History VideoGame / TheMysteryOfTheDruids

** Then, later on, a librarian resolutely refuses to help Halligan look up a book, and refuses to let him check it out once he finds it.
* BigBad: Lord Sinclair turned out to be this, being responsible for both the troubles that dogged Halligan and the recent skeleton murders.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Melanie Turner ends up in the plot because she's the only one present at the Anthropological Museum to help Halligan out regarding a particular forensics investigation, and she just so happens to have been reading an Arthur Blake magazine article that discusses the particular historical context as to why she's found gold shavings matched to druidic sickles for rituals. Then we go to [[MrExposition Mr. Blake himself]], whereupon he lays out the ''entire plot of the villains'' in full, overly-elaborate detail because he happened to be studying inscriptions describing them at that particular moment in time.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: At one point early into the game, one of the {{Moon Logic Puzzle}}s requires Halligan to knock out a beggar with a spiked drink and steal his money in order to make a phone call. In an average adventure game, this would be nothing more than just one of many inconsequential acts of jerkassery that a typical adventure game hero commits over the course of their journey. Therefore, it may come as a surprising [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] to many players when this action is later brought up by Halligan's boss, who says that the beggar contacted a police department and, since Halligan [[IdiotBall actually revealed his name to the beggar]], they were able to find the culprit quite easily. This gets Halligan a [[WhatTheHellHero thorough chewing out by his boss]] and a stern warning that any further morally dubious actions on his part will get him in serious trouble.

* ChekhovsTimeTravel: [[spoiler:Halfway through the game, Mr. Blake mentions the Twelve Bridges, a sacred, but dilapidated site made by ancient Celts that were supposedly created for attempts to travel through time. Once Mr. Blake is killed and Sinclair's actions end up locked in motion, Halligan and Melanie decide to travel there and make use of it in order to stop their plans retroactively.]]

* MetaphoricallyTrue: In one moment [[spoiler:during [[TimeTravel a trip to the past]], Halligan encounters a blacksmith and offhandedly mentions to him he's from UsefulNotes/ScotlandYard. The blacksmith assumes it's somewhere in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}}, and Halligan corrects him by saying "[[ExactWords Let's just say it's a place it takes a long time to get to."]]]]

** Most of Halligan's coworkers are totally uninterested in helping him solve the case, including Chief Inspector Miller, who demands immediate results. The critical path of Halligan simply phoning up a bone expert and doing a database search on modern druids would have taken mere seconds compared to the hoops the player has to jump through in chapters 1 and 3, respectively. (His office phone can't make outgoing calls because apparently, he's over-used it in the past, but still.)

* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Everyone in Scotland Yard seems to have it out for Halligan to a degree; DaChief Miller is very frequently exasperated by the consequences of Halligan's shenanigans which he has to deal with, Lowry hates him for always misplacing and never returning the things he borrowed from him, and Janet dislikes him for his tacky life choices. Chris is the only one who at least is professional around him, but even he screws around with Halligan by [[ItMakesSenseInContext offering him a taste of ethanol]] knowing it'll knock him out cold.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Scotland Yard requires a ''much'' higher level of security clearance to get anything done than usual, and the need to get the appropriate paperwork completed is an issue Halligan must workaround at certain points. [[LampshadeHanging The game is aware of this]]; apparently, security increased [[NiceJobBreakingItHero ever since Halligan put out a search warrant for Prince Charles after Princess Diana's accident as a joke]].
* OddlySmallOrganization: Scotland Yard seems to have three staff total besides Halligan.
* OohMeAccentsSlipping: A weirdly consistent example - most of the game's voice acting is excellent, except the word "pizza" is always pronounced "pits-uh". This is how the word is pronounced with a German accent, probably not a coincidence given that was the game's native production language.

->''"HALLIGAN! WHERE ARE MY [[BerserkButton SCISSORS]]?"''