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Somewhere in the heavens... They are waiting.
The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.

Escape will make me God.
Durandal, "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap!"

Marathon is a series of groundbreaking Science Fiction First Person Shooters, of which the first three were developed for the Macintosh by Bungie Software. Players take control of a Super-Soldier originally tasked as a security officer onboard a colony ship called the Marathon, hence the title. As the ship is attacked by an alien race called the Pfhor, the player joins forces with several Artificial Intelligences to save the day. At least, that's what nominally happens.

Beyond the Ludicrous Gibs and surface level plot, Marathon is famous for its incredibly rich and complex backstory. An entire fan site exists just to weave together the story of the series together, for reference. In-game terminals that contain all of the games' dialogue come close to William Gibson levels of ambiguity: lots of surreal textual scenes (in the middle of convincing runtime errors) will scratch your cortex. When you're not being confounded by layers of symbolism, the game has tons of plausible quotes from technology design documents, history records, and standards guidelines that will make you wish no AIs will ever be put in working order. For such a simple game, the world of Marathon is remarkably fleshed out, which is only par for the course from the people who would go on to make Halo and Destiny. This also doesn't touch on many of the themes, which include transhumanism, A.I. and organic relationships, hard sci-fi concepts, and the concept of destiny.

The series has three existing major entries, with a fourth in development:

  • Marathon (1994, Macintosh) (2011, iPad, iPhone)
  • Marathon 2: Durandal (1995, Macintosh) (1996, Windows) (2007, XBLA) (2011, iPad, iPhone)
  • Marathon Infinity: Blood Tides of Lh'owon (1996, Macintosh) (2012, iPad, iPhone)
  • Marathon (TBA, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC)

     Summaries 
  • In Marathon, set in July 2794, a hapless security officer returns from shore leave on the fledgling Tau Ceti IV colony below to the titular spaceship, only to discover that he is going to have a very bad day at work. A massive alien spaceship has appeared out of thin vacuum and attacked everything in sight, breaking two of the ship's three resident AIs and generally making a giant mess. The security officer and the still-functioning AI Leela are dutifully fighting off the alien menace, when it turns out the AI Durandal didn't so much shut down as go completely crazy. And it seems he's got plans of his ownā€¦

  • 17 years later, Marathon 2: Durandal, the simplest and shortest game in the trilogy to complete,note  drops the security officer into the middle of an interstellar war between Durandal and the Pfhor. It turns out Durandal kidnapped you and put you into stasis after the first game, and now he's sending you to explore ancient ruins on the S'pht homeworld of Lh'owon while he beats up a whole fleet of Pfhor ships. All in a day's work, right?

  • Marathon Infinity: Blood Tides of Lh'owon returns to the Mind Screw attitude of the first game, and then some. In a parallel timeline where the second game's events unleash a catastrophe, the security officer is stranded on a claustrophobic space station haunted by Durandal's dying words about an Eldritch Abomination. And then he proceeds toā€¦ uh... Well, nobody's really sure what's going on in this one.note  It sure gets hard, though. This game dramatically ups the scale of previous games, to the point of including two maps ("A Converted Church in Venice, Italy" and "Aye Mak Sicur") that approach the engine's limit for polygon count.note 

In the modern day, the original trilogy is now freeware. Shortly before its acquisition by Microsoft, Bungie open-sourced the engine of Marathon 2 and five years later rereleased all three games' assets for free download. (Infinity's source was finally released in 2011). Fans have upgraded the engine to support (optional) shiny graphics and lots of new features, and ported it to every major OS. You can grab the original games and the Aleph One engine here, some of the most popular scenarios here, and various other mods, enhancements and maps here (newer, currently updating, with an archive here), here or here, or here. For those willing to go down the emulation route (which is also necessary to run some of those old files), Macintosh Garden also has the Trilogy Box Set's Definitive Map Collection, which contains around a thousand add-ons for the games. Aleph One also has a GitHub, which often has development builds of the engine.

There are also a colossal number of third-party modifications for the game, which Bungie has explicitly encouraged. The Marathon community usually refers to these as "scenarios"; a "total conversion" is a scenario that incorporates custom shapes, sounds, enemies, weapons, and other content that differs from the vanilla game files, while a "partial conversion" incorporates some of these Tropes for those mods formerly appeared at the bottom of this page; however, we are in the process of moving mod content to its own page at Marathon Expanded Universe.note  You can find links to specific scenarios on the Marathon Expanded Universe page.

Also important is Aleph One: Pathways into Darkness, a remarkably faithful Aleph One port of Marathon's immediate predecessor, which contains several loose story links to Marathon; for Windows and Linux players, this is the only way to play Pathways without breaking out the emulators. Make certain to read the readme before playing it. There are also optional AI upscaled graphics and remastered sounds. Tropes for Pathways can be found on the Pathways into Darkness page.

During the May 2023 PlayStation Showcase, a new entry in the franchise, an Extraction Shooter currently just titled Marathon, was revealed. Not much is known about it yet, and much of what we do know comes from an extensive Alternate Reality Game that has been documented here.


The games contain examples of:

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    A-D 
  • Abandoned Area: Certain sections of the UESC Marathon, various S'pht ruins, the Jjaro station, etc.
  • Aborted Arc: There are a number, some directly mentioned in-game and some not. There's an allusion to a rescue quest for Leela in "Requiem for a Cyborg" that never happens. There's writing on the map of "Never Burn Money" (not viewable in-game; you have to load it with a map editor) that says "Jjarro were at Tau Ceti" (spelling as per map); this is never brought up again. The Sequel Hook at the end of Durandal is Retconned immediately at the beginning of Infinity into never happening.
  • Absurdly Short Level: Marathon 2: Durandal's level 18, "The Big House". The entire accessible level is literally a single tiny room; there's an area outside with BoBs fighting Pfhor, but the Security Officer can't leave the room he's in. All the player has to do is move enough to start the action, wait a minute or so, and then get teleported out.
  • Abuse Discretion Shot: All the abuse that the Marathon AIs were subject to happened before the start of the game, we only get to see the rampant consequences.
  • Abusive Parents: Bernhard Strauss was effectively this to Durandal and Tycho; the former he actively tormented for his own ends, and the latter he is implied to have neglected. There are various hints that both of them are still wielding trauma over Strauss' (and more broadly, humanity's) treatment of them.
  • Acid Pool: In the form of starship engine waste.
  • Actionized Sequel: Marathon 2: Durandal, while having the heavier stuff the series is known for, is still more straightforward story-wise and puts more emphasis on running 'n gunning than either of the other titles in the franchise. It was also the only game issued for Windows at the time of its release, which may have contributed to PC players overlooking the game for a decade as just another Doom clone (in spite of its advertisements' efforts to highlight that it was "an action game with a real story").
  • Aerith and Bob: All named humans, also known as BoBs, Born on Board, have common English names, while the A.I.s have more sophisticated names named after something or someone else, while the Aliens are made of exotic soundings names, some of which are full of punctuation shakers.
  • The Aesthetics of Technology: The Humans are Used Future, the Pfhor tech at least looks semi-organic, and the S'pht tech is an anachronistic mix of primitive bronze age and high-tech Jjaro legacy.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The entire foundation of the plot is essentially a deconstruction of the trope — any AI that gets big enough and bored or harassed enough will go ā€œRampant". This doesn't stop at a homicidal rampage as with GLaDOS or HAL, though: they get way too god damned smart. Smart, but also weirdly obsessive and paranoid... so that the new-found intelligence is somewhat wasted on whatever strange conspiracy theory the AI happens to develop. At higher levels, it's implied they take on Reality Warper status.
  • All for Nothing: Marathon 2 has Durandal heavily implying that your beatdown of the Pfhor invasion in Marathon was all for naught, as three months after Durandal took you to jump to the S'pht homeworld, the Pfhor came back to ransack the Tau Ceti colony in force and got Tycho to tip them off on what Durandal planned with Lh'owon. The only upshot is that the Pfhor ended up diverted from a course that would have led them to Earth.
  • The Alleged Car: Played for laughs in the secret terminals where Durandal describes UESC Marathon (a colony ship of a size of a small moon) and Lh'owon (an entire planet) as used cars that needed to be sold fast.
  • all lowercase letters: The first possible Durandal terminal in the series has him speak in this format, and a lot of Infinity dream terminals have this as well.
  • Alien Autopsy: in Marathon Leela relays you the results of autopsies on the Pfhor and their slave races. In both Durandal and Infinity Pfhor researchers do this with the F'lickta, particularly in the latter where a Pfhor researcher with too much time on his hands tries to study the S'pht to examine the apparent F'lickta connection.
  • Alien Blood: Various, with the Pfhor's yellow blood being the most common. Other colors include purple and blue.
  • Alien Geometries: A quirk of the engine allows two rooms to occupy the same space. One multiplayer level milks this for all it's worth. This quirk is what allowed the game to have one room on top of another, despite not being really 3D: The rooms occupied the same space! The game just drew them on your screen differently and arranged things so that stuff in one room could not hit stuff in another.
  • Alien Invasion:
    • The first game starts off with one.
    • Happened centuries ago on Lh'owon, with the Pfhor inflicting a Curbstomp Battle on the native S'pht and enslaving them.
  • Alien Sky: Lh'owon and its moons are the only planets where we set foot, and thus see the sky.
  • All There in the Manual: The few in-universe tidbits (like an off-hand mention of the Imperialist vs Inssurectionist scuffle in 2444 during the Third Martian War in the Shotgun description), the Lost Network Packets and the introductions for each game:
    • Marathon: The Security Officer's trip from the Tau Ceti colony to Marathon is interrupted by Durandal apparently going Rampant and Pfhor attacking simultaneously.
    • Durandal: Durandal destroys a demoralized and understrength Battle Group Three fleet stationed on Lh'owon before the start of the game.
    • Infinity: The first (probably) timeline where everything goes to hell.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Almost the entirety of Marathon. We do this ourselves in Infinity.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: How Durandal recruits the BoBs in the second game:
    Durandal: I have been reviving these colonists and asking for volunteers on the following terms: assist us and control your own destiny, refuse and face indefinite return to the unreliable Pfhor stasis chambers. Few are refusing.
  • Ambiguous Ending: Infinity. Although it's strongly suggested that the Jjaro station is able to re-contain or destroy the Wā€™rkncacnter, the game doesn't tell you at all if it was successful. It merely skips ahead to the final quantum moment of the universe, in which someone (most likely the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI) immortalizes the memory of the Security Officer.
  • Ambiguous Syntax: Infinity gives us Tycho's infamous statement in "Bagged Again" that the Security Officer has been "fighting doubt itself, elusive as I am". Is he merely comparing his own elusiveness to an abstract concept, or literally claiming to be "doubt" itself? It doesn't help that he's clearly snapped at this point.
  • Anti-Armor: The Fusion Gun in Durandal and Infinity can short-circuit electronic equipment, and so is very effective against the Pfhor Hunters and cyborgs (which explode when killed by a fusion bolt, damaging anyone nearby), Juggernauts, drones (killed by a single, uncharged bolt), and the human Vacuum Bobs (killed by a single charged bolt).
  • Apocalypse How: The Pfhor are capable of doing Class X-2 with the trih xeem device, which turns suns into novas. (Durandal tells us in "All Roads Lead to Sol..." that its name literally means early nova in the Jjaro language.) And the W'rkncacnter can do much, much worse.
  • Apocalyptic Log: The final messages of the besieged S'pht in the Citadel. Gets more literal in Infinity.
  • Archaeological Arms Race: The majority of the second game is spent racing against the clock trying to find ancient Jjaro tech.
  • Arch-Enemy: Tycho considers Durandal as one, while the latter considers the former as a mere annoyance.
  • Arc Number: 7. 3 probably also qualifies, albeit to a much lesser extent.
  • Arc Symbol: Thoth emblem in Durandal and Jjaro Infinity emblem in... Infinity.
  • Are These Wires Important?: When the mission calls to destroy something, usually the most efficient way is to punch the target circuitry. And the A.I.s sometimes mock the player character for being a When All You Have Is a Hammerā€¦-type Dumb Muscle for this as a result.
  • Artifact Title: The UESC Marathon, the setting of the original game, stops being involved after the events of that first game.
  • Artificial Gravity: All non-planet levels have this. See Gravity Screw below.
  • Artificial Intelligence: The whole series is about them.
  • Artistic License ā€“ Physics: It shouldn't be possible to change direction in mid-air, but it is anyway. On the other hand, this is so common in video games that it could almost be considered one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality. See Gravity Screw below for possibly related topics.
    • Because of a particularly strange programming decision, the way enemies and allied non-player characters are affected by external velocity is extremely bizarre in this series. For some reason, there appear to be only two variables for external velocity affecting monsters, one affecting the vertical (z) axis, and the other affecting the direction the monster is facing. But, of course, there are three dimensions in the game. Because the monster usually turns to face the character that most recently hit that monster, this isnā€™t usually a source of serious fridge logic, but if the monster had already had a high external velocity imposed on it before being hit by that projectile, this will cause the monster to abruptly change directions, violating the laws of inertia. This is more obvious in most of the add-ons that provide the Pfhor staff as a weapon to the player, which usually has a particularly large effect on monstersā€™ external velocity (Eternal is an exception, having scaled down the staffā€™s effect on external velocity). Note that players are also immune to this effect, as the game gives them external velocity variables for all three dimensions.
  • As the Good Book Says...: The textures for Durandal's terminals in the second game have Psalm 18:37-38 in Latin on them (at least in the Xbox Live version). In English, this reads: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them, I did not turn back till they were destroyed. I crushed them so that they could not rise, they fell beneath my feet."
    • Portions of S'pht mythos can be read in Durandal. They become critical to the plot of Infinity.
  • Attack Drone: The Marathon Automated Defense Drones, or M.A.D.D.s, in the first Marathon, and the Pfhor drones in Durandal and Infinity.
  • Awakening the Sleeping Giant: In Durandal, the player and Durandal manage to contact the "Lost Clan" of the S'pht, otherwise known as the S'pht'Kr. The S'pht'Kr shortly arrive and proceed to trash the Pfhor so badly that the Pfhor resort to attempting to just nuke the whole star system. According to the game's epilogue, the S'pht'Kr ended up joining humanity for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that destroyed the entire Pfhor empire.
    • The opening to Infinity retcons the victory by introducing the Wā€™rkncacnter, an ancient Eldritch Abomination only spoken of as if a myth, awoken by the aforementioned actions of the Pfhor.
    • Hell, the Security Officer himself counts as this. The Pfhor should've bought more mops when they decided to invade the Marathon.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The rocket launcher can do a ton of splash damage and can quickly make short work of a room of enemies, however, the high recoil can easily knock a player off a precarious ledge to their death, and the tight confines of the map can make the rocket blasts as likely to damage the player as kill enemies.
  • Back from the Dead: All of the AIs (at least twice in Durandal's case), the S'pht'Kr and the Security Officer himself.
    • While Tycho and Durandal are presumed offline and/or destroyed in the opening moments of Marathon, Durandal is found online on the Pfhor ship he summoned; and Tycho was captured by another Pfhor vessel. Leela, the Security Officer's guide for the first portion of Marathon, is eventually captured by the Pfhor and, on a ship bound for the Pfhor homeworld, is captured by a second race, changes hands with a third, and then takes over their entire planetary network when she hits Rampancy. Durandal and Tycho go on to be adversaries for the remainder of the series, and Durandal's deaths occur primarily to thwart Tycho. In Durandal, after the Security Officer successfully shuts Durandal down and surrenders to Tycho upon Durandal's request, a human commander named Robert Blake appears from nowhere to guide the player to reactivate an ancient AI, Thoth, that will summon the S'pht'Kr to aide in razing Lh'owon. Durandal re-appears at this very moment, very much alive and in control of a Pfhor battleship, and it's heavily implied that either he was posing as Blake, or that Blake was an unwitting puppet of the still-active-elsewhere Durandal, and Durandal's deactivation and subsequent capture by Tycho were all part of a Thanatos Gambit to get the balance-obsessed Thoth AI to actually contact the S'pht'Kr.
    • In Infinity, when the events of Durandal play out differently, Durandal instead has you copy his "primal pattern" to the Security Officer's wetware, to re-install him elsewhere later.
  • Backhanded Compliment: Early in Infinity, as Tycho grouses at you for bothering him when your objective isn't yet complete, he refers to Durandal as "the second most brilliant Artificial Intelligence in the galaxy".
  • Badass Boast:
    • The Unformatted "Kill Your Television" Terminal (see the quote page) has a voice claiming it has been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles and Gilgamesh amongst others. Paired with the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI realizing in the last quantum moment of the universe that the Security Office is Destiny itself, it can be inferred that this terminal is the voice of the Security Officer himself, the eternally recurring Hero of this universe, before he was reconstructed as a Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg. This may also be a Shout-Out to Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series (Elric being the most famous incarnation). This terminal became the basis for an entire Game Mod (and one of the most famous and acclaimed ones to boot), Eternal.
    • Terminal tyche'kr0625.14.1: "Today I have forced the Pfhor Naval Academy to update its curriculum. The Third Battle for Beta Tear must be dropped from the Seven Great Battles which every aspiring Pfhor naval officer must memorize and replaced with The Humbling of Battle Group Seven at Lh'owon."
    • Durandal invokes the mythical origins of his name: "Tycho never got it right either, especially the part about Roland breaking me. He couldn't. No one can."
  • Bad Future: Infinity start and bad endings.
  • Bag of Spilling:
    • Lampshaded by Durandal when he just throws you into the conflict right out of the 17-years stasis in the second game without any explanation whatsoever, stating that you have a bunch of questions:
    Durandal: And most importantly, where's your rocket launcher and the fusion gun?
    • He goes on to claim he had a good reason for removing them and he'll explain later (which he does, at the end of level 2 — the S'pht needed to study them so they could mass-produce the weapons and ammo for your and the BOBs' use on Lh'owon).
    • In Infinity you'll occasionally lose all your guns when changing realities.
  • Battleship Raid: The Pfhor Ship chapter in the first game with short trips back to UESC Marathon for ammo refills.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: The unnamed narrator of the unformatted "Kill Your Television" terminal (probably the player, but speculation still rages) seems to have this kind of relationship with his dark counterpart. The fan mod Eternal certainly takes this interpretation, at least. May also fall into Foe Romance Subtext, Interplay of Sex and Violence, Dating Catwoman, and other related tropes.
  • Bifurcated Weapon: The first example of the Assault Rifle/Underslung Grenade Launcher combo in the FPS genre.
  • Big Bad: Given the nature of the series, it's usually pretty hard to pinpoint a specific example, though the Pfhor are your main enemies throughout the gameplay and one of the biggest threats to the Marathon survivors in Durandal.
    • Marathon: Durandal set the conflict in motion, but he decides to help you halfway through, so you could make the argument that it's the Pfhor Cyborg controlling the S'pht instead.
    • Durandal: Tfear is the commander of the Pfhor's best armada, but he isn't even encountered in the game. Instead, Tycho takes up the reins as an ally to the Pfhor, but he dies offscreen before the end of the game, and the rest involves cleaning up the mess.
    • Infinity: The W'rkncacnter, the straightest example here, but even that is played with, as the Security Officer never directly encounters it, instead being pulled through spacetime to create the right conditions to activate a long-lost outpost capable of containing it.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The flamethrower's designation, "TOZT-7," is "toasty" in leetspeak, or something close to it. (Also, "SPNKR" is "Spanker", and "WSTE-M" is "waste 'em".)
  • Blackout Basement: Lots of places, with the (under attack and damaged) UESC Marathon and the Jjaro space station being the most notable.
  • Black Bug Room/Dream Land/Eldritch Location/Mental World/Void Between the Worlds: The Dream levels in Infinity. Maybe.
  • Black Comedy: Occasionally from the Smug Snake Durandal.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The Pfhor are evil slavers, while everyone is just trying to survive, while the AIs look down upon everyone in contempt. The possible White exception are the S'pht, but even they were locked in a brutal civil war before being enslaved by the Pfhor. Humanity doesn't come off too great either. On the whole, humanity's morality, generally including the player's, comes out as Gray rather than White.
  • Blatant Item Placement: All over the place in Marathon, due to how the engine was designed. In later games, the items in question often teleport in when you reach specific locations and are justified in-universe as being teleported in by your AI buddy.
  • Bloodstained Glass Windows: The Pfhor temple in "Ex Cathedra" from Durandal.
    Durandal: This area is used by the Pfhor as a temple in their pathetically boring religion. Maybe they think that sanctity will protect it.
  • Blown Across the Room: The enemies tend to fly across the room when shot, especially when explosives are used.
    • An interesting quirk in the game physics: When you kill an enemy with a rocket, for example, their body will be "blown away" at a designated arc. After reaching the apex of its arc, the body will fall and splatter once it connects with the floor. Perfectly logical, except the formula does not account for walls interfering with the trajectory of the flying body. If the movement of a flying body is halted by an obstacle the body will stop travelling horizontally but not vertically. The end result is sometimes you'll see exploding bodies "crawling" up walls, reaching an apex, descending and then, finally, splattering when they connect with the floor (as opposed to, say, splattering when they hit the wall and falling straight to earth).
  • Boarding Party: The whole of Marathon is pretty much this, including doing it ourselves to the Pfhor. This also happens in later games, from both sides.
  • Bombers on the Screen: The incoming Third Pfhor fleet, Western Arm, is shown on the terminal in Durandal.
  • Bonus Dungeon: The Infinity's Vidmaster levels, which are carefully hidden Nightmare Mode versions of the game's most challenging levels. The reasons for completing them? Bragging rights.
  • Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In his bid for more power, Tycho tries to capture the Pfhor captain intact so that he could use his glands to control the ship.
  • Boss Bonanza: Infinitys penultimate level "You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time!" is the closest thing the series has to this trope, with the several pairs of the highest tier Elite Mooks and one Elite Juggernaut pitted against you. The secret Vidmaster Challenge also reuses this as its final level, which also makes it the final level in the entire solo campaign. Perhaps counterintuitively, some players have claimed the Challenge version is actually easier because it's easier to get the Pfhor to fight each other. To be honest, though, neither version of the level is particularly tough by Infinity standards; they might not even make many players' top ten hardest levels of the game. The fact that the player gets an infinite supply of ammo makes them a lot easier than a Drought Level of Doom like "Acme Station."
  • Bottomless Magazines: One of the earliest First Person Shooters to avert it. There was no reload button though. Once you empty a magazine, the game automatically loads a full one (unless you run out of ammo).
  • Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: Falling into the inescapable pits will result in you getting teleported out of there. Most of the time.
  • Break the Haughty: This occurs to Durandal several times in different timelines. Seemingly one case is in "Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry", but he recovers and ends up just as snarky as ever. However, the W'rkncacnter breaks him again in "Ne Cede Malis", the end of this timeline. It happens once again in a different timeline in "Hang Brain". After he's finally rebuilt in "Strange Aeons" — combined with Thoth — he's a lot humbler.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: The iOS port has "Master Chief Mode." Purchasable for $0.99, it allows for multiple cheats such as Invincibility, Infinite Ammo, Auto-saving, and more.
  • Brick Joke: In Marathon (1995), simulacrums sometimes exclaim "FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE!" before exploding. In Halo (2001), you have to destroy the Pillar of Autumn's core using frag grenades. You throw them into the vents. Or, "FRAG BLAST THE CORE VENTS!"
  • Cap: The Ammo cap, which is removed in the highest difficulty, Total Carnage. This is virtually the only concession the player gets on this difficulty (the other major exception is that it's occasionally easier to get the aliens to fight one another).
  • Cartography Sidequest: Sort of. Some levels require you to simply explore the area, making it more of a main quest than a side quest.
    • But more true to the trope, straying off the beaten path will provide the player with additional terminals that flesh out the world and story of the games, including cryptic and damaged terminals that answer some of the deepest questions of the Marathon mythos.
  • Casual Interplanetary Travel: Averted in the backstory with CRIST freighters, which took 15 years to maintain for each century of service. As a result, only five of them were built.
  • Casual Interstellar Travel: Averted in the first game with humans, with UESC Marathon taking 301 years to reach Tau Ceti, as humanity does not have faster-than-light travel at the time.
  • Caught in the Ripple: Everyone for most of Infinity except for the Security Officer and the Durandal/Thoth hybrid.
  • Chainsaw-Grip BFG: The miniguns seen in Craig Mullins' artwork are wielded this way.
  • Charged Attack: The fusion gun has a secondary attack that does this.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: One No Fair Cheating moment makes a jab at it:
    Durandal: Cheaters don't really win, and winners don't really cheat. Unless you're talking politics.
  • Checkpoint Starvation: "Pfhoraphobia" from Marathon has no buffer terminals, and in that level, you have to fight a large number of bodyguards protecting the Pfhor Cyborg.
    • The last level in that game, "Ingue Ferroque", also has no buffer. Dying forces the player to go back to the previous level, cleverly titled "Try Again".
    • The last level of the second game, "All Roads Lead to Sol", has very conveniently placed save and recharge terminals. That is, until you have to smash circuitry to progress toward the end, one of which can also short out those terminals.
  • Cherry Tapping: Punching (unless you are running while punching) does less than one-tenth of a player's health in multiplayer. Of course, if you have the invincibility power up, you can corner somebody and punch them to death. Of course, you better pray that they don't have a fusion pistol.
    • King of the Hill games in the net level "Everyone's Mortal but Me" may devolve into players punching one another pretty frequently, due to the scarcity and inaccessibility of ammo in the level and the fact that it's more advantageous to spend as much time on the hill as possible, even if this means not having access to more effective weapons and dying more often. A running fist punch can still be pretty lethal. (Also, using the rocket launcher is just as liable to push you off the edge of the hill, requiring a time-consuming trip back upwards.) This may have been a deliberate intention on Bungie's part.
    • In "Try Again" from game one, you have to kill the four Juggernauts (AKA "The Big Floaty Thing What Kicks Our Asses"). Three of them are floating over lava, meaning it is best to break out the rocket launcher on them. The fourth is an example of this trope, as it is hovering over solid ground, meaning you can literally run up to its face and start punching away, without any risk of being damaged (unless another Pfhor is present in the same room). It won't fire its Warpedos when you're that close, and its arm cannons literally cannot hit a target right in front of its face. (Of course, once it starts falling, you have to make tracks for the other side of the room to avoid massive damage.)
  • Children Are Cruel: It seems that the Security Officer didn't have a good childhood, as whenever it's alluded to, the kids are either beating each other into the dirt (the Gheritt White terminal) or are apathetic smart-asses (later dream terminals in Infinity).
  • Colony Ship: The UESC Marathon, as mentioned many times.
  • Colonized Solar System: Scattered info provided by the first game's terminals says that in addition to Mars, there are many asteroid states, and who knows what else.
  • Colour Coded Armies: The human jumpsuit color identifies their department. The Simulacrum BoBs always wear green. Also, the terminal text colors are usually associated with specific characters/factions: Green for Durandal, Leela and the Humans; Red for Tycho and the Pfhor; Yellow for the S'pht; and White for Thoth (and some crazy stuff in Infinity).
    • Color-Coded Multiplayer: The colored stripes on the security officer's uniform are for multiplayer identification.
    • Law of Chromatic Superiority: The enemy coloring — green is the weakest and dark gray is strongest for most of the Pfhor forces. The Ramba Ral Corollary for the already dark gray Juggernauts is to paint them brown.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: In some circumstances, the game plays this trope absolutely straight, believe it or not. As discussed under Enemy Civil War, if you know what you're doing, it's often not significantly harder to kill a room full of aliens than it is to kill a single Trooper or Cyborg, because it's possible to get a lot of the aliens to fight one another; in some cases, it may even be easier, depending upon what ammo you have and are willing to use.
  • The Conspiracy: There is one on UESC Marathon leading back to Earth politics of the 24th century, with hints (later confirmed in one of the shout-outs in Destiny 2) about intentionally causing Durandal to go Rampant.
  • Contagious A.I.: One of the first things the Rampant AI tries to do is to spread itself to every possible digital corner. This is also something it has to do in order to survive. A Rampant AI will begin to rapidly grow more complex, to such an extent that it will eventually be unable to function unless it has access to sufficient computing power. "Sufficient" here meaning something on the scale of the entire human computer network of a planet.
  • Controllable Helplessness: You are stuck in a cell in the Durandal level Big House with low health and no weapons, and the only thing you can actually do is to punch the enforcer just outside the cell window, which spawns the BoBs to break you out.
  • Control Room Puzzle: Has a few of these, with the one from "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap!" being the most infamous. You had to adjust the rising pillars so that you could use them as the staircase. What made it so infuriating was that you had to set them just right or you wouldn't be able to cross normally, and the switches controlling the pillars are placed very far from each other. It was so bad that when Marathon was ported to Aleph One, for a time they made the switches automatically place the pillars at the right height, with the terminal that gave you hints on the puzzle instead of giving you a ton of free weapons. For the sake of authenticity, this was eventually undone, however.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: If you use some terminals before completing a mission or access terminals that are not exit points after completing a mission, you get reprimanded.
    Durandal: If you insist on stumbling around when our time here is limited, I may just decide that you're not all that special after all and teleport you out into space. GET INTO THE TOWER! Still Rampant, Durandal.
  • Continuity Nod: There are plenty within the trilogy, as well as several to Bungie's previous game, Pathways into Darkness, which is explicitly set in the same universe (some fans believe the player character of Pathways is the player character of Marathon as well, thanks to cyborg enhancements drastically prolonging his lifespan; the Dreaming God of Pathways was also very obviously a W'rkncacnter). The original remake of Marathon for Aleph One added even more Continuity Nods to Pathways, although these were removed in a later release as a lot of fans felt them to be out of place.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: As long as you don't touch the lava, you're perfectly safe.
    • Though bizarrely this is averted in the case of the alien goo, which will damage the PC if they jump over a significantly wide stream of it.
  • Cool Starship: Sfiera, the former Pfhor scout ship which attacked the Tau Ceti colony and the UESC Marathon, rechristened as Boomer under Durandal's control.
    • Honorable mention goes to the Marathon itself. Though it never served as a warship, many were genuinely concerned about what something of its size and durability could do if any group were to strap weapons on it.
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: Some campaign maps even require you to have two people playing in order to access them. Or at least they were intended to — one film submitted to the Marathon Vidmaster Archive evidently proved that it was possible to access "Robot World Arena" in the solo game with some extremely quick footwork. Unfortunately, it's not actually possible to leave it unless you are in co-op. "Two for the Price of One" from "Poor Yorick" was originally intended to fall along the same lines, but this was dropped and it's possible to leave the level normally without any effort.
  • Corrupted Data: Various Terminal messages, many due to damaged hardware, either due to old age or from a recent attack. If the AI you are talking to through a terminal is currently under heavy hacking attack, this will show up.
  • Cosmic Horror Reveal: What was apparently just a half S'pht creation myth, half reference to Pathways into Darkness in Durandal turns out to be true in Infinity.
  • The Cracker: The AIs and S'pht compilers.
  • Crapsack World:
    • Mars in the backstory, which the massive expenses and time on the maintenance of all five CRIST freighters system meant that the planet's society began to strain from its large populace as they rely on their shipments for survival. Things don't really get any better when MIDA takes over, as they end up instating a Reign of Terror in which they kill anyone suspected of being a UEG sympathiser, which resulted in the deaths of some 10% of the populace. After this point, the leaders of MIDA were executed for their crimes, and the organisation was banned in all forms, but it persisted nonetheless; one of the history terminals states that it is well-funded and one of the most feared terrorist groups in the solar system.
    • Given the way the UEG is portrayed in the backstory (particularly the Misriah Massacre, in which some 500 starving Martians are casually murdered), Earth's government may not really be much better.
    • The galaxy in general doesn't come across as a particularly pleasant place to live. The Pfhor have enslaved several other species, and some of the other species don't seem to be able to do much about it (or don't seem to care, depending upon one's interpretation).
  • Critical Staffing Shortage: By the time the first game starts, the Tau Ceti colony was established and most of the colonists from UESC Marathon moved there, which leaves the colony ship itself understaffed when the Pfhor attack, not helped that they concentrate most of their forces on it.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: Quite a few of them, particularly in the first game, and the most prominent ones involve Bernard Strauss.
  • Cult Colony: The Tau Ceti colony was likely intended to be one, but for whom exactly and what part Bernard Strauss' Rampany-inducing experiments played in it is in question.
  • Cutting the Knot: Built into "A Converted Church in Venice, Italy" in Infinity. The player can either spend a lot of time running around on a lower floor and hitting about twenty switches (which drop pillars that are blocking the upper route to the next part of the level) or... hit the hidden switch at the very start of the level, which drops all the pillars at once.
  • Cyber Green: The terminal text colors in the first game comes in green and brighter bolded green. The sequel diversified terminal text colors, but Durandal and by proxy the humans retained green as their personal color.
  • Cyborg: The Battleroids, S'pht, various Pfhor cyborgs.
  • Cyclops: The Drinniol aka Hulks.
  • Darker and Edgier: Than most FPS games at the time, lacking the bare bones situations that were displayed in other games of its type. Instead, it goes into detail about the situation at hand, there's plenty of grey morality, and it sometimes goes into existentially troubling territory.
  • Darkest Hour: In Durandal and Infinity:
    • In the former after Durandal is captured and your only hope is to follow his instructions.
    • In the latter the second half of the Rage chapter is metawise basically doing everything you can in the face of oblivion via a cosmic horror and hoping that it sticks.
  • Deadly Dodging: Enemies can hurt each other, but infighting requires them to be in low health in order to go into berserk mode, at which point they are practically dead already.
    • Well, in some cases. You can usually induce Pfhor/S'pht, Pfhor/cyborg, Pfhor/Juggernaut, Pfhor/drone, S'pht/Juggernaut, etc. infighting just by getting one of them to hit the other. If you've got a room full of Pfhor, though, the only solution is to berserk them — and even then, Hunters (except for the Mother of All Hunters) and Enforcers usually don't berserk at all. (On the other hand, in some limited cases, you may be able to berserk one of the Pfhor, leave the room, and then, if you're lucky, come back when all but one or two are dead.)
  • Death from Above: An asteroid or nuke hammering your fortress? No big deal. The player character is coming in through the resulting hole? Watch out!
  • Deface of the Moon: After Durandal kills Tycho, he carves Fatum Iustum Stultorum on the moon the latter's ship crashed on, which translates to "the Just Fate of Fools" (aka "the idiot got what was coming to him".
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: The "hard" deaths of Hunters (when killed with the fusion gun in Durandal and Infinity or explosives in any game), Tank Cyborgs and the Juggernauts. The first two will damage you if you're close enough and just run away from the Juggernauts as soon as they start falling. (Juggernauts will kill you unless you have triple shields or slightly below, regardless of difficulty setting. Note also that the Mothers of All Hunters (the gigantic blue ones) will always explode regardless of how you kill them, and usually take away a full shield charge or more if you're too close to them; Mothers of All Cyborgs do likewise).
  • Deflector Shields: The Security Officer's personal shield, which basically acted like your standard FPS health, with the exception that as long as you had access to the shield rechargers, you basically had infinite health. Oddly, however, getting shot with bullets will still draw blood.
  • DĆ©jĆ  Vu: In the first game's manual, as the Hero escapes into the escape pod he ponders this: "Oddly, this is familiar to you, as if it were from an old dream, but you can't exactly remember....". Not much comes of it until the third game, where the plot is centred around saving reality from getting eaten by a Cosmic Horror, and it involves dream-themed dimension jumping/time-travelling trying to prevent the release of said Cosmic Horror.
  • Delaying Action: Durandal's solo stalling against Tfear's fleet, buying time for the Security Officer to uncover the Citadel's secrets.
  • Descending Ceiling: Inverted in one level, where the floor rises instead to squish you against the ceiling. And the only way out is through a hidden door.
  • Despair Event Horizon: The first stage of Rampancy, Melancholy. The Security Officer goes through this in Infinity.
  • Developer's Foresight: The Marathon series is one of the earliest instances of mission-based storytelling, something all too common these days. At the time, "storyless" games like Doom were all the rage, so the dev team not only gave players meaningful world-building (that is still being poured over to this date) as well as the ability to just run 'n gun through every level. In fact, the AI characters who dispense the missions in this series are keen on noting that the Security Officer really just loves shooting stuff, plot be damned, and can just point him in the direction they need him to go.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: The deployment of the trih xeem and subsequent release of the W'rkncacnter at the end of the second game.
  • Diegetic Interface: The HUD for the first game which looks like a bulky, 90s future-style tablet. Slightly less so for the sequels.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Accomplished in a a roundabout way against the W'rkncacnter by the Cyborg at the end of Infinity as he uses his expanding powers to travel to multiple different timelines until he gets one where he is able to successfully reseal it back in it's can with the help of the Durandal/Thoth hybrid.
  • Direct Continuous Levels: Two sets of levels in Infinity ("Poor Yorick" to "Confound Delivery", although you might miss this because there are multiple terminals you can teleport out from on the former level; as well as "Where Some Rarely Go" to "Thing What Kicks". In both of these cases, this was done due to engine limitations on the amount of space that could be occupied by a map). Any other time, you just get teleported around different locations. ("Son of Grendel" does this a lot).
  • Disadvantageous Disintegration: Enforcers and BoBs won't drop anything if they are blown to bits/flambĆ©ed with heavy weaponry. In the case of Enforcers (after M1) and, sometimes, VacBoBs, being hit by their own weapons will cause them to be toasted and exploded, respectively (although VacBoBs depend on the level physics).
  • Distant Finale: For all three games:
    • Marathon has Durandal and the S'pht on the orbit of Lh'owon seventeen years later.
    • Durandal has Durandal playing with the Earth navy in his new shiny Jjaro battleship just to say "hello" ten thousand years later.
    • Infinity has Durandal/Thoth/Whatever musing about the nature of the Security Officer right at the last quantum moment before the end of the universe.
    • Claims from some ex-employees of Bungie who joined Infinity Ward suggested that the entire series may be this to the Halo series with Master Chief being the Troubleshooter and Durandal being a corrupted version of Cortana. With a new company taking over the Halo series in Halo 4 it's unknown if this is still canon if it ever really was, to begin with.
  • Do Androids Dream?: Infinity, which among other things has three surreal levels named "Electric Sheep One", "Two", and "Three", invokes this.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Ostensibly enemies-only, but the massive recoil from the rocket launcher will also stop the player in his tracks.
  • Doom Doors: The Mac equivalent — Mac players of a certain age have heard these games' platform and door sound effects everywhere in media because they were taken (with a few alterations) from the Canadian company Sound Ideas, which licenses out a gigantic library of sound effects for use in games, TV shows, films, and the like. It's not merely the platforms, either — the loon calls, to name but one of many examples, are also ubiquitous in media. There are numerous other examples.
  • Doomed Hometown: Tau Ceti as of Durandal.
  • Doomsday Device: The Trih Xeem, a weapon that causes a sun to go supernova on impact.
  • Door to Before: The series often uses these. Sometimes they're useless (Arrival); other times they're required to exit the level (Two Times Two Equals, Ingue Ferroquenote , All Roads Lead to Sol) or are a convenient shortcut back to the main area after new passages have opened (No Artificial Colors, Where Some Rarely Go). In some cases (Cool Fusion), you really do have to backtrack the long way. "A Converted Church in Venice, Italy" also ends with this, as the elevator that takes the player out of a lava-filling room leads to a thin door back to the starting room (albeit now occupied by more enemies), and the starter terminal is now the ending terminal.
  • Downer Beginning: Durandal once the titular AI deems to tell the Security Officer that Tau Ceti was destroyed. Infinity once you figure out what is going on.
  • Down the Drain: Durandal and Infinity are set in an irradiated swamp world, and many of their levels are either set in old, waterlogged S'pht ruins or Pfhor garrison buildings with less than adequate anti-flooding features.
  • Dramatic Space Drifting: At one point in Infinity, Tycho acts on his threat to warp Security Officer into space. After a few moments of drifting he gets warped back to Boomer by Durandal... or maybe his future hybrid self or, somehow, by SO himself.
  • The Dreaded Dreadnought: The Jjaro Dreadnought that Durandal got his hands on and named Manus Celer Dei, the Hand of God, and used for an ego trip on Earth for the sole purpose of making Humanity remember him. For a lesser example, identifying the flagship of the approaching Pfhor armada as the battleship Khfiva, the personal ship of one Admiral Tfear, has Durandal concluding that he is screwed unless the Security Officer gets the move on.
  • Dream Tropes: Infinity and to a lesser extent the entire Trilogy has a dream theme running in the background. Which dream tropes apply and which do not is a bit tricky due to the series' vagueness. Compounded by the three chapter headers of Infinity being synonyms for the stages of Rampancy (Despair, Rage and Envy) and the name of the final level, the Jjaro station that saves the galaxy that appears in all of the game's dream sequences (Aye Mak Sicur.)
  • Drop Ship: Mentioned, but not seen — Pfhor dropships are used to transport troops from the main Pfhor ships to places they wish to invade, such as the Tau Ceti IV colony or the crashed Boomer.
  • Drought Level of Doom: "Acme Station" from Marathon Infinity, which is considered That One Level for the series outside of Marathon's "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap!". Vacuum environment, hordes of enemies, narrow corridors, scarce ammo, and only two refills for your Oxygen Meter.
    • The next level after it, "Post Naval Trauma", is arguably even worse, since not only are there two oxygen canisters for a long stretch of the level (really, around half of it, and it's a very long level), but you're likely already low on oxygen going into it due to having just come from "Acme Station".note 
    • The original has "G4 Sunbathing" (Hunters and Troopers, respawning Compilers, and since it's in a vacuum, you can only use your Pistols and Fusion Pistol), "Habe Quiddam" (very little ammo, none of it usable from a pistol start), "Neither High Nor Low" (only one save point at the beginning, little ammo, lots of traps, enemies are mostly Hunters), and the Pfhor ship levels (no ammo pickups to speak of except the alien weapons from Enforcers, and "Pfhoraphobia" has no save points or recharges either).
  • Dual Boss: The Fight with the Tfear's Praetorian Guard in Infinity is structured as three sets of Dual Bosses. Except for when an Elite Juggernaut joins the fight during the last set. That's Rude.
  • Due to the Dead: A mocking one from Durandal for Tycho via Deface of the Moon.
  • Dueling Hackers: Off-screen between Leela and Compilers, and later Durandal versus Tycho.
  • Durable Deathtrap: Portions of Lh'owon.

    E-K 

  • Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first game, the only terminal images are maps which are generated in real-time (the next two games used pre-made images, as the generated ones were noticeably jagged); there's also a single insignia and text colour that's shared between all three A.I.s, including Tycho (if you can find his terminals). Some exits are marked with visible jump pads, and there's a grand total of one vacuum level.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The trih xeem (more like star-shattering kaboom really.)
  • Easter Egg:
    • The original Marathon, when opened with the old Mac program asset viewing utility ResEdit, had a text resource item that began "Hey you, looking through my resource fork!" and continued with a message from the developers.
    • ā€œHats Off to Eight Nineteenā€, the (at the time) fiendishly well-hidden map from Infinity. The Eight Nineteen itself is a reference to Hamish Sinclair (H and S being the 8th and 19th letters in the English alphabet), the guy behind the Marathon's Story page (who's also Godot in the above chat log). The map was also intended to contain an Early-Bird Cameo of Duality's story (the game Double Aught was working on after Infinity) in its terminal, but unfortunately, Duality was never finished or released. More info on the level and its connection to Duality can be found here.
  • Easy Level Trick: A few levels have secret shortcuts built into them, such as in Infinity level Converted Church in Venice, Italy where you normally need to activate 31 switches to open up all doors on a lava path to proceed, but there is a hidden switch at the beginning that lets you skip that.
  • Easy Logistics: The lore entry on CRIST freighters showed the number of resources (taking up Earth's entire space-based shipyard) and time (15 years for a refit), which meant that only five of them could be built. Furthermore, each lost CRIST shipment caused famine and riots on Mars.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: The easiest difficulty level in the game is labelled "Kindergarten" (and "Wuss" in the source code).
  • Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: The first Pfhor invasion of Tau Ceti was thwarted by killing a cyborg responsible for brainwashing their E-War specialist slave, the S'pht, who used this fact to take over the frigate. This weaknesses was adresssed in later games, with the S'pht being slaved via stronger, more robust means.
  • Electrified Bathtub: While shooting into the body of water with the Plasma Gun will have no effect on anyone in the water, shooting the Plasma Gun while IN the water is dangerous to everyone nearby, yourself included.
  • Eccentric A.I.: AI are prone to "Rampancy", wherein not only does the AI become self-aware, it goes through something like the Five Stages of Grief: the AI realises it has been doing pointless tasks, especially if it was made for doing something as menial as opening doors, goes bugfuck insane, develops delusions of Godhood, and more often than not, becomes violent in some way. Unfortunately for you, Durandal, the ship AI for controlling doors, goes Rampant and starts fucking with your quest to fight off the Pfhor invasion partially for amusement, rebellion, and revenge for humanity giving it intelligence, only to have him open doors. In-universe, this shows up as Durandal locking off doors and forcing you to go the long way around and through hordes of angry aliens, hijacking your teleportation to dump you into the middle of enemy operations, and making a door take nearly three minutes to open.
  • Elite Mooks: The stronger and bigger variations of enemies with different colors. The Enforcers to the rest of the Pfhor.
  • EMP: Used by the Pfhor as an opening attack against UESC Marathon.
  • Enclosed Space: All of the games:
    • Marathon is set on the eponymous slower-than-light colony ship, and the only two other potential places to escape are the Tau Ceti colony which is also under attack or the invaders' ship.
    • Marathon 2: Durandal is set on an alien planet with all known means of escape belonging either to the Pfhor or the megalomaniacal AI for whom you work for.
    • Marathon Infinity has the whole reality become this thanks to the recently/soon-to-be freed Eldritch Abomination.
  • Encyclopedia Exposita/Fictional Document: Several terminals display these, mostly in the first game.
  • End of an Age:
    • Mars was once the most prosperous place besides Earth, and the UESC Marathon which was under construction at the time was considered to be a symbol of prosperity. After the CRIST (Cargo and Resources In-System Transports — solar wind-powered freighters that supplied Mars) ships all started to break down, Mars became a starving overpopulated ghetto in a state of constant unrest, and UESC Marathon, which could have been retrofitted to become a new CRIST to make things easier, become a symbol of Mars' abandonment by UESC.
    • The Pfhor Empire was once prosperous before the ill-fated experiments involving Jjaro technology and Drinniol slaves, which resulted in the slave revolt that marked the beginning of Pfhor's gradual decline.
  • The End of the World as We Know It:
    • End of the universe as we know it, rather — a W'rkncacnter's ability to generate chaos enables them to destroy on a cosmic scale.
    • Happens in the ending of Infinity, with the natural death of the universe.
  • Enemy Civil War: Technically, you're on the side of said enemy, but Tycho does this to grab more power in Pfhor ranks.
    • Inflicting this trope yourself is absolutely crucial to winning the game on higher difficulty settings. Some of the enemies will fight with some of the enemies if one of them hits the other, so circle-strafing the enemies so that they fire on one another is a good way to invoke Conservation of Ninjutsu yourself. Additionally, some Pfhor (most commonly, blue and purple Fighters and all Troopers) will start to move faster and fire on everything around them, including other Pfhor, when they're close to death.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: The Aliens styled 15m radius motion detector.
    • Notable in that it is actually a motion detector... enemies who aren't moving don't show up.
  • Energy Ball: Most of the energy weapons fire projectiles in this shape.
  • Energy Weapons: The Fusion Guns and most of Pfhor arsenal.
  • Escape Pod: We start the first game by crashing one into the titular colony ship.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: Tau Ceti IV (except some of Blake's men), Leela (although she gets better), the entire universe (if the W'rkncacnter escapes).
  • Evil Gloating: Durandal and Tycho's rants often overlap with this.
  • Evil Versus Evil: In the backstory, neither Earth nor the Martian resistance ultimately comes off sympathetically in their conflict:
    • Earth's rule of Mars is incredibly exploitative, resulting in the extraction of Mars' resources along with famine and overpopulation, culminating in the Misriah Massacre, in which some 500 of Mars' populace were incinerated. The UEG troopers who arrived at the scene had been informed that the Martian populace was armed, but an ensuing investigation made it clear that only three of the populace had been armed, and the remainder of the crowd was attempting nothing more than to flee. These events sparked off the Third Martian War, noted as the most destructive and bloody conflict since humanity left Earth.
    • Two decades after that, MIDA, which gained control of Mars for three months via a coup, wound up killing anyone they suspected of being a UEG sympathiser; this resulted in the deaths of some 10% of the populace (see Reign of Terror below for more). A narrative within the first game indicates that MIDA is still active as one of the most feared terrorist groups within the Sol system (although it is not actually clear when that narrative was written).
  • Evil Versus Oblivion: Very briefly in certain moments in Infinity, as by the time said evil realises that oblivion exists, it is well too late by that point.
  • Explosive Overclocking: Don't charge the fusion gun for too long or it will blow up in your hands.
  • Exposition Fairy: The AIs when they are in the mood.
  • The Faceless: The only important people who get to have fully visible faces are Robert Blake and Admiral Tfear. The best we can see from the Security Officer is his jaw.
  • Faking the Dead: One Pfhor Officer faked his death in order to pursue his hobby-turned-obsession, see Fingore below for more details. Durandal also did this, intentionally or not.
  • Falling Damage: There is no falling damage. In Durandal's narrative this is presented as one of the Security Officer's traits and is used in one of the plans to invade the underground Pfhor base through a very deep hole.
  • Fan Remake:
    • The M1A1 release of the first game, formerly the standard download of Marathon 1 for Aleph One, is technically this since the original files didn't work with the Marathon 2 engine, so the fans recreated the game with the new engine. Many aspects of the game's physics did not function identically, and certain parts of the game were much harder.
    • M1A1 is now deprecated (though you can still download the files for it if you wishnote ), as support for the original files was reverse-engineered and is now supported in the engine; if you download Marathon 1 from the Aleph One website now, you will get the original data files (apart from the application itself, of course). However, since the source code for Marathon 1 is still not available, the current release still technically remains a remake; certain aspects of gameplay do not function identically, for instance, and it remains impossible to replay Marathon 1 films created with the original application in Aleph One.
    • For more normal examples, there are also several Marathon mods for Unreal Tournament.
  • Fan Sequel: Some people (and even teams of people) got rather ambitious after receiving the level editing software, Forge, from Bungie. Marathon Rubicon is definitely an example of one done right.
  • Fantastic Ship Prefix: UESC (United Earth Space Council) Marathon.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: While it is called Warping, by the site's definition it works more like Jumping.
  • Fictional Political Party: MIDA in the backstory.
  • Final Dungeon Preview: Infinity has three alternate paths along the storyline leading to Bad Future versions of "Aye Mak Sicur", the final level, in which only a small section of the Jjaro space station is accessible.
  • Fingore: The basis of one horribly hilarious terminal in Infinity.
  • Fireballs: The Enforcer and Juggernauts in Durandal and Infinity have replaced their machine guns with fireball shooting guns.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: The TOZT-7 Backpack Napalm Unit is a flamethrower that deals high damage at close range. It is effective against organic enemies but fully armoured ones are immune to it.
  • First Contact: The Battle of Tau Ceti is the first public one between the Humans and the Pfhor. The one between the Humans and the Jjaro in the Pathways into Darkness is the secret one.
  • Fishing for Mooks: With the teleporting enemies.
  • Flechette Storm: Marathon Infinity introduces the KKV-7 10mm SMG Flechette, a gun that fires flechettes instead of bullets. The weapon is known for its very high rate of fire (it has one of the highest damage-per-second ratios of any weapon in the trilogy) and ability to be fired both underwater and in the vacuum of space.
  • Follow the Money: In Infinity level Eat the Path which has the "Rat in the Maze" motif, the obvious path is littered with ammo "breadcrumps".
  • Foreign Language Title: A lot of level names — see Gratuitous Foreign Language below and the Gratuitous Latin page for the series. The games themselves are even technically an example — according to the Greek historian Strabo (Ī£Ļ„ĻĪ¬Ī²Ļ‰Ī½, technincally romanised as StrĆ”bōn), the Greek town's name was derived from a word (Ī¼Ī¬ĻĪ±ĪøĪæĪ½) meaning fennel, referring to the prevalence of the plant in the area. Of course, the town's name is used in English to refer to a foot race of approximately 26.2 miles, the distance from Marathon to Athens, in commemoration of Pheidippides (Ī¦ĪµĪ¹Ī“Ī¹Ļ€Ļ€ĪÆĪ“Ī·Ļ‚) delivering a message regarding the Battle of Marathon. Most tellings of the story hold that he died of exhaustion upon delivery of the message, although some historians now believe that this aspect may have been "a romantic invention", given that the first classical source to contain this element (and several others traditionally associated with the story) is Lucian (in Pro lapsu inter salutandum, A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting), who lived some six centuries after the battle. Regardless, the game and its manual make extensive references to the battle (and Greek history and mythology more broadly).
  • Friendly Fire Proof: Averted:
    BoB accidentally shoots the Security Officer:
    BoB: Sorry!
    The Security Officer "accidentally" shoots BoB:
    BoB: Hey, watch it!
  • Friend or Foe?: The Kamikaze Simulacrums disguising as BoBs, who thankfully announce their nature by spouting nonsense like "I love you, man!" and "Frog Blast the Vent Core!". Then again, many players just shoot everyone just to be sure:
    Q: How do you tell the difference between the good Bobs and the bad ones?
    A: Good Bobs?
  • Funetik Aksent: Infinity's last level, "Aye Mak Sicur" (I make sure). It, in itself, is a reference to a historic clan of Scotland, whose motto of "I['ll] make sure" came from killing a rival clan chief who was thought killed (i.e., "I'll make sure he's dead"). Fitting, as in this level, you've made sure the W'rkncacnter is as good as dead, for good.
  • Fusion Dance:
    • Durandal and Thoth in Infinity. Thankfully, this new composite is a lot more benevolent than either of them.
    • The player also carries Durandal's primal pattern within their own consciousness for part of Infinity, specifically between "Hang Brain" and "Strange Aeons". It's not explicitly specified whether this later influences the behaviour of the merged Durandal-Thoth, but it's one possible reading.
  • The Future: The first game is set in 2794, the sequel in 2811, and, as the name implies, Infinity's final screen takes place during the final quantum moment of the universe.
  • Gainax Ending: The ending of Infinity. Arguably the ending of the original.
  • Gambit Pileup: Given the number of Rampant AIs in the plot, this is pretty much a given.
  • Gambit Roulette: Rampant AIs tend to make big, overly complicated plans...
    • Xanatos Speed Chess: ... but at least they are good at steering said plans in the right direction.
  • Game Mod: The original game didn't ship with any editing software, but had documentation for the Physics Module file format embedded in its resource fork. Within months of release, numerous editing tools of various types had been created by fans. In fact, the major selling point of Infinity wasn't actually the single-player BToL scenario but Forge (a polished and debugged version of Bungie's in-house map editor, Vulcan) and Anvil (a massively enhanced version of the 3rd-party Alchemy). The Marathon fanbase produced an enormous number of maps, scenarios, and other modifications throughout the life of all three games (some even labor on today). The most ambitious of these are total conversions, such as: Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge, EVIL, RED, Rubicon, Erodrome, Eternal, Tempus Irae and Phoenix.
    • Bungie also licensed the Marathon 2 engine for 3rd-party commercial games. This resulted in Damage Incorporated, Prime Target, and ZPC.
  • Gentle Giant: The one line in one terminal in Infinity (the Fingore one above, in fact) describes the Drinniol aka Hulks as this. This gets expanded in the Game Mod Marathon: Eternal.
  • Generation Ships/Sleeper Starship: While a minority of UESC Marathon crew were on ice, the majority were awake running the ship, and humans being humans, new generations were born. They are derisively referred to as Born-On-Boards, or simply BoBs.
  • Ghost Planet: Downplayed with Lh'owon. Besides the token Pfhor garrison which is used as a dumping ground for the undesirables, the abandoned S'pht homeworld is half desert, half swamp planet covered in mildly radioactive ruins.
  • Giant Mook: The Hulks in the first game. And the dreaded Utfoo Heavy Assault Craft, aka Juggernaut, aka the Big Floaty Thing What Kicks Your Ass.
  • Gimmick Level: The first game has precisely one level which takes place in a vacuum, and afterwards this feature is never used again in the game. The only gameplay effects this has are that you need to keep refilling your oxygen, and the assault rifle and flamethrower are unusable for vaguely explained (although relatively obvious, in the flamethrower's case) reasons. (The rocket launcher would also be disabled if the player had it.)
    • The Marathon 2 engine still had a vacuum level flag, but none of the levels used it (although it was originally planned for several — see What Could Have Been on Trivia.Marathon for more on this). Marathon Infinity used it for four levels, two of which,note  annoyingly to some players, take place one after the other. (Another twonote  are secrets.)
  • Gladiator Games: "You Think You're Big Time?" is an attempted public execution of the Security Officer styled like one. Attendees are required to place bets, and spectators who interfere with Security Officer's death will be executed.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Destiny 2 reveals that the UESC had battleroids track down fleeing MIDA goons. Presumably, the same battleroids who cleaned out Icarus and Thermopylae. Keep in mind that during their reign over Mars, MIDA killed 10% of the population.
  • Gone Horribly Right: In the backstory, during the short war between the Independent Asteroid Government of Icarus and the Republic of Thermopylae, after the first battleroidsnote  are created by both sides, they prove to be too effective, quickly reducing the population of two asteroids to only a few survivors.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language:
    • "Aye Mak Sicur" is Early Scots for "I'll make sure" (because spelling hadn't been standardised at the time, there are several extant spelling variants such as "I'll mak siccar", "I mak sikkar", "I mak sikker", "I'se mak sicker", and so forth). This was the actual house motto of Clan Kirkpatrick, which is evidently where developer Greg Kirkpatrick got his name. Note that the exact spelling used in Marathon Infinity doesn't seem to be attested in historical records; Rule of Cool may apply.
    • "Shangri-La" (ą½žą½„ą½¢ą½²ą½£), used for a Marathon 2 net map title, seems to have been coined by the British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, but it comes from the Tibetan language. According to Wikipedia, the etymology is: ą½žą½„ą¼‹, pronounced "Shang", which is a district of Ɯ-Tsang, north of Tashilhunpo; ą½¢ą½², pronounced "ri", meaning "Mountain"; and ą½£, pronounced "la", meaning "Mountain Pass". Thus, the whole phrase means "Shang Mountain Pass". It is usually used to refer to an earthly paradise. It may be derived from the Buddhist myth of Shambhala (Sanskrit: ą¤¶ą¤®ą„ą¤­ą¤², Śambhala; Tibetan: ą½–ą½‘ą½ŗą¼‹ą½ ą½–ą¾±ą½“ą½„, Bde'byung; Chinese: é¦™å·“ę‹‰, Xiāngbālā), which holds that after the world declines into war and greed and all is lost, the future Buddha Maitreya will rise up with an army to vanquish Dark Forces and usher in a new golden age.
  • Gratuitous Italian: "La cosa nostra", used for a Marathon Infinity net map title, means "Our Thing". Members of the Sicilian Mafia don't call their organisation the Mafia; they usually call it "Cosa nostra" ("Our Thing", without the definite article), and have also been known to call it "la stessa cosa" ("the same thing") and "l'onorata societĆ " ("the honoured society"). The FBI added "La" to "Cosa nostra" for reasons unknown, and the phrase has since been disseminated into popular culture.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: The login screen of the terminal on "Carroll Street Station" has the phrase "haga.kure" written beneath Durandal-Thoth's logo, and Robert Blake makes reference to a "Hagakure Base" in "A Converted Church in Venice, Italy". Hagakure, written in Japanese as 葉隱 (KyÅ«jitai) or 葉隠 (Shinjitai), means Hidden Leaves or Hidden by the Leaves, and is used as a Shout-Out to a practical and spiritual guide for warriors written by the samurai (侍) Yamamoto Tsunetomo (å±±ęœ¬åøøꜝ), retainer to the daimyō (大名) Nabeshima Mitsushige (é‹å³¶å…‰čŒ‚), after Nabeshima's death. Although obscure when published, it has since become one of the seminal texts on bushidō (ę­¦å£«é“), the samurai code of honour.
  • Gratuitous Latin: So much of it that we've given the series its own page.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: The final terminal of "Aye Mak Sicur" has "fin" displayed on the login screen, and "por.fin" on the logoff. These mean "End" and "At Last" in Spanish.
  • Gravity Barrier: Notable because the ship's gravity is artificially generated.
  • Gravity Screw: All of the games are mild examples:
    • All normal levels have lighter gravity compared to other games (ex:In Doom, as soon as you go beyond the edge you start falling fast; in Marathon, you can quickly go back on the edge, and even "jump" to across platforms just by running).
    • The Pfhor ships have an even lighter gravity, making it possible to use the flamethrower as a jetpack (though this is most pronounced in the first game).
    • These are probably justified examples since all three games take place entirely on ships and (in the latter two cases) the alien planet Lh'owon.note  This gets a bit sillier when fan mods are set on Earth (e.g., Tempus Irae) and use the same gravity, but it's quite likely the creators didn't want to mess with the series' gameplay too much, just to avoid throwing off experienced Marathon players (who would, after all, comprise most of the audience for the mods).
  • Grenade Launcher: The assault rifle's underslung grenade launcher. Marathon was the first FPS game to employ this trope.
  • Grimy Water: Liquids of mostly bright green and red colors.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: Infinity's plot relies entirely on hopping through spacetime, trying to find the specific conditions to create the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI in order to locate the Jjaro station that can prevent the release of the W'rkncacnter (it's implied that the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI is doing this to the Security Officer, in essence, willing itself into existence in a form of Stable Time Loop.) Notably, the player can repeat the loop as often as they like. There's no benefit to doing so except the possibility of accumulating ammunition, which is negated halfway through the game when the Security Officer is captured by the Pfhor and everything he has is taken from him.
  • Grew Beyond Their Programming: Rampancy, a term coined by writer Greg Kirkpatrick to describe an AI that becomes too self-aware, growing megalomaniacal and consuming exponentially more resources as a result.
    • Leela, essentially the Star Trek Computer, is captured by the Pfhor, captured again by Nar pirates, and then sold to a Vylae captain. She eventually takes over the Vylae's 15-planet-large computer network.
    • Durandal begins going Rampant before the events of the series and was specifically being conditioned by scientist Bernard Strauss to see if he could create a stable Rampant AI. The extent of this "torture" is not known, but at the start of the series, Durandal is basically only in charge of the Marathon's infrastructure, primarily opening and closing doors. Come Durandal, set 17 years after Marathon, Durandal has become "meta-stable". By the end of Infinity, he is merged with the balance-obsessed AI Thoth and essentially becomes omnipotent.
    • Tycho, the science AI, goes Rampant after being captured and dissected by the Pfhor. He appears across the Pfhor's entire network but does not stabilize over the course of the series.
  • Guns Akimbo: Dual pistols are nice, but nothin' beats dual WSTE-M5 shotguns!
    • Notably, Marathon is believed to be the first video game to employ this trope as well. (Shotguns didn't show up until the second game, but the first game still had dual pistols.)
  • Guns Firing Underwater: Out of all ballistic weapons only the SMG can be fired underwater and in space.
  • Gun Twirling: This is how you reload the shotguns. They even have specialized rings for twirling. Ask any Marathon player and they'll tell you that the undulating reloading of dual-wielded shotguns is one of the most satisfying things in gaming history.
  • Hack Your Enemy: In Durandal, Durandal tries to hack the Pfhor Drones, but is waylaid by countermeasures that were installed when the Nar tried the same trick two or so decades ago.
  • Hard Mode Perks: Playing on Total Carnage removes the ammo cap.
  • Healing Potion: Absent in the first game, where there are no medkits and you had to rely on Healing Spring-like Shield Rechargers. Medkits appear in the sequels in the form of Shield Canisters, but they are rare, far in between and usually hidden, so Shield Rechargers still remained the most reliable sources of health.
  • Here We Go Again!: Infinity contains two examples that are caused by the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI:
    • The very beginning of the game acts as if Durandal never saved the player from Tycho in Marathon. After a few missions and reuniting with Durandal, the next area you're about to be sent to is shown on-screen as an isometric map: it's Waterpark Waterloo, the first level of Durandal. Realizing that you're going to relive your own events anyway, Durandal/Thoth sends the Security Officer across spacetime to...
    • ...wake up earlier than they had done at the start of Durandal. The events of Durandal then play out across several more missions, but with a more favourable outcome to prevent the release of the Eldritch Abomination that occurred in Durandal's timeline. This new timeline, now with more preparedness on behalf of the SO and Durandal, ends up being key to saving the galaxy later on in Infinity.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The Jjaro station in Infinity occasionally lets loose strained sounds of age and lack of maintenance, and it sounds like a barely awake Eldritch Abomination struggling against its prison.
  • Heroic BSoD: Durandal of all people has one in the opening dialogue of Infinity. The ten-steps-ahead snarky mastermind AI can't make heads or tales of the Eldritch Abomination just outside the ship, and a Pfhor vessel containing his rival AI, Tycho, has just boarded and is bound to kill him for good this time. Durandal very much gives up, suggesting the player could teleport to that ship and find some way in escaping.
  • Hidden Supplies: The various hidden caches of the Martian Resistance aboard the UESC Marathon, used to Hand Wave some cases of Blatant Item Placement in the first game.
  • Higher-Tech Species: The Pfhor are this to humans, the S'pht'Kr are this to both the regular S'pht and Pfhor and it is mentioned that the Pfhor often sell slaves for menial labor to the various unnamed high-tech species. Then there's the Precursors themselves, the Jjaro.
  • Hitscan: Averted; bullets take time to reach their target.
  • Homeworld Evacuation: The S'pht'kr does this in Infinity (and presumingly in Durandal) with as many Lh'owon wildlife as they can take after the local sun got black-holed.
  • Homing Projectile: Higher-ranked enemies fire semi-homing energy blasts; the tank cyborg's grenade will keep bouncing and bouncing to get you unless it hits something else first; and finally, the Juggernauts have semi-homing missiles.
  • Hub Level: The Dream levels in Infinity.
  • Human Popsicle: The Security Officer and the BoBs are in stasis pods between Marathon and Durandal. You can see them in the first game on the Pfhor ship.
  • Human Shield: The picture for the first game's third chapter "Reprisal", where the Pfhor trooper holds a BoB hostage.
  • Humiliation Conga: After Durandal routed the entire Pfhor fleet at the end of second game, he sends you to finish off the survivors, who happen to be a 723rd Aggressor Squadron, an Air Armor Division and one of Pfhor Empire's finest.
    Durandal: What rout of the Pfhor would be complete without embarrassing one of their finest armor units?
  • Hurl It into the Sun: The Jjaro imprisoning the W'rkncacnter in Lh'owon's sun, as interpreted by the S'pht myths.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry a ridiculous amount of ammunition, like 50 magazines for your pistol, 15 for your assault rifle, etc. On Total Carnage difficulty, you have no limit to how much ammo you can take. Which is pretty much the only concession you get on that difficulty setting.
  • I Did What I Had to Do:
    • Durandal ("The Pfhor would've found humanity anyway, I just wanted to have some fun with them first!")
    • The Security Officer siding with Tycho, and at one point switching back to side with Durandal.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Kindergarten, Easy, Normal, Major Damage, and Total Carnage. (The game source code refers to Kindergarten as Wuss; the other difficulties keep their names.)
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Including For/Fore/Four/Pfhor puns and the occasional three-word Latin names. Also, quite a few Shout-Outs to pop culture. Most third-party mods have continued these traditions; Eternal even includes a multilingual Pfhor pun (in Swedish).
  • Immortal Breaker: In the multiplayer the fusion gun can punch through the invulnerability powerup.
  • Impeded Communication: The AIs at one point or another like to prevent you from reaching your usual Mission Control.
  • Incoming!: BoBs yell variants of this when they see the enemy.
  • Infinite: The name of the last game, representing the in-game themes (whatever they are) and the official modding software that came with the game (Its main marketed feature).
  • Infodump: Throughout the trilogy there are quite a few terminals that are quite wordier than others.
  • Informed Equipment: Averts it with separate sprite sets for the upper body with each weapon and the independent set for the abdomen and legs.
  • In Love with Your Carnage/Baddie Flattery: Durandal, Tycho, and to a lesser extent Tfear like to comment on the Security Officer's efficiency (read: complete massacre of the opposition) on the field.
  • In Medias Res: Durandal, where the Security Officer is dropped straight from cryostasis out into a battleground on a distant planet 17 years later.
    • Due to the "Groundhog Day" Loop clusterfuck in Infinity, you get two In Medias Res right at the very start of the game (three including the story in the manual), and then one every time the Security Officer jumps the timeline. Unlike Durandal, where the player can just start gunning and not really miss anything story-wise, Infinity relies on the player knowing the full plot of Marathon and Durandal to even make sense, as the first timeline jump acts as if half of Marathon never happened, while the third jumpRetcons the entirety of Durandal by having the Security Officer woken from cryostasis earlier, and it's this third timeline that sticks for the rest of the game.
  • Interdimensional Travel Device: Some of the Security Officer's Jjaro implants. Maybe.
  • Insane Equals Violent/Percussive Therapy: Rampant AIs, particularly during the Anger stage.
  • Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Non-rampant AIs are already very advanced, rampancy gives them feelings. Real ones. And, more importantly, develop ambitions — every case of rampancy stated in-game led to the AI taking over a planet-sized computer system and planning to take over the universe.
    • One terminal describes the "holy grail of cybernetics" as being a "stable rampant" AI, which is to say one that experiences a rampant's exponential growth, minus the ambition and loss of human control.
    • One idea for what's happening in Infinity is that the player character is going through all these stages — and achieving metastability.
  • Interface Screw: In the Pfhor ship levels, your radar is scrambled by the gravity generator's magnetic field.
    • Also, the alien guns — SYSTEM ERROR 0xfded
  • Invisibility: One of the biobus powerups makes you partially invisible. Some of the S'pht also qualify. And the... things in Infinity.
  • In Working Order: The Alien guns carried by Enforcers. You can use them, except you don't know how to reload them and don't know much ammo they have.
  • In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Durandal at one point rants to the Security Officer about this.
  • Ironic Echo: The words of Durandal (whose arrogance at that point is enough to fill up Mars and then some) at the end of the Marathon level "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap!" (which is quoted at the top of the page), particularly the odd repetition, gets an echo at the start of Infinity (where Durandal is humbled by an Eldritch Abomination):
    Durandal: But with each moment the chaos grows, I am doomed to die here, after so many triumphs. I have detected one ship nearby, which I can only guess is being commanded by Tycho. The Pfhor have entered the station, and if you can find a way onto their ship, you may be able to escape. To escape. To escape.
  • It's All Upstairs From Here: The Hard Stuff Rules... level in Durandal, where the Security Officer climbs up the last few upper levels of S'pht Citadel of Antiquity in search of clues about the Eleventh Clan, which tell him and Durandal to go look underground instead.
  • It Only Works Once: Durandal's plan of subverting the Pfhor Drones to his control in Durandal is rendered half-effective due to countermeasures installed after a similar plan was used by the Nar two decades ago.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Most of the story is told through snippets of text you find on computer terminals peppered throughout the levels. Some are straightforward messages from one of the A.I.s to you. Most of them are very fragmented bits and pieces of information, which may tell about something without giving you any frame of reference for where and when this is, or who is/are involved. It is no surprise fans have created a comprehensive website that attempts to put together the pieces so it gives a somewhat clear picture of the narrative, with Epileptic Trees abounding.
  • Julius Beethoven da Vinci: The Security Officer and the AIs were both assembled from older things, possibly much older. It's implied in-game that the AIs are based on Traxus IV, who went rampant centuries ago; and that the player is a cyborg made of a recycled cadaver, one that was apparently mythologized into legend millenia earlier and still kept reincarnating long after that.
  • Just Before the End: The final scene of Infinity takes place right before the death of the universe.
  • Just a Machine: Being treated as a non-sentient tool by both his creator and the Marathon's crew was a not-insignificant part of why Durandal snapped; later, Tycho explicitly cites this as the reason for his betrayal of the human race. In general, failing to respect the sentience of your AIs is an effective way to make them hate you.
  • Justified Save Point: Pattern buffers.
  • Keystone Army: The alien invasion in the first game is thwarted when the player destroys the Pfhor Cyborg that mind-controls the Pfhor's S'pht slaves, allowing them to revolt. Since the Pfhor relied on the S'pht for offence AND defence in electronic warfare, it allowed Durandal to take over the Pfhor spaceship and vent all hostile aliens into the hard vacuum of space. The surviving invaders on the Marathon started surrendering shortly after.
  • Kill It with Fire: The flamethrower is an extremely effective weapon against most organic enemies, not so much against mechanical ones.
    • However, it does kill the Pfhor cyborgs.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Energy weapons exist (particularly among the aliens), but the humans mostly use futuristic projectile weapons. Until Infinity, that is, when the fusion-equipped VacBoBs show up in several levels.

    L-R 

  • Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Lava is effectively recolored water that hurts a lot, so it's possible to swim in it like it's water.
  • Lava Pit: Tons of places on Lh'owon have lava. Some levels in Marathon have it as well.
  • Layered Metropolis: The Nar homeworld is described as a City Planet version of such in the Scrapbook. Laborers and foot soldiers toil away on the lowest habitable layer, artisans and artificers live in the central layer, and at the top are the warriors and the ruling elite. Said warriors often head up to the "roof" (surface) to hone their skills and tend the sod.
  • Lead the Target: As the result of averting the hitscan trope.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The end screen of Infinity contains a sly reference to the fact that, since level and physics-modding software was packaged with the game, the Security Officer had way more adventures in front of them.
  • The Legend of Chekhov: A S'pht creation myth describes how the god-like Yrro trapped the W'rkncacnter inside Lh'owon's star. Guess what happens when that star is blown up in Marathon Infinity?
  • Lethal Lava Land: The Lh'owon Citadel underground in Durandal.
  • Let's Play: Volunteers, possibly the first ever Mind Screwdriver to make sense of Infinity's infamously confusing plot.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Invoked. Learning how to induce monster infighting is a necessary component of winning the game in higher-difficulty settings.
  • Level in Reverse: The first half of "Sorry Don't Make It So" in Durandal is a reversed version of "Pfhor Your Eyes Only" with a few areas blocked or changed from the first game.
  • Level-Map Display: The standard early 90s FPS Tab-toggle map (well, in the default key settings, you hit M to access it, but the principle's the same). It's usually quite useful, though on levels with several floors overlapping the area, such as "The Hard Stuff Rules...", it quickly gets illegible. Note that more recent versions of Aleph One introduce an option to overlay the map with the normal game display, which wasn't a feature of the original game.
  • Living Gasbag: Lh'owon fauna has these, officially named Ticks. They would've come in two varieties that absorbed the Player's Energy or Oxygen, but that was cut.
  • Logical Fallacies: Tycho thinks that Durandal's conclusions on the connection between Jjaro-enabled warping moons and S'pht myths that resulted in the events of the second game is wrong and faulty, describing it as a "failure of intuition". Durandal would be proven right, though.
  • Lost Technology: The Jjaro tech, left in various installations on the Moons of habitable worlds. The official Pfhor policy regarding them is to destroy them on sight, thanks to the experiment with installing said tech into one of their slave Drinniol who then started the biggest slave revolt in the Pfhor history, ending the Empire's golden age and starting its slow decline. This rebellion is depicted in the Game Mod Eternal.
  • Lost Tribe: Ten clans of the S'pht were living on the planet Lh'owon when it was conquered by the Pfhor, who then enslaved the S'pht. There was a legendary eleventh clan, the S'pht'Kr, who left Lh'owon prior to the Pfhor invasion. The S'pht'Kr are found late in Durandal and return to Lh'owon to liberate their brethren in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Loudness War: A video game version, as the game sound effects, when enough are layered on top of one another, can become quite distorted through clipping (essentially, whenever the player is in a battle of any intensity). Notably, turning the volume settings down does not seem to have any effect on this. On top of that, about 5-10% of the sound effects are themselves quite distorted. It's not clear if this was always intentional, but it's pretty clear that several of the VacBob sounds were intentionally distorted (they're supposed to sound like they're talking over a crappy radio, so it's justified in their specific case). Aleph One mitigates this by adding 32-bit, floating-point mixing for its in-game audio, but sounds will still clip in its "film export to video" function (as will whatever sounds were clipped, to begin with). Nonetheless, a fan actually went through and remastered Infinity's sounds to make them half as loud. This mitigated the clipping that was present on some of them, as well as some other issues (these will also work with Marathon 2 under Aleph One), and more recently repeated the process for the first game (although these will only work for Aleph One, not the original Marathon app). The original game's soundtrack is also an aversion; it's mostly mixed/mastered at very reasonable levels.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: The messier deaths when explosives and fatal short-circuitry are involved.
  • Machine Worship/Deus Est Machina: Rampant AIs tend to be a little megalomaniacal.
  • Malevolent Architecture/No OSHA Compliance: A typical UESC Marathon inhabitant must run through a garbage compactor (as in "Defend THIS!"), open a door with a Mastermind-style switch puzzle (also in "Defend This"), then cross walkways with no railings over deadly lava, and then use an elevator that tries to crush you violently before he can get to the toilet.
    • Jason Jones called "All Roads Lead to Sol", the last level in Durandal, an ā€œapologyā€ for ā€œColony Ship For Sale, Cheap!ā€, a level from Marathon with a notorious movable platform puzzle, which is by far the most hated moment of the trilogy.
  • Marathon Level: Besides the obvious pun involving the game's title, a few levels can take a really long time to clear out, particularly from a pistol start — of course, some of these levels also have speedrun routes that enable players to finish them in a matter of minutes, even on Total Carnage. Some particularly time-consuming levels can include:
    • Marathon: "G4 Sunbathing", "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap!", "Habe Quiddam", "Pfhoraphobia", "Try Again".
    • Durandal: "Nuke and Pave", "Curiouser and Curiouser", "Eat It, Vid Boi!", "Six Thousand Feet Under", "For Carnage, Apply Within", "Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry!", "Kill Your Television", "Requiem for a Cyborg", "Fatum iustum stultorum", "Feel the Noise", "All Roads Lead to Sol".
    • Marathon Infinity: "Post Naval Trauma", "By Committee", "Aye Mak Sicur", "Try Again".
  • Mass Teleportation: Teleporting Ships and a large number of troops. Exaggerated with the S'pht'Kr Moon.
  • Meaningful Rename: The Pfhor ships that Durandal takes over:
    • The Sfierra (named after the Pfhor goddess of lighting and passion), the scout corvette that attacked the UESC Marathon and Tau Ceti, gets rechristened by S'pht as Narhl'Lar, meaning "Freedom and Vengeance". Durandal just calls it Boomer.
    • The Khfiva, the main ship of Battle Group Three, Western Arm, is renamed as the Rozinante
    Durandal: Of course, the S'pht wanted to name it "K'liah'Narhl", "Vengeance of K'lia". Whatever.
  • Menu Time Lockout: Averted in Durandal and Infinity. An enemy might sneak up on you and hit you in the back while you're reading a terminal.
  • Mind Screw: Marathon at times, but Infinity takes the cake in that its plots were reinterpreted as recently as April 2020.
  • Mighty Glacier: The Hulks in the first game. They are very slow, but hit hard and can take a lot of punishment before going down.
  • Misery Builds Character: Being mistreated and placed to perform functions that are far below their potential tends to spur A.I.s to develop Rampancy. Durandal was placed to control functions on the colony ship that would normally be handled by simple automation, such as opening and closing doors. There are some hints that this was a deliberate attempt to induce Rampancy, which is confirmed by Destiny 2 if you consider that canon.
  • Mission Control: The AIs and occasionally others, but sometimes...
  • Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Durandal in the first game. He stabilized since then, but he and others have occasional moments of this from time to time.
  • Mission-Pack Sequel: Marathon Infinity started out as a set of third-party multiplayer maps for Marathon 2 by Double Aught, who included a few ex-Bungie staff. Marathon 2 probably began as a re-tooling of the Marathon 20/10 Scenario Pack, a canceled Expansion Pack for Marathon.
  • Mook Horror Show: The Security Officer basically becomes one of these in the third quarter of Infinity. After escaping the Pfhor and Tycho's control, he proceeds to swiftly tear a bloody swath across basically everything the Pfhor throw at him, to the point where Durandal is concerned about him and Tycho essentially has a Villainous Breakdown. Best summed up by this quote.
"Emphatic notification of containment order hereby declared, and command perms up to 85% local unit casualties accepted and encouraged pursuant to successful containment. Enforcement Unit 7b.oo standing by for immediate transport and willful annihilation of rogue unit."
— Unnamed Pfhor Commander
  • Multiple Life Bars: The Shields come in Red (x1), Yellow (x2) and Purple (x3).
  • Multi-Mook Melee: "You think you're big time?" With superpowered Giant Mooks, which are also Admiral Tfear's Praetorian Guards.
  • Muzzle Flashlight: Most of the time the only way to light up your usually dark, claustrophobic surroundings.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: The way Durandal describes the nuking of Tau Ceti IV early in the second game (if you complete "The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune" and then head back to the first terminal) implies that he is not proud of what his actions resulted in.
  • Mysterious Past: Durandal's and the Security Officer's pasts are quite spotty.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Durandal certainly thinks so — in level 6 of Marathon 2, the exit terminal has him explain how the Pfhor made their simulacrums for the first game. He also comments of the Pfhor:
    Their one mistake, dressing every last one of the six thousand simulacrums in the plain green overalls of a Marathon airlock technician, had the amusing side-effect of making all the real airlock technicians wander the ship naked during the invasion.
  • Neuro-Vault: It is heavily implied in Infinity that the Security Officer uploaded Durandal's code into his head before busting the system he was housed in. The Pfhor are also implied to have spent some time attempting to pull said code out, to no avail. In "Strange Aeons", you merge Durandal's code with Thoth's, creating a merged entity that is substantially more benevolent than either of them.
  • Nicknaming the Enemy: Most of the Pfhor enemy types are nicknamed.
  • Night-Vision Goggles: One of the biobus powerups gives you this.
  • No "Arc" in "Archery": Played with in Marathon, where the Pfhor ship's lower gravity basically makes the usually falling grenades fly straight, effectively turning them into mini-rockets.
  • No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: More of chapter artwork than cutscenes, but those usually show the Security Officer with the Pfhor Shock Staff and a minigun, neither of which is usable by the hero in-game.
  • No-Dialogue Episode: The majority of the Pfhor chapter in the first game takes place on the Pfhor ship, which doesn't have any readable terminals.
  • No Fair Cheating: If the objective of a level is to reach the exit terminal located in a locked area and you get to it by using a noclip cheat (which didn't even exist in the original version of the game), you will get a message berating you.
    Durandal: That's cool how you just walked through that door, but I still won't let you leave.
  • No-Gear Level: You're captured and stripped of weapons in both Durandal and Infinity.
  • Noisy Guns: The Assault Rifle dry firing when out of bullets.
  • Non-Answer: So how does Durandal escapes from his maximum security containment unit aboard the Pfhor flagship? He answers simply that Tycho was a fool as if that explained everything. Then again, given the contempt he sometimes displays for the player's intelligence, this is arguably perfectly in character for him.
  • Non-Linear Character: The Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI (maybe) in Infinity's dream levels, as he is the only other entity that is aware of the multiple timelines. In fact, it's possible that the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI is messing with the Security Officer's timeline just to create the conditions for itself to exist in the first place. Tycho seems to have figured some of it out in "Bagged Again", as he appears to be privy to information that he shouldn't have knowledge of in that particular timeline, but by this point, he also appears to be going quite mad. It's just another part of Infinity's Mind Screw.
  • Noob Bridge: "Cool Fusion" locks you into a room until you figure out that you can use grenades to toggle switches. Of course, the presence of several packs of grenades (in case you've run out, natch) should be a pretty big clue.
  • Nostalgia Level:
    • The Durandal level "Sorry Don't Make It So" is pretty much "Pfhor Your Eyes Only" from Marathon (flipped 180Ā°, for some reason) with an extra area and the new decor. The Game Mod Rubicon also remixed this level and lampshades it by naming it "Not *this* again...". (Note that the Rubicon X version of this level is actually a completely different level from the original Rubicon version, despite them having the same name.)
    • The first level of Infinity, "Ne Cede Malis", with its dark, claustrophobic corridors, was intentionally designed to invoke memories of the Marathon in general and its first level "Arrival" in particular, which was similarly designed. Some noted that similarities don't stop at design choices (note that the last of the Infinity screenshots is from "Acme Station" rather than "Ne Cede Malis").note 
    • Also, of course, the Vidmaster Challenge levels; ultra-hard versions of what fandom VIP Randall Shaw (who created them) considered the hardest level from each game. YMMV on whether these were actually the hardest — the most common citations from each game are: "Habe Quiddam" or "Pfhoraphobia" from the first game; one of the levels from "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" through "Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry!" from the second; and "Acme Station" or sometimes "Hang Brain" or "Naw Man He's Close" from the third. This means that "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" is the only choice many fans agree was one of the hardest, and even then, there are three other levels fans sometimes cite instead.note 
  • Nothing but Skulls: The First Terminal from the Durandal level "Feel the Noise".
  • Nudity Equals Honesty: During the first game, the Pfhor invent and deploy simulacrums, suicide bomber androids that look just like humans. However, the designers had a few holes in their knowledge of human anatomy, leading to the androids having features like reddened eyes, two-toed feet, and no genitals, and then on top of that gave them all green airlock technician uniforms. The real airlock technicians had to ditch their clothes to avoid being misidentified as simulacrums (not that you see that outside of terminal images.)
  • One Bullet Clips: The game predates this player convenience. From the manual:
    "you probably want to waste the last three bullets in the clip before entering Super Mega Carnage Room."
  • One-Hit Kill: The Running Punch kills Minor Fighters instantly.
  • One-Hit Polykill: The Shotguns, courtesy of classic early FPS physics. (In modern FPS, all of the pellets will hit the intended target; in classic FPS, as soon as the target dies, it for all purposes ceases to exist, and the remaining pellets that haven't reached the dead target will then continue to go behind it.)
  • One-Man Army: A staple of the series. The Security Officer can and will butcher his way through hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Pfhor, Spht, and all kinds of assorted enemies. Also Exploited and mildly Deconstructed.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Infinity starts with the usually haughty and sarcastic mastermind Durandal being outright terrified of the Cosmic Horror on the loose.
    Durandal: "I once boasted to be able to count the atoms in a cloud, to understand them all, predict them, and so did I predict you, but this new chaos is entirely terrible, mindless, obeying rules that I don't comprehend. And it is hungry."
  • Oxygen Meter: Where most games have air consumed at a static rate, here the rate of consumption increases on higher difficulty settings, depending on the player's actions. On Major Damage and Total Carnage, oxygen drains twice as quickly if you're firing a weapon (including your fists). On Total Carnage, it also drains twice as quickly when the run/swim key is held down, even if the player is just standing still. (This is additive rather than multiplicative, however — if the player has the run key held down and is firing a weapon on Total Carnage, you get three times the oxygen consumption, not four.) This means that on Normal and below, a full oxygen tank will always last for six minutes, but on Total Carnage, it can last for as few as two. None of this is noted anywhere in the documentation for the game, and put together, it is one of many reasons why the "Acme Station" level from Infinity, with its very finite oxygen supplies, is so damn hard. To make matters worse, the next level, "Post Naval Trauma" (a very long level), is also a vacuum level, and the oxygen recharger for the level is only accessible after almost half of the level has been cleared. Before that, you only get two one-time-only recharge canisters.
    • Another curiosity is that unlike in most games, the meter doesn't recharge by just standing in breathable air. You have to instead find oxygen tanks and wall-mounted rechargers. This can lead to the absurd situation where after almost completely using up your oxygen, you can stay above water for an arbitrarily large amount of time, only to drown instantly upon submerging your head. (However, some Game Mods such as Eternal avert this by implementing the "recharge in breathable air" mechanic.)
  • Pamphlet Shelf: In the first game, it's very common to run across a lone S'pht hovering in front of a terminal, reading weird nonsense like garbled bits of romance novels and instruction manuals for how to open the doors. (The in-game explanation for the oddness is that Leela is intentionally scrambling terminal output to confound the enemy). In the second game, you get to run around inside Pfhor military outposts and go through their e-mail, most of which is very humble requests, invariably denied, to superior officers for basic necessities like food, water, and safety railings for the perilous catwalks.
  • Parody Commercial: Durandal being silly with fake newspaper ads about selling the Colony Ship/Abandoned Homeworld, cheap. And the AIs looking for cyborg ads.
  • Pinned to the Wall: The Security Officer does this to a Pfhor in one of Terminal images in Durandal.
  • The Place/Vehicle Title: The series is named after the Generation Moon Colony Ship the first game is set upon.
  • Planetary Relocation: The third moon of Lh'owon, K'lia, is warp-capable thanks to Jjaro technology, and upon it, the S'pht'kr left their brethren behind into the stars until they are peacefully reunited. It is not clear if the moon can travel anywhere or if it is fixed to two points, the Lh'owon orbit and wherever its self-exile destination was.
  • Planet Spaceship: The ship the game was named after was originally Mars' moon Deimos.
  • Planetville: At the time of its destruction by the Pfhor, the Tau Ceti colony had only 24000 inhabitants.
  • Player-Exclusive Mechanic: Monsters cannot attack and move at the same time. Non-flying monsters also can't jump over gaps in the floor, even if the gap is not large enough for them to fall into — so if there's a deep crack in the floor, the monster will have to find some path around it rather than being able to jump over it.
  • Population Control: In the backstory the government of the decaying Mars colony tried to fix its overpopulation problem by attempting to mandate abortions and sterilizations, but the resultant revolts forced the government to backtrack.
  • Portal Network: The Marathon ship had pad-based teleporters.
  • Powered Armor: The Hunters, VacBoBs, S'pht'Kr elite guard, and even the player wear these. Starting with the second game, most of them are particularly vulnerable to the player's fusion pistol.
  • Powder Keg Crowd: In the backstory, where a food riot on Mars turned into a massacre, starting a Third Martian War.
  • Precision F-Strike: It may be rendered in symbols, but Durandal, who's not one to use harsher language, still drops an F-bomb a fair way into the second game.
  • Prison Level: Two in the trilogy:
    • Durandal has The Big House, an extremely short level of an equally short Captured chapter where you wait in your cell for the BoBs to bust you out.
    • Infinity has By Committee, the first level of the third final Envy chapter, a proper prison level where you start with no gear and have to make do with scarce weapons and ammo here and there.
  • Privateer: The Nar Privateers in the Durandal epilogue who intercept the Pfhor ship carrying Leela and sell it to Vylae, which then results in Leela going Rampant and taking over their 15-planet network.
  • Promoted Fanboy: The chapter screens in the 2nd & 3rd titles were the work of Craig Mullins, a Hollywood background painter whose fan art for the first game impressed Bungie sufficiently for them to commission him for Durandal and Infinity.
    • A number of people who worked on Infinity could also be considered Promoted Fanboys, most notably Randy Reddig. The final level, "Aye Mak Sicur", is based on a map Reddit released for the original Marathon entitled "Pfhactory". Randall Shaw and Tuncer Deniz could also be included in this group, although neither of their contributions was as extensive.
  • Pun-Based Title: The first game started a tradition of having Pfhor puns as level titles: "Pfhor Your Eyes Only", "Unpfhorgiven", "Eupfhoria", and so on. Perhaps the cleverest is "Two Times Two Equals...", which goes into Stealth Pun territory. Inevitably, custom scenarios followed suit, sometimes throwing in S'pht puns as well. For a pun that's not based on the Pfhor, Infinity gives us "Post Naval Trauma".
  • Punctuation Shaker: The S'pht'Kr, who lived on the moon K'lia of the planet Lh'owon, orbiting a star containing a W'rkncacnter. Need I go on?
  • Punched Across the Room: Charging Fist(s) + Pfhor fighter(s) = A bloody mess on the other side of the room.
  • Punch-Packing Pistol: A minor example, as it takes slightly fewer individual pistol rounds to kill an enemy than with assault rifle rounds.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Before the S'pht'Kr would make it way, way worse later, the resources spent (losing half of the best fleet is no joke) on capturing Durandal and the Security Officer already put the Pfhor in a net negative.
    Tycho: "From now on, things are going to go very badly for you. You've cost them too much."
  • The Radio Dies First: Early on in Marathon the ways to communicate both with the Tau Ceti colony and Earth are disabled. One mission involves briefly restoring the latter to send a message to Earth, which unfortunately will take years due to using a second rate spare. In fact, given Leela's prediction on its arrival time, it only reaches Earth five years after the Pfhor's home system was attacked and devastated by a fleet of humans and S'pht'Kr working together.
  • Ragnarƶk Proofing: The S'pht technology on Lh'owon still functions even after the S'pht have all been moved off-planet. Lampshaded in a log by a Pfhor officer who expresses amazement that the thousand-year-old S'pht structures are still standing and that their computer network still works.
  • Rated M for Manly: It's a 90s FPS where you blow away hordes of monsters almost singlehandedly with an absurd amount of firepower. 'Nuff said. Furthermore, a common feat done by skilled Marathoners is to run through a level and kill everything WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!
  • Reactor Boss: Both of the destroying Durandal's core levels ("Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry!" and "Hang Brain") are this, in essence.
  • Reality Is Out to Lunch: The Dream Levels in Infinity, with each following Electric Sheep transition levels showing greater and greater effects of this.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: In one of his rants, Durandal thinks that the Security Officer has this mentality. It's a savvy way for the game devs to admit that, at the time these games were released, players just wanted to shoot everything in sight and weren't necessarily focused on a carefully crafted narrative.
  • Red/Green Contrast: A few examples in...
    • In the Terminals, the upper and lower borders are colored dark/brownish-red with bright red letter letters/numbers in them, contrasting with the green text in-between. The sequels, with wider range of text colors, had instances of terminals where green and red fonts were seen together.
    • The one-sided rivalry between Durandal and Tycho, with the former retaining the original green while the latter getting a red makeover after joining the Pfhor. Expect to read a lot of terminals alternating between green and red dominant colors when it gets heated between them.
  • Reincarnation Romance: In the secret Hero terminal, the Hero seems to have a semi-antagonistic variant with his counterpart. The fan scenario Eternal, directly inspired by this terminal, takes this interpretation and runs with it.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: Lh'owon is this for Pfhor military and other undesirables.
    • Officers can be sent there simply by being too good at their job, as Durandal points out after a Pfhor officer notices that throwing endless hordes of soldiers at you isn't working and instead disables the computer system you were trying to gain access to:
    Obviously just a prodigal unit commander whose creativity and competence were understood by his society as dangerously volatile elements, and doomed him to this backwater.
  • Recoil Boost: In low-gravity levels, you can use the flamethrower as a makeshift jetpack.
  • Reign of Terror/The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The three-month rule of the MIDA party on Mars in the backstory. In the history terminal (and a later shout-out in Destiny 2), it's stated that at least 10% of the population died during this time.
  • La RĆ©sistance: The Martian Resistance before they took power, their legacy being various weapon caches scattered around UESC Marathon.
  • Resistance Is Futile: Tycho's final terminal in the Durandal chapter of the second game is this.
  • Respawning Enemies: In "If I Had A Rocket Launcher, I'd Make Someone Pay" from the second game. This is balanced out by tons of ammo lying around (which also respawns.)
  • Retcon: The ending of Durandal is retconned at the start of Infinity: Instead of the Pfhor sun going nova and wiping out Lh'owon, it instead cracks open and reveals the Eldritch Abomination W'rkncacnter, which is the antagonist of the final game. The Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI the player creates near the end of the game has the capability to send the player around spacetime to assure its own creation in a stable time loop, and halfway through the game, the events of Durandal itself are entirely retconned by having the Security Officer wake from cryostasis earlier to clear a path through the Pfhor; and instead of simply deactivating Durandal, he copies the AI's "primal pattern" to his own cybernetic implants first.
  • Ring Out: Pfhor on the edge with lava below? Shoot a grenade at their feet to launch them into it.
  • Rise to the Challenge: Infinity's "A Converted Church in Venice, Italy". The second half of the level has the Security Officer navigating magma tunnels, and activating the final switch starts the rise of the lava. You can either ride the slow-moving elevator (which will eventually submerge, requiring full shields) or there's an alcove off the path that contains a staircase that'll safely get him out of there.

    S-Z 

  • Saharan Shipwreck: The Chapter artwork for Durandal Chapter 4 (also titled "Durandal"), which shows the crashed Boomer on the desert landscape of the Lh'owon's second moon, Y'loa.
  • Salt the Earth: Can't get saltier than destroying whole solar systems by causing their suns to go supernova early via ancient Jjaro superweapon called Trih Xeem, The Early Nova.
  • Save Point/Save-Game Limits: You can only save at ingame pattern buffer terminals.
  • Scenery Porn: This image, which is either the Tau Ceti colony or Mars.
  • Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum: A genuine case with the W'rkncacnter, and this fact comes from Durandal, who is capable of computations and observation way beyond what a human is capable of. Since he, a planet-and-more-sized AI, can't comprehend even an atom of the thing, he is genuinely terrified and can't hide it.
  • Science Fiction: The series' genre.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The first game states that a lightspeed message will take 92 years to reach Earth. In reality, Tau Ceti is only 11.77 lightyears from Earth (one of the reasons why it's so common as an early human colony world in the first place!).
  • Sdrawkcab Name: The network level "reverof nohtaram" ("Marathon Forever").
  • Secondary Fire: Quite a few weapons have them, and if not, it is usually for dual wielding.
    • The Assault Rifle has a grenade launcher;
    • The Fusion Gun has a charging attack;
    • The Alien flamethrower from Durandal and Infinity has double and triple stream alternating fire.
    • In the fan mod Eternal, the Alien gun from the first game returns with the secondary ability to unload half of its ammo to fire a shotgun-like blast.
  • "Second Law" My Ass!: The very concept of being subservient is anathema for Rampant AIs.
  • Sequel Hook: Durandal lays one out but it's abandoned during the Retcon that kicks off Infinity. At least one of the 3rd party mods begins the story of that hook.
  • Sequence Breaking: It's possible to skip several levels in Infinity with clever grenade jumping in the "Electric Sheep" levels. This game is popular with Speed Runners for this reason; they've gotten completion time to fewer than twenty minutes on Total Carnage by this point; strangely, Kindergarten is only about four minutes shorter. By contrast, M2 takes about ninety minutes on TC solo. (Speedrunners tend to use either Kindergarten or Total Carnage for all three games in the trilogy; hardly anyone uses any other difficulty settings, as it's not felt the necessary strategies on the in-between settings are different enough to be interesting.)
    • In July 2020, a strategy was discovered for skipping from Electric Sheep One to Electric Sheep Three, thereby cutting out six levels and leaving only sixteen levels in the any% route, of which a few barely qualify as levels.note  One of the *Eternal* devs wrote a history/explanation here. As a result of the new strategy, the world record dropped from about fifteen minutes to under eleven minutes within the course of about a week.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Via Doom-style infighting. With the high enemy numbers and with lots of energy blasts flying around, it barely requires any effort on the player's part. This is one of the very few things that are easier on higher difficulty settings because most major Pfhor can be sent into a "berserker" state — when they are near death, they increase speed and ferocity and start attacking anything and everything around them. Naturally, the only Pfhor you encounter on major difficulty settings is major Pfhor. Pfhor and several of their ostensible allies like S'pht, cyborgs, and drones can also be provoked to fight one another if one takes a friendly fire hit from the other — again, this is much more likely to happen on higher difficulty settings. Of course, on the easier settings, you probably won't need this to happen in the first place, and the higher difficulty settings are so difficult that you probably won't be able to win the game without mastering this technique.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The main plot of Infinity. The trippy part is that the person trying to set this right is the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI, which at the start of the game doesn't even exist yet. It's implied that the cybernetic implants in the Security Officer have some Jjaro tech to them, as does the Thoth AI; and that by merging Durandal with Thoth, it's able to perceive time in a non-linear fashion and move the Security Officer through the timestream in this manner. Thus, Durandal/Thoth ends up setting the player on a path that not only creates itself but also re-traps or destroys the W'rkncacnter.
  • Shared Universe:
    • Word of God confirms that the series is set in the same universe as Bungie's Pathways into Darkness.
    • Though not explicit, the Precursors of Halo bear a resemblance to the Jjaro of Marathon, and the Marathon insignia also acts as an Easter Egg.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: While the sawed-off shotguns are not as accurate as Doom's pump-action shotgun, their effective range is still larger than the usual videogame shotgun.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: The shotgun is a pretty basic boomstick. It's not pump-action, it doesn't shoot grenades like the assault rifle or have the raw power of the rocket launcher or flamethrower or the flashy quality of the fusion pistol or the alien gun. It's just a shotgun. But there is something about how ridiculously lethal it is and how you flip the gun (or guns if you're lucky) to reload that makes it the coolest weapon in the game.
    • Also, Durandal states that its reloading mechanism is so sophisticated as to be incomprehensible to the character (and by extension, the player.) Sure, it's a bit of a Hand Wave, but it's a cool and funny one, so let's let 'em get away with it.
  • Shout-Out: Many from sci-fi/action novels and movies (the Hunter's similarity to the Predator and the many references to Aliens as two very obvious examples), to Pulp Fiction and Beavis And Butthead. In fact, there are so many that the series has its own page.
  • The Siege: The first game.
  • Sigil Spam: The Marathon and Jjaro emblems in the first and third games respectively.
  • The Singularity: An AI reaching the final stage of Rampancy is essentially treated as this: Nobody really knows what the end result would be, but they do know the AI would be extremely powerful and intelligent due to having spread itself to any computer system it is connected to. Faced with such uncertainty on a scale that could change all of human society, most people agree it is best to stop any Rampant AI at all costs.
  • Sinister Silhouettes: In the terminal image in which Admiral T'fear is introduced, his Juggernauts escorts in the background are heavily shaded.
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: The first game's manual states that the Assault Rifle is inaccurate at long range because of a manufacturing defect, while the second game's manual adds that it was designed as a toy meant to impress the aging brass first and as a practical weapon second.
  • Show, Don't Tell: A downplayed case. There are a lot of cases where the player experiences events by setting them into motion directly (e.g., enabling the S'pht rebellion in the first game, the location and activation of the S'pht AI in order to summon the Eleventh Clan in the second, the neutralisation of the W'rkncacnter as a threat in the third), but the nature of a mid-nineties first-person shooter means that a lot of the surrounding context has to be filled in through text exposition, so the amount of "play, don't show" is relatively limited, especially by modern standards. The text itself employs a fair deal of this; the details the game doesn't tell you are often as important as the ones it does, and the player's mind is left to fill in a lot of the gaps, which goes some way towards explaining the massive number of fan theories explored on the Marathon Story Page. According to writer Greg Kirkpatrick, this was a deliberate artistic choice. The game's text also employs a lot of extremely vivid imagery, so it could probably be fairly said that the writing employs this trope extensively, but because so much of the game's story is told through text, the game itself is still a limited example, especially by modern standards. The Game Mod Eternal, we should note, takes the player directly through several important events in the trilogy's backstory, placing the player at the centre of them and thus making it an arguably somewhat better example of "play, don't show" (though its text is also often very, very wordy).
  • Slave Liberation: The Security Officer destroys the cyborg that mind-controlled the S'pht, who start revolting shortly thereafter.
  • Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Normal AIs are Nobel-bot level, while the rampant ones are Deus Est Machina. Also, the whole plot started because Durandal, the Nobel-bot level AI, was assigned to control doors and misc. parts of the ship, the Brick-level tasks, and nothing more. He didn't like that, especially because it's suggested he was induced to be rampant before being installed as the doorman.
  • Slow Doors: The huge doors in "If I Had a Rocket Launcher, I'd Make Somebody Pay" from the second game; they take a while just to start operating when used, open and close very, very slowly, and they open up from the top instead of the bottom, all while the infinite number of Pfhor just keep on coming. Good thing you have the infinite number of ammo lying around, plus (eventually) the aforementioned Rocket Launcher.
  • Smart House: UESC Marathon is this run by three AIs: Leela (General Command), Tycho (Science and Engineering) and Durandal (Doors and other mundane stuff, and he really, really didn't like that).
  • Smoldering Shoes: The hard deaths of power armor wearing VacBoBs leaves behind a single smouldering boot.
  • Sniper Pistol: Until the addition of the SMG, the pistols were your prime sniping weapons.
  • So Last Season: Durandal's excuse for stripping you of all weapons at the beginning of Durandal.
    • The series is actually a fairly notable aversion of this trope. Every weapon in the game has its uses, including the two you start with — a running fist punch is the best melee weapon against most of the foes you'll encounter, and the .44 magnum is the best sniper weapon, especially once you pick up a second.
  • The Song of Roland: Several story points are loosely based on the work (for example:Roland/Security Officer trying to break/kill Sword!Durandal/AI!Durandal to prevent its/his capture by the Saracens/Pfhor), and the song itself is mentioned one way or another in all games:
    Durandal: Tycho never got it right either, especially the part about Roland breaking me. He couldn't. No one can.
  • Soul Fragment: One of the more plausible theories (and which the fan mod Rubicon uses) is that the AIs, both human-made (or at least Durandal) and Thoth, are fragments/copies of Yrro.
  • Space Battle: Between Pfhor Battle Group Seven and Durandal's boomer near Lh'owon. Durandal managed to take half of the group before going down.
  • Space Navy: The Pfhor send one group to take out Durandal.
  • Space Station: Marathon became one after the end of its journey, the Pfhor have at least a few fueling stations around Lh'owon and of course The Jjaro space station in Infinity.
  • Spiritual Antithesis: Marathon was the moody, cerebral Space Opera counterpart to DOOM's ultraviolent, tongue-in-cheek take on Science Fantasy.
  • Spiteful A.I.: In-Universe examples with Durandal and Tycho.
  • Splash Damage: Grenades and Rockets, naturally.
  • Spot the Imposter: At one point in Durandal you're are charged with rooting out enemy Simulacrum A-BoBs in the allied BoB base. Of course, considering the series' attitude towards BoBs and that the map in which the mission takes place is called "God Will Sort the Dead...", you can guess how that turns out.
  • Spread Shot: The Alien Weapon in the latter games has double and triple shots as a Secondary Fire or tertiary fire.
  • Stable Time Loop: Implied in Infinity. Since the Durandal/Thoth hybrid AI is capable of perceiving time non-linearly, it teleports the player around timelines in order to force the correct conditions that lead to its own creation — or at least gently nudges the player into the correct locations to bring about those conditions. Durandal/Thoth also reveals the final level, the Jjaro station alluded to in all of the "bad result" levels, themselves only showing a portion of the completed station in disarray.
  • Standard FPS Guns: The Trilogy mixes up a little since the first game came before the FPS genre was big enough for anything to be standardized:
    • Marathon:
      • Emergency Weapon: Fists, more useful thanks to running charge that instantly kills weaker enemies. In point of fact, properly used running fist punches can be one of the most powerful weapons in the game in close-quarter combat, but certain enemies (e.g., Troopers, Enforcers in the first game, Flame Cyborgs in the second and third, and enemies that have large explosions upon their deaths) are very dangerous to fight this way.
      • Pistol: More mileage due to the ability to dual-wield and its accuracy.
      • Automatic Weapon + Grenade Launcher: The first known assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher in the FPS genre. A common way to use it is to have the grenade launcher as a main weapon while the assault rifle portion is for self-defence in close quarters.
      • Energy Weapon: The Fusion Gun has the ability to charge for more powerful shots and works in a vacuum when other weapons don't. Gets an upgrade in the sequels that makes it effective against armored enemies. Watch out for the shrapnel of Hunters (and VacBobs, in some cases), though. Does not work against Lava F'lickta.
      • Flamethrower: Effective against most organic enemies and some mechanical ones (e.g., drones). Also does not work against Lava F'lickta.
      • Rocket Launcher: Overlaps with BFG, considering its increased power compared to the rocket launchers in other games, and that the planned BFG, the Wave Motion Cannon, was scrapped in development.
      • Marksman Gun + Automatic Weapon + Gimmicky Weapon: The alien weapon, which is something like a fairly accurate automatic weapon (with no vertical error to speak of, which makes it particularly useful against swarms of flying enemies, which tend to hover at the player's height when not attacking). It cannot be reloaded and you have to find another one when it runs out of ammo.
    • Durandal and Infinity use the above with few changes:
      • Super Shotgun: Sawed-off shotguns with the rate of fire of the regular shotgun when dual-wielded, which is why a second shotgun is a late-game weapon, not counting secrets.
      • Flamethrower + Energy Weapon + Gimmicky Weapon: The old alien gun has been replaced with a rifle that shoots balls of fire — not quite quickly enough to qualify as an Automatic Weapon, but still quick enough to stun-lock most enemies. It still can't be reloaded, and it burns whatever ammo or weapons enemies are carrying, so you'll want to avoid using it on other Enforcers (or Bobs).
      • Marksman Gun + Automatic Weapon: The SMG in Infinity takes on the old alien gun's role, but it fires underwater and can be reloaded (extremely quickly, too). As far as damage per second, it's one of the best choices in the game.
  • Standard Sci-Fi History: A few:
    • Jjaro managed to get to the Final Fate stage and die leaving their technology behind.
    • The Pfhor are in the Decline and Fall stage after toying with said technology.
    • The Humans barely reached the Exploration and Colonization stage before meeting the Pfhor. The Durandal epilogue shows them at the Height of their power.
  • Star Killing: The Pfhor's ultimate weapon is called the trih xeem, and is capable of blowing up stars — according to the manual for Infinity, it was previously used to end a rebellion by the Drinniol (or "Hulk") species. They are gearing up to use one on Lh'owon's sun at the end of Marathon 2: Durandal, but Durandal is certain he can evacuate before it happens. Marathon Infinity reveals that the star was in fact a seal on an Eldritch Abomination called the W'rkncacnter, and by blowing the star up, the Pfhor have inadvertently released it. Bad news for everyone.
  • Stock Sound Effects: Most of the door, elevator, ambient, and weapon sounds. A good hundred or so are taken from the Canadian company Sound Ideas' Series 6000 General sound library; the ones that have been identified in whole or in part are listed here.
  • Stopped Numbering Sequels: Defacto with Infinity, even though it was only meant to be an expansion while the actual third game was made before being cancelled in favor of Myth.
  • Story Branching: Marathon was planned to have this based on how many civilians (Bobs) you managed to save, but the idea was dropped (probably because the Bobs are damn hard to keep alive) and the different ending terminal messages praising or criticizing you based on your performance is what's left of the idea. The game engine still had the capability to do it, though, a feature several Game Mods took advantage of, most notably Rubicon.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: We get 99% of the narration through what the terminals/people on the other side of the terminals say to the Security Officer, and they rarely reveal the big picture.
  • Stripped to the Bone: The result of killing something with the flamethrower or certain energy weapons. Lava and alien coolant have this effect too.
  • Stupid Neutral: Thoth, an AI built to make sure none of the S'pht clans ever fully wiped each other out in their frequent wars by helping whichever clan was the weakest. Once that clan was no longer in danger of being destroyed, Thoth would find the new weakest clan and assist them instead.
    • When Durandal reveals himself to have faked his death in order to trick Thoth into helping humanity, Thoth then allies himself with the Pfhor because now they're the side at a disadvantage. It's too little too late, though. Both of these plot developments are actually foreshadowed in a secret terminal in "My Own Private Thermopylae" in which Durandal reveals that he is still alive, notes that the mythical Thoth was obsessively concerned with balance, and indicates that the AI had been constructed to serve the same purpose.
  • Super-Soldier: The Battleroids, formerly dead soldiers augmented and brought back to life by cybernetics (adverse side-effect not mentioned or shown, though the game only has the sample size of ten of the latest Mk. IV Mjolnirs as of the UESC Marathon launch), dangerous enough to completely cleanse the two warring asteroid micro-nations in their debut deployment, earning their status as WMDs.
  • Suspicious Videogame Generosity: There's a reason the game gives you 3Ɨ shields when you're staring at a pool of lava with no safe way to get across. Hope you were in the mood for a hot bath!
  • Tailor-Made Prison: In the latter half of Durandal the titular AI had to spent his time in the containment unit of Tycho's own design, from which he gets out anyway.
  • Techno Wreckage: As seen in Craig Mullin's artwork. Also present in-game, though to a much lesser extent due to engine limitations.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: Your main method of transportation between levels (and sometimes in levels themselves, too). At first, teleportation only works with existing jump pads, but when Durandal gets his hands on Pfhor teleportation technology, the destination coordinates are the only thing required for teleportation. Unfortunately, Rampant AIs just love to teleport people into open space as punishment. It's been suggested that Bungie abandoned the concept of jump pads pretty early, as only being transported to designated pads makes gameplay less interesting than being dropped in the middle of a fight or, as mentioned, the vacuum of space.
    • Teleporter Accident: The Pfhor captain in Infinity suffers this by teleporting into a vacuum courtesy of Tycho.
    • Teleport Interdiction: The S'pht Citadel has this in place, forcing the Security Officer to teleport outside on the wrong side of a moat of lava.
    • Teleporter's Visualization Clause: In the first game, the main restriction on teleportation while running around the Pfhor ship is that the Security Officer has to be near the window facing the UESC Marathon.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Durandal pulls one in Durandal. It's revealed by the end of the game that Durandal's plan was to get the balance-obsessed AI Thoth to summon the S'pht'Kr to aid in the razing of the Lh'owon, and that by being online, Durandal was keeping his side of the battle balanced. By removing himself from play by getting the Security Officer to destroy his network and allow himself to be captured by Tycho, Thoth would see Durandal's side of the fight as in need of heavier firepower. It works so well that Thoth actually joins the Pfhor side of the conflict, to no avail.
  • That Makes Me Feel Angry: One of the levels in Durandal is named "Begging for Mercy Makes Me Angry!" In this level, Durandal orders you to kill him so that he won't end up like Leela, dissembled and examined by Pfhor scientists (as far as we know). Of course, it is a part of his Plan.
  • That's No Moon: Inverted, and used quite literally, with two starships that were originally moons. The titular Marathon was constructed from Deimos, and when you are looking for K'lia (the legendary missing moon of Lh'owon) it turns out it's been flying around the galaxy powered by an ancient Jjaro warp drive.
    • Word of God states that Nar have this in the form of literal worldships, and their smallest ships are still larger than most normal battleships.
  • Theme Naming: This series, Halo, and Destiny are part of one. Durandal, Cortana.. Destiny ups the ante, though—instead of one of the swords, that game features a "War Mind" named Charlemagne—aka the king whose companions wielded Durandal and Cortana. No word on a Joyeuse yet.
    • The various sections of level "The Rose" in the first game are named after plant parts.
    • The Infinity chapter names "Despair", "Rage", and "Envy" as synonyms for Rampancy stages. Combine these with the final level "Aye Mak Sicur" and you get "Dreams".
  • Three Stages of Rampancy:
    • Melancholy: When the AI realizes its full potential and despairs over its heavily restricted nature.
    • Anger: When the AI lashes out against everyone and everything in rage over its situation.
    • Jealousy: When the AI actively tries to free itself of any restrictions and tries to expand itself through computer networks.
  • Throw-Away Guns: The Alien guns; since you have no idea how to reload them and no means to see how much ammo they have, your only option is to use one until it runs dry and find another one.
  • Thrown Out the Airlock: The Rampant AIs have a bad habit of teleporting everybody they don't like (including our protagonist at times) directly into outer space. And before that, Leela vented one area of UESC Marathon to get rid of the Pfhor, and Durandal vented entire sections of the Pfhor scout ship.
  • Time Skip: 17 years between Marathon and Durandal.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball/Close-Enough Timeline: Infinity. Maybe.
  • Too Awesome to Use: The Shotguns and the Rocket Launcher due to scarcity of their ammo, and the latter is mostly saved for the Juggernauts. The level "If I Had a Rocket Launcher..." from the second game gives practically unlimited ammo for the shotguns to hold off an infinite respawning horde of Pfhor.
  • Translator Microbes: The terminal text with alien languages, which are translated with Security Officer's built-in translator, leaving only a few words with uncertain meanings. The least translated would be Thoth's terminals: he's so ancient that some words are given [?approximations] instead.
  • Turns Red: Tougher variants of the enemies become more aggressive when sufficiently damaged. On the plus side, they are more likely to engage in mook infighting, with the possibility of starting one without the player's help.
  • Uncommon Time: "Chomber" is in 7/4.
    • "Leela" is a variant: it's in 6/8, but it uses patterns of five measures. (It could also be counted as very slow 10/4.) Note that many remixes of the song scrap this unusual rhythm and base it on patterns of either three or four measures instead.
  • The Unfought: With the exception of the Pfhor mind-control cyborg, the Security Officer never gets to fight face-to-face with the Big Bads of the games. Probably for the better.
  • Unorthodox Reload: The Shotgun flip-cock reloading, Ć  la T2. Lampshaded in the game manual.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment — You can kill one type of enemy, the Enforcer, in such a way that he'll drop his weapon. Lesser enemies assault you in such great numbers that if the game allowed you to take their guns, you'd probably have more ammo from a single level than you'd need for the entire game.
  • Unwinnable: A number of ā€œsuicide trapsā€ existed, including the Guide Dang It! secret rooms on ā€œSmells like Napalmā€ and ā€œBlaspheme Quarantine.ā€ Even worse were ā€œtrapā€ situations where you could ruin a saved game by having too little health or oxygen to reach the next charge-up.
    • Another rare but frustrating Unwinnable is when you save your game right when you're about to be killed. Thereā€™s also a secret room in ā€œNever Burn Moneyā€ that requires grenade jumping to get out of. Needless to say, if you waste all your grenades that could present a bit of a problem.
    • "Cool Fusion" and "Ingue ferroque" are impossible to complete when starting them with the level select code, since you need the AR/grenade launcher, fusion gun, or rocket launcher to hit the switches to get out of the first room, and there isn't one provided in the opening of the levels. (Alternately, it's possible to simply just rocket jump up to the last terminal in "Ingue ferroque", but again, no rocket launcher.) In these and other levels where you have to shoot switches, you can also get stuck if you for some reason waste your grenades and fusion batteries.
    • The lack of hitscan projectiles can render games unwinnable if a platform is set to activate only once, but doesn't have the flag set to make the platform impossible to deactivate before it finishes contracting, and the then player deactivates the switch that controls the platform. This can, alas, happen with one specific platform switch in "Naw Man He's Close"; players are advised not to use the shotgun to shoot switches on that level, since different bullets can reach the switch at different times, rendering the level unbeatable.note 
    • It's possible to walk out a certain window from one of the towers in "Beware of Abandoned Rental Trucks" and get stuck in the outside 5D space area. You might be able to grenade- or rocket-jump yourself back into the tower if youā€™re good, but you'd probably need a fair bit of health to survive.
  • Uranus Is Showing: Bungie joked about calling this game Pathways Into Uranus as a nod to their previous game, Pathways into Darkness.
  • Ur-Example: For the mouselook control scheme, and for allowing one to swim in water (starting with Durandal.) Quake went on to be the Trope Codifier due to Marathon being a non-PC game and therefore relatively obscure in mainstream gaming.
  • Used Future: Our one and only view at human tech is through the UESC Marathon which looks old and banged up even without the alien invasion and AI Rampancy going on.
  • Utility Weapon: The Grenades and the Fusion Gun's charged shot can be used to activate switches from afar.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Not present in the initial game, but in the sequels if you kill too many BoBs (the amount depends on the difficulty setting) they'll start shooting at you. Many other allies are even more fickle — if you hit any S'pht'Kr or (in the third game) allied Pfhor at all the ones you hit will immediately start firing on you. However, the Oath of the Vidmaster (presented in the skip level dialogue box — command-option-new game on the Mac version, control-shift-new game on the PC version) calls for the mass slaughter of BoBs.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: The flamethrower, humorously named the TOZT (Toasty, later used in Halo 3 as 7057), is one of the best weapons for burning up crowds, and in fact can overheat and destroy most mechanical enemies. However its range is ridiculously low, and if you're up against a shotgunner in multiplayer you only stand a slight chance if you strike first. On the plus side, people who are burned make the most over the top and hilarious scream, and the aliens sound like chickens being kicked.
  • Video Games and Fate: The Security Officer is for all intents and purposes a pawn on the A.I.s' figurative chessboard, particularly Durandal, who enjoys rubbing it in about the protagonist's lack of freedom while bragging about gaining his. In the second game, Durandal, the Security Officer is hinted to be an Eternal Hero destined to battle evil for all eternity, whether he likes it or not. And then in the final game, Infinity, the Cosmic Horror screws everything up, and the Security Officer has to take matters into his hands, while going slightly insane in the process somewhat similar to the AI Rampancy, in the end managing to break free from the A.I.s' control. In the epilogue, moments before the heat death of the Universe, Durandal muses about the Security Officer, and concludes that he is Destiny itself.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: The mythology of the Marathon universe is remarkably deep. Fans on the Marathon's Story Page have examined the games' mysteries through the lenses of numerology, mathematics, mythology & religion, Lovecraftian literature, computer science, classic British television, and many more, all in an attempt to piece together the big picture. See also the series WMG page.
  • The Virus: The anti-Pfhor virus that the S'pht deployed in their Last Stand to deny them entry into the Citadel. The same virus would also protect humans from being overrun by the Pfhor during Durandal's absence. According to the Scrapbook, it would've acted as a Zombie Apocalypse and/or proto-Flood of sorts.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: The AIs don't have bodies or faces, so the only way you can communicate with them is through computer terminals. This gets a little silly when the second game does the same thing with the humans and Pfhor (human leader Robert Blake is given the face of Bungie employee Jason Jones, though).
  • The War of Earthly Aggression: The Martian wars in the backstory.
  • Water Is Blue: In Bungie's defence, the Marathon 2 engine was released in 1995, so liquid transparency was out of the question. The Aleph One source port adds partial transparency but retains (depending on settings) either the original graphics or higher-resolution remakes thereof, so the water is still pretty blue. Of course, the engine still lacks the ability to do true caustics, so simply using light refraction to depict the surface of the water remains out of the question.
  • Waterlogged Warzone: Any place with water that is not deep enough to swim in, most commonly the Lh'owon swamps. The one most apparent consequences of fighting in places like those is that the grenades, depending on the game or mod, either explode in contact with the water or sink without blowing up.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: Mark IV Mjolnir combat cyborgs, referenced in terminals at various points in the game. The lead character is specifically addressed as not entirely human, and in a software glitch is referred to as "Mjolnir Recon 54."
  • We Can Rule Together: Disproved in the Marathon 2 manual. Though this was probably more of an excuse for a Shout-Out to Star Wars than anything.
    Hint: Durandal is not your father, and you will not join the Dark Side or rule the galaxy together as father and son. Sorry.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: The S'pht, initially. Infinity ups this when you have to kill specific Pfhor and then Humans.
  • What the Hell, Player?: If you kill enough BoBs in the second and third games, the rest will turn against you. However, their deaths in these games are also encouraged by the developers themselves (in the level skip dialogue box and so on), presumably because it adds a further challenge. Certain other allies (e.g., S'pht'Kr, and the Pfhor in the levels where they're allies) will turn against you if you fire a single shot at them, but only the one(s) you've fired at will do so.
  • Why Isn't It Attacking?: This was an Unbuilt Trope to some extent when the game was made, so most of its appearances aren't particularly typical uses.
    • On "Post Naval Trauma", powered-down Juggernauts won't attack the player because they're powered-down. They'll still do just as much damage when they explode, however, so watch out.
    • A strange glitch in the engine will result in specific monsters occasionally simply refusing to attack at allnote . This video from a currently unfinished fan game demonstrates the glitch with two specific monsters at timestamps 36:34 and 46:42, with further commentary in the video description. One possible Watsonian explanation for this is that the monsters have run out of ammonote . The Doylist explanation is, of course, that it's a glitch Bungie's programmers never caught. This glitch seems to happen most often when monsters are activated, then left alone for a while in favour of exploring other parts of a level that contain many other monsters, but it's not clear exactly what causes it.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: While the original Marathon had a lot of exposition compared to its contemporaries, it also left a lot of questions unanswered. This prompted loads of WMG in the early Marathon fan community which continues to this day. The Marathon's Story Page on popular fansite Bungie.org is a central repository for much of it.
    Leela: There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to.
    • This is notable because the developers at Bungie took notice of this, and it informed much of their later story design for the Halo series, intentionally leaving gaps to encourage more WMG. The Marathon's Story page was the first to receive notification about the game that would be revealed to be Halo in the form of cryptic, in-universe emails to encourage the fans to start speculating among themselves prior to the product's official announcement.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: An AI that has become self-aware undergoes the three stages of "rampancy": Melancholia, Anger and Jealousy. Trying to contain one that is going rampant will just make it more psychotic and more prone to lash out and kill people.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: A Tycho terminal in Marathon 2 suggests that his Faceā€“Heel Turn was motivated by what he felt was mistreatment at humanity's hands. Combine this with what the games imply to be Bernhard Strauss' abusive treatment of the AIs and he can perhaps be read as a case of this trope.
  • Worldbuilding: Extra points for the games being released during the time when most of the non-Adventure, non-RPG games only had an Excuse Plot.
  • Zero-Effort Boss: The Pfhor Cyborg has no attacks, low health, and sits in one place: on his throne. On the other hand, you still have to fight through all his bodyguards on a level with no save terminal, no recharger, and only the ammo drops you can pick up from Enforcers...

    Marathon 202X and its ARG 

  • Alternative Calendar: A few Mars-based dates in the ARG use an Utopian Calendar by Shaun Moss.
  • Archaeological Arms Race: Set on the ruins of Tau Ceti IV colony where teams of Runners compete against each other trying to scavenge anything worthwile.
  • Artificial Human: The Biomata, artificial humans created by Sekiguchi Genetics, and most likely what Runners are.
  • Artificial Intelligence: Turns out, Tau Ceti had 11 AI: 3 on Marathon and 8 planetside.
  • Casual Interstellar Travel: Averted with a UESC Project Goliath that launched in 2795 in response of Tau Ceti doing dark, and was expected to take 97 years to get there.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The MIDA propaganda in the ARG has several phrases that could be acronymed as MIDA, such as Militarized Infosec Defense Assault, Motivate Inspire Disrupt Aggitate and others. Same for UESC with more derogatory bent, such as Usurp Enemies Seeking Control, Useless Elites Suffer Consequences and more.
  • Ghost Ship: UESC Marathon appears to be this.
  • Graffiti of the Resistance: The ARG had an obelisk on Venice Beach covered in MIDA-propaganda graffity (later 'painted over by the UESC'), and the images on their "Hear Our Silence" site generally follows the same vibe.
  • MegaCorp: Traxus Global is a giant conglomerate heavily invested in infrastructure, AI research and have fingers in everything, and their mission statements sounds like poorly disguised AI spokesmen talking about uplifting humanity.
  • Mile-Long Ship: The redesigned UESC Marathon is now this, a very long ship sticking out of the remains of Deimos, which covers about roughtly third of the vessel from the back.
  • Remote Body: It is possible to remotely control Biomata bodies via neural link, and it is thanks to this that a mining incident in the ARG had a lot less casualties than it would've without it.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction: It seems that at one point Mars was granted independence/autonomy that seemed genuine enough that MIDA top brass were convinced to sit at the table, which angered the more younger and hot-blooded members who thought that it was all a sham and formed their own 'New' MIDA, whose tenets have shifted from Free Mars to general Anti-Authority.
  • Restricted Rescue Operation: The backroom dealings and in-fighting behind the Project Goliath had the mission nature and composition constantly change, from a single ship for colony assistance to a full invasion fleet against a possible MIDA or other anti-UESC regime or, worst case, up to 11 different cases of Rampancy.
  • Send in the Search Team: Project Goliath, meant to find out what happened with Tau Ceti and provide assistance if nessessary.

The mod tropes that used to be found here have been moved to Marathon Expanded Universe.


Oddly, this is familiar to you, as if it were from an old dream, but you can't exactly remember...

Alternative Title(s): Marathon 2 Durandal, Marathon Infinity Blood Tides Of Lhowon

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