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"I... AM TUROK!!"
Tal'Set Tan'Celle'Nyo and various Turoks

Turok is a video game franchise based on the Turok comic book series published by Valiant Comics.

The first Turok video game, titled Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, was released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 console. It followed Tal'Set Tan'Celle'Nyo, the eldest male in his family chosen to become Turok: The protector of the boundary between this dimension and the others, a series of parallel universes held together by "The Lost Lands," a world where "Time Has No Meaning." In other words, a place where things like robots, cyborgs and aliens from the distant future, Demons from the darkest pits of Hell, and Dinosaurs from primeval jungles ran rampant, and where various people from different dimensions were at war for its control. The job of the current Turok was to keep balance in this world and close the portals to the other dimensions that were bound to The Lost Lands. (This was also a good excuse to give a Native American warrior things like Nuclear Fission Cannons and Radioactive Death Rays.)

Turok was well received by gamers and critics alike, and paved the way for the even more popular sequel: Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (1998), which was lauded for its excellent AI, graphics and long, sprawling levels. It followed the life of Joshua Fireseed, a modern-day eighteen-year-old young man chosen to become the next Turok, as he slaughtered his way through hordes of enemies to stop the evil Primagen from destroying his universe. A PC port and a side-scrolling Game Boy Color version were released in the wake of the game's success, but both were poorly received.

The following title, Turok: Rage Wars (1999), was a pure multiplayer game along the lines of Quake III: Arena or Unreal Tournament, which was situated outside the main chronology. Despite this (and a so-so reception from reviewers) Rage Wars was well received by fans.

The third canonical entry to the franchise was Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion (2000), which took a more story oriented path than the previous games, and more-or-less picked up where Seeds of Evil left off. The Hero of the previous game dies, leaving his two remaining family members — younger brother Joseph and older sister Danielle — to carry on the family tradition of blowing up dinosaurs with big guns... And to also stop the abomination known as Oblivion from devouring all life in the universe. The game was sadly mired by programming errors and annoying bugs, as well as poor voice acting. A common fan criticism is that it didn't have the feel of a Turok game.

The final game to appear as part of the original storyline was Turok: Evolution (2002), a prequel game revolving around the early exploits of the first game's protagonist, Tal'Set, as he battles the tyrannical Slegs (a race of Snake/Lizard/Dinosaur people) and their commander, a genetically-engineered T-Rex named Tyrannus. Unfortunately, it released to mixed reviews with the PlayStation 2 version in particular being singled out for framerate issues and poor graphics. Acclaim went bankrupt shortly after the release of this and the disastrous BMX XXX.

A Continuity Reboot by Propaganda Games and Disney's Touchstone Games, simply titled Turok, was released in 2008 for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360, with the titular hero as a Space Marine. While not a terrible game, it was dismissed as simply a generically-average shooter that had the bad fortune to be released at a point when several unique and very good shooters were crowding the market, and received predictably poor reviews and fan reception. While a sequel was planned, it was cancelled, deep-sixing Touchstone Games and Disney's move to make a franchise out of it. (Ironically, Disney would purchase the company who took the Acclaim name and finish off the brand name for good in 2010, while DreamWorks Animation obtained the rights to the Turok franchise when they purchased copyright holder Classic Media in 2012.)

In 2015, a PC-exclusive Updated Re-release of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released on GOG.com and Steam by Nightdive Studios, who were behind the updated rereleases of System Shock and Strife, boasting features such as redesigned levels, increased draw distance and frame rate, widescreen support, and new graphical effects. A similar remastering of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil followed in March 2017. Both remasters were eventually released for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, as well as PlayStation 4 later on. On August 23, 2022, a remaster of Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion was announced for PC, Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. It was released on November 30, 2023.

In 2019, 11 years after the release of the 2008 reboot, Pillow Pig Games and Universal Studios Interactive released Turok: Escape from Lost Valley, a 2D isometric action game with a cutesy, Super-Deformed art style on July 25, 2019 on Steam — where it was eventually delisted and can no longer be played. The trailer can be seen here.


These games provide examples of:

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    # — D 
  • Abnormal Ammo: Becomes more ubiquitous the more powerful your guns get.
  • Aborted Arc: The ending to the third game has Adon defying the Council of Voices and going on a quest to resurrect Joshua, and an Evil Counterpart of her — implied to possibly be her mother or sister — being called into service to stop her. Evolution ignored this and was instead made as a prequel to the first game.
  • Adapted Out: The first game is loosely based on the early issues of the Valiant Comics reboot, but omit the arc's villain Mothergod and her right-hand raptor Mon-Ark, as well as Turok's brother Andar.
  • Adjustable Censorship: Several of the games feature the option to turn the blood from red to green, or to turn it off completely. Interestingly, this also effects the zombies in the second level of Turok 2, since for some reason their projectiles are counted as blood to be removed, so turning off blood makes them trivially easy to deal with.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Most of the alien races count as this, including the Purr-lin, Mantids, Dinosoids, and Flesh Eaters.
  • Anachronism Stew: Averted, as the dinosaurs, demons and aliens were all involuntary interdimensional travelers, and not simply different things from different time periods thrown together for no reason.
  • Antagonist Title: The third chronological game in the series, Shadow of Oblivion, is all about finally dealing with the titular Greater-Scope Villain after its appearance and future threat were left as a Sequel Hook in Seeds of Evil.
  • Arc Words: "The child is the key." Turns out it was referring to Danielle's unborn child.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Rage Wars has both a deliberate and not-so-deliberate example. The deliberate example is that the AI will, depending on its skin, usually never use Explosive or Energy weapons (for example, Turok has three skins, Turok, Warrior, and Master. Turok will never use Energy weapons or Explosive weapons, Warrior will never use explosive weapons, and Master will use any of the three). The not-so-deliberate part is that the AI also has an aggressive misunderstanding of the term self-preservation, as it will very often get stuck in lava and occasionally fling itself into a hole. When it's your allies doing this, this can get annoying. The AI also will never go after the Retaliation box in Monkey Tag (which briefly turns them back to normal and all other players into monkeys/chickens/compies), meaning that provided the other AI players leave you alone, it's utterly trivial to camp the transformation pad, especially if you have the Flare Gun's charged shot since they'll blithely run directly into it and immediately get blown up by it.
  • Ascended Extra: Djunn barely appears in the "main" version of Evolution (to the point most players don't realize he's the male voice speaking on the radio during the penultimate chapter) but he's the other playable character in the GBA version.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The Alien Weapon. Unless you are using cheats with unlimited ammo to complete the game, this weapon uses 5 Ammo. Using 3-4 Pulse Rifle shots are just as strong, making the Pulse Rifle more efficient to use.
    • The Fusion Cannon in the original game. It had a massive blast radius and does massive damage, but its ammo is pitiful to the point where it's often Too Awesome to Use, with exactly two specific situations where it's really good at: the Triceratops if you want to conserve regular ammo, or against Thunder, where you can easily clip off half his health (albeit at the cost of all of your Fusion Cannon ammo).
      • Do not use the weapon against the Campaigner. In the original, the Campaigner will disarm you and force you to switch to the knife, as well as unleash his most powerful attack, which can knock off over half the player's health in one go. The remaster redesigned the game so the Campaigner simply dodges it, and it only does Scratch Damage even if you hit.
    • The Nuke Weapon in the second game. Obtaining it requires completing all 6 of the Oblivion/Flesh Portal zones, which is not easy, but unlike the first game's Chronoscepter, you get it a good distance from the final boss and you get refillable ammo for it at item-respawn points. Unfortunately, you still get it so late in the game that there's nothing to use it on as it has no effect on bosses, and the only enemies left by that point are the penultimate or final bosses. At that point, its only use is firing it at the ceiling during the final boss fight, where it will take care of the latter's mooks. The only way the player will get any other use out of it is if they haven't been collecting the Primagen keys and need to backtrack to find them.
    • The Cerebral Bore. Extremely cool-looking and shows a satisfying way to kill enemies by ripping and blowing their heads off. The problems? The weapon is very limited in use. Enemies have to be locked-on in order to use it. It won't work on bosses nor sub-bosses. And worse, it won't work on certain enemies: Smaller enemies, Dead-kind, and Purr-linns. While headshots are instant-kills, there are chances that the weapon would explode and miss.
    • The Scorpion Launcher's bugged damage means it sometimes does nothing but knock an enemy into the air without damaging them.
  • Backtracking: The second game requires you to return to the earlier levels after acquiring Talismans in the later levels so you can obtain the Primagen Keys, which are needed to complete the game.
  • Bag of Holding: The Light Burden, the small bag the Turoks carry, is explained to be one of these, and stores all their weaponry and items.
  • Bag of Spilling:
    • Despite the above, once a game is over and the Light Burden ends up passed to another Turok, all the various weapons the previous one collected are gone.
    • Evolution handled the trope in a rather unusual manner by having specific weapons disappear from the player's arsenal between chapters for no clear reason, only to have them reappear just as mysteriously later in the game. While this was probably done to avoid overburdening the player's inventory with obsolete or situational weapons, enemies will strangely still drop ammo for the pistol long after it becomes unusable.
  • Balance Buff: The Remaster of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter does this to a few weapons:
    • The Tek Arrows and Explosive Shells can now destroy stalacites. You can now receive the Minigun as early as Level 2 instead of waiting until you get an explosive weapon at Level 4 minimum to backtrack.
    • The Quad Rocket Launcher counts only 1 rocket to shoot all 4 rockets shot instead of 4 ammo-wise.
    • Chronoscepter does more than double the damage. The game encourages players to get all 3 pieces. Yes, you can now defeat the Campaigner in 3 full shots.
  • Bee People: The Mantids.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: All of the Turoks; Tal'Set especially. Righteous, brave and heroic, and not above slitting throats, making fatal shots, exploding heads, and wiping the existence out of their enemies. Or using the Cerebral Bore.
  • BFG: A staple of the series. The first game alone has a "mini" gatling gun.
  • Big Bad: The Campaigner in the first game, Primagen in the second, Oblivion in the third, Tyrannus and Bruckner in the fourth, and Kane in the reboot.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: The first game gives us Giant Beetles, Giant Dragonflies, and the Mantis boss. There's also Swamp Wasps and the Mantid beetles from the second game. The 2008 game gives us giant mosquitoes.
  • Bittersweet Ending: In Turok 2, if you failed to save all the totems the Primagen is implied to only be temporarily defeated and will return eventually.
  • Black Blood: In the German version, since that version had to replace all the enemies with robots.
  • Black Speech: Heard while approaching a temple in 3. Warping to the level boss and going to the temple from there lets it be heard properly; it's actually just a bunch of sinister voices repeating the words 'Foreign chanting' over and over!
  • Bloodier and Gorier: The first game had plenty of bloodshed, but the sequels take things up to eleven with High-Pressure Blood and Ludicrous Gibs! Even a simple pistol can cause enemies' heads to burst like paint-filled balloons!
  • Bloody Murder: The lower varieties of Deadkin in Turok 2 make use of this, throwing ludicrously-precise globs of blood at long range. Interestingly, some versions of the N64 original allow you to accidentally make them harmless by turning blood off.
  • Blooper: A pretty noticeable one in the Gamecube version of Evolution. For whatever reason, Tarkeen's cutscene appearance in Chapter 14 is not properly programmed, causing him to spawn T-Posed and phased midway through the floor.
  • Blown Across the Room: Hilariously invoked in Turok 1, soul-crushingly averted in Turok 2; In Dinosaur Hunter, an enemy's body could be knocked about endlessly with explosives, all the while spewing endless torrents of blood as well as screaming no matter how many times you did it with explosive weapons, until their bodies disappear over time. In Turok 2, no matter how much explosive power you launch at an enemy, their body will not move from its spot. Ever. It will fly upwards, perfectly vertical upwards of ten feet, and fall back down to its anchored spot, but it will not be moved horizontally.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Good for a One-Hit Kill in Seeds of Evil.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Turok 1 has respawn points for ammo and 25+ health during boss fights only, in sparkling fashion. After completing the bosses at Levels 3 and 5, you can refill all of your ammo and full health before collecting the key. Sure, it may take a lot longer, but you will be fully prepared ammo-wise before proceeding.
    • Like the first game, Turok 2 has respawn points for ammo and 25+ health. Only this time, it appears in non-boss battles as well. Enemies do not respawn randomly in Turok 2 (they respawn to their original positions when teleporting at any point), making that a plus.
      • On a much bigger plus, these respawn points are the only points where you can generate Nuke ammo once you assemble all 6 pieces. While the Nuke itself is ineffective against bosses, it can be useful to wipe out large areas when backtracking to maximize ammo, lives, health, missing Primagen keys, etc. before entering the final boss. It can also be used to clear out Primagen's enemies during the boss fight. What makes this a lot more boring is the mass amount of time it takes to generate the Nuke ammo, since it is very rare.
    • The Charged Dart Rifle stuns enemies and does minimal damage, but it has a long duration making them easy pickings for your other guns; this is a good time to shoot enemies in the head or use the Razor Wind to kill them.
  • Boss Battle: There are several of these in each game; the first one has a boss at the end of Levels 3 and 5 (3 has a pair of sequential Hummers then the Longhunter, while 5 has a giant Mantis), and two at the end of The Final Confrontation (Thunder the modified T-Rex, who is encountered at the end of the main stage, then the Campaigner after a rest area between Thunder and him). The second game has one boss at the end of the final three levels, then the Primagen Keys are required to access the Primagen, who is the Final Boss.
  • Boss Corridor:
    • The first game has one before each of its bosses. The first corridor is accessed after passing through the Ancient City's exit portal, and it leads to the giant arena where you have to deal with two Humvees, one after the other, and then the Longhunter. The second is a cave at the bottom of a pit in The Catacombs (this pit needs to be filled with water, or it's effectively bottomless). The cave leads to a room with a Save Shrine and the level's exit portal, and passing through the portal warps you to the Mantis. The third is at the end of The Final Confrontation, past a room with several elevators, enemies, and a pit in the middle, and it goes to the arena where the T-Rex Thunder is unleashed. The last one is accessed after killing Thunder, and, in addition to a Save Shrine, some health, and the final Chronoscepter piece, has a refill for every weapon in the game plus Tek Armor and a backpack. This hall leads to the Campaigner.
    • The second game had a small cave with a Plasma Rifle in the Lair Of The Blind Ones that Turok winds up in after completing the level and saving the Energy Totem. The cave leads to the giant cavern where the Blind One boss lives, and Turok must kill it to leave the level. The second one is in the Primagen's Lightship after unlocking the last door. Like the Campaigner's hall, it has a refill of every major weapon, and the corridor leads to the level's exit portal, which goes to the Mother boss fight if you have completed your objectives and picked up the Primagen Key (again, Turok must fight the boss to return to the hub; the entry corridor to the level becomes a Boss Corridor because the entry portal will also go to the boss fight once the level is complete).
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: The triceratops riders in the first game. They take multiple shots from explosive weapons to bring down, and the rocket launchers they carry do a ton of damage.
  • Boss-Only Level: The Primagen is not fought at the end of the Primagen's Lightship level in Turok 2 despite having a virtual complete weapons rearm at the end of the level (Mother is fought instead). The Primagen Keys are needed to access a separate area from the Hub where the Primagen is confronted.
  • Bottomless Pits: Absurdly common in the earlier games. The first game's 3rd level ended with a series of jumps on pillars over a giant pit to get to the boss, the beginning of the 6th level required some awkward jumping down ledges, and the 7th level has a lot of jumps on platforms and rocks over an endless expanse; one false move and Turok is dead.
  • Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Every protagonist up until the 2008 version.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The defeat of the Primagen causes a chain reaction that results in the end of the universe as we know it, as well as bringing forth an even worse Eldritch Abomination, Oblivion. Joshua is killed by Oblivion's spawn at the beginning of the third game.
  • Captain Obvious: Turok in Turok 2008. When he and Slade come across a destroyed bridge, Turok replies, "Looks like the bridge is out."
  • Checkpoint Starvation: The original releases of Seeds of Evil were (in)famous for having save stations that were widely spread out.
  • Classic Cheat Code: "bewareoblivionisathand" "NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK"
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: If you attempt to use anything more powerful than the minigun (apart from the Chronoscepter) on the Campaigner in Dinosaur Hunter's final battle, the Campaigner activates a magnetic shield that not only protects him from harm for some time, it actually removes the weapon from your arsenal. Oh, and he counters your puny efforts with an attack that knocks HALF of your health off and sends you flying across the arena.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity:
    • Averted in Rage Wars. The Inflator and Emaciator can inflict an instant kill effect after landing enough shots, regardless of the target's health. Syra and Symbiont are completely vulnerable to these, and can be disposed of quickly using either weapon. Bastille and Tal Set have resistances, but not immunities, as Bastille's shield will negate the inflation/emaciation effects (but once it drops, anything goes) and due to the scripting in Tal Set's battle, it will advance to the next phase instead of taking him out completely (unless it's already the last phase).
    • Played straight in Seeds of Evil. The Nuke and the Charged Dart Rifle do not effect bosses.
    • The remaster of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter made the final boss immune to the Fusion Cannon.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: The Cerebral Bore. Despite being the most iconic weapon of the series, and for a damn good reason, has an almost non-existent fire rate and limited ammo, and sometimes left the enemy alive after the bore detonated.
  • Cool Gate: The Warp Portals.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: The games (and the comics they're based on) practically run on this. The series features a Native American hero with an arsenal of advanced weaponry fighting savage dinosaurs, giant mecha and otherworldly monsters.
  • Covers Always Lie: The cover of the first game portrays Joshua Fireseed as Turok, when the game itself has Tal'Set as Turok. Apparently, this was due to a mix-up with Acclaim's marketing who assumed that the game would follow the comics made at the time and feature Joshua as the protagonist. Acclaim, not wanting to admit fault, attempted to Retcon Tal'Set as a villain and claimed that Joshua had always been Turok. The Night Dive Studios Updated Re-release fixes this with a redrawn cover.
  • Creepy Child: In Shadow of Oblivion. It turns out to be Oblivion itself.
  • Critical Existence Failure: As typical for the genre, the various player characters are just as fighting-fit when whittled down to ten health as they are when overcharged to something like 250.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas:
    • What Galyanna is implied to be.
    • Also a little present in the second game. The city of Aidia and the city on the River of Souls are both at least at early-modern levels, yet architecturally and stylistically they resemble Ancient Rome, right down to their soldiers wearing legionary armor and skirts while using modern shotguns.
  • Cutscene: Averted for the most part in the first game (you get a brief cutscene of bosses dying after you beat them), played straight from the second onwards.
  • Cut Short: Hope you didn't care about the Cliffhanger that Shadow of Oblivion left on, as the next game, Evolution, was a prequel to the first game and ended up being a Franchise Killer for the Acclaim series.
  • Cruel Mercy: In Evolution, where you leave the Big Bad alive with a dead T-Rex on top of him after giving him a humiliating ass-kicking. Compys quickly close in on him as Tal'Set leaves.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: Turok 2 suffered severely from recycling identical areas, to the point it was entirely possible to walk from the middle of Lair of the Blind Ones to the entrance without realizing. Those sprawling levels? Sprawl a little too much.
  • Cyborg: A lot of the Campaigner's minions, as well as the Campaigner himself.
  • Darker and Edgier: The comic books were produced in the ultra-politically correct 50s, and come with a seal from Dell comics that promises "only clean and wholesome entertainment", pledging to eliminate objectionable material entirely. The videogames, on the other hand wholeheartedly earn their M rating.
    • The Acclaim games also underwent darkening throughout the series. While Seeds of Evil was subtly darker than the first game, Shadow of Oblivion took the series several notches darker along with its more story-driven nature. Interestingly, this was also one of the main criticisms of Shadow of Oblivion; It was too dark and story-driven for a Turok game.
  • Dark Reprise: The music for the Primagen's Lightship, the final level in Seeds of Evil is a slower, darker remix of the Port of Aldia theme, the first level.
  • David Versus Goliath: Tal'Set has faced off against the Mantis, a giant guardian mantis and Thunder, a cybernetically enchanced T-rex, all of which are bigger than him, and won against both.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: "8 lives remaining!" The remastered version of Turok 2 at least allows this to be averted in Hardcore Mode, where you get at most one life.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Slade in the 2008 version is a male, non-romantic example. He starts out as a complete asshole towards Turok (he does have a reason, namely his brother was in Wolf Pack (Turok's old group) and died after Turok betrayed them), but gradually softens and respects him, especially after Turok saves him from a giant eel/octopus thing.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: You get these in the Lost Land, and they're basically souped-up High Priests (who were already an annoying and dangerous enemy prior).
  • Developer's Foresight: In Turok 2, once you're accomplished the objectives of the Primagen's Lightship and retrieved the level's Primagen Key, both the exit portal AND the entry portal lead to the same place: the Mother boss fight.
  • Disk One Nuke: Developers, while liking the gory effects in the game, didn't have weapon balance in mind:
    • Dinosaur Hunter:
      • The auto-shotgun, received very early in the game, is your bread and butter throughout the game due to the plenty of ammo scattered for it. In later levels, explosive shells are more common.
      • The Minigun in the remastered version. Originally locked between stalactites in Level 2, the Tek Arrows and Explosive Shells can now destroy them instead of waiting for the Grenade Launcher first received in Level 4. In addition, there's plenty of minigun ammo available, in which each bag now fully fills your ammo to the max 500 bullets.
      • The Pulse Rifle nearly replaces the auto-shotgun in later levels due to enemies carrying pulse rifle cells.
    • Seeds of Evil: Since headshots are insta-kills (except for bosses), just about any weapon that have a higher chance of performing a headshot either by spread or by luck. The shotgun can be this in the early Stages 1-2. The Shredder received early in Stage 3 (which you can enter after Stage 1) can become your most used gun; if you hit the enemy in the chest, there is a high chance that you will kill them due to the ricochet spread bursting to the head. Oh, and there's plenty of ammo.
  • Drought Level of Doom: All of Turok 2 on Hard difficulty. Conserve, and choose your weapons and strategy wisely.
  • Dual Boss: Syra and Warclubs in Rage Wars. Syra is significantly more powerful with Warclubs, but either one can respawn if they are killed as long as the other one doesn't die quickly enough. It's handy to whittle one down, kill the other, then finish the job.
  • Dumb Muscle: The Purr-lin have this as their Hat. While not given much characterization in the first game, the second game has Adon narrating about how they regard humans as "weak, squeaking insects" and hate the other races out of resentment for the other races scientific and technological progress, which the Purr-lin have presumably been unable to make due to their stupidity. They are so dumb that the Cerebral Bore does not lock on to them because it cannot detect their brain activity.
  • Dynamic Entry: in level 5 (catacombs) of first game you have numerous Purr-lin smashing through walls to attack you, which happens so many time it borders on a Running Gag.

    E — I 
  • Early Game Hell: Becomes a theme starting around the Campaigner, Lord of the Dead, and Juggernaut in Rage Wars. As the frag requirements pile up, the game also gets stingy with 1-Ups, cutting them in half (literally, so that you have to get two halves for a 1-Up) and giving more Minigame Icons, which have no active benefit. Thus, the early stages are a struggle to make par without getting splattered too many times, while it'll lighten up later when there's more room for error. This goes double if you take things in the wrong order, in which case you could go the entire way with one of your weapons missing because it's unlocked in a trial you haven't done yet. Oblivion Spawn (unlocked through Juggernaut) has it the absolute worst because of his godawful weapon loadout. While the Shotgun and Mag 60 are fine weapons, they both serve effectively the same role, and the rest of his weapons will be missing their alternate fires because he is the one that unlocks them, nevermind that the Scorpion rocket launcher's alternate fire is basically worthless anyway, the Emaciator is strictly inferior to the Inflator (though still sufficient for eliminating Bastille and Syra quickly), and the Flare Gun's primary fire is worthless for combat, only serving a purpose in healing with Energy Absorption.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Primagen and Oblivion.
  • Eldritch Location: Oblivion's Lair. Oblivion's influence rapidly turns the first level in 3 into one.
  • Elite Mooks: At least one different kind each level. The first game has a few pulse rifle-wielding sergeants in every stage except The Lost Lands and The Catacombs, and they fire fast and take more shots to kill; they fire even faster in the Night Dive Studios version, making them a giant pain in the ass when you see them. Levels 4, 5, and 6 add the High Priests, who have a fire staff, with a few also having teleportation techniques, and they are probably the hardest human Mooks to kill in the N64 game (the Priests take the most grenades to put down out of all the humans; they require 3, while the sergeants require 2 and the other humans only need one). The Lost Lands replace the Priests with Demon Lords, who take even more damage to kill (this same level also equips the raptors with plasma cannons). The end stretch of The Lost Lands and the final level add some giant robots with shields, rockets, and guns. The second game thrives on Elite Mooks around every corner.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: You fight some undead enemies in both the second and third games, including the Sister of Despair family in the second; you MUST kill all three members of that family to proceed with the game. The level they appear in also has two Soul Gates letting undead in that also need to be taken out.
  • Evil Laugh: The Campaigner does quite the MUHAHAHA.
  • Evil Overlord: The Campaigner and Lord Tyrannus.
  • Evil Sorceror: High Priests and Demon Lords. The Campaigner also uses magic.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The Demon enemies in The Lost Land level in Turok have the human voices, but they have been made deeper and slower (on the PC, however, they're the same as the humans). The Campaigner also has a deep, raspy voice.
  • Evil Sounds Raspy: The Primagen, when Turok meets him, has a raspy voice when speaking.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In Japan, the games were called "Violence Killer: Turok".
  • Excuse Plot: Almost every game: "Some jackass is trying to conquer the Multiverse... or something of that variety. Here's some kick-ass weaponry. Now go kill."
  • Expy: A Badass Native who wears a bandana and goes running through the jungle with a bow and arrow, machine gun, and massive knife, and frequently goes shirtless to show off his Heroic Build. Definitely an original character.
  • Faceless Goons: The Mendel-Gruman soldiers from the 2008 game. Commentary from the development team in the art booklet states that this was intentional, as they wanted to "de-humanise" the enemy. In a rare variant of this being played straight for the good guys, the Lost Land soldiers have helmets that conceal everything but their mouths in Evolution, and SWAT wear balaclavas in Shadows of Oblivion.
  • Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: The earlier games are very much on the "not" end of the scale, with Hammerspace inventories, the ability to jump in mid-air and healing by picking up plus signs. Even the most recent one let you dual-wield shotguns and stab giant dinosaurs to death with a knife, though it introduces a Halo-style two-weapon limit.
  • Family-Friendly Firearms: The Pulse Rifle is this series take on this trope, in addition to bullet using firearms. The Campaigner Sergeants wield Assault Rifles modified to fire plasma rounds. Cyborg Sergeants can also be seen wielding actual Pulse Rifles.
  • Fangs Are Evil: The Flesh Eaters have mouths full of pointed teeth to show how evil they are.
  • Fetch Quest: The first two games are all about finding keys and the pieces to the Chronoscepter note . Extended with 2's objectives, which often included fetching things like explosive charges and crystals that you were never actually told about.note 
  • Final Battle: The Battle of Galyanna in Evolution. In every fight before that, Turok and his allies are just playing for time.
  • Final Boss: The Campaigner in Dinosaur Hunter, Primagen in Seeds of Evil, Oblivionated Joshua in Shadow of Oblivion, Captain/General Tobias Bruckner in Evolution, and the Tyrannosaurus rex in Turok 2008.
  • First-Person Shooter: All the main games are first person shooters where you run and kill dinosaurs and other enemies with guns and other various weapons.
  • Flat Character: Both protagonists in Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil. The latter gets some Character Development in the third game, right before he dies. In Evolution, while Tal'Set is given a reason for his rage, it's never really expanded upon and he only talks in cutscenes between levels — if there are cutscenes.
  • Flunky Boss:
    • Longhunter in the first game. You have to fight two Humvees before facing him.
    • All of the bosses except Mother in the second game. You get grubs, tentacles and whatnot when facing the Blind Ones' Eye, the Mantid Queen has workers and beetles, and the Primagen will sometimes send out flying robots.
    • Symbiont and Tal'set in Rage Wars. Symbiont fights with several copies, while only the real one must be killed. Tal'set, meanwhile, will vanish and summon mooks twice in the battle. For the third round with him, the same mooks will appear to fight at the same time. Killing them this time does away with them for good, and they must be killed when Tal'set is gone to get him to come back.
  • Foreshadowing: The second game's fake portals that get you parts of the Nuke weapon also get you ambushed by the minions of Oblivion, who takes the time to taunt you but never gets resolved in the game's focus on the Primagen. Naturally, Adon senses something far more evil lurking in the background even after you defeat the Primagen in the best ending. The code for the "Big" unlock everything cheat ( BEWAREOBLIVIONISATHAND) also foreshadows the very same entity. Naturally, the third chronological game was Shadow of Oblivion.
  • Four Is Death: Both Turok and Turok 2 have exactly 4 boss scenarios in them (the first game's final level concludes with two boss fights, but they are fought separately and in different rooms with a weapon reload area between the first and second).
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Genn in the fourth game.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: In the first game's final battle, it's possible to lose a life, and for the Campaigner to then end up stuck in the animation from Tal'set's death scene, while being impossible to damage. The only way to get out of it is to fire the Chronoscepter at your feet, thus killing yourself and breaking the Campaigner out of the loop — but if you're down to your last life and/or out of Chronoscepter charges (or just didn't collect all its pieces to begin with), you'll have to restart from your last save.
  • Gatling Good:
    • The minigun.
    • Fire. Storm. Cannon. It's a plasma-throwing chaingun-esque energy blaster.
    • Flechette Gun. Secondary fire. DAKKA. DAKKA. DAKKA.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The boss in the Lair of the Blind Ones. It's not mentioned in Adon's briefing and there's no clue as to what it even is.
    • From the Game Boy Color version of Shadow of Oblivion, the bosses of the first three levels. The first level is about opening the defenses of an enemy base so your allies can get in. After you accomplish that, you have an out of nowhere fight with this raptor like creature. The second level is about destroying supplies of enemy ammo and fuel, and after you accomplish that, you are suddenly back in your boat are chased by this giant alligator. The third level is about breaking an enemy defector from prison, after you accomplish this, you suddenly face a giant crab monster. The fourth and fifth levels avert this as your stated goal in both is to find and kill the boss of the level.
    • In the 2008 game, halfway through the game, after facing mostly dinosaurs and human mercenaries, you have to cross a cavern infested by giant scorpions, leading to a boss fight with a huge, eel-like Sea Monster with Combat Tentacles dwelling inside an underground lake you have to cross. Bonus point for being completely different compared to the dinosaurs.
  • Giant Spider: Lair of the Blind Ones has these in spades.
  • Go for the Eye: After you've taken care or all the Blind Ones boss's tentacles, you have to shoot its eye out to kill it, leave the level, and return to the hub. The eye is the ceiling of the boss room.
  • Golden Ending: On Turok 2, if you save all the totems from destruction once you beat the Primogen the totems all shoot out energy beams that vaporize him and kill him permanently.
  • Gorn:
    • Turok: Dinosaur Hunter:
      • The human/demon enemies who use one-handed weapons (including pistol/knife poachers, the mace and shield Campaigner's Soldiers, the High Priests/Demon Lords and the blow dart/bone club warriors) will sometimes shoot a glorious fountain of sweet crimson from their necks after you shoot them enough, gagging while trying to hold it in and keep from collapsing, before falling to the ground, choking to death and ceasing to live. The human/demon enemies with two handed weapons (including the pulse rifle sergeants, anyone with a trident or pitchfork, and the shotgun poachers) will sometimes bend over and collapse to the floor right away in their attempts to stay alive after you shoot them.
      • Raptors and Demons shot in the face drag their heads along on broken necks before flopping around like fish and giving a soul-chilling death rattle; all while kicking the air in a futile attempt to keep alive.
      • The Shockwave freezes enemies when they are at their last health. Then they burst into pieces.
      • In rare cases, the Chronoscepter can cause enemies to explode into bits.
    • Turok II: Seeds of Evil
      • Shoot a monster through the chest and its heart will be blown out; still beating, it will crawl away while its former body collapses.
      • Blow the head off a Raptor or Raptoid and it does a "headless chicken" death spasm where it will continue to attack you before realizing it no longer has a head, then falls down dead. During this spasm it will no longer make noise but will continue to spill blood all over the floor.
      • Shoot the Cerebral Bore at something with a brain in its head, and pinkish-green goo will be spit out of its liquified brain before blood jets out just before its head EXPLODES. Note that the drilling noise the weapon makes while drilling into its victim is chill inducing, as is the way the victim will writhe in pain. Though it is hilarious to see enemies try to run from the heat-seeking weapon. Please note that it will NOT work on the undead. Hence the 'something with a brain comment'.
      • Insectoids can be roasted to nothing but exoskeleton before its rotting remains spill out of its abdomen.
      • Use explosive shotgun shells on the dinosoids and you can literally blow them in half, exposing their spines and a few surviving ribs.
      • Explosive shotgun shells (well, the regular ones can do it too, but with less occurance mind you) when used on the Purr-Linn that aren't wearing chest armor, can literally blow a hole in them so large you can see through it, count surviving ribs, and supposedly even shoot through it at enemies behind them. Granted, Purr-Linns killed in this manner only stay up for a short time so it's not a wise tactic to try, since if you miss when shooting them they can melee you to death, very fast.
      • The Nuke Weapon, which you can only get by completing all six Oblivion/Flesh Portal zones (meaning facing down the meanest enemies outside of the final stage), fires a bolt of energy that draws in more energy, then lets out a blinding flash. Any enemies caught in any of these flashes will be turned into a blackened statue that will then explode if not touched for a few seconds. The Nuke in Turok 2 is essentially a combination of the Shockwave and Fission Cannons from the first game as far as use goes.
      • Sunfire Pods, when used against the Blind Ones, will set them on fire and send them running to try and stop the searing pain. Also it's an instant kill to spiders caught in the flash.
      • Dead soldiers line the walls of the Port of Adia and River of Souls levels. Such bodies usually have spears embedded in them, holding them up against the wall. If the player is so inclined, they can shoot regular arrows at the dead soldier and they will embed themselves. More than 20 arrows can be fired into any one soldier and they will all remain in place so you can see them from another angle, which is more No Kill like Overkill than anything. Said arrows can then be reclaimed and reused.
      • Firing an arrow at an enemy will cause them to stick in place.
      • Explosive shotgun shells (aren't they fun?) when used on the lava dinosoids in the Lair of the Blind Ones level can blow them up in such a way that all that remains are their legs, and their thigh bone which will protrude out of the remaining leg, all the while spilling blood over the floor.
      • Proximity mines somehow send out completely horizontal shockwaves. This means the blast tears the feet off enemies while the rest of the body is left intact. The enemy then falls over and thrashes around on the ground helplessly for a moment before expiring.
    • Turok III: Shadow of Oblivion:
      • Bloodied bodies litter the streets of cities overcome by Hellish Demons that seek to bring about absolute rule of their Eldritch God, Oblivion; disembowelments and skinnings of screaming children becomes reasonably commonplace.
      • In the first level, an innocent citizen who the Fireseeds ask for help climbs winds up getting cut in half at the hip. Headless bodies also populate the area.
    • Turok: Rage Wars:
      • The Inflator does exactly what you would expect from the name. Enemies hit with it will be inflated like a balloon until they also pop like a balloon. A balloon full of blood.
      • Chest Burster's secondary fire implants an embryo which after a short period will burst out of the enemy's chest, killing them instantly.
    • Turok: Evolution:
      • There's gorn here before you even start playing the game. In the opening movie, a Sleg (humanoid reptilian) gets an axe thrown directly into his face, splitting his head and jaw open (leading to the title screen as he slumps down the wall as blood spurts).
      • Most weapons can sever enemies' limbs, resulting in them flailing around and screaming in pain, clutching the bloody stump and gushing blood all over the place. Works for decapitation too, minus the flailing and screaming.
      • The Poison Arrows cause most enemies to literally puke their guts out until they collapse in a pool of their own bloody vomit.
      • There's also the Swarm Bore Clusters, an equally-sinister version of the infamous Cerebral Bore. It shoots a bunch of tiny drills into the enemy, who is paralyzed and can only cry out in pain as his legs, arms, and finally head are turned to bloody mush, leaving only the torso behind.
    • Turok 2008: CQC knife kills are introduced, that allow you to kill dinos by stabbing them in the head with your knife. And as one of the loading screens says, "What's a meat fountain? Try hitting a dino with a well-placed grenade." Explosives let you blow some dinos to bloody pieces, which then twitch around on the ground. And guess how you defeat the T.rex? You jab a grenade into its already-scarred eye and blow the whole top of its head off, leaving just the bottom jaw.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Oblivion in the second game operates the Flesh Portals Turok can enter, and in the game's ending, Adon mentions Turok's lineage has dealt with it before, but it doesn't directly antagonize Turok until the third game.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Some mooks can have their torsos blown up.
    • The Sisters of Despair from Seeds of Evil also count.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: When you kill the triceratops riders in the first game their triceratops rolls over and crushes the rider as it dies.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts: The Mantids. Unlike the typical example, they are actually a technology advanced race, not just a bunch of giant bugs.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: An aversion was attempted in the first game, since you could only hold a limited amount of ammo unless you had a backpack equipped. It didn't do much to improve realism since its own capacity was unlimited, so the bag (or rather, not having one) was a hindrance more than anything and wasn't included in later games.
    • Turok 2 takes it to the extreme with the ability to carry over 20 weapons, but then does a fairly nonsensical subversion by allowing you absurdly little ammo for many of them — the pistols, for instance, are limited to fifty shots; considering the Mag fires three shots at a time, you can only pull the trigger 16 times before you're out.
    • And Evolution overkills it.
    • Averted in the 2008 game. You can only carry two guns, a knife, and a compound bow.
  • In Name Only: The 2008 game has barely anything in common with either the comic or the previous games, beyond starring a Native American called Turok who kills a lot of dinosaurs.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Every game in the original N64 trilogy has a BFG that must be assembled, piece by piece, throughout the entire game — although there's not much to use them on by the time you have put them together.
    • In the case of the first game, the Chronoscepter actually does have some use against the Campaigner (using it on him will wipe out almost all of his health if not outright kill him, making the otherwise challenging final boss fight almost trivial). The Nuke in the second, not so much since if you been collecting everything as you got, there's likely to be nothing left worth using it on since it has no effect on bosses.
  • Insectoid Aliens: The Mantid race in Turok 2, as well as the Primagen himself, who is some unknown alien race and looks something like a combination of grasshopper and moth.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Fairly frequent in the older games would be finding your way blocked by a grating or arbitrary wooden barrier.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: S.W.A.T. Officers in the 3rd game. They open fire on you if you try to get past them, and are completely unkillable. They pretty much serve as a Border Patrol to push you down the pre-scripted game path.
    • In the Game-boy Color version of Shadow of Oblivion, gun turrets in the boat sections can't be destroyed, though their missiles can.
  • Involuntary Dance: The ever-popular "Disco Mode" cheat code in the first game would make all the regular enemies dance and never attack you. Including the dinosaurs.
  • Item Get!: In Turok 1 enemies are kind enough to let Turok grab a key and gaze at it thoughtfully, like it was a gift from the gods and not one of two dozen Plot Coupons.

    J — M 
  • Jerkass: Slade in the 2008 version, who constantly complains and makes snide remarks toward Turok at the drop of a hat. Though he does soften over time.
  • The Juggernaut: The fourth game has a Seismosaurus converted into a Land Battleship called "Juggernaut". An entire three levels are spent stopping it from reaching Galyanna. The 2008 game has a Giganotosaurus which can't be killed, only run from.
  • Jump Scare: Happens several times in Level 5 of the first game, when Purr-lins bust out of the walls at you with no warning.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • Zigzagged by the Mother boss in Turok 2. While she is defeated and badly injured, she escapes alive, and is never encountered again.
    • Lord Tyrannus escapes his army being brought down, but you never fight him, and given Evolution's failure, most likely never will.
  • Law of 100: Collecting 100 Life Force shards will either grant the hero an extra life (Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil) or increase the hero's maximum health (Shadow of Oblivion).
  • Life Meter: You get 100 points of health, and losing all of them takes a life and sets you back in the level you're in.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Common place among bosses. They are typically very durable, and very mobile.
  • Living Dinosaurs: The main storyline has to do with the job of an ancient warrior trying to keep The Omniverse from collapsing; using his ancient wisdom to survive in a dark, alien land. They could just have easily have come up with some pretty strange creatures for the Lost Lands, but Bio-mechanical Dinosaurs were apparently better fitting.
  • Logo Joke: Once per Episode with developer Iguana Entertainment until Evolution (except Rage Wars). In order...
    • Dinosaur Hunter: The eponymous iguana is sitting atop the multicolored name of the studio in a forest. He gets assaulted by arrows, axes, and other assorted tribal weapons before quickly booking it.
    • Seeds of Evil: Once again the iguana is assaulted with tribal weapons (mainly arrows). This time; however, the iguana manages to pull out two sawed-off shotguns and proceeds to start taking shots at his attacker with a first-person POV shot of the assailant meeting his demise, all while the iguana sports a horrifying Slasher Smile.
    • Shadow of Oblivion: Now renamed Acclaim Studios Austin, the logo starts off fairly normally with the iguana simply looking around before lightning strikes turning the iguana into a skeleton and the letters in Acclaim into weird, pulsing flesh-things (with the dot on the i turning into a reptilian eyeball). The skeleton soon falls off leaving only the name of the studio behind.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Starting with Seeds of Evil, the Turok games allow you to reduce enemies to this with regularity.
  • Man-Eating Plant: Appears in The Lost Land in the first game. They can also shoot little pods at you.
  • Marathon Level: Seeds of Evil is loaded with them.
  • Mile-Long Ship: The Primagen's Lightship in Turok 2. While we never see it from the outside, it's obviously quite large based on the inside.
  • Mini-Boss: You essentially get two versions of this trope in the River of Souls level in 2, both of which are the stage objectives that must be completed to go to the Totem.
    • The first is the Soul Gate, which is a circular undead portal. There are two of these, and when entering the room, a bunch of zombie enemies will start coming out. You need to use a lot of weaponry to blow the gate up.
    • The second is the Sister of Despair trio, who are each in a graveyard zone of the stage. Once you meet these disembodied zombies, they'll dart around the area and have a good chance of killing you quickly with their attacks or backup; they are one of the deadliest enemies in the game. You must kill all three to finish the stage.
    • The Lords of the Flesh in the Oblivion portals also count, as they are the strongest and nastiest entities in these stages, one of the nastiest in the game, and you do have to kill virtually each and every Flesh Lord you come across to complete the Oblivion mini-level and escape.
  • Mordor: Level 7: The Lost Land in Dinosaur Hunter.
  • More Dakka:
    • Mooks not dying fast enough? FIND BIGGER GUN.
    • Penultimate weapon: THE MINIGUN IN EVOLUTION. It is able to gib the huge minibosses, literally in seconds. The drawback is that it has very little ammo in store.
  • Multiple Endings: Turok 2 has two endings depending on whether or not you're able to save all of the Energy Totems.

    N — R 
  • The Needs of the Many: Quoted word-for-word by a senator in the Suspended City right before their Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Nice Girl: Adon, who is one of the few non-evil aliens you meet and serves as the Big Good from Turok 2 onwards.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Dimension-hopping Navajo Warrior trying to stop an Omnicidal maniac's army of genetically engineered Dinosaurs, shape-shifting Demons and Vicious biomechanical Extraterrestrials with future-weapons that skull-fuck enemies to death on an Alternate version of Earth where "Time has no meaning". How freakin' epic is that?
  • No Fair Cheating: In the second game if you use the level select cheat to warp to the Primogen and kill him, you automatically get the "bad" ending.
  • Nonstandard Game Over:
    • The first would have different Game over animation if you died against some of the bosses. The Mantis and T-Rex would eat you and the Campaigner bludgeoned Turok to death.
    • The T-Rex had a Nonstandard Nonstandard Game Over animation on top of this. Normally the animation ends with the T-Rex burping after eating Turok, but if you enable the "Disco Mode" cheat (which normally causes enemies to dance, but just screws around with the bosses' timing), then the T-Rex eats Turok faster than normal, burps, and then watches a feather from Turok's headdress floating by its head.
    • The original version of the first game said Game Over when you beat the game (which is technically true as the game is over). The remaster removed this, however.
  • Nostalgia Level: The first half of Chapter 4 in Turok 3 has you fighting through the first couple of levels of the first game. Your enemies are even dinosaurs and what appear to be the remnants of the Campaigner's army.
  • The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Lazarus Concordance.
  • One-Hit Kill: Various weapons to regular enemies by default.
    • Turok 1:
      • The Fusion Cannon. It is possible to kill a Humvee in 1 shot.
      • The Chronosceptor. It is possible to kill the Longhunter in 1 shot.
    • Turok 2:
      • Headshots to any enemy, including the biggest enemies. Yes, even the weakest ones like a regular arrow from your standard bow, one bullet from the Firestorm Cannon, or even a shredder shrapnel.
      • The Razor Wind. There is a bug where it may not even hit an enemy outside of Level 6, counting it as a miss. You can tell if there is blood or not on the disk. The bug also applies to Turok 3 as well.
      • The Nuke. Ineffective against bosses.
  • Our Demons Are Different: They show up in the Lost Land level of the original Turok, replacing the human enemies; they are pretty similar, but they can take much more damage.
  • Outrun the Fireball:
    • How you escape from the Suspended City as it falls into the Great Chasm.
    • Also happens during the ending cutscene of the original.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: The raptors from Seeds of Evil. Hit one with a well-timed Tek arrow, and the ensuing explosion will obliterate everything, leaving a quivering torso behind—and enough blood that could easily fill two or three of them!
  • Oxygen Meter: Swimming underwater long enough will eventually bring one of these up. Lose it, and you start choking on your health.
  • Permanently Missable Content: A few to name, minus cheat codes:
    • Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
      • On Stage 3: Ancient City, after defeating the Longhunter boss fight, if you went straight for the final Level Five Key before getting the Pulse Rifle, you will not be able to go back to get it. Good luck not using the weapon as the Pulse Rifle is more practical to use than the energy-consuming Alien Weapon or the slow-to-fire Shockwave, in addition of much more Energy Cell drops.
      • Averted if you can endure not having the Pulse Rifle at the end of the game. Before fighting The Campaigner, you collect all the weapons, including the Pulse Rifle. Unfortunately, at this point of the game, there are far more better weapons to use to deal with the Campaigner (if you were able to assemble the Chronoscepter, that's the weapon of choice for him). This is also averted in the Night Dive update at least; a few more Pulse Rifles are hidden in secret areas between The Longhunter and The Campaigner (they are very few and far between, though).
      • Once you enter Level 8: The Final Confrontation, you cannot backtrack through past levels. If you forget to collect any Chronoscepter pieces in any of the other levels, you won't be able to use it. Inside this level, there will be trap doors that will send you further into the stage but will not allow you to return to earlier parts of the level. The first one has a warp to four water tanks with weapons seen just a few minutes earlier, and missing the jump to the warp will leave you with no way to reach it.
  • Platform Hell:
    • The end of Ancient City. Holy shit.
    • There's also one in maze form at the end of The Ruins.
    • You also have some tricky jumps in The Lost Land later in this game.
  • Playing with Fire:
    • Several enemies in the first game do use fire as part of their attacks. The larger dark-green Pur-linn have accessories on their right arm that fire fireballs at you. The High Priests and Demon Lords' primary attack has them flinging flaming skulls in your direction when they see you, and the T-Rex can breathe fire.
    • The second game has a Blind Ones' Lair-exclusive Dinosoid called the Fireborn that is a fiery palette-swap of the Endtrails. The zombies in the River of Souls can also fire fireballs at you.
  • Point of No Return:
    • In the original game, the portal to the final level, The Final Confrontation, is a one-way trip. Make sure you have all the Chronoscepter pieces and have saved your game before using said portal note , or you can forget about having the Chronoscepter to cheese The Campaigner and will be in for a hard fight if you get to him. There are also points during the stage where you'll fall down a pit/take a warp and won't be able to backtrack to earlier parts of the level; the last warp in the main stage has the "Hub Ruins/Cave" silent beat music playing before it instead of the stage theme, and it goes to the T-Rex. Once the T-Rex is dead, you're immediately taken to the last hall before The Campaigner and cannot return to any of the main stage, so you can only pick up refills and the last Chronoscepter piece and go to the warp to the final boss fight.
    • The second game has a similar setup with the Primagen Keys. You will want to be armed to the teeth before using the keys, as once Turok places the last one, a cutscene starts that takes him to the final boss fight against the Primagen.
  • Position of Literal Power: The Campaigner in the first game, who is probably the hardest enemy in the game if you don't have the Chronoscepter, and the Primagen in the second, though he does fight dirty. Kane in the reboot shows that he's the best knife fighter in Wolf Pack and easily proves his position by beating Turok in a sparring match in a flashback.
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: The final chapter of Evolution. Gallyana is saved and Lord Tyrannus's plan is ruined, but Tal'Set still has a personal score to settle with Bruckner.
  • Primary-Color Champion: Tal'Set. His pants are blue, his loincloth is red and armband and some parts of his headdress are golden yellow.
  • Private Military Contractors: The Mendel-Gruman Corporation in the 2008 reboot.
  • Random Number God:
    • The Shredder in Turok 2 is very random. It will either bounce somewhere else (it is not always an exact mirror reflection), disperse shrapnel in different direction, or nothing. If it does ricochet or disperse shrapnel, it gives an additional chance to hit an enemy's head, killing them without realizing it.
    • The Scorpion Launcher has inconsistent damage due to a bug in its programming. Sometimes, one shot may not do anything but launch an enemy in the air. Sometimes, it can kill enemies.
  • Raptor Attack: The most common dinosaur enemy in the first game and one of the first enemies you'll face is the Raptor. Once you reach The Lost Lands, they'll come equipped with plasma guns.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Tal'Set. Altough physically appearing in his late 20's/early 30's, thanks to constant time travel in the Lost Lands, he is approximately millions of years old!
  • Recycled Title: Turok 2008.
  • Red Baron: Bruckner is also known as "Red Snake".
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: A handful of the enemies in the games (the Leapers, the demons, the Dinosoids, the Oblivion soldiers, the Mantis boss, the Campaigner and his robots) have red eyes.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Slegs. They torture for fun. A lot. You also have a bunch of dinosaur enemies including the Dinosoids in 2 and 3.
  • Retcon: The series' very favorite thing; Turok 2 and 3 are the only ones to not totally ignore the events of every preceding game. Seeds of Evil didn't bother to pick up on Dinosaur Hunter's "Campaigner is actually an Android" ending or explain how Joshua became Turok (this is because the Turok in the first game was supposed to be Joshua as per the cover and manual comic, but for some reason was shown as Tal'Set instead). Rage Wars barely had a plot at all and claimed the first Turok was the bad guy, leading to Acclaim making the insane claim in the Extreme G strategy guide that Tal'Set had never been Turok and the Turok in Dinosaur Hunter was Joshua. Turok 2008 ignored the entire preceding series.
  • Ribcage Ridge: Early in Turok 2008 a ridiculously huge carnivore skeleton is seen; the skull alone is the size of a house. The player might think this is foreshadowing. It isn't.
  • Rule of Cool: Dinosaur Hunter had raptors with horned skullcaps, Death-rays and Rocket boosters, Triceratops with mounted machine-gunners, rocket-launchers and grenade-launchers, a freaking fire-breathing bio-mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex with laser beams on its eyes, flame-throwers on its face, death-rays and rocket launchers and freaking intestine-rending claws. Meanwhile, the Player Character is a dimension-hopping Navajo warrior with a scorpion missile launcher that fires 4 rockets at a time and a ruby-powered fission cannon. Now those had to be some pretty epic brainstorming sessions.

    S — Z 
  • Sadistic Choice:
    Oblivionated (!) Joshua: If you kill us, you kill your brother! Weep, little Turoks! The Sons of Stone will fall this day!
  • The Elevator from Ipanema: See Soundtrack Dissonance.
  • Sand Worm: The "Subterraneans" in the first game were Hideous, Snake-worm animals with Eyes on Stalks and acid-spitting abilities.
    • Seeds of Evil has these within the Lair of the Blind Ones.
  • Say My Name: Collect enough icons for a 1-up, or be revived, and you hear several Fireseeds proclaim, "I! AM TUROK!!!" ...to no-one in particular.
  • Scary Scorpions: Scorpions show up in Turok 2008 as a particularly tough enemy.
  • Science Fantasy: The Acclaim games mix fantasy elements with science fiction, with the Magical Native American hero armed with plasma rifles and automatic shotguns going up against cybernetic dinosaurs, demons and zombies. The 2008 reboot dumped the fantasy elements for straight Sci-Fi.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Primagen in 2. He created the Lost Land when he crashed his dimension-travelling Cool Ship, being entombed at its center. If he manages to break free, he will destroy the Lost Land and several other worlds, including Earth, as a side-effect of his destabilizing it. He never escapes his Lightship; the player/Turok uses the Primagen Keys to enter the can and access his quarters in the ship (which is separate from the main Lightship level) and defeats/kills him in there.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • The Golden Ending of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil had Adon congratulate Joshua on killing the Primagen for good — only to express concern about a mysterious and far more deadly evil lingering in the cosmos. One that the Turok lineage had dealt with in the past. Lo and behold, after a multiplayer-focused pit stop with Rage Wars, the very next chronological game in Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion dealt with continuing this very plot line.
    • Shadow of Oblivion also ends with another pair of hooks that still haven't been answered: One, that Danielle's child would be the "key to salvation", and likely the next inheritor of the Turok lineage. And two, that Adon had grown exhausted and weary of the Council of Voices' passive nature in all but the most dire of matters, and their refusal to let her save Joshua and bring him Back from the Dead with yet another vague warning of future danger causes her to defy them and go her own path. Cue the Council speaking to a mysterious woman named Enri, who says Adon was doing it out of love for Joshua and seems to be personally assigned to kill Adon.
  • Sequential Boss: The first boss scenario of Turok 1 has three stages to it, where you take on two Humvees, one at a time, then the Longhunter. All boss fights in Turok 2 are sequential in some way (as in your target changes), and all are flunky bosses as well.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Shotguns appear in every single game. Turok 2 features the infamous Shredder, a futuristic shotgun that takes regular shells and shoots ricocheting laser beamsnote .
  • Shout-Out: Seeds of Evil had the Cerebral Bore, referencing The Tall Man's orbs in the Phantasm series, and a disc weapon straight out of Xena: Warrior Princess. Its remaster adds an achievement for getting two enemies of different species to infight, which in a reference to Doom, the Trope Codifier for monster infighting, is named "I thought only demons did that".
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Usually averted. Mooks and Elite Mooks appear throughout the whole game, but generally aren't any tougher than the ones from the last level.
    • The 2nd game has this with the Primagen's bio-bots encountered on his lightship, who are definitely the strongest enemies in the game, but not necessarily the hardest if you've been collecting all the weapons and know how to deal with them. Also, the Oblivion portals in the same game DO get a lot nastier in the later levels, with far more enemies.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The Elevator music "Girl from Galyanna" from Shadow of Oblivion.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: Turok 2 featured an interesting graphical glitch that showed how the sprites were scaled; the game measured the distance from player object to sprite to figure out how large the sprite should be on-screen. Unfortunately, it had no way to compensate for the sniper zoom, meaning a 2D effect will appear to shrink as you zoom in and grow as you zoom out.
  • Standard FPS Guns: Depending on the game, this is either played straight, averted, or subverted with some creative inclusions.
  • Stealth-Based Mission: Evolution went there. And lo, it was terrible.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Bows are a starter weapon in every game.
  • Stuck Items: The knife and bow from the 2008 game.
  • Stylistic Suck:
    • The "Quack Mode" cheat turns off the game's texture filtering and makes the animation look very choppy as a jab at FPS games like Quake.
    • The "Pen and Ink Mode" also replaces all the textures with flat white ones and makes the game look like it's in wireframe mode (albeit without the transparency of most wireframe modes).
  • Suicide Attack: The alien troopers in the first game and the endtrails in the second game sometimes set off a self destruct device as an attempt at Taking You with Me. Luckily, it takes several seconds to activate, giving you time to get out of range.
  • Swamps Are Evil: The Death Marshes. The brown marshes are OK, but the green ones are the titular marshes that will kill you if you stay in them. Both can have worms with overly long tongues to whip you with, and the poisoned River of Souls also passes through the level.
  • T. Rexpy:
  • Take That!: The original game featured a cheat code that unlocked "Quack Mode", which made the graphics blocker and lowered the framerate, an obvious jab at Quake.
  • Taken for Granite: The Shockwave Weapon and Nuke Weapon do this to every enemy in the area. Then they explode.
  • Taking You with Me: In Turok 2 you find out the Primagen plans to do this on a universe wide scale: he's set up a couple of robot building factories in his lightship that, in the event of his death, will create an endless army of robots to kill everyone. One of your mission objectives is to ruin the robot factories before they can be turned on.
  • Terrifying Tyrannosaur:
    • Appears twice in the fourth game: The first is a one-off encounter, and the second is Bruckner's mount.
    • Recurring Boss in the 2008 reboot, which you don't actually kill until the end of the game.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The staple of the series.
  • Trouser Space: The first two Turoks were only ever seen wearing pants and a few small accessories (probably why they got damaged so much, come to think of it).
  • Turns Red: Mantis and Thunder, who both get more frantic and ferocious the lower their health goes.
  • The Unfought: Tyrannus in Evolution.
  • Unique Enemy: Seeds of Evil has multiple enemy types that are only encountered in one level each.
    • The Deadkin are only encountered in the River of Souls.
    • The Pur-Linn only appear in the Death Marshes.
    • The Blind Ones and the Giant Spider enemies only appear in the Lair of the Blind Ones.
    • The Mantid enemies only appear in the Hive of the Mantids.
    • The Primagen's troopers only appear in the Primagen's Lightship.
    • In the 2008 game, a Giganotosaurus is encountered at only one point in the game. It can't be killed, so player has to run from it.
  • Updated Re Release: Nightdive Studios have remastered the 3 mainline N64 games for modern PCs and Nintendo Switch. The remasters of the first 2 games are improved versions of the original PC ports, with support for modern systems and modern resolutions, an improved lighting system, and some quality-of-life additions to gameplay such as objective markers in Turok 2 due to that game's rather confusion level layout and easily missable objectives. Turok 3 is the most updated from the original, as it had to be remade from the ground up due to never having had a PC port. The graphics and HUD/UI have been completely redone and look a full console generation ahead of the original, though maintaining the original artstyle and general appearance.
  • Vampiric Draining: The Vampire Gun in 3. It only works at close range and does a couple hp of damage to YOU when used, so if you fire it without sticking it in an enemy fire you'll just hurt yourself.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • Two words: Cerebral. Bore.
    • Holy shit, is it very bad in Evolution. Let's see — the bore. Then you get to the flamethrower, where you could burn them until they gibbed. You had poison arrows, which caused them to puke their guts out until they died. You had the black hole grenades, which stretched the enemies as they were sucked into the hole. You could fire darts or arrows into their throats and watch them choke on their own blood. And so on...
    • For its time, Seeds of Evil was considered pretty bad, though it pales in comparison to the gore in Evolution. The PFM Layer (Personal Fragmentation Mine Layer) could amputate the legs of most enemies, causing them to roll around on the ground in agony until they bled to death (and you could sometimes shoot legs off with your other weapons). You could blow off heads and arms from just about every enemy. Zombies could be blown in half, reduced to an upper torso crawling along and dragging its naked spine. Purr-Linn Warclubs could have holes blown clear through their upper torso (the Magnum, Shotgun and Shredder were best at this), resulting in blood fountaining down both sides of their bodies and a ghastly gurling sound before they keeled over.
    • Even the original had its moment. In the tutorial. Shooting Tek Arrows at the pillars enemies were situated on rather than the enemies themselves would (somehow) cause them to launch into the air, bleeding and screaming. And you could ''juggle'' them this way.
  • Violation of Common Sense: In both games you can do the levels out of order, as the first level has the keys to both the 2nd and 3rd level, with the 2nd level having keys to the 4th and the 3rd having keys to the 5th. While it's generally not a good idea in the first game (as you'll have to kill the first two bosses with out some important weapons), it is generally a good idea in the second note , as if you do the odd numbered levels first, you'll get the really powerful weapons earlier, which makes level 2 and 4 a hell of a lot easier.
  • The Walls Have Eyes: Turok 2 has a giant eye protected by smaller eyes and tentacles stuck on the wall as the boss of the Lair of the Blind Ones.
  • Weakened by the Light: Sunfire Pods from Seeds of Evil will stun most enemies and outright kill the Blind Ones' warriors.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The Mother boss on Turok 2 escapes at the end of the battle and is never seen again (in that game or later games).
  • Who Even Needs a Brain?: Implied Trope. The Purr-lins straight up No-Sell the Cerebral Bore.
  • Who's on First?: The short comic included with Turok 1 ends with Joshua stumping The Campaigner (!) with this very problem.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Primagen from the second game. He originally just wanted to go back in time to see the creation of the Universe, unfortunately, time travel into the past causes massive damage to the universe, and in doing so he created the Lost Lands, and ended up trapped in his lightship, where he was eventually Driven to Madness. Now, he mainly just wants to escape, even if doing so will destroy the entire Universe.
  • World Half Empty:
  • You Don't Look Like You: The character design style changes noticeably between the second and third games. It's probably most pronounced with Adon, who in the second game has lavender hair and bluish-white skin, which is changed to a normal skin tone and black hair in the third game.
  • Your Head A-Splode: The Cerebral Bore.
  • Toothy Iguana: The Iguana Studios opening animation from Seeds of Evil shows the namesake animal bearing human teeth as he's about to go Guns Akimbo on those attacking him.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Your mission objectives in the second game's "Slaughter by the River of Souls" are basically preventing one, by destroying a pair of Soul Gates before the undead pouring out of them can leave the city and banishing a trio of "Sisters of Despair" acting as leaders for them. A weird variant occurred in the GBC version, where something was causing random people on Earth to turn into dinosaur-headed maniacs, though for whatever reason only Turok was particularly capable of telling the difference.

Alternative Title(s): Turok Evolution, Turok 2 Seeds Of Evil, Turok Rage Wars, Turok 3 Shadows Of Oblivion, Turok 2008

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Tyrannus

Dinosaur supremacists? That's new.

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