Marvel: Avengers Alliance is a Facebook game launched in March 2012 by Marvel and Playdom Online Games.In the game, the player, or Agent, is a S.H.I.E.L.D. recruit just finishing basic training when a mysterious Pulse comes out of space, wreaking havoc on electronic systems worldwide and showering New York with crystals of Isotope-8: an unknown but versatile substance capable of boosting human strength, speed, and endurance. S.H.I.E.L.D. soon learns that it also acts as a catalyst to focus all kinds of elemental and energy-based powers: heat, cold, electricity, magnetism, water, momentum...even magic.Naturally, the criminal underworld is eager to capitalize on this new opportunity. The smaller minds merely want to take advantage of the global confusion, but the bigger players quickly grasp the possibilities of this new source of power. Some of the biggest names in villainy are now in the Iso-8 game — HYDRA, A.I.M., the Hand, the Maggia criminal syndicate, the Wrecking Crew, the Brotherhood of Mutants, The Hood, each with their own agendas. And some of the Marvel Universe's greatest Chess Masters, like Magneto, the Mandarin, Loki, Dormammu, and even Doctor Doom, may be pulling strings behind the scene to form a villainous Syndicate of a scope never before considered. And what about all this talk about "The Circle of Eight"? It's clear S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers have their work cut out for them.The game takes place in an alternate continuity which somewhat resembles the Ultimate Marvel/Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is mostly based on the 616 comics. The storyline is split into seasons, which in turn are split into chapters comprising 6 missions apiece. Season 1 ran from March 2012 to April 2013, with 12 Chapters and mostly taking place in New York City. Season 2 starts on June 18, 2013, and will be initially set in England. Gameplay overall is turn-based Western RPG storyline/graphics with Final Fantasy-esque mechanics.There is a sister game for iOS and Android called Avengers Initiative, which is in the same Marvel XP continuity. This game itself is coming to iOS on June 13, 2013, with an Android version at a later date.
This game provides examples of:
Specific Characters
For the full list of the heroes and main villains, and descriptions of the classes they belong to, see the Character Sheet.
Everything Else
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100% Completion: Getting five-star mastery on all six missions of a chapter earns a special Golden Weapon as a reward.
To recruit a Lockbox-exclusive hero, the player is required to collect 8 comic books to complete the specific set.
Absurdly Sharp Blade: Weapons made of adamantium or vibranium bypass defense and certain resistances.
Actually a Doombot: Three of them for Chapter 3's Epic Boss Battle, another one in 10.5's Sequential Boss, and FIVE of them for Chapter 12's Premium Mission.
Omega Sentinel spent most of her time in the comic books fighting alongside the X-Men. In game, however, her humanity is overwritten by Sentinel programming and she appears as a boss instead. This is eventually subverted as she becomes recruitable via Lockbox in Spec Ops 8.
Skurge the Executioner, a Noble Demon that would Never Hurt an Innocent and whose last achievement in life was a Heroic Sacrifice that allowed him entry into Valhalla. He has gone on to become a posthumous ally to Thor and company ever since, but most adaptations, including this one, seems to have ignored that. At least they kept his loyalty to the Enchantress intact.
All According to Plan: Mandarin is not worried about the defeat of Savin at the end of Special Operation 9: he has served his purpose.
The Alliance: S.H.I.E.L.D. has joined forces with heroes of all stripes. Their counterpart is the villainous Syndicate.
All There in the Manual: Some of the plot particulars are clarified in the news section of Marvel XP. Agent Sitwell also only shows up here so far, as many of the bios are presented from his POV.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Stark Tower, Avengers Mansion, and even the Agent's Helicarrier have been targeted by various evil forces. This is usually an It's Personal moment for the specific hero.
Alternate Universe: Although drawing inspiration from Earth-616, there are significant differences in the Marvel Gaming Universe's timeline. The most obvious differences can be seen in the stories of Avengers vs X-Men and the Ultron saga. Characters who are dead in 616, such as Nightcrawler, Phoenix and Jasper Sitwell, are all happily alive here. There's also a number of elements borrowed from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most prominently Stark's face and personality.
Always Chaotic Evil: The Fugitive prison escapees have a Psychopath passive where they will attack anyone in order to gain power, including their own allies and themselves.
Always Night: The New York battle maps. The San Francisco map is Always Sunset.
Ambidextrous Sprite: Applies to every hero and costume except Hulk's World War Hulk armor, where the metal guard is correctly on his left arm even when the sprite is facing right.
Anagram Bin: The various Limited Edition scrolls are anagrams of famous meats.
Animal Motif: Psylocke has the butterfly. Others are inscribed into their superhero codenames.
Animal Themed Superbeing: Black Cat, Black Panther, Black Widow, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Phoenix, Wolverine, Wasp and Tigra have distinct animal themes in their costumes and attacks. Mockingbird, Hawkeye, Iron Fist (dragons), and Psylocke (butterflies) are borderline cases.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: Initially, alternate costumes offered just that, and a version under a different class. After the introduction of the Avengers-based uniforms, these costumes gradually gained abilities to the point that these weren't just simple costumes.
10 units of Energy are required per battle. Energy refills at a rate of one point every six minutes, or one hour between fights once you run out for the day, so you'll be compelled to either buy more or take a break. Regarding PVP, Challenge points refresh at a rate of 1 per 24 minutes or full refill at two hours.
Heroes cannot level-up normally without being trained first at the expense of S.H.I.E.L.D. points, silver, and time, which all increase in duration and cost as the hero progresses in higher levels. This behooves the player to recruit and use other heroes in the roster while the hero-in-training is disabled for use.
April Fools' Day: 2013 "introduces" Galactus as a playable character and various overpowered weapons from The Avengers as daily roulette prizes.
Appropriated Title: It really focuses on the Marvel universe as a whole, rather than one team of heroes. Still, there was a popular movie with the name of Avengers, might as well put it in the title.
Armed Legs: Made possible with shoe-based weapons like "Anklebiter", "Das Boot" and "Reboot".
'Adaptable' heroes who require different attack combos for varying situations, such as Gambit or Black Widow, are completely useless. On the other hand, heroes like Psylocke and Emma Frost are lethal, because their moves are useful in almost any situation.
AI opponents have a penchant for attacking Kitty Pryde, who 1) is immune to at least 80-90% of attacks when phased and 2) will counterattack automatically in her Shadowcat uniform.
Opponent AI Invisible Woman uses Force Cage (which stops you from attacking, but PREVENTS the other team from damaging you as well) on you. The rest of the AI team then uselessly focus fire on you while you sit safe in the Force Cage and your teammates demolish them handily.
Opponent AI Human Torch uses Nova Blast to kill himself and the rest of his team.
In a Human Torch Mirror Match, the AI will exclusively use Flame Stream, which reactivates the Flame On! buff.
Do not rely on a specific or complicated setup for your Away From Keyboard defense (be it gear or heroes), because the AI's chance of following it is 0%.
Opponent AI Agents who use Quantum Jumper and forfeit their turn, even though there is no one else on their team.
Opponent AI Agents who use Quick Action buffs to boost offensive output, followed by...a non-offensive move.
Opponent AI Agents who use a healing gadget as their first move of the game, before their team has lost any health.
Ass Shove: Implied by the "Where the Sun Don't Shine" attack by the enemies in mission 4-1.
Satana, from Special Ops 4: All Hallows can summon demons as well.
Mephisto releases demons with his Bound Souls attack to intimidate your team.
Doctor Doom can summon random Servoguards using his Summoning Portal move, as can the Agent after stealing his Servoguard Programming Interface.
Back from the Dead: An essential part of the powers of many heroes and villains.
Two of the weapons from Special Operation 5 (the Hoarfrost Mace and Barrowguard) will allow you to revive upon dying. The Barrowguard can do this infinitely, but only after three turns have passed since the last revive.
Plotwise, the Hood and the Red Skull have been resurrected through a combination of magic and Iso-8 as of the end of Chapter 10. The Hood's case was just a test for the latter.
Back-to-Back Badasses: The game gives you extra bonus points at the end of the match if the Agent brought along two heroes with certain similarities in group affiliation, history, motif, etc.
Badass Back: About a third of the heroes (including the male Agent) stand with their bodies turned away from the enemy.
Badass Bookworm: Most of the intelligent characters, who get a teamup bonus titled 'Eggheads'. Some of the heavy hitters are better termed Genius Bruisers.
When you first encounter Black Widow in the tutorial mission, she is severely injured by foes. The aim of this is to teach players how to use items from their Supplies, and you must heal her with a Medkit.
The first Special Ops mission involved rescuing Mockingbird.
Maria Hill and Nick Fury go missing in Chapter 7 and do not return until Chapter 9.
Badass Normal: Besides the Agent, who can only fight on field because of their gadgets, there's also a teamup bonus for heroes without special powers, weapons or armour.
The Bad Guy Wins: That's how humanity from the future must see the end of Special Operations 7, with the victory of Hank Pym and the successful creation of Ultron.
Kang:You think you are on the brink of a great discovery...but I come from a future where you are vilified as the man who began the destruction of the world.
Barbie Doll Anatomy: Several characters are either nude or wearing outfits so form-fitting that they may as well be naked, but nothing shows.
Barrier Warrior: Several heroes and enemies can raise shields.
Batter Up: Also the name of the passive from Scrapper prison escapees, who fittingly use baseball bats as their weapon of choice.
The Agent can do the same if they win the S.H.I.E.L.D. Slugger, a PvP Season 7 reward.
Battle Aura: Suggested by the various suits of power armor for the Agent. The Phoenix Five costumes give their wearers a phoenix-shaped aura when using the Phoenix Force (Jean Grey's is constantly visible).
Battle Couple: Bonus points with interesting taglines are granted if the Agent brings in a pair with a past/present romance: Cyclops & Phoenix or Emma, Hawkeye & Black Widow or Mockingbird, Kitty & Colossus, Mr. Fantastic & Invisible Woman, Black Panther & Storm, Spider-Man & Black Cat, Vision & Scarlet Witch, Hank Pym & Wasp, and so on.
The Subcinctus and Meretrix succubi have a move called "Temptation," usable on both male and female characters.
Similarly, the Enchantress' "Alluring Voice" attack affects men and women equally.
Satana's Consume Soul. Being the succubus that she is, she uses this move equally on male and female characters/agents.
Big Applesauce: Most of the battle maps are New York regions with recognizable landmarks, both real and fictional (Stark Tower, the Chrysler Building, etc.)
Big Bad Ensemble: The story is chock full of Marvel's most notorious as well as obscure villains. With several enemies working together against S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury and gang have a hard time figuring out exactly what is going on.
Big Ball of Violence: Nightcrawler's Triple Threat and almost all of Quicksilver's moves evoke this in their animations.
Chapter 10's Premium Mission Der Rote Schadel Lebt Noch is German for " The Red Skull Lives Again". Even when the chapter was pending release, its title and flavor text foreshadowed the infamous WWII villain's resurrection.
Spec Ops 5.3 Mission "Götterdämmerung" translates to "Twilight of the Gods" in German. With the plot partially inspired by The Ring of the Nibelung.
In Spec Ops 2 Mission 2, Crimson Dynamo speaks of being hired by a 'mutant oboroten lady'. 'Oboroten' roughly translates into 'shapeshifter' in Russian, as Maria Hill subsequently notes, hinting at Mystique's role as mastermind.
Body Horror: Several villains have engaged in horrific "experiments" that turn humans into unwilling mutants or cyborgs.
Bonus Boss: Epic Boss battles, which can only be accessed by completing every fight and deployment in whatever mission they're hidden in.
Epic Bosses are usually the 25th and final task required to unlock the central hero in SpecOps missions.
Boss Only Level: Chapter 12 is a Boss-only Chapter; all hostile spots are boss battles.
Boss Rush: The non-Premium missions in Chapter 12 don't feature fights with mooks at all, instead featuring multiple Minibosses and a single Boss that can indeed be fought in one fight.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: Deadpool, as per norm. He even browses the Internet while waiting for his turn. His attacks involve using a laptop, and he can beat his opponents with his own life bar.
Bribing Your Way to Victory: All the resources needed to play this game are in limited supply and can be purchased with Gold, which is available in-game but is more readily acquired by paying real money.
To gain considerable (but not foolproof) advantage in PvP: recruit all heroes, bring them all to Level 12, and don't forget to dish out as much "gold" to buy the overpowered limited edition gear and socket the most current items in your armory. You can't do all of those without paying real money to shorten the time frame.
The British Invasion: A term informally used by Playdom to describe a string of British-themed hero releases tying into chapter 13 (or the first chapter of Season 2), set predominantly in London - Psylocke, Captain Britain, Black Knight and Union Jack.
British Stuffiness: Invoked with Captain Britain and Union Jack, who are stuffed full of British cliches in the names of their passives and attacks.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Operation 8, Mission 6. Tony notes that while there is a breach of security at the UN, it is nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that the Destroyer is involved. So, a UN security breach is apparently common enough occurrence to be unremarkable.
The Bus Came Back: Chapter 12 sees the return of Bosses that previously were only seen in Spec Ops.
But Not Too Evil: Necessary to justify the future recruitment of ambiguous villains who are sometimes heroes.
In Mission 2.6, electronic systems are seen going haywire near Avengers Mansion, affecting Servobots and the Crimson Dynamo. Tony Stark talks about bringing Hank Pym in to investigate. This eventually leads to Spec Ops 7 (where Hank works on containing the problem in a robotic body dubbed 'Ultron').
Spec Ops 8 follows directly after Spec Ops 7 when Ultron was created and went rogue. At this point, Ultron begins amassing his own army of clones, and his focal creation is an android he named "The Vision".
Yet another hilarious callback for Mission 2.6 occurs in Spec Ops Mission 9.1. Crimson Dynamo boasts about his upgraded tech yet again, only for Iron Man to point out that the last time he did this, his armor was hacked by Ultron in 2.6.
In Mission 10.6, the Red Skull is resurrected by the Syndicate. This leads to Magneto's defection to the heroes' side, and explains 1) why Magneto was missing from the Brotherhood in Spec Ops mission 6.2 and 2) why the Brotherhood members were so angry at him, going so far as to even dub him a traitor. He mysteriously reappears as a boss in Chapter 11, but it turns out that this Evil Knockoff is in fact Mystique, and Mags himself goes to dispatch her.
Spec Ops 1 involved the search and rescue of Mockingbird, with a loss to main boss the Wrecker in mission 1.3 prompting him to taunt about the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. In Spec Ops 2, the player is then tasked by the White Queen herself, Emma Frost, to find out who impersonated her and solve the greater mystery behind Mockingbird's abduction. The Hellfire Club even makes a subsequent appearance in Spec Ops 6, with Emma retrieving Havok from her 'good' half of the Inner Circle to stop the Living Pharaoh's Power-Up into the Living Monolith.
In Spec Ops 4, a deploy task involves exchanging hellfire-tainted ISO-8 with the X-Men's Phoenix-tainted ISO-8, a leftover from the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline in Spec Ops 3.
In a Spec Ops 5 deploy, Wolverine demands to borrow a Quinjet from S.H.I.E.L.D., and Fury relents. When asked upon return the purpose of his sojourn, Wolverine only cryptically replies that "Let's just say that a couple of other Weapon X alumni have been in touch." When X-23 (Wolverine's Weapon X female clone) was released later, she utters this line of dialogue upon recruitment.
"...Logan said you could use some help. If he trusts you, so do I. "
Sadly, fellow Weapon X member Fantomex doesn't make any such reference when recruited.
In Mission 9.2, Stark snarks that he should just buy Bellevue Hospital himself because it keeps filling back up with evil people doing experiments right after they just cleared it out (see the Crimefighting with Cash entry). It seems he actually did just that, as in Spec Ops 10 it's under their control and where Wonder Man gets treated.
Cap: All recruitable heroes max out at Level 12. The Agent is capped at level 300.
Captain Geographic: Several "nation"-themed heroes. Captains America and Britain have their own team-up bonus: "Patriotic."
Cardboard Prison: The Wrecking Crew have escaped from prison four or five times by Chapter 10. In Special Ops 5:3, Fury gets fed up and has you send a deploy to the Raft to tell them to tighten up their security.
Character Class System: Blaster, Scrapper, Infiltrator, Bruiser, Tactician, or Generalist. Other than Generalist, each is strong against one class and weak against another. Heroes have a native character class; Agents may switch between them at will with a change of uniform. Some alternate costumes also provide an alternate class.
Players can pick the gender, facial features, skin tone, hair color and style, and name of the Agent.
With the available alternate costumes, players can specify which class his/her heroes will take (for combat as well as PvP bonuses), as well as improve their stats with a variety of Iso-8 gems for those outfits.
Charged Attack: Gambit, Hulk, Magik, Quicksilver and Thor all require the use of a basic attack that provides stacks of buffs for their other attacks, causing increased damage or effects. One of the benefits of the Modern Armor Thor alt is that he starts combat fully charged.
Iron Man's Unibeam gets stronger with each use if fired every round.
Beast has a neat twist on this with his "Catch-22" move, which makes him stronger for every turn that he does not directly attack.
Captain Britain has a "Roar of Valor" power-up that boosts all his stats, gained whenever attacking a debuffed enemy or when an enemy is KO-ed. On the flipside, he loses a buff stack when an ally dies.
When in his Chivalrous Duty stance, Black Knight can absorb ranged attacks and convert them into the Sword of Light buff that increases his next Ebony Blade attack.
Black Panther is first referenced in-game as being busy with the ISO-8 situation in Wakanda, before appearing as a playable hero later.
Hank Pym was referenced in a number of regular mission deploys, before making his debut in Spec Op 7.
From the list of confirmed future heroes, Daimon Hellstrom looks to be this as well; he was first referenced as White King of the Hellfire Club in Spec Ops 2, and then in Spec Ops 4 as Satana's brother.
Doctor Voodoo is mentioned in two deploy missions, and is also scheduled to be released in-game.
Scarlet Witch notices that Vision's brain patterns are modeled after someone she knows. In a deploy mission for Beast, Nick Fury asks him to look at Pym's files to see who might have been used as the base for Vision, but we do not hear Beast's conclusions. Vision then confirms that his neural basis was from Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man in the 10th Spec Ops.
Tony mentions decorating the Christmas tree with his secretary girlfriend Pepper Potts in Spec Ops 5, before she makes her debut as Rescue in Spec Ops 9.
Interestingly, Namor used to be referenced on occasion, but has been entirely excised from the storyline in a Retcon.
Deadpool was first referenced in the random Pretty Cool Guy buff that could appear for Scarlet Witch's Probability Field. Subsequently and in true Troll fashion, he suddenly appeared in-game as a future release, despite no official announcement beforehand that he would become a playable (and ahead of some other previously-announced names).
Beast making an early-bird appearance in Spec Ops 3 during a lab research task, as 'Dr. Hank McCoy', before his subsequent release as a playable character. (Although it should be noted that his future release was confirmed at this point.)
The Red Skull at the end of Mission 10.6, after Luke Cage fails to stop the Hand's resurrection ritual despite defeating Elektra.
The Mandarin appearing at the end of Spec Ops 9, claiming to have masterminded the Extremis plot and preparing to make their next move.
The Chessmaster: Doctor Doom is revealed to have created the Syndicate for his own motives, successfully uniting villain factions when they were needed and then allowing them to fight among themselves subsequently to be part of his Syndicate. He then lets S.H.I.E.L.D. do clean-up on Manhattan's villains, stalling for time to complete his plans and invade the city.
Chest Blaster: Iron Man's Unibeam, duh. Tactical Force from the HYDRA Four also has his HateBeam, which is essentially his version of Iron Man's signature attack.
Christmas Episode: Spec Ops 5, The Wild Hunt, was released in time for 2012's December holidays. It features frost giants, snow and Asgardians galore.
Tony Stark: (Loki) might think it's time for the Wild Hunt, but I've got a Christmas tree to decorate. Pepper's going to kill me if I'm late.
[later]
Tony Stark: All we need to do now is get rid of Loki, and then we can get on with the important Christmas stuff. I mean, of course, overeating and lots of loot.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: All mentions of Namor were mysteriously removed from the game. The euphemism 'an Atlantean' is used instead. Speculation is rife that this was done as Marvel did not have Namor's video game rights.
City of Adventure: Almost all the action takes place in New York or in convenient portals from the city leading to hell and the Bifrost, with the only exception of San Francisco (as the X-Men are located there).
Chapter 13 will take place mostly in London.
Cleavage Window: The Phoenix Five outfits of Phoenix and Emma Frost.
The various ISO-8 gems are also color coded in a prismatic fashion: Red is Attack/Accuracy, Blue is Health/Stamina, Yellow is Defense/Evasion, and the secondary colors combine the matching primary color stats. That being said, chaotic/rainbow-colored ISO-8 are the most valuable, being able to raise all stats by significant values.
Certain Mooks are Palette Swapped, but that usually tells you how strong the enemies are. For example, the Hand (Red > Green > Black); Mutated Human Experiments (Purple > Blue > Red); Maggia (Purple > Blue > Brown); Escaped Prisoners (Yellow > Blue > Orange); Thugs (Black > Red > Blue).
Combat Medic: The Agent will often serve as this, with one or more of the many healing and buffing gadgets available, if not straight up The Medic. Iron Fist, Doctor Strange and Omega Sentinel can also spread some healing power around in between taking names.
In a slightly unusual variant of this trope, Valkyrie and her team gain health when an opponent inflicted with the Deathglow debuff (through her Dragonfang ability) dies.
Colossus and Emma Frost's passive Phoenix powers grant a chance to greatly restore ally health and stamina, and a chance to clear an ally's debuffs every round respectively.
Abilities with Desperation Attack attached to them inflict more damage when the hero/Agent has lower health. Valkyrie's Geirr is a straight example. Human Torch's Nova Blast comes with Power at a Price if there aren't enough protections, as it will hit everybody, including himself and his team.
When Scarlet Witch uses Probability Field, it may give her opponent "Power of Four" (see Power at a Price below), "Sudden Death" (which leaves the opponent with 1% health, but it removes all debuffs and it greatly increases attack) or both. If you are facing her on PvP and you get these, these are major comeback opportunities.
The Hoarfrost Mace (from Spec Ops 5). If you are hit with an attack that would normally kill you, you are revived to 1% of health. This removes the sacrifice status, but it gives the team "Sacrificial Strength", which gives a major attack buff.
The various revival mechanics discussed under Back from the Dead, giving your team a fighting chance even if you got unlucky with the turn order.
A trait of Asgardians in general. Thor, Sif, and Valkyrie have a tendency to react with dead earnest nobility, seriousness, and poise to the sorts of low-brow or inherently doofy situations and villains where the other heroes would be more likely to voice sarcasm and/or irreverence.
Hill also sometimes comes off as this in her reactions to the odder/weirder problems, especially when in comparison to Stark or Fury being wise-asses instead.
Doctor Strange appears to be this but sometimes shows a dry and subtle sense of humor.
The Vulture: Oooh, the magic show's about to start. I can't wait.
Doctor Strange: Who mocks the mystic arts only proves himself the greater fool. Now, watch.
Since Namor was not an available character by the time of the AvX Spec-Op, Jean Grey was placed in his stead. Jean's Phoenix Five costume is an amalgam of P5 Emma's chestpiece and P5 Cyclops' suit. Her P5 persona is essentially the Dark Phoenix, being the Epic Boss of the Avengers side after defeating P5 Cyclops.
While Hank Pym dons his Modern Giant-Man costume and uses his regular name, his moveset utilizes abilities from his Ant-Man and Giant-Man/Goliath personas.
War Machine gets Norman Osborn's Iron Patriot armor as an alternate costume, as a tie-in promotion to Iron Man 3.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: To make up for the otherwise abysmal AI play in PVP, the computer has a much better chance at procuring random buffs. This explains how Scarlet Witch can Reality Warp away all your attacks, Emma Frost's stat-raising-debuff-cleansing Cosmic Power appears on all your enemies every turn, and why Ghost Rider just won't die. Worst-case scenario, a near-death enemy Scarlet Witch procures Power of Four on a heavy hitter with her Probability Field, and begins to massacre your otherwise very healthy team with Epic Overkill blows.
The game's prize roulette in general, thanks to the Random Number God. The margin to get a good prize is quite low, which is even blatant with regards to Boss/Epic Boss rewards (which teases you of all the possible prizes). Chances are 7 out 9 possible prizes are very eye-catching; however, the highest possibility that the cursor stops on is the most measly i.e. one command point or one supply better off sold for more silver.
Each Premium roulette nets 2 exclusive prizes: one themed for the guest star hero and one for the villain, usually related to their powers or events in the comics. Spec Ops and Epic Boss roulettes have 1 such prize based on the villain.
The "Modern" costumes of some of the characters are loosely based on either their most recent arc (Astonishing/Ultimate) or from the Marvel origin films (WWII Cap, Modern Thor and Sif to name a few); which in turn the Marvel origin films are also a nod on various elements from the 616/Ultimate comics.
A Cyclops-themed weapon, the Ruby Quartz Rifle, has the caption 'Surprisingly slim for a hard hitter'. Slim is, in fact, Scott's main nickname.
Rogue's extra turn buff after using Southern Comfort is Ms. Marvel's Kree Speed, a reference to both characters' complicated history. They also get their own team-up bonus, Identity Theft.
Contrary to most mooks, a lot of the bosses are "Relentless" or immune to Stun and can take two turns in a row (or the occasional three). True to the comics, some bosses are also immune to certain damage/debuff types, such as Magneto (psychic), Hydro-Man (burning), or Blob (bleeding). Additionally, certain percentage-based attacks and debuffs like Mental Anguish, Bifurcator and Fatal Blow are significantly less effective on bosses, although they still deliver quite a blow.
Though Hydro-Man is also a subversion when it comes to Storm's Blizzard or any other attack that causes Chilled, as it will actually affect him worse than it does the mooks, by causing him to freeze and lose all his turns until it wears off.
Crimefighting with Cash/Cut Lex Luthor a Check: At the end of one of the missions, Stark gripes about how the villains keep moving into the same hospital to do experiments right after they just cleared it out. He then wonders if he should just buy the hospital himself and keep them out that way. Fury snarks that it's the "The billionaire's solution." Amusingly, in Spec Ops 10 we see that he actually followed through with it.
Crisis Crossover: The Pulse is an excuse to unite the various heroes and villains in the Marvel Universe under one event.
Critical Hit Class: The core benefit of the Blaster class is that they always critically hit and ignore defense against any character in the Bruiser class.
Crutch Character: The starting heroes - Iron Man, Black Widow and Hawkeye. They are all at least decent characters, especially with the purchase of alternate uniforms that greatly upgrade them, but you'll definitely have to diversify if you want more versatility or power in your squad. You will get one free hero after completing the first chapter, but you will have to start saving your Command Points from that point forward.
Curse Cut Short: At the start of the Premium Mission of Chapter 2:
Nick Fury: Lock it down, Tony. That's an order. Tighter than a flea's—
Maria Hill: Agent, deploy to Avengers Mansion immediately. Assume all cybernetic objects are hostile.
Cute Bruiser: X-23. She's petite, young and cute...but she's also of the Bruiser class, a class usually filled with heavy-hitters like Hulk, Thor, Thing, Hercules or at least adult women like She-Hulk or Valkyrie.
Justified because unlike other conventional Bruisers who have high durability and can easily take lots of punishment, she has a healing factor as replacement (superior to Wolverine's in the comic books). Also, have you seen the abs on that girl?
Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Scarlet Witch shows a flash of pity for Omega Sentinel before obliterating her, and commenting on her suppressed humanity.
Scarlet Witch: You've already had an unlucky life. Why make it worse?
Omega Sentinel: Purification imperative is in effect. Commence.
[later]
Scarlet Witch: I've known machines with more soul than this thing. She seems to have been purged of her humanity.
Omega Sentinel, whose nanite technology grants her powerful weapons and durability, at the cost of turning her into a mutant-killing machine. She got better, fortunately.
Iron Man and Rescue, since their powered armor are what essentially keep them alive.
Damage Over Time: Several effects. The 'basic' ones are Poisoned, Dark Void, Bleeding, Burning, Chilled and their magical equivalents Soulfire and Deathfrost. Some villain-inflicted debuffs (and Bleeding) cause damage per offensive action taken.
The roster of heroes with 'Black' in outfit and codename is increasing: Black Cat, Black Knight, Black Panther, and Black Widow. Granted, Felicia Hardy (Cat) and Natasha Romanova (Widow) started as villains, but have since sided with the good guys.
In addition to the 'dark'-themed names above, there are plenty of creepy anti-heroes or hell-based characters who ally with you, such as Magik, Ghost Rider and Daimon Hellstrom (in the future).
A Day in the Limelight: While the sheer number of heroes makes it hard to feature more than a few regularly, everyone eventually gets at least one dialogue to their name whether through deploys or boss team-ups. The Spec Ops in particular often require for deploy dialogues whomever are the most recently released characters.
Deadpan Snarker: Iron Man, of course, though Fury also laces almost every other sentence with heavy-duty snark. In Spec Ops 4, Tony tells Doctor Strange that "snark is [his] department," and in a conversation with Phoenix in Spec Ops 6 he hints that he does it because of "nerves."
Though admittedly the game is something of a World of Snark, in that there's very few characters who don't toss off at least one snarky comment to somebody at some point.
Death or Glory Attack: The Tesseract Simulation Device. It affects everyone on the field. It may transport them to a cosmic rift that makes them evade all attacks and gives a 30% attack bonus for a full turn. If it benefits your team, you've nearly won. If it benefits the opposing team, you basically lost.
Defrosting Ice Queen: Tried and denied in the first example, the second on the other hand, plays it straight.
Gambit:You know, dis not be the first time I steal jewels for a beautiful woman... Hill:Don't even think about it. Gambit:Heh. Mebbe it's not jus' thievin' I be rusty at.
Spec Ops 2: Long Live the Queen was an exercise in this. A typically sarcastic Emma Frost approaches S.H.I.E.L.D. (specifically, your player character) for help to investigate shenanigans in the Hellfire Club. At the end of the story, you have sufficiently impressed her enough to join your team. Where the recruitment button for other Spec Ops characters says 'Recruit Them', it says 'Impress Her' for Emma's!
Determinator: Nothing will stop Hank Pym from completing his project. Not Tony Stark's cynicism, not the A.I.M. goons trying to hijack his work, not Doctor Doom's meddling and certainly not equally-determined plunderers from the future.
Hank Pym:You go to hell, Kang. Nobody tells me what to do in my own lab with my own mind.
Kang:I fight for everyone in a future you do not wish to see, Pym. I know pride, and it is even stronger in you than it is in me. Fool.
Difficulty Spike: After earning five stars in any regular missions, subsequent runs will have enemies scale to your level.
If you're overleveled, you can opt to do Challenge Mode at any point. The enemies are set at five levels higher than your agent. Yes, this includes the Premium Missions. But you have a chance to gain level-customized gear and extremely rare epic gear.
Distaff Counterpart: Invoked with a similarly-named teamup bonus, for female heroes based on a male counterpart.
Divided We Fall: The plot of the third Spec Ops mission. Five of the X-Men got possessed by the Phoenix Force and wanted to use it to save mutantkind. The Avengers, on the other hand, were of the opinion that the Phoenix Force Is Not a Toy, and that it would end up wiping out the entire planet, mutants and all. And while they were at each others' throats, the bad guys were trying to turn the situation to their advantage. This even turned into a gameplay mechanic; you had to choose whether to side with the X-Men or the Avengers each time you started a mission, and you weren't allowed to use core members from the opposite side during fights or deploys.
Don't Explain the Joke: This line of Dialogue between Hank Pym and Nitro before their fight:
Doomed by Canon: As soon as we hear that Hank Pym is going to name his new embodied electrical matrix "Ultron," we know it won't end well.
Double Entendre: Hercules' "Likes It Rough" ability, where he gains Stamina when attacked.
Downer Ending: You can never truly kill Mephisto. Even if you reduce his health to 0, it will go back up to 1% of his health bar, then the battle will end when he uses Prince of Lies to teleport away. Disappointing considering how he is one of the most truly heinous villains in the Marvel Universe, amongst the plentiful numbers that exist.
Chapter 10, with the resurrection of the Red Skull.
Dual Boss: actively encouraged, fighting the Mini-Boss(es) with the main Boss nets a nice bonus for the mission score, and in SpecOps this will save the player valuable Unstable Iso-8s.
This is a major Guide Dang It when it comes to what not to do in a Spec Ops. If one of the tasks asks you to defeat a Mini-Boss, go after the Mini-Boss only. If you try to two-bird or three-bird, but the next task asks you to defeat the actual boss, you just wasted a run's worth of Unstable Iso-8s. So if that task comes up (usually within the first 10 tasks of a Spec Ops), don't attempt to Dual or Triple Boss.
Dynamic Difficulty: Premium and Spec Ops missions always scale to your Agent's current level. This also happens after achieving five-star mastery on any other mission.
In the first Spec Ops, in order to recruit Mockingbird, you had to get five stars on all three missions. For the subsequent Spec Ops, you do not need to five star every mission, but you will have to follow all twenty-five tasks in that order.
The requirement to unlock Mission 6.6 was to recruit Colossus. It has since been changed to Phoenix. However, there was a bug regarding unlocking the mission. The safest bet as of now is to recruit Colossus and Phoenix, just in case recruiting Phoenix doesn't unlock 6.6.
The entirety of Player Versus Player. When the game started it was an optional aspect of the game. Once the PvP tournament began, almost half of the game was focused on it. Early seasons gave advantage to powerhouse characters like Emma Frost, Mockingbird, Scarlet Witch and Capt. America. Later on, the focus shifted to increased bonuses for heroes above Level 9. As of Season 6 with the advent of the Aegis Armors, all advantage was given to the highest Attack and Defense bonuses in their armory: players with outdated socket items in the armory will get pummeled. Hard.
Earn Your Fun: The Golden Weapons and the Epic Boss weapons are better than the items for purchase, but acquiring them is not easy. Doubly true for characters or items obtainable through the Special Ops missions.
The End Is Nigh: Discussed in Mission 4-3 when S.H.I.E.L.D. discovers a mutant wearing a sandwich board sign and asks the Agent to send someone to check it out. Turns out he's just calling for a mutant rights demonstration.
Tony Stark: Who wears those anymore? Is it going to say THE END IS NIGH? (his emphasis)
Enemy Civil War: The Syndicate gradual collapse by the end of Chapter 10, starting with the resurrection of Red Skull and Magneto's defection to S.H.I.E.L.D. Chapter 12 showsthe Syndicate's complete disintegration into different factions, as you take on Loki's minions, AIM, Hydra, the Criminal/Mystical Underworld, the Red Skull and his posse, before culminating with a final throwdown with Dr. Doom, where he reveals the founding of and the subsequent collapse of the Syndicate, were all according to his plans..
Enemy Mine: The Agent can take any two heroes into battle, regardless of their past (or current) level of regard for one another. Ever wanted to deploy, Captain America & Phoenix Five Cyclops or Emma Frost & Kitty Pryde together in the same battle? Go ahead!
Partially averted in the Avengers Vs X-Men Spec Ops, where you couldn't field core Avengers members in X-Men missions (and by extension, have Avengers members fight against each other) and vice versa.
Worldbreaker Hulk can fight side-by-side with same members of the Illuminati who exiled him to space.
Empty Levels: Leveling up your heroes doesn't increase any of their 6 base stats, but only as means of unlocking his/her complete moveset and opening all Iso-8 slots; each new outfit has a unique set of slots for further Iso-8 customization. Fortunately, the game awards you with a massive PVP bonuses if you level up your heroes past Level 9.
Formerly the case with "customized" gear, whose power level is determined by the level of the Agent when s/he acquired it. Mitigated with the "reforge" mechanic, which will bring the gear up to the Agent's level at the cost of a hefty sum of gold, the in-game currency. At this point, such gear can still be obsolete level-wise and will need to be reforged in the future.
"Reactive" Iso-8 works the same way custom weapons/gear do, taking on the Agent's level on the moment of socketing, but cannot be reforged.
Dr. Strange and Havok can absorb energy from enemy attacks to gain extra turns or further empower attacks, respectively; likewise with the Living Pharaoh's power to morph into the Living Monolith.
Human Torch gains a 'Flame On!' buff when he is hit by an attack that should cause Burning, and is also immune to Fire attacks.
Ms. Marvel gains stamina when hit by Energy attacks, and she gets healed by them after using her Absorb Energy move.
A couple of demon Mooks are healed when hit with Energy attacks.
Energy Weapon: Psylocke uses a telekinetically-charged katana, and can project her psionic energies into Psychic Knives.
Ensign Newbie: The player character Agent is either this or Rookie Red Ranger, having jumped from training directly into the front lines at the head of a squad of heroes.
Even Evil Has Standards: Magneto may do many things to ensure the survival of his brethren, but he'll draw the line at cooperating with resurrected Nazi war criminals.
Everything Fades: Defeated foes either fade into purple when beaten normally or red if Overkilled.
Everyone Loves Blondes: It's pretty much an established Running Gag that the limited-edition Spec Ops heroes available to be won are going to be blondes. Spec Ops 1-3 and 5 were all blonde women: Mockingbird, Emma Frost, Magik and Valkyrie. For the men we have the 6th & 7th, Havok and Hank Pym, and the 4th, Ghost Rider, is blonde when he's not on fire.
Eventually averted with the Vision's release (bald android with green head), although lampshaded in-game when Tony Stark suggests that Vision wear a blonde wig.
Some folks are still arguing that the blonde theory holds, because Vision (Spec Ops 8) was constructed from a template of the original Human Torch, who is blonde; Rescue (Spec Ops 9) is played by Gwyneth Paltrow in the movies, and she happens to be blonde.
The blonde streak ended earlier with SpecOps 8's Vision (synthezoid) and with SpecOps 10's Wonder Man who is a brunette.
Evil Is One Big Happy Family: Profoundly averted. The Syndicate rapidly dissolves into chaos, while the SHIELD alliance holds despite setbacks like Ultron because the heroes can set aside their differences and work together.
Evil Knockoff: The bogus HYDRA Avengers in the Chapter 5 Premium Mission.
The U-Foes, of the Fantastic Four. Which was their whole backstory, really. Referenced multiple times in pre-fight banter between the U-Foes and their Fantastic Four counterparts.
Vapor: Oh, the jealousy. Pathetic.
Invisible Woman: I'm jealous? You're the one who tried to replicate our first mission, and you think I'm jealous. Project much?
Fantastic Racism: Twofold. First is Magneto and the Brotherhood's "homo superior" modus operandi of transforming captured humans into mutated soldiers. Once Red Skull is Back from the Dead, he begins his own campaign of destroying the Ubermensch (inferiors) faction of the Syndicate, i.e. the mutant Brotherhood.
Fixed Damage Attack: Damage-over-time debuffs. Almost all of them has a fixed percentage amount based off the victim's maximum health. Debuffs like Dark Void, Burning, and Poison depletes the same amount each turn, while Bleeding is only one-third of the damage (but can have three stacks and damage almost doubles with Ravaged).
Flaming Sword: Magik's soulsword. Psylocke's telekinetic katana has a similar look.
Foe Romance Subtext: Daredevil & Elektra, Ghost Rider & Satana. There are also hints of one-sided attraction with Viper (Captain America) and Enchantress (Thor).
Foil: While the heroes have abilities to complement each other, Playdom releases buffs/debuffs and new heroes that have moves to counteract each other for the sake of PVP.
Emma Frost is extremely effective against heroes with all-out offense skills. Psylocke, Jean Grey and Magneto have passives that allow them to have anti-psychic advantages.
Foregone Conclusion: Spec Ops 7 adapts Hank Pym's quest to create Ultron and its eventual fall to sentient villainy.
Spec Ops 8 is a direct sequel adaptation, where Ultron creates the Vision to fight the Avengers, only for Vision to turn against him and stand with the Avengers.
Form-Fitting Wardrobe: A number of characters, but Vapor's◊ outfit◊ takes the top prize for looking naked but in dark green. Scarlet Witch and Crimson Cowl's outfits both appear like a pink bodysuit wrapped around with a red one-piece "bathing suit" and a huge cloak.
One of the AIM goons' buffs in mission 1-4 is titled this, described as "Healing with the power of SCIENCE!" (their emphasis)
Pym will build his Ultron pet project no matter what, no matter who points out all the things that can go wrong with it...not even if he gets an Ominous Message From The Future.
Four is Death: Some of the formidable groups of supervillains have four members:
The U-Foes consist of Vector, X-Ray, Ironclad, and Vapor.
The Wrecking Crew is made up of Wrecker, Piledriver, Bulldozer and Thunderball.
The main Asgardian supervillains are Loki, the Destroyer, Executioner and Enchantress.
HYDRA's copycat Avengers (a.k.a. the HYDRA Four) in Mission 5.6: Militant (Captain America), Tactical Force (Iron Man), Hammer (Thor), and Bowman (Hawkeye)
The weapon "Power of Four" is literally this. Appropriately, it can be won after defeating the HYDRA Four.
Freudian Excuse: Magneto's story as to why he embarked on his extremist ways. Piecing the whole story together unlocks him as a playable character.
The three heroes of Mission Control. Tony - Id; Maria Hill - Ego; Nick Fury - Superego.
The three main Asgardian villains: Executioner - Id; Enchantress - Ego; Loki - Superego.
Friendly Fireproof: Averted on the villains' side with Fugitives who may attack their own team, and Abomination who consumes his own allies. Also averted literally with Human Torch's fire-based Nova Blast ultimate and his themed Handheld Hohlraum weapon, but there are instances where this can be beneficial (e.g. healing when Chaos Shield is up, or dissipating your team's Electromagnetic Field for extra turns).
Also, Fixer's Timed Grenades, BL-Beta/Alpha's Meltdown and Vapor's suicidal explosive/poison gas whammies when she's low on health. Abomination has another Collapsing Infrastructure debuff that afflicts everybody and stacks. Mephisto's Contractual Obligation targets his allies only, and instantly overkills them as he replenishes his own health.
Genius Bruiser: Bringing in a pair of such heroes (Hulk, Iron Man, Hank Pym, etc.) earns the team-up bonus Dr. or Eggheads.
Some of the enemy move names as well, such as "Where the Sun Don't Shine" and "Money Shot".
"Where the Sun Don't Shine" also tends to hit right in the crotch, as do several other attacks including "Shank".
The Subcinctus succubus in Spec Ops 4 has an attack called "Petite Morte" (literally: little death), which is an old euphemism for an orgasm.
A similar enemy, Meretrix, has a name which meant "prostitute" back in the Ancient Roman days.
In one of the Spec Ops 6 deploys, Deadpool asks the player if you can send him on a mission with the Scarlet Witch and give them a Team-Up bonus, as he wants to "team her up real bad".
In one of his dialogues, Nick Fury describes the "shinola" as having hit the fan.
Spec Ops 10, Task 7 is called "Schmidt Happens".
The Ghost: Various characters have been mentioned who are important for plot purposes but unlikely to be playable or get dialogue sprites, like Professor Xavier, Dum Dum Dugan, and Wong.
Hank Pym's move "Bug Squashing" takes the form of him growing so large that all you can see on the screen is his gigantic boot stomping on all of the enemies.
Wasp's "Fist Bump" is a variant that smashes an enemy with Janet's enormous fist.
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: the Epic Boss the player needed to defeat in order to unlock Havok? Norman Osborn, a.k.a. the Green Goblin, the last character you'd ever expect in a Havok-centric storyline. (Previous Spec Ops bosses, normal or Epic, at least follow the general theme of the operation's story.)
The Glasses Come Off: Cyclops pulls down his visor for his ultimate skill, "Mega Optic Blast."
Fury: Joint operations among the enemy. Terrific. Constrictor: The Maggia's just in this for the sweet HYDRA paycheck. Push back hard enough and they'll slither back to their protection rackets and gambling dens. Tony Stark: You hear that? Sounds to me like someone's volunteering to do the pushing. Constrictor: ...Me and my big mouth.
Gotta Catch Them All: There is a roster of Marvel heroes who can be unlocked through completing SpecOps missions or collecting comic covers through Lockboxes, won by finishing at the top of PvP tournaments, or recruited with Command Points.
Nick Fury: Boomerang is overseeing the transfer of artifacts...but we don't know to who. Maria Hill: Whom. To whom. Tony Stark: Seriously? Hill: Chaos starts when little details get forgotten. We're in the business of fighting chaos. Fury: New S.H.I.E.L.D. executive order: Grammar corrections will be met with gunfire.
Iso-8. In-universe, it is treated by the villains as a powerful status-enhancing drug. Mystique even has a move called "Isotope-8 Doping" where she gets high, heals herself and goes hyper, getting several turns in one go.
The black jacket Slicer Mook has "Tripping" (impervious to pain) where he starts the battle in a Nigh Invulnerability state for 3 rounds. Once those rounds are up, he falls down easily.
The Zap-8 items function like a drug, as it greatly enhances all stats, but then severely lowers them once the effects wear off (Referred to as "Zap-8 Withdrawal").
Green Rocks: Iso-8 again, which comes in nearly every color of the rainbow (including all of them at once) and has all sorts of power-boosting capabilities.
Ground Punch: Luke Cage, Colossus and Thing both have this type of attack that affects all enemies. Cage hits the ground multiple times, while Thing and Colossus hammers the ground once. Captain Britain's Smashing is of the stomping variant.
On the enemies' side, Avalanche uses his own ground punch attack with a side of seismic feedback.
Guest Star Party Member: Certain heroes must be in your party for certain boss battles. If you have not recruited that hero yet, you may still play him/her temporarily.
If the guest hero is already recruited, but is unavailable (whether he/she is in Remote Ops or in training), the player won't be able to enter that Boss battle, even in the off chance that the hero can be switched out (though you can probably blame that one on pre-battle dialogue).
Customized Weapons. Customized means that upon acquisition, the weapon level is set 5-10 levels above the agent's level. However, this means they can get obsolete. Consider the stamina costs to using the weapon and compare it to damage output while playing PvP, Five-starred Missions, Spec Ops, Premium Missions or Challenge Mode. Consider if the weapons is really worth using 15 levels later when the damage output is lower.
You can now reforge your Customized weapons. However, they cost gold, and in this case Patience is everything. The cost of reforging is as much as purchasing a Limited Edition weapon, and even then, it will eventually have to be reforged. The best strategy (unless you're willing to shell out Gold) is to wait until you're level 300 to reforge.
Marvel XP awards. Some people forget that MAA is a part of Marvel XP, and completing Marvel XP achievements can net you some in-game cash and even weapons.
Avengers Initiative is also part of Marvel XP. Doing Marvel quests in Avengers Initiative can also net you some nifty awards.
Speaking of which, you can get Blaster Iron Man Mark 5 costume for FREE by defeating the Hulkbuster in Hulk's story.
You can get Mockingbird for FREE when you defeat Taskmaster three times consecutively (without retreating) in Captain America's story. You will know you have accomplished this task if you get "Free As A Bird" achievement in Avengers Initiative.
Whether to attempt to Two-Bird (Dual Boss) or Three-Bird the Boss in Spec Ops. This depends on the situation, but if the task is to defeat the Mini-Boss, just go after the Mini Boss by him/herself. Don't attempt to Two-Bird or Three-Bird the Mini-Boss with the Boss because one of the next two tasks might be defeating the Boss. You will waste a whole run's worth of Unstable Iso-8 trying to go after the Boss task after doing the Mini-Boss task. This is usually two of the first 10 tasks in a Spec ops. In fact, it's better to go to the Avengers Alliance Wikia and check the tasks before attempting them.
Reactive Chaotic Iso-8 changes color types randomly (and back to prismatic) once equipped. You might be surprised if you see your outfit socketed with prismatic gems all turn into another color type, which can mess up certain battles if you're not aware what stats the Iso-8 adjusted.
H-M
Halloween Episode: Spec Ops 4, All Hallows, was released in time for Halloween. It features Ghost Rider, demons and hell-lords.
Hard Mode Perks: Choosing "Challenge Mode" for certain missions increases the difficulty of fights (which corresponds to your current level, plus 5) against enemy mooks and boss battles in said mission. On the plus side, fights in Challenge Mode now give you a higher XP gain than regular missions, plus you can earn Customized Gear in Boss Drops. Said Customized Gear scales to your Agent's current level, and can be subsequently reforged when outleveled.
Heel Face Revolving Door: Magneto, apparently. After defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. in Spec Ops 6, he subsequently declares Manhattan to be a mutants-only zone in Chapter 11, sparking widespread panic amongst the populace. Despite him appearing at S.H.I.E.L.D. to proclaim his innocence, Nick Fury and Cyclops remain highly skeptical, while Tony Stark is confident that Magneto is indeed siding with the heroes. Turns out that Tony was right. The Magneto inciting chaos is actually Mystique using Doctor Doom and HYDRA's technology, whom the real deal defeats. Real!Magneto explains that he held out on exposing Mystique to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Referenced with the Red in the Ledger team-up bonus for ex-villains.
With Red Skull's impending resurrection, Magneto finally sides with the Agent as a recruitable character if the player completes his comic collection.
He still can't be selected in missions involving the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, though.
The Lockbox-collectible characters are set to be former villains you get to recruit, providing the player completes the Lockbox collection to get that chance.
Hellfire: Used by several characters, like Ghost Rider, Magik and Satana.
Hello, Insert Name Here: The player can name the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent player character, but everyone calls them "Agent."
Hell On Earth: A scenario that has happened in the regular storyline, and more explicitly in Spec Ops 4.
Chapter 11's main bosses outline the Brotherhood's roster in Pryde of the X-Men. Furthermore, the events and revelation of the entire 5th mission is a blatant fanservice on that Konami arcade classic.
Some recent Spec Ops storylines are dedicated to recreating classic moments from the comic books. For example, Spec Ops 7 & 8 are a loving retelling of the Ultron saga, with 7 featuring the 'birth' of Ultron and 8 concerning the Vision's defection against his creator. Spec Ops 9 also looks to be a mashup of Extremis, Iron Man 3 and the Rescue storyline.
Heroic Build: Applies to the character portraits, which look like they've come straight from the pages of a well-drawn comic book. The character sprites themselves zigzag this trope. Mr. Fantastic looks too reedy to qualify, while Hercules, Hulk, and Thing are arguably exaggerations.
Heroic Mime: Everybody talks to the agent, salutes the agent, gives orders to the agent, congratulates the agent, engages in small talk with the agent...but the agent never, ever speaks a single word.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Ultron Prime created the Vision to enforce his new world order, only to have the latter turn on him with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s assistance.
"Sudden Death" brings a character to about 1% health left, but his attack damage increases immensely.
Some revival effects like Hoarfrost Mace and Ghost Rider's Infernal Contract passive brings them to 1% health if they are hit with an attack that normally takes them down to zero.
Hyperspace Arsenal: The Agent. During battle, only one weapon or device is visible on the character sprite; he or she pulls the others from a Hammerspace pocket which appears to be located behind the neck.
The Punisher and his assortment of weaponry. He is a 'walking armory' after all!
I Did What I Had to Do: Instead of admitting that downloading Ultron was a mistake, Hank Pym insists that the alternative of leaving him in New York's electronic systems would have been worse.
I'm a Humanitarian: Abomination, when he uses 'Consume Ally' move to instantly OHKO his own team members.
Improvised Weapon: Spec Ops 8 gives us the "Pym-Grown Needle", which is, seriously, a perfectly ordinary sewing needle...albeit grown to be about 4 feet long.
Many, but when considering just moves - 'Raise Hell' (raises "hellth"), 'Tired' (tyre throw), 'Smashing' (a literal ground smash), 'Money Shot' and 'Unsafe' (safe throw) are a few.
The team-up bonus titles are about 1/3 incredibly lame puns, 1/3 stock phrases, and 1/3 Shout Outs.
Incendiary Exponent: Fire is cool. Just ask Ghost Rider, Human Torch, or the Phoenix Five.
Insufferable Genius: Hank Pym. Tony Stark and Reed Richards have shades of this too. Nick Fury sometimes has to step in to call them out when they start arguing on who's the most genius of them.
Iron Lady: Maria Hill, who is very cool, serious, and no-nonsense, especially in contrast to Stark's snarky antics.
Item Farming: "CP Farming" is done by repeatedly playing certain missions in hope of winning Command Points from the boss roulette. They used to Randomly Drop in Epic Boss fights, but this has been phased out.
It's Personal: Frequently; usually when the enemy attacks someone's house or home base.
It's Up to You: Somehow you, a newbie S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, wind up leading the heroes in all of the major battles.
I Warned You: Kang the Conqueror comes from the future to warn Pym not to build Ultron. Pym tells him to beat feet.
Jack Of All Stats: The Generalist class, which is neither strong nor weak against other classes. Heroes with a Tactician base-class also starts with a very balanced set of stats. However, upon Level Up the Generalist Agent would increase all stats equally.
Just Between You and Me: At the end of Special Operation 9, the Mandarin called SHIELD and told them that "You'll never see me coming". Except that he has just told them, and now they will be ready for his attack.
Hoo boy, TA-Betas. Has an annoying passive that drains your stamina when you attack them, buffs his own team, inflicts crappy debuffs like Stun and Weakened, uses psychic attacks that renders protectors and the Infiltrator counter class useless, and generally hard to kill in the first place given their high Defence.
Subcinctus-type enemies were initially considered this with her gloriously overpowered Hell Hath No Fury counterattack, before it was discovered that stealthy attacks put her down quickly.
Mooks with evasive passives like Squirrelly, Drunken Master and Spring Thaw.
Mooks with buff removal attacks like Pistol Whip and No Touching! can nullify your buff buildup in an instant.
Level Up Fill Up: A variant; HP is automatically replenished between battles, but whenever you level up, the Energy bar completely refills.
Licensed Game: Of the Marvel IP in general, but the game is built to tie into the release of Marvel films. For example, Avengers Alliance was originally named something else, before a name change to capitalise on the hype from the 2012 blockbuster. It offers exclusive content connected to the films, from minor goodies for non-Marvel Studios properties like The Amazing Spider Man to full tie-ins for major releases including limited-time characters and outfits.
Life Drain: Besides the classic example of Rogue, The Agent also has a variety of gadgets at their disposal to drain health from the enemies to their team, including the Sword of the Barony and Signpost.
Lighter and Softer: Not the storyline, which sees Playdom gleefully throw whatever villain or crisis they can think of at the player, but the characterisations of the Marvel heroes themselves. For example, many characters dead on Earth-616, like Nightcrawler and Jean Grey, are alive in Avengers Alliance. The personalities of certain villains, such as Magneto, are less extreme or vicious as well. Additionally, some of the darker past misdeeds of heroes such as Scarlet Witch, Cyclops, and Hank Pym are only briefly alluded to, handwaved, or written out entirely.
Limited Animation: "Idling" characters on the battle screen. Averted with their attacks, which are fully animated (except that they all slide to the center of the screen or right in front of the enemy they're attacking to perform an attack).
Loophole Abuse: Oh so vital for Spec Ops for saving Unstable Iso-8. If a certain task asks you to use certain characters (that are not in the Spec Ops), you can generally use them in story mode. For a long time, players were able to fight certain mooks outside of the Spec Ops, saving a ton of Unstable Iso-8, but it is starting to become no longer the case. Playdom has started to patch these loopholes in the later Spec Ops, though they may have left some loopholes intentionally open.
By aborting a mission before 5-starring it, you keep its difficulty fixed at a lower level even as you gain more experience. This makes it very easy to run through missions for drops or Command Points with little difficulty.
Lost Forever: Limited Edition equipment and items that are only available after research as a Spec Op or PVP task (aka the "Blueprint" research items), as well as Spec Op boss rewards. Certain limited-edition costumes (notably the ones for The Avengers and the Phoenix Five) are lost to those who didn't buy them but occasionally become available for purchase.
Averted with the Spec Op and PvP tournament heroes, who are always released for purchase at some point (albeit with a hefty CP price tag).
Luck-Based Mission: Recruitment of heroes specific to Collections. The player must collect 8 unique comics to complete the set and unlock the new hero via lockboxes. These boxes have a 7% chance to procure a comic cover if opened one by one, or 100% to get a comic if 10 are unlocked at once. Getting several unique covers in a row is not uncommon, but that is where probability gets higher that subsequent boxes opened will procure more and more duplicate covers. Furthermore, obtaining lockboxes is not an easy task, unless the player is willing to shell out Gold, the in-game premium currency to buy more boxes.
Magikarp Power: Several of the heroes fall under this, generally for one or more of four reasons:
The first two moves are weak, but exist to set up their better third and fourth (ultimate) moves. Example: Storm, where her moves form an interlocking chain.
The first two moves are weak but the last two moves make them much better. Example: Ghost Rider's final move increases the power of all his other moves.
The last two moves are major powerhouses. Example: Black Widow's third move does major damage and is a debuff.
They have good moves but weak stats, needing ISO slots socketed to boost them. Example: Quicksilver gets lots of turns and counterattacks, but has an initially very low attack stat. Get a full set of Attack-boosting ISOs on him, however...
The art in Chapter 5's mission briefing involves a David and Goliath face-off between Spider-Woman and Wrecker. Guess which part of Jessica Drew's physique is emphasized.
Omega Sentinel, Sif, Spider-Woman and Enchantress get moments' emphasis on their behind by using certain actions.
Probably unintentional, but Ghost Rider's Penance Stare ability hits female characters directly in the chest.
Man of Kryptonite: Each Bogus Avenger is strong against his real-Avenger counterpart's default class (in 5.6, anyway; the Bogus Avengers had a change in class in Spec Ops 7).
Marathon Boss: In Spec Ops 8, players can find random Ultron encounters that they can initiate. Doing so pits the player against an Ultron copy whom they must damage as much as possible, before 1) Ultron flees, 2) Ultron is destroyed or or 3) their team is knocked out. However, due to the multiple overpowered passives and attacks on each Ultron copy, as well as the player not being allowed to utilize their inventory, it is rare that an Ultron can be defeated at the first try, necessitating either added attempts on the player's side or calling his allies for help.
Marathon Level: when going after an Epic Boss, the player must finish ALL hotspots on the mission map, some of which would require more than the maximum units of energy. Mission 9.4, in particular, has a LOT of hotspots on the map.
Metagame: The PvP portion has one, consisting of people trying to figure out what characters and gear everyone else will use and setting up their own strategy to counter it. Playdom sometimes also gets involved by tweaking existing heroes and releasing new heroes with skillsets designed to counter certain strategies.
Thor and the Hulk do huge amounts of damage but take a while to get moving, though it's averted with the Modern Thor outfit, which comes pre-stacked with 2 Might of Mjolnirs.
The Bruiser class in general can became scarily powerful with their Enraged class bonus, but this requires at least 2 turns of attacks or being attacked to unlock their full potential. She-Hulk's main benefit is that she can make two attacks in a single turn, letting her charge up quickly.
The Yellow uniform Ravager can become scarily strong very quickly. This version has the passive "Furious" which allows him to get one stack of Enraged, no matter who he attacks. If he attacks a scrapper, he can get two stacks of Enraged in one go.
Hercules needs at least 1 or 2 rounds before he can gain all the buffs from his Bruiser class, and attacks for the Blessing of Olympus buff. Once he achieves this, however, the battle is usually over in very short order.
Captain Britain, along with the Bruisers' Enraged class bonus can get "Roar of Valor" stacks which increase his stats dramatically if he's got three already. If an enemy is hit with enough debuffs from his other attacks, his Level 9 "Britannic" attack does scary damage thanks to the Paragon Exploiter attack buff effect.
Ghost Rider, although he's not a bruiser. His passive ability can cast the Sin debuff on any enemy that attacks, and can cast additional Sin when the enemy does a follow-up attack. He isn't strong at first, but once you pull Burn Out and the enemies have a total of at least 7 Sin (giving GR at least 7 vengeance), the battle is going to be over in very short order.
Mission Control: Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and Tony Stark (though Tony is more than capable of joining you in the field to kick ass as Iron Man).
Missing Mission Control: Two of the above are kidnapped at one point in the plot, and the third coordinates efforts to get them back.
Money Grinding: The easiest way to earn Silver is to send out heroes on Remote Operations. Repeatedly. The game also rewards active maintenance, which means that four one-hour Remote Ops yield more Silver than a single four-hour Remote Op.
Averted with the 10 minute missions with Level 4 planes and above. Usually the ones that take the least amount of time to complete end up netting more money over time. Doing six 10 minute missions nets you less silver than doing three 20 minute missions.
Mooks: Maggia mobsters, the Hand ninjas, A.I.M. and HYDRA agents, mutated human experiments, escaped convicts from Rykers, Latverian robots, demonspawn from hell...
Motifs: The Special Operations have various themes regarding the reward equipment.
Multiform Balance: the Agent can equip various armor corresponding to the various classes. Some characters, in their Alternate costumes that have various bonuses, also qualifies.
Muscles Are Meaningless: Largely averted: the characters who are pure brawlers tend to have the physique to match.
In Mission 9.3, Constrictor using items and calling assists is a nod towards his previous status as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in the comics. In-game, while the Agent is alive, the player can summon assists via Distress calls and use items for healing, defense or offense uses.
Iron Fist in Chapter 6.5. When he faces Bullseye, Bullseye was upset that he wouldn't be facing Daredevil. Iron Fist offers some sarcastic comfort that he once dressed up as Daredevil. In the Daredevil comics, Iron Fist is one of a couple of heroes who took up the mantle of Daredevil while Matt Murdock was in jail to prove that Matt Murdock was NOT Daredevil.
In chapter 10.6, when Luke Cage ran into Elektra, his words to her include: "By the way, you seen Doom? He still owes me money." referencing the "Where's my money, honey?" incident.
N-S
Neologism: Stark likes doing this from time to time, with a hint of Buffy Speak. He coins "cosmo-mystical" in Spec Ops 5 to refer to Asgardian-magic-infused ISO-8, and "Mutanthattan" to refer to the Brotherhood-besieged New York in Mission 11.5.
Havok:I'm pushing on towards the Living Pharaoh. Stark:Well then, cry havoc, and let slip- Havok:Don't. Stark:Touchy, touchy. What do you have against Shakespeare?
Never Live It Down: In-universe for the Crimson Dynamo. In his first appearance, his armour was hacked by an external force and he could not control it. In all later appearances, the heroes laugh on him for that.
Also in-universe for Hank Pym, whose decision to create Ultron is still a point of mockery two Spec Ops later.
Never Say "Die": Inverted. Characters are no worse than KOed in combat (both heroes and villains) but there are attacks and passive abilities with names like "Death and Rebirth," "Sudden Death," and "Fatal Blow."
However, Mephisto and his demonic minions seem to outright kill their lower ranking hellish allies to fuel their own attacks and HP.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It doesn't work out so well for Hank Pym when Ultron, which he built to contain a rogue artificial intelligence that caused computers to go haywire, disobeys his programming and decides to destroy the world. This despite reassurances from Pym that although there were multiple failsafes, 'he didn't anticipate needing them'. He even ignored the Ominous Message From The Future that told him precisely what would happen, that he wouldn't be able to control Ultron.
Hank Pym:Too late. It's already gone...Ultron has gone rogue.
Tony Stark:Surprising no one, it seems, but Dr. Henry Pym. Way to go, Doc.
Also noteworthy is that the Agent is present for that battle and assists Pym (there is no option to believe Kang and either stay out of the fight or try to dissuade Hank from creating Ultron).
Ninja: Daredevil, Kitty Pryde and Psylocke are labeled as shinobi. The Syndicate's own faction of this is The Hand ninjas.
No Damage Run: Actively encouraged, because it nets the player a double bonus: one for Vitality (health remaining) and one for Perfect Strategy.
Not so Above It All: After dealing with large amounts of craziness from everyone with total diplomatic aplomb, Hill is finally driven to a tiny bit of snark after a particularly over-the-top display of insanity from Deadpool in Spec Ops 8.
Hill: We have the androids contained, Agent. Deadpool was able to delay them long enough for backup to arrive. ...Unfortunately, he survived.
Not Using The Zed Word: Tony Stark and Nick Fury get into a brief discussion about if resurrected HYDRA soldiers should be called zombies. Fury points out that they are fully cognizant, and not trying to eat anyone's brain, whereas Tony says that magically resurrected corpses count, no matter their behavior.
Kang: You think you are on the brink of a great discovery...but I come from a future where you are vilified as the man who began the destruction of the world.
Hank Pym: Well, you came to my present, where I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen. Now stand down and do not get in the way of my work.
Kang: This Ultron construct is more dangerous than you imagine. You cannot control it and are a fool to try. Destroy it now...or I will.
One-Hit Kill: Actively encouraged, with a nifty bonus for every enemy you one-shot.
One-Winged Angel: Ahmet Abdol, aka the Living Pharaoh, can absorb cosmic radiation to transform into the massive Living Monolith.
Only Sane Man: Hill is this for Mission Control, ever straight faced and no-nonsense no matter how strange things get. Out in the field, unlike most of the other heroes, Invisible Woman spends more time complaining about how crazy things/people are than she does adding to it with her own quirks.
Only Six Faces: Playdom has a tendency to recycle bits and pieces of their sprites, with only minor modifications. For a few examples, Emma Frost and Valkyrie have similar facial features, and Quicksilver's face is also recycled from the Maggia infiltrators'.
Overrated And Underleveled: Unrecruited guest star heroes and Spec Ops heroes. For beginners of the game, mandatory team-up heroes are tremendously powerful whenever they are present, being able to mow down enemies/bosses with a complete Level 9 skillset. Since these unrecruited heroes stay at Level 9, by the time the player gets his agent and own heroes above this level, they are better equipped with all 4 skills, elite gear and Iso-8. Guest star heroes then tend to be weaker and obsolete in comparison. Finally, any unrecruited normal/Spec Op hero reverts to Level 1 once recruited.
Plucky Comic Relief: Tony's role in Mission Control involves throwing out as many jokes as facts. When Nick and Maria disappeared, he got a lot more serious — then returned to his old ways once they were safely recovered. Though sometimes he meets his match.
Tony: Jean, we need some serious cosmic elbow grease to get through that shield. Would you mind asking Hot Wings if we could borrow a cup of world-leveling primal flames?
Jean Grey: I don't think you're giving this the serious treatment it deserves...
[later]
Jean: No Pharaoh, but there was some kind of equipment behind the shield. It's ashes now.
Tony: Good, that probably bought us more time—
Jean: Oh, and the Phoenix Force is coming to incinerate the planet. Did I mention that?
Tony: [startled beat] Don't do that.
Jean: You're not the only one allowed to make jokes, Tony.
The Power of Four: If used, you are guaranteed four turns. However, you better be able to kill of the enemy team. Otherwise you will be Killed Off for Real at the end of your fourth turn, no ifs or buts about it. *
There are reports of agents using/being afflicted with Power of Four while having the Hoarfrost Mace equipped. They may not have died on the fourth turn but as soon as Sacrifice buff ends, the agent is good as dead.
Also applies to certain types of supplies, such as Zap-8 (temporarily increases all stats, but will reduce them after the effect wears off) and Kinetic Amplifier (increases attack damage but reduces damage mitigation).
Power Creep: Averted and played straight, the former mostly for heroes and the latter for weapons (which get outdated very fast).
The old heroes mostly dealt either straight-up damage or vanilla debuffs compared to newer releases, with few if any passives that were usually generic. Their moves often had awkward sequencing and little synergy as well. The first few new heroes (e.g. Black Panther, Scarlet Witch & Emma Frost) were literally god-tier entities who could decimate the opposition on their own—Emma still gives players problems despite being downgraded a record 6 times!
On the other hand, subsequently released heroes still possessed interesting buffs & debuffs, better attack chaining and unique playstyles (instead of focusing solely on damage). All of them have a place in the current gameplay environment, but none have been too overpowered.
Additionally, older characters have been buffed and adjusted as alternate costumes were released for them, with the improvements made becoming more eclectic recently, turning previously maligned characters into brutal powerhouses.
Sadly, whilst most new premium weapons released have been useless, there are always a few ludicrously overpowered gadgets popping up to wreak havoc in PvP, especially Spec Ops weapons combined with the Power of Four (the Agent gets instant 4 turns to decimate opposing teams with overpowered weapons). Loud and often justified cries for Nerfing will then often be heard. Notable overpowered weapons are Phoenix Flare, Grief, and the Hoarfrost Mace.
Power Nullifier: A lot of gadgets can turn the tides by removing buffs and debuffs. The Scroll of Angolob cleanses the party's debuffs while ripping out the enemy party's buffs; practically the reverse of Scarlet Witch's Probability Field.
Psychic Block Defense: Juggernaut and Magneto with their helmets, per the comic books. Colossus and telepaths like Phoenix take less damage from psychic attacks. The Agent's Techno-Organic Endoskeleton also grants immunity from psychic attacks. On the enemy side, all robotic enemies and Mindless Ones are immune from psychic attacks.
Handily bypasses defences and avoidance effects. Emma Frost's is of the Mind Rape variant and hence useless against mindless/robotic enemies as well as mental resistance. Phoenix (Jean Grey), on the other hand, deploys telekinesis, Psychic Linking and fiery blasts of psychic Phoenix energy. On the enemy side, TA-Beta.
Primal Stance: Wolverine, Beast, Nightcrawler, and possibly Spider-Man. Black Cat, Black Panther, and Tigra do a "ready to pounce" version.
Randomly Drops: Various items may drop during ordinary combat; hero deploys and boss fights yield rewards based on random selection.
Random Number God: PvP mechanics. The computer AI controlling your "away from keyboard" party relies on whatever the agent's gadgets are and the heroes' current moves. The Agent AI alternates randomly with whatever equipment set for the battle, or use a hero's move no matter how useless it is for the situation (a desperation attack at full health). These "rolls" and luck are also main factors in having those heroes' passive buffs (Cosmic Power) to kick in.
Rank Inflation: You are graded by points on how well you fought in each battle, which also tallies into your mastery upon winning the map. The ranks are Fair > Good > Great > Amazing > Superior > Perfection. The last one can only be attained when dealing a One-Hit KillNo Damage Run on both the miniboss (es) and the main boss at the same time.
Redemption Demotion: Averted so far. Other than minor tweaks to translate their abilities into the hero movesets (and lower HP), the villains who've joined the Alliance have been as strong as when they were enemies.
Reed Richards Is Useless: So, you can research temporal warping, and use it for... giving more turns to a SHIELD agent in his super-hero fights? What a waste.
The trope has no relation with the hability (or lack thereof) of Reed Richards as a playable character in this game
Religion of Evil: The Circle of Eight appears to be one of these.
Required Party Member: Special Deploys; especially important in missions with Epic Bosses.
Right Makes Might: Invoked by "Right is Might", one of Captain Britain's moves.
The Rival: Hank Pym and Tony Stark are absolutely obsessed with trying to one-up each other verbally and otherwise, to the point where Fury gets fed up with their constant bickering. Notably, Pym seems to be the only one of the heroes who gets genuinely mean-spirited responses from Stark as opposed to friendly teasing.
Kitty Pryde: In Soviet Russia, Sentinel modifies you!
Crimson Dynamo: That joke is older than you, child.
Sarcastic Devotee: Wasp seems to be this to Hank Pym. She snarks about his flaws and cleaning up his messes out of one side of her mouth, but defends his honor to an enemy and vows to always have his back out of the other side.
It continues with the "Scroll of Melsalam", which calls to mind another lunch meat...
The meaty Running Gag continues with the "Scroll of Oziroch" which is a popular sausage/pizza topping.
The next scroll released was named "Scroll of Ocirebi Nomaj", which is Bilingual Bonus for Spanish speakers.
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Doctor Strange uses large words alongside a formal, slightly stiff conversational style.
Scarlet Witch is characterised in the same way as her fellow magic user, dignified and serious in her dialogue.
Set Swords to Stun: Despite people cheerfully throwing everything from blades to guns to magic to the elements to hell and holy fire at each other, the storyline has villains and mooks surviving to be captured or escape, and heroes who lose simply being knocked out and rescued.
Sibling Team: Cyclops & Havok, Captain Britain & Psylocke, Colossus & Magik, Invisible Woman & Human Torch, Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, X-Ray & Vapor. Hulk and She-Hulk are a Cousin Team.
Slave Mooks: The mutated human Test Subjects; probably the various demons; possibly others.
Smug Snake: Hank Pym, who tells a skeptical Tony Stark "That's why I'm on Project Ultron and you're doing whatever you're doing." He also reassures S.H.I.E.L.D. that there are multiple failsafes on Project Ultron, 'but he didn't anticipate needing them'. Things go horribly wrong, of course.
Shield Points are the main one; needed in large quantities to level up heroes and research weapons, items, and ISO, but only available via gifting or visiting your allies' maps which have four random prizes a day, if you don't want to shell out lots of premium currency. Energy packs and Unstable ISO for missions, both of which are rare to find outside of gifting, are also crucial.
Very crucial for Remote Ops, which require friends to be "crew" for your upgrades. If you don't have many allies, you'll be forced to spend Gold to have generic agents fill the slots instead.
Also, equally crucial for Group Boss fights, where said boss needs to be fought several times by you and your allies before they can be defeated. Doing so earns you Lockboxes the more times you help out an ally with the Group Boss.
Speed Blitz: Quicksilver takes the first two turns in a row most of the time. This can give a huge advantage in PVP when an Attack Iso-empowered Quicksilver can strike four times once the battle starts with an enemy Infiltrator, whittling down the health of an enemy party almost halfway through.
Splash Damage: Made possible with Punisher's 'Frag Grenade' ability, as well as several weapons like the Army of One, Spitting Viper and Rocket Pistol.
Squishy Wizard: All 3 magic-using heroes are very much this, despite defence in the form of healing & shields (Dr. Strange), sheer randomness (Scarlet Witch) or counterattacks (Magik). It doesn't help that Strange and Scarlet Witch have Blaster as their native class.
Vapor can switch between "Poison Gas" and "Explosive Gas" modes at will. In some SpecOps and later chapters, these modes become "Poison Iso-8 Gas" and "Explosive Iso-8 Gas", granting her new abilities and passives.
The Executioner, in Spec Ops 5.2, can switch between Ice and Fire stances. When health reaches critical levels, he switches to Blood stance, basically Berserker Rage mode.
Status Buff: Many. Some are passive abilities for heroes (which may or may not randomly transfer to teammates); others may be bestowed on the hero or the team through special abilities; most come from special items which can be found in the field or purchased at the store.
Status Buff Dispel: Several items, weapons, and attacks from some heroes and enemies have the ability to remove status buffs.
Agent Sitwell:Have you ever noticed that certain people in our various spheres of influence have amusingly or tragically ironic names? But such is not the case for Michael Steel. I mean, what are the odds that a man named Steel would develop a super-dense, metallic body when exposed to a particularly large dose of cosmic radiation? If only his name had been Michael LotteryWinner, things really might have gone his way.
Stone Wall: Captain America, Black Knight, Thing, Colossus, Luke Cage and Hercules have abilities which let them take damage in place of the team. (The Thing's version is actually called "Stonewall.") Some enemies do as well. The Agent can do this with various Protect weapons like The Kuzuri, Hoarfrost Mace or The Knight equipped.
Some heroes gain counterattacks or special abilities when blocking. For example, Cap and Herc will retaliate, bashing whoever attacked them, and Thing will gain stamina, then get an extra turn.
Stripperiffic: Honorable mentions to Tigra and Classic Storm, but the crown goes to Phoenix Five Emma. Also Psylocke and her infamous bathing suit 'costume'.
Super Team: Pick and choose from a wide range of superheroes for individual missions, from psychic mutants to mystics, immortals, metahuman aliens, time-travellers, ex-villains, thieves, geniuses, battle suit operators, vigilantes, martial artists, genetically-enhanced supersoldiers and special agents.
T-Z
Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Blaster > Bruiser > Scrapper > Infiltrator > Tactician > Blaster. The 'Generalist' class is neither weak nor strong against any class.
Deadpool with his passive ability to 'Whine on the Forums' and hit people (including himself) with a literal nerf bat, greatly reducing stats. A not very subtle reference for the Unpleasable Fanbase's tendencies to whine about everything on the official forum.
There is also the joke 'Banned from PVP' debuff when Deadpool uses his 'L33t Hacking Skillz!', referencing the penalty inflicted on those who use game hacks.
Stark:Lab boys say the machinery used ISO-8 to do some kind of chemical transformation. Hill:Maybe this was just a routine terrorist op. Poison the river or something. Fury:Poison the Hudson River? Kind of a waste of effort, isn't it?
Whenever the guest team-up partner is not recruited yet, that hero will be in a maxed-out, non-ISO'd level (sometimes) wherein he has access to all four of his moveset. Once recruited, that hero starts at Level 1 and must level up normally to use his ultimate moves.
Basically the point of Spec Ops, whether or not you actually will get to recruit that hero(ine).
Teleport Spam: Gloriously invoked with Nightcrawler's attacks, which are extremely effective on a debuff-laden enemy team and ignores any protect or counterattack effects.
Theme Naming: Nimrod Sentinels are named after electrical scientists (Faraday, Coulomb, Tesla) while the regular Sentinels are named after the mythical Titans (Cronus, Rhea, Iapetos, etc).
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Actively encouraged, in that your score for a mission gets higher whenever you decide the best way to handle a weak(ened) enemy is to obliterate them into ludicrous gibs. The resulting damage labels range from Overkill to Epic Overkill.
Throw Away Guns: Deadpool during his "Bang Bang Bang!" attack gets a 25th hit by throwing his spent guns at the enemy.
Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Captain America's Shield Throw. The HYDRA Four's Militant, natural for an evil Cap knockoff, does this with his Shield Blow attack.
Occasionally Fury, Hill, and Stark engage in a friendly version with each other as well; usually ending with Fury or Hill telling Stark to shut up.
Trick Arrow: Like in the comics, Heroic Age Hawkeye's updated passive allows him to launch one of the many arrows from his Loaded Quiver for various elemental damage and debuffs.
Trivial Title: The game does feature The Avengers but also features several Marvel superheroes who are not Avengers. The name of the team is hardly used in the game. Instead, the heroes are joining S.H.I.E.L.D..
Twenty Bear Asses: It used to be that every second and fourth mission in the standard chapters required the collection of a certain number of small items which randomly drop from clobbered Mooks to unlock the next mission. This stopped when Chapter 9 arrived, and was removed from all previous chapters by a later patch.
Unlockable Content: Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and a fourth character of the player's choosing are free. The rest of the roster must be purchased with Command Points. Bonus Missions are also locked until the player recruits the 'unlocking' character.
Unwinnable by Mistake: If you send your heroes on side-mission in limited-time chapters and don't take them back before the time expires, you can no longer reach them.
Urban Fantasy: The story is centered almost entirely around New York City, with a side excursion to San Francisco and the occasional trip through portals to the edge of demonic dimensions and metahuman realms. As per the wide reach of the Marvel Universe, a whole load of eclectic and special characters are assembled for the action.
Piledriver in Mission 5-1 has a move called "Money Shot" or "Unsafe" which involves him throwing a safe full of dollar bills at you. A similar attack is also called "Tired".
Vitriolic Best Buds: A lot of the heroes are this to each other (just about everyone is to Tony Stark), and the banter can get a little barbed at times.
Walking Armory: The Punisher's second skill grants him to swap among the six classes, where each class equips him with a unique gun and grenade combo for a total of 12 armaments.
Daimon Hellstrom will also qualify with just a pair of leather pants for an outfit, if his teaser image◊ is any indication.
Hulk sports his classic purple ripped Magic Shorts.
Thing wears only a set of pants in his default look, but averts the trope with his Future Foundation outfit that resembles a wrestling singlet.
Wave Motion Gun: The Agent's A.R. and P.E.W. guns unleash huge beams of destruction, usually defense-piercing and debuff-inducing.
Weaksauce Weakness: Because Cable has no Recharge button and no Subtle attacks (besides the Quick Action Temporal Shift), he cannot do anything when trapped in Invisible Woman's Force Cage, and so he must always lose a turn. To a lesser extent, Cable must always suffer from Emma Frost's Mental Anguish because of said inability to recharge, although he has a 25% chance to dodge the debuff and takes less damage from it due to his own buffs.
Gambit has a passive ability called this, in which he'll randomly either join in his team's attack, or attack an enemy that just had their turn.
The Generalist Heroes. They are designed to be this way, and facing one of them can seriously screw you over in PVP:
Beast has the ability to disable class advantages and grant random buffs or guaranteed crits.
Mockingbird has the ability to change to the counterclass of her attackers, can preemptively change to a counterclass before attacking and even gains extra turns through her class change. She can retain multiple class advantages in a round through this mechanism.
Punisher can switch to whatever class he wishes to during any turn, with the potential to choose from 13 other attacks and gain multiple class advantages if someone gives him extra turns. In his Generalist form, he also gains random buffs at the start of each round.
ANY attack/passive that relies on proc rate percentages too many to list here. Thanks to the Random Number God, a simple chance to protect, stun, or clean all debuffs is a matter of life and death, especially in PvP.
Reactive Chaotic Iso-8 also have random properties, as stated above.
Wolverine Claws: Aside from Wolverine (duh) and his genderflip clone X-23, a lot of heroes and villains have claws in their arsenal, which often afflicts Bleeding. Certain weapons like Snikt! and Sabretooth's Claws also work the same way.
Woman Scorned: The Temptation attack by Meretrix and other succubi. If she has the buff "Hell Hath no Fury" and she is attacked, she will counterattack everyone with such vicious damage that it's almost comical. (Fortunately, you can take her down with Stealthy attacks).
Working With The Ex: Heavily implied with Cyclops and Phoenix, since Emma Frost is confirmed to be romantically connected to Scott. Jean and Scott's Team-Up Bonus even denotes them as "X-Lovers." Also suggested to be the case for Hank Pym & Wasp, and Hawkeye & Mockingbird (but not Black Panther & Storm, who are still Happily Married in this continuity). Kinda-sorta hinted at with Scarlet Witch and Vision, since their backstory is...complicated, to say the least.
Wreathed in Flames: Human Torch, Ghost Rider, P5 Jean Grey, and the rest of the P5 whenever they tap into the Phoenix force.
Xanatos Gambit: The formation of the Syndicate turns out to be one by Doctor Doom. If the Syndicate held, it would take out or severely weaken SHIELD; if it collapsed, the infighting would weaken his own enemies; and in both cases it kept SHIELD's attention while he was free to pursue his own projects.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Loki and Mystique are 2 instances, with Loki having impersonated Valkyrie before, and Mystique impersonating Emma Frost and Magneto.
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: HYDRA's Evil Twin of Thor flanderizes Thor's mildly antiquated speech into this trope. War Machine and Stark both complain bitterly about how annoying it is.
Gold: Silver coins, which is the main currency to buy items, research and leveling-up your heroes.
Lumber: SHIELD points and Unstable Iso-8, which will be plenty if you have a lot of allies. Again, these are more vital in research and level-up purposes. Unstable Iso-8 are necessary for Special Operations missions and deploys.
Power: Command Points and Gold. Command Points are extremely vital to recruit heroes. Gold is the game's universal currency which can be exchanged for almost anything, from limited edition gear to skipping tasks.
Population: Allies. A player can only have up to 51 maximum allies. One distress call and 4 random rewards can be collected by visiting each ally every day.
Zero-Effort Boss: Fixer has a bit of a reputation of being the most useless major villain in the game. He almost never does any direct damage, instead either doing a little healing, throwing up a defensive shield around himself, or throwing proximity mines that go off after a fixed number of rounds or when you do anything offensive that isn't a subtle or stealthy action, but do only a manageable amount of damage. As long as you stay healed up and/or stick to said subtle/stealthy actions, he's more annoying than a real threat.
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