Web Video / Ten Little Roosters

Ten little roosters all gathered to dine...

"You've all got blood on your hands. And now you're all going to pay."

— Michael Jones, Episode 1: "And Then There Were Nine"

Ten Little Roosters is a 2014 murder mystery comedy web series created by Rooster Teeth, consisting of eight episodes that aired weekly from November 4 to December 23. The series is an affectionate parody of Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None, and runs on the Ten Little Murder Victims premise synonymous with the novel.

The series takes place at the inogu...inaugg...first banquet held at the Rooster Teeth office by Burnie Burns with nine other Rooster Teeth employees^list Lindsay Jones, Gus Sorola, Chris Demarais, Miles Luna, Gavin Free (technically him and a clone, but they're treated as one person), Adam Ellis, Michael Jones, Barbara Dunkelman, and Ryan Haywood. However, the party goes downhill when Michael Jones accuses everyone of committing serious crimes in the past, saying that one person is guilty of "cold-blooded murder".

Shortly afterwards, the guests find a poem taped to the wall written in the style of the original "Ten Little Soldiers" poem (said poem can be read in full here◊), and from the first episode it becomes clear that the poem is outlining the murders of all but one of the party guests over the course of the night. Everyone is then locked in, and they must figure out who the killer is among them.

After the first episode, viewers were asked to submit guesses as to who the killer was and who the survivor would be (confirmed to not be the killer). After each episode aired, viewers were also asked to guess who would die in the next episode, as well as how they would die.

The list of the victims, how they died, and the eventual survivor is as follows:

1. One Choked On His Rage: ^answer Michael Jones is poisoned after drinking a toast from a tampered champagne glass.
2. One Tripped Over Themselves: ^answer Gavin Free and his clone literally bump into each other over several mousetraps that chew them up.
3. One Was Martyred: ^answerChris Demarais pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to save Burnie from being shot by arrows, and dies himself.
4. Life Imitated Art: ^answer Burnie Burns gets a lethal sting from one of Joel's scorpions after trying to reach for a gun.
5. One Died To Scale: ^answer Gus Sorola is stabbed through the chest with a pitchfork, dying the same way Baby Gus died.
6. One Ran Out Of Air: ^answer Not Ryan Haywood, trapped in the Edgar hole, but Adam Ellis, who is strangled in the motion capture room with the cord of a computer mouse.
7. One Got What They Wanted: ^answer Lindsay Jones, a Kind Hearted Cat Lover, gets mauled to death by a puma when she calls it away from Ryan.
8. One Died Of A Pun: ^answer Miles Luna has his hands glued to a treadmill and is forced to run on it until he dies of exhaustion, unable to "go the extra mile."
9. The Killer Was Killed: ^answer Barbara Dunkelman, the mastermind of the whole plot, is killed by Gavin's 100% Accurate Creeper Suit after mistaking it for a green screen outfit.
10. And Then There Was One: ^answer Ryan Haywood successfully defeats Barbara and makes it out of Studio 5 alive.

As these tropes relate to a murder mystery with nine different murders and multiple plot twists, beware of spoilers below.

At RTX 2015, a sequel series, The Eleven Little Roosters, was announced, revolving around the survivor of the series being recruited by an international spy agency to root out The Mole in a group of 18 assassins and spies from 11 agencies around the world. A prologue series, Assassin Superstars 360, premiered on December 20, 2016, and the official series premiered on January 16, 2017. This time, with the exception of the survivor, the cast is playing original characters, not fictional versions of themselves. Both series were then followed by another Spiritual Successor series, Dead Little Roosters, in 2021.

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Ten Little Roosters contains examples of the following tropes:

• Accent Relapse: Cop!Burnie reverts to his "natural" Joisey accent when he reveals his true nature to Ryan. He switches back to his "ridiculous fake" accent for the rest of the conversation, though after Ryan presses his Berserk Button, he gets so flustered he relapses again.
  Cop!Burnie: An' listen ta me! Now I'm breakin' character! Six months with a vocal coach, right down da fuckin' drain thanks to you guys!
• Adam Westing: Everyone plays an exaggerated and fictionalized version of themselves.
• A God Am I: Barbara reveals to have a God complex, to the point of replacing phrases with "God" with her name.
  Barbara: The time of "God dammit, Barb" is over! I'm God now, so it's "Barb dammit, Barb"!
• Annoying Arrows: Played for Laughs. Arrows are lethal in this series, as Chris dies from getting shot, but it takes several of them to put him down for good, and he keeps getting back up after being shot.
• Anyone Can Die: As the poem indicates, all but one of them will by the end.
  • Even offscreen, this was happening; based on the incriminating photos everyone picks up, almost everyone committed murder (except Ryan, whose photo just has Edgar in a hole, and possibly Miles, who doesn't get a photo). Aside from the shout-outs to Rooster Teeth Shorts, these include Adam killing Kerry^*"The point we just can't take... anymore. Right, Adam?", Lindsay killing Kdin^*"A top 5 way to die, by Lindsay!", and - perhaps most jarringly - Gavin killing Meg, his girlfriend^*"No one likes a Know It All, do they, Gavin?". And this is before we learn that the murderer trapped in here has been killing for a while...
  • Episode 6 makes us think that Ryan's time has come... only for the picture to fall off the wall as glass smashes and Ryan finally climbs out of the hole. When the actual ^*Adam victim is shown a few minutes later, his portrait is nailed to the wall to make it stick this time.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In episode 4, Burnie equips a tactical vest, helmet, three (progressively bigger) guns, two swords, a grenade... and a wiffleball bat.
• Artistic License:
  • The weapon of murder in episode 2. The murder of the Gavins shouldn't be as gory as it is considering the murder weapon (mousetraps), yet they're left as a bloody mess at the end of the episode.
  • The manner of death in episode 4 falls under this too. Scorpion stings do not kill in less than 5 seconds, as the venom is a neurotoxin that paralyzes its victim until it cannot breathe and asphyxiates.
  • Similar to episode 2, the death in episode 7. Lindsay gets torn up into ludicrous gibs in a matter of seconds, which is not how pumas or other big cats kill prey or consume it.
• Aside Glance: When they find the poem on the wall, Burnie, with Miles and Gus behind him, comments that it is an ominous portent for the evening. All three then look straight at the camera with little grins.
• Attack Its Weak Point: When confronted with the puma, Miles wields his prop from the RWBY set and tells himself to aim for the soft underbelly (a ref to Weiss fighting the boarbatusk in RWBY). He decides against attacking it and just runs.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: In the finale, Ryan puts on a crown and leaves the studio after becoming the only survivor.
• Bad Boss: Burnie mocks the notion that anyone might be getting a raise, a nod to his character in the shorts.
• Badass Boast: From Ryan:
  [After escaping the Edgar hole.] Fuck you, hole. Unlike a cow, I have opposable thumbs.
• Bait-and-Switch: After getting stuck in the hole, it seemed like Ryan would end up being the one who "Ran Out of Air". Episode 6 makes it seem that way, due to cutting to Ryan's portrait after he supposedly succumbs to asphyxiation...only for the sound of shattering glass to be heard as he bursts out.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Barbara murdered Cop!Burnie's partner because she knew that Burnie would respond by trying to trap her with the fake dinner party, gathering all her planned victims into one place for her.
  • Michael's murder might not have even happened if Barbara hadn't been sure that Gus would hand Michael the glass in anticipation of a toast.
  • There's also the case of Ryan's mental breakdown in the fourth episode — Barbara killed off Michael and Gavin first and planted their dolls, knowing that Ryan would question his own sanity due to his sociopathic tendencies in Achievement Hunter videos.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The victim of episode 7 dies by "[getting] what they wanted." It turns out to be Lindsay, who always wanted a cat and tries to befriend a puma. This does not go well for her.
• Berserk Button:
  • Burnie gets really angry when he learns Ryan doesn't watch Red vs. Blue.
  • In the same conversation, Ryan gets a defied one; when Burnie calls him a "bad king", instead of getting mad like the buildup would have you think, Ryan just snarkily corrects him ("It's 'mad king'").
• Big "NO!":
  • Chris in episode 3 when he sees the murderer about to kill Burnie.
  • Barbara in the finale when Ryan activates her 100% Accurate Creeper Suit, which is rigged with explosives.
• Black Comedy: As a murder mystery created by Rooster Teeth, there's black comedy everywhere, particularly in the death scenes (most notably the Gavins and Lindsay).
  • After Miles' death, Ryan and Barbara joke about the death via treadmill.
• Blackmail: Michael's plan to turn in all of the other party guests for the crimes they've committed and get rich. He doesn't get too far with the plan since he ends up getting murdered midway through his accusations.
• Bloody Hilarious: The deaths of the Gavins, Lindsay, and in the finale, of the killer Barbara.
• Bond One-Liner: The final line of the series, after Ryan kills Barbara by activating her explosive-rigged suit.
  "Well, that ended with a bang."
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the final episode, Ryan ends up questioning how he got captured when the last thing he remembered was Lindsay saving him from the puma and getting killed for it. Barbara handwaves by saying that she somehow got the drop on him and knocked him out — mostly so she could get to monologuing.
• Brick Joke: In the first episode, Chris quotes J. R. R. Tolkien whilst Gus quotes himself calling Chris a nerd. Fast forward to the finale, and the same Tolkien quote is shown after the credits, as well as Gus' made up quote.
  Not all who work here are fucking nerds.

  — Sorola
• Brown Note: It's implied that Barbara's cat keyboard does this to the puma, which leaves Barbara alone after being subjected to its noise. The final episode revealed that Barbara actually trained the puma to follow the cat keyboard's tunes. She also did it with the scorpion, which she admits took a very long time.
• Chase Scene: Miles and Ryan getting chased by the puma. Easily goes into Stylistic Suck.
• Chekhov's Gag: The green screen from Lindsay's Sanity Slippage moment returns in the finale to create an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield for Ryan and Barbara's fight.
• Chekhov's Gun: Some of the murder weapons become this when they are seen/mentioned in episodes prior to being used.
  • Adam mentions several things that were stolen from his work station. The first of them to come up is his bow, used by the murderer to kill Chris. The computer mouse he mentions turns up later in episode 6 as the weapon that kills him.
  • Somebody releases all of Joel's poisonous animals in episode 2, letting scorpions, spiders, and a cobra roam the office. A scorpion kills Burnie in episode 4, just like how Caboose (played by Joel) killed Church (played by Burnie) in Red vs. Blue.
  • The pitchfork that Adam leaves by the puma cage in episode 4 is used in the following episode to kill Gus. The puma itself comes up in episode 7 when Barbara accidentally releases it from its cage and it menaces the survivors and ultimately kills Lindsay.
  • Barbara's cat piano is used in episode 7 to lure off the puma.
  • One of Chris' off-hand comments when talking to Gus in Episode 1 turns out to be the way we could have guessed the survivor from the first week. It's part of a poem that ends "The crownless again shall be king."
• Clothing Damage: By the time Miles dies, he's lost the Ruby Rose costume's boots and cloak, and the outfit itself is slipping off him.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone has their moments, but Chris and Lindsay might be the most consistent; the former keeps quoting Lord of the Rings and the latter loses her sanity over time to the point of "hiding" in wide open spaces such as in front of the greenscreen. Everyone else makes dumb decisions, but at least keeps a sane mind overall.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Lindsay's quote in her portion of The Know:
  "Holy fucking shit, we're all going to die here... ...oh, my fucking God... ...Fuck."

  —Lindsay Jones, pooped her pants.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Adam tries to ask Miles what's up with his outfit (meaning: why is he dressed up as Ruby Rose?), Miles responds that he took off his shoes so that the murderer wouldn't hear his footsteps. Before Adam can clarify what he meant, Miles gets distracted by a "Eureka!" Moment.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Creepy may be too strong of a word, but Miles dressing up as Ruby Rose is... unsettling.
• Creepy Doll: Ryan keeps plushies of himself, Michael and Gavin in his room. He talks to them. Made creepier because Michael's has an empty wine glass next to it and Gavin's has mousetraps attached to its limbs, reflecting how they died. Ryan doesn't seem to acknowledge this.
  • It's revealed at the end that Barbara planted them there to make Ryan think he was going crazy.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: So far, these have also counted as Ironic Deaths for their victims.
  • The first: Michael, known for Rage Quit, choked. The poem explicitly states "one choked on his rage."
  • The second: The Gavins bump into each other while running and fall into a cluster of mousetraps, getting chewed apart in slow-motion. The poem states that "one tripped over themselves."
  • The third: Chris, a huge Lord of the Rings fan, is shot with multiple arrows like Boromir to protect Burnie, fulfilling the poem's statement that "one was martyred."
  • The fourth: Burnie, while gearing up to find the killer, accidentally touches a scorpion while reaching for a gun, which ends up poisoning him. The poem stated that "Life imitated art", so Burnie had to die like how his character in Red vs. Blue did, which in that case, was from the scorpion tank. Furthermore, it was Joel's scorpion, and Joel played Caboose, who had been driving the tank at the time.
  • The fifth: Gus is ambushed by the killer and skewered through the chest with a pitchfork. Gus's blackmail photo revealed that he had accidentally killed Baby Gus with a dinner fork while eating.
  • The sixth: Adam is also ambushed by the killer and strangled by a computer mouse wire. What makes this bad is Miles is seeing this as a mocap animation and he's mistaking it for a Red vs. Blue mocap video... that goes into sex.
  • The seventh: Lindsay is mauled by the escaped puma. The poem stated that "one got what they wanted," so Lindsay had to die by the very thing she loves. A cat.
  • The eighth: Miles has to run on a treadmill until he dies of exhaustion.
  • "The killer was killed": Barbara put on a green screen suit to stealthily stalk Ryan... except she chose Gavin's 100% Accurate Creeper Suit. Which is full of explosives. And was built by Ryan himself, so he knows how to activate it.
• Dark Secret: Everybody has blood on their hands from the past, as Michael reveals. No wonder there's ten Roosters, apparently half the company has been killing the other half off!
• The Day the Music Lied: As Miles is stuck running on the treadmill, the RWBY theme music starts playing as he tries to convince himself that he can escape it and survive. One Gilligan Cut later, and he's dead.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  Burnie: I'm old and gross, dude, I could die any time. I could die the shit out of a death.
• Detect Evil: Chris' version of the sword Sting glows blue in the presence of the murderer rather than Orcs. Before he can test this on anyyone, the lights go out and he wakes up separated from everyone else. It does serve as an Imminent Danger Clue for him later though.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In episode 2, Barbara manages to contain the poisonous jellyfish and blue-ringed octopus in Joel's office but allows the scorpions, cobra, and spiders to escape. As Lindsay points out, the jellyfish and octopus would be much less dangerous than the other animals if they were released from their containers. Subverted Trope, as she did think it through, being the killer.
  • The Killer tying up Ryan's hands with a necktie, without changing the type of knot.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Ryan admits that he hated Gavin and Michael after they died, citing several (real) extremely minor pranks they played on him as reasons why he wished them dead. It's suggested that a murderous second personality may be to blame.
• Dissimile: Ryan expresses the belief that Burnie will be the last one remaining and how it'll be like "Red vs. Blue all over again". Burnie points out that his character, Church, is the first one to get killed partway through Season 1, to which Ryan admits that he hasn't watched any of the series.
  • Funnily enough, Burnie bringing that up winds up being Foreshadowing.
• Dissonant Serenity: Even though a murderer is on the loose and everyone's trapped inside the studio, Gus seems extremely calm about it and mostly frets about having time taken away from his poetry writing.
• Distress Call: Both Barbara and Gavin use one in episode 2. It doesn't work for Gavin.
  • The finale reveals that Barbara's "distress signal" was actually a song she taught the scorpions to keep them from stinging her.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Miles when he sees motion-capture footage showing up on Monty's computer. It's of Adam in a mocap suit being strangled to death not 30 feet away from the same computer yet Miles thinks it's previously recorded for Red vs. Blue... which (appears to) quickly degrade into sexual positions.
• Dysfunction Junction: The RT employees are portrayed as having basically no camaraderie at all and barely able to tolerate each other to the extent that they'd pretty much all be quite happy to see the rest of them dead. Fairly common for RT Self-Parody pieces, but really dialed up to eleven this time around (so you will believe that anybody who hasn't died yet could be the murderer)
• Edible Bludgeon: In the finale, Barbara uses a variety of food on a table to attack Ryan.
• Ending Fatigue: In-Universe; mentioned by Burnie in episode 3 when he tells Chris that his LOTR role-playing is "about as long as those 12 endings to that shitty movie". This is taken to another level when Chris' death, mirroring Boromir's, is humorously prolonged after Chris dramatically collapses, seeming to have died, only to get back up. This happens several times, long enough to piss Burnie off.
• Epic Fail: As Ryan points out, Burnie's plan to catch the killer - although the killer is trapped, there are nine other people trapped in the same building as the killer (who doesn't take long to start murdering them), especially since Burnie himself is trapped there and at risk just as much as anyone else. Burnie admits that he Didn't Think This Through but it's too late now.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Adam's attempt to insult Miles's Ruby Rose dress reminds Miles that Monty keeps an emergency beacon under his desk, which they can use to alert the police.
• Every Episode Ending: Each episode ends with a framed picture of that episode's murder victim, with the line of the poem that relates to their death on a plaque below the picture.
  • The poll for each episode includes an image containing the portraits of all ten party guests. As the story continues, a portrait gets changed depending on who was murdered that episode, and the change in the portraits reflects the murder of the characters. For example, Burnie's portrait gets covered in scorpions, Chris' portrait is riddled with arrows etc.
• Exact Words: The 100% Accurate Minecraft Creeper Suit.
• Exposition: Episode 6 opens with Lindsay going through all the murders from the previous episodes via a segment akin to The Know. Barbara later joins and mentions Ryan being trapped in a hole.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The events of the series happen over the course of a single night.
• Failed a Spot Check: Burnie fails to notice the scorpion on the table right next to the gun he reaches for. He pays for this mistake.
  • If Miles had just looked to the left, he may have seen Adam being strangled to death, and could've stopped it.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Episode 6. Let's just say that the portrait wall was a little bit early that time...
• Fan Disservice: Miles wearing a Ruby Rose costume, complete with makeup and lipstick too. Wow.
  • Also, Ryan is wearing his kilt traditionally.
• Final Girl: Or Final Guy. As the poem ends with "... The killer was killed / And then there was one.", it is implied that the last survivor will end up killing the murderer to save themselves.
  • It does end up being a Final Guy, as Ryan does exactly that to make it out alive.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • Everyone does this after Michael reveals his blackmailing scheme.
  • Also, in the second episode, one of the Gavins' severed hands does this as they're being chewed up by mousetraps.
  • Ryan does this to Miles while playing charades.
  • In the sixth episode Ryan flips off the hole that he was previously trapped in.
• Fluffy Tamer: Lindsay, a Kind Hearted Cat Lover, fancies herself one when she tries to speak to the puma and befriend it, calling it adorable among other things. This gets subverted when she realizes how big and vicious it is.
• For Science!: Allegedly why Shannon died.
  Burnie: That's like one of the top 3 or 4 ways to die.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Whilst it isn't spelled out completely, the poem◊ foreshadows the deaths of nine of the party guests, as well as hinting at how they will die.
  • In episode 2, Burnie explains to Ryan how his character was the first to die in Red vs. Blue after being killed by a scorpion tank. Two episodes later, Burnie gets murdered in a manner reminiscent of his character's death.
  • Just over a minute into Episode 1, Chris quotes the famous Tolkien line "Not all those who wander are lost." As the end of the final episode shows, the final line of the poem that line comes from is "The crownless again shall be king." The Sole Survivor? The Mad King, Ryan Haywood.
  • Ryan's fight with the creeper in Episode 4 turns out to be foreshadowing his fight with Barbara.
  • Barbara's blackmail photo. Blaine was killed by poisoning (the same way that Michael was murdered) and he was the only victim in the blackmail photos to die this way. This is revealed in the finale to be one of the clues for figuring out the killer from the first episode.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Subverted. It seemed that Rooster Teeth was playing this straight (along with What Happened to the Mouse?) to avoid losing the comedy of the series to grief and mourning. For several episodes any character deaths were mentioned in passing, with most living characters seeming mostly indifferent to their co-workers and friends dying off. Then in Episode 6, a grieving and fearful Lindsay recounts the previous 5 deaths in an episode of The Know and Episode 7 has Barbara solemnly playing a rendition of Taps as Animated Adventure depictions of the previous 6 deaths follow "In Memoriam". Though it should be noted that, sans those two moments, the trope is played straight for everyone else.
  • After Michael dies in the first episode, everyone has a brief freakout... then forgets about them in favour of freaking out about the killer on the loose. Even Gavin, who previously ran to his side as he died and his wife Lindsay. And in the next episode, all they get is a passive mention just as a way of clarifying that people who die stay dead.
  • And in episode two, the next victim is Gavin and his clone. The next episode, they only get mentioned from one person to another just to say "They're dead", and neither of them react whatsoever besides Ryan bringing up the possibility that he may have killed them via split personality.
  • Chris doesn't even get mentioned in episode 4 after they have been killed, nor did Burnie in episode 5, although this was because the victim died out of everyone else's sight and was not discovered until episode 6.
• Fourth Wall Psych: At one point in Episode 6, we cut back to the hole Ryan is in as he addresses the camera. The loss of air has really gotten to him...
  Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan from Achievement Hunter, and this is "Things to Do While Dying in a Small Hole from Lack of Oxygen"! (pan out to show the rest of the sunken prop room) ...yep.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Chris, type 2.
• Gambit Roulette: The murderer seems to have a very convoluted plan that involves predicting the actions of 9 persons of varying levels of stupidity while still remaining above suspicion. Additionally, several elements are set up by the killer beforehand that lead to the death of a Rooster depend on some level of contrivance, such as Barbara accidentally activating the gate to the puma cage or one released scorpion ending up exactly in the right place to sting Burnie. Somehow everything falls into place and everyone dies in the order that they were planned to.
• Gaslighting: Barbara is revealed to have planted false clues (such as the Michael and Gavin dolls) to make Ryan think he had developed an Ax-Crazy split-personality as part of her plan to frame him for the murders.
• Genre Savvy: Adam refuses to team up with Barbara in episode 4 in case the killer plans to murder them both at once, since that's exactly what happened to Gavin and his clone. He turns out to be Wrong Genre Savvy, since keeping his distance from others made him easy to ambush and strangle.
  • The killer is very aware of Ryan's reputation, and uses that to their advantage - knowing that Ryan would be the most obvious choice for the killer, Barbara deliberately uses his GTA V outfits as a disguise to make it look like Ryan had been the murder, since the suit would be covered in the blood and DNA of the victims.
• Girly Run: Miles runs like this when he encounters the escaped puma.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: Barbara proposed to break the glass "cage" that Ryan's trapped in by playing her cat keyboard. Ryan immediately points out how stupid this idea is, to Barbara's ire.
• Gorn:
  • The Gavins' death. The result? Organs everywhere.
  • Lindsay's death, as well. Seriously, two heads.
  • And the way Barbara goes out. Everything from the waist up gets reduced to a fine bloody mist on the back wall behind her.
• Gory Discretion Shot: For the murders of the Gavins and Lindsay, only blood and body parts are shown as they are being murdered. However, the audience does get a final shot of Gavin as he dies, suggesting that Lindsay's death was even gorier...
  • Subverted for Barbara's death. The explosion itself is just a flash but we see the aftermath of just legs and a waist remaining and the rest having been reduced to a fine bloody mist.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: In the finale, the exploding Creeper suit leaves Barbara's lower half intact, with her torso up entirely Ludicrous Gibs.
• His Name Is...: Cop!Burnie's partner expires before they can state their killer's name. It is because of this that Burnie hosts the party to try to track down the killer once and for all.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Chris dies saving Burnie in episode 3. The poem stated that the victim would be "martyred".
  • An accidental one is pulled off in episode 7: the puma is approaching Ryan and poised to kill him when suddenly Lindsay calls it off of him, thinking she can "speak puma". It mauls her and presumably Ryan gets away.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the finale, the green screen suit Barbara wears to stalk Ryan throughout Studio 5 is Gavin's 100% Accurate Creeper Suit. It's full of explosives.
• Hypocrite: Burnie gets upset when Ryan reveals that he's never seen a single episode of Red vs. Blue, but then himself messes up the nickname that Ryan got in his Achievement Hunter activities, indicating that he probably hasn't watched any of their stuff either.
  • Gus berates Chris for wearing a Hobbit outfit (with a tie) at a formal event, even though Gus himself is wearing a suit-jacket on top of a t-shirt and without a tie.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode is named "And Then There Were [X]", with the number reflecting the number of remaining Roosters.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Gus gets impaled with a pitchfork in Episode 5.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: The final murder is "One Died of a Pun." The victim is killed by being glued to a treadmill and forced to run until exhaustion, unable to go the extra Mile...s.
• In Memoriam: In-Universe; at the start of episode 7, Barbara plays a song on her cat keyboard to commemorate the fallen Roosters, and the scene is prefaced by a screen with "IN MEMORIAM" on it.
• Inner Monologue: Miles has one in episode 2. It gets weird.
• Ironic Death: Most murder victims have one, as covered by the list under Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Ironic Echo: Several of the crime/victim images revealing who each person killed previously have one of these written on them, often referencing the victim or killer's works. For example, Adam's photo of the dead Kerry reads "The point we just can't take anymore... right, Adam?", which is a reference to both of them working on RWBY.
• Ironic Hell: Ryan ends up trapped in an "Edgar Hole" in Episode 5.
• Irony: The line in the poem "The killer was killed". Barbara wrote that as part of her plan to frame Ryan as the killer and escape as the survivor, but Ryan turns the tables on her and kills her anyways, fulfilling the poem's original meaning.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Miles, in episode 2, declares that he can handle a night trapped with a murderer because he beat The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim eight times and got all the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
• Just Between You and Me: In episode 8, the final survivor does this to the killer, who clarifies everything that happened as part of their master plan. And then Ryan reveals that his hands weren't really bound after all, meaning that he got Barbara to tell everything before attempting to escape.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Michael. The murder is very reminiscent of another famous murder sequence.
  Michael: And if that person tries to kill me...if they...if they try...*coughing fit followed by death*
• Killed Off for Real: The show's creators stated that once someone dies, they stay dead for the rest of the series. Confirmed in-series by Burnie in a discussion with Ryan.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Both Barbara and Lindsay, just like their real life selves. Barbara keeps a "cat keyboard" on her at all times and Lindsay expresses the wish for a cat in episode 2. This foreshadows Lindsay's ironic death when she is mauled by a puma in episode 7.
• The Klutz: Gavin dies from tripping over his clone and getting them both chewed up by mousetraps.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • So much. Burnie can't even get through his dramatic narration of the poem without getting interrupted with these.
  • Also, the Big Bad's monologue gets one.
    Barbara: I don't have time for your continuity questions, okay? I need to do my monologue.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ryan gets what they deserve when he wakes up trapped in a hole with a glass ceiling, exactly like he did to Edgar during Let's Play Minecraft.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Episode 6, we have Lindsay and Barbara doing an episode of The Know as a means of contacting the police about the killings. However, the fact that it has footage of the kills pushes this closer to Breaking the Fourth Wall territory.
• Lethal Klutz: Barbara has several accidents and screw-ups that spell disaster for the survivors, like inadvertently kicking the tripwire that released the puma. This is revealed to be a subversion, as she's the killer and those weren't accidents at all.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Burnie stops screwing around and suits up to track down the killer once and for all, donning armor, weapons, and some cool shades. Sadly, it lasts for about 5 seconds before he perishes from a scorpion sting.
  Burnie: Let's go do some things!
• Let's Split Up, Gang!:
  • This seems to be the plan for most of the guests. The only time that more than two characters are shown onscreen at the same time is in the first episode. Apart from that they're either going solo or randomly bumping into other guests with no plans to form a team.
  • Barbara proposes teaming up with Adam to increase their survival odds, but the latter rejects this out of hand, arguing that their odds worsen that way. His rationale is that he initially teamed up with Gavin, but the killer planned for both of them to die together in a trap, so staying separate is best. Thinking like this gets him killed, as the killer strangling him would have been harder if someone had been around to help him, or if he had properly gained Miles's attention.
• Life Imitates Art: In-Universe. One of the lines of the poem states that one of the guests will be murdered as a result of life imitating art. Sure enough, Burnie gets killed in episode 4 after getting stung by a scorpion, emulating the death of his Red vs. Blue character Church.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Burnie gets one in episode 4 as he prepares to track down the killer, gearing up with katanas, guns, ballistic armor, more guns, grenades, bigger guns, and a wiffle bat. He dies while reaching for yet another gun and getting stung by the scorpion that was next to it.
• Locked in a Room:
  • Like the original novel, everyone is trapped in the studio with the killer.
  • Ryan finds himself trapped in the old prop room, which fell in a sinkhole, in episode 5.
• Ludicrous Gibs:
  • The fate of the Gavins when they fall into the mousetraps.
  • Something similar happens to Lindsay when the puma mauls her.
  • And in the finale, the exploding Creeper suit liquidates Barbara from the waist up.
• Made of Explodium: Gavin's 100% Accurate Creeper Suit is filled with explosives that detonate by Ryan's voice command.
• Madness Mantra:
  Ryan: I'm on a murder break...
• Major Injury Underreaction: Played for Laughs.
  • Burnie yells when bit by a scorpion but goes on to simply say "That was kinda... stingy" moments before dying.
  • Gus has a very subdued reaction to being impaled with a pitchfork.
• Man in a Kilt: Ryan, which he refers to as "the original combat-skirt". And yes, he is wearing it in the traditional manner...
• Meaningful Echo: Chris' quoting Tolkien in the first episode is revealed to have more significance than it first seemed, as the full poem of the quote is shown during the epilogue, which ends with the line "The crownless again shall be king."
• Meaningful Name: See Incredibly Lame Pun above.
• Metaphorically True: The last two lines of the poem read "The killer was killed / And then there was one." Many interpreted this to mean that the killer predicted their own death at the hands of the sole survivor when they wrote the poem. Barbara actually meant that she wanted Ryan (the virtual "killer") to be framed for all the real murders, leaving her as the last one standing. It's Barbara that meets her demise in the end, however.
• Mind over Matter: Ryan seems to think he's developed telekinesis after questioning his involvement in the deaths of Michael and the Gavins.
• Mind Screw: In episode 4, Ryan hallucinates fighting someone wearing a Creeper suit while having a nervous breakdown. After beating the Creeper and knocking its head off, the head explodes open and reveals his head inside of it. He is understandably unnerved by all this.
• Mirror Character: The reason why Barbara was trying to mess with Ryan's mind and make him think he was crazy - Ryan's natural sociopathy meant that he would have figured out Barbara from the beginning, so she needed a way to distract him.
• Mood Whiplash: Frequently. Even though it's a murder mystery with a serious plot, it's a Rooster Teeth murder mystery, so the drama is sprinkled with Lampshade Hanging and humorous quipping.
• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: In episode 7, Barbara uses her cat piano to pacify the advancing puma.
• Never Split the Party: Double subverted. Adam rejects an offer to team up with another Rooster, asserting that the killer is planning on people coming together so he can kill them since that's exactly what happened to Gavin. They pay dearly for this mistake. Of course, the Rooster that makes the offer turns out to be the killer, so perhaps it's more delaying the inevitable.
• No More for Me: After Ryan starts hallucinating a Creeper-person slapping the shit out of him then exploding on the ground, revealing his face, he looks at his can of Diet Coke, visibly disturbed. Not a moment later he passes out too. After this whole ordeal and getting trapped in a hole in the following episode, Ryan says it'll be the last time he'll drink Diet Coke... for that day at least.
• No OSHA Compliance: Even disregarding all of the killer's deliberately lethal actions, Rooster Teeth Studios is apparently an unsafe workplace, since there are no emergency exits and Joel is allowed to keep several species of poisonous animals in his office for some reason. There is also apparently a live puma locked in a studio lot with only a chain-link fence protecting everyone, and one wonders why Monty feels the need to have an emergency police beacon under his desk "in case things get really crazy".
  • On top of that, the building's foundation is extremely unstable, with an entire room falling through a sinkhole. Rooster Teeth's solution? Build another room on top of the first one in only half a month and ignore the issue completely.
• No, You: Michael and Barbara get into one of these, leading to Michael declaring the infamous "omni-directional dick-suck fest" line.
• Not His Sled: It was confirmed that while the series follows the basic premise of And Then There Were None, it would not use its original ending, both to make it easier for those playing at home to follow along with, and to keep viewers familiar with the original in the dark.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Ryan's attempts to stop himself from getting murdered can count as this:
  Ryan: Can we talk for a minute?! You like killing people, I like pretending to kill people - we can work this out!
• Not Worth Killing: The murderer initially seems intent on burning Chris to death, but after seeing how troubled and divorced from reality their victim is, they just leave, either out of genuine pity or because of this.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Barbara's "accidents" and "goofs" turned out to be part of her plan to kill everyone.
• Obviously Evil: A silent stranger in a black skull mask and leather jacket appears, wielding a lighter and a jug of gasoline. He must be a herald of good news.
• Once an Episode: Adam gets his beard stuck in something or vice versa. A fork, a door, a microphone, another door...
• Once More, with Clarity: All throughout Episode 8 as Barbara, the mastermind, monologues to Ryan, secured with one of his own ties, on the set of the podcast.
• Only Sane Man: Played with. Initially it appears as if Miles is the most normal of the bunch, as it's not certain whether he even had a past crime due to the missing photograph (unlike the others). He seemingly undergoes Sanity Slippage, as he starts sporting Slasher Smiles starting with episode 2 and sees nothing wrong with dressing up as Ruby Rose to help him survive, yet at the same time he's the only Rooster who continually does the sensible thing: attempt outside communication to get help. Everyone else quickly gives up on that count and just hides or tries looking for the killer by themselves.
  • Burnie, jerkass though he may be, comes the closest to playing this trope straight, considering he's actually an undercover cop. He's actually presented as the only credible threat to the killer. This makes the ease of his murder even more surprising, failing to notice a conveniently placed scorpion on his desk.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Chris' death in Episode 3, which took three arrows and a whole lot of fake outs for him to finally die.
  • In episode 3, the little montage of clips showing Miles dressed as Ruby Rose goes on for thirty seconds. Granted, it isn't as long as most examples, but the content can make each second feel agonizingly embarrassing or utterly hilarious.
  • The death of episode two, if it can be considered a "gag". Possibly justified in this case since it was in slow-motion, since it was the Gavins dying.
  • Sort of with Gus' death. Those reaction and murderer holding weapon shots were hilariously cheesy.
• Parlor Games: In Episode 3, Ryan and Miles play a game of charades to get Miles to put on his headset.
  Miles: Two words. Sounds like... [Ryan flips him off] "Go fuck yourse-." Oh, you want me to put on headphones.
• Person as Verb: In Episode 6, Lindsay refers to Chris' death as "getting Boromir'd".
• Plot Hole: The show's creators highlighted the rule that there's only one survivor left at the end, and the survivor can't be the same person as the murderer. All very well and good, but the poem in the series - which was written by the murderer - says the same thing, which means that either the killer wrote that for the sake of the poem, or they've already predicted their own death...
  • The finale reveals that when the poem stated that "The killer was killed", Barbara meant that Ryan was the one who was supposed to be framed for the murders since everyone thought that he would be the killer.
• Pointless Band-Aid: After being freed from the door, Adam has a bandage in the middle of his beard.
• Poison Is Evil: The Big Bad poisoned both Michael and Blaine.
• Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo: As revealed in the finale, Michael was poisoned through Barbara's champagne glass. She poisoned her own champagne and waited for Gus, who was drinking beer, to bring it to Michael when the opportunity for a toast emerged.
• Poor Communication Kills: Things might have turned out very differently if Chris had answered Burnie's vitally important question ("You saw the murderer?! Who is it?") clearly instead of making it sound like his Lord of the Rings fantasies. May be justified by Chris being a Cloud Cuckoolander.
  • Things might have also turned out very differently if Adam had yelled at Miles when he saw him in Monty's room, not whisper.
• Precision F-Strike: In episode 6.
  Ryan: Fuck you, hole...
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In the finale, there are two. Only one is successful.
  Barbara: Get ready to hunt achievements...in hell.
  Ryan: Barb damn you, Barb.
• Psycho Smirk: During Burnie's narration of the murder poem, when he gets to the "[...] The killer was killed [...]" part, the screen cuts to Ryan doing this. Ryan immediately takes offense that his face got picked for this purpose.
• "Psycho" Strings: Adam says he's started wearing noise-cancelling headphones to drown out any of these he might hear. He and Miles then imitate some in a conversation on classic horror movies. The same chords they imitated then play for real as the killer murders Gus. Ironically, more subtle "Psycho" Strings play as Adam is strangled to death in the proximity of Miles.
• Punny Name: A meta one which doubles as an Actor Allusion: Mark Keys, Cop!Burnie's dead partner, is played by Aaron Marquis.
• Quizzical Tilt: The silent masked stranger can only do this to Chris being Chris.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Gus is deeply into his feminine-sounding poetry, surprisingly enough.
• Red Herring:
  • In both the figurative and literal sense - one of the possible murder weapons is a literal red herring.
  • The narration of the killer's poem shows different Roosters at each death clue, hinting that they will be the victim at that point since each plausibly fits the description. Gavin lampshades this when it's his turn, saying it can't be the same people they keep showing because that would be too obvious.
  • Some initial suspicion is cast on Gus; he is conspicuously absent for episode 2 and claims to have been working the whole time in episode 3 yet seems highly secretive of what's on his computer screen. It turns out that he was just writing poetry the whole time and he gets offed in episode 5, confirming that this lead was false.
  • In episode 5, Ryan is found trapped in the Edgar hole and, by episode six, he's slowly running out of air. As he apparently runs out, it cuts to his picture... which falls off as glass is heard breaking and Ryan ends up climbing out.
  • The blue ringed octopus as a murder weapon - despite not being used to kill the victim in episode 6, it was accepted as a correct answer in the poll leading up to that episode because it worked so well as a red herring.
  • In a way, the prominence of RWBY merch and posters in the background could be seen as one by those people who thought it hinted towards Miles (who has been wearing the Ruby Rose costume since Episode 3) being the Sole Survivor.
  • Of the list of murder weapons, only the actual red herring, bathroom scale, the power of math, the Crescent Rose Scythe, and a slow-motion explosion were not used, mentioned or alluded to in some form.
  • According to the journals Josh posted after the series ended, Miles turned out to be the biggest Red Herring of the entire series as most of his possible deaths listed in the poem could actually work around certain things connected to him.
• Retraux: The intro and music are very similar to ones used in movies form the 1950s/'60s.
• Revenge: The reason why the party was happening in the first place — Cop!Burnie's partner was killed by the murderer years ago, and his dying wish was to be avenged, so Burnie held the party in order to get his hands on the killer.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: In episode 5, Adam points out mid-conversation with Miles that he very well might be talking to the killer. Miles asks "Do I look like a serial killer to you?" with an unsmile and creepy makeup on.
• Right-Hand Cat: Played with. Barbara carries around a cat piano which she used to train the scorpions and the actual puma.
• Running Gag:
  • Adam's beard getting trapped into things and vice-versa.
  • People flipping the bird.
  • Barbara trying to solve everything with her cat piano. Turns out to be she's using the piano to control her animal minions.
• Rule of Funny: All of the deaths rely on this to some extent, whether it be through unrealism or Stupid Sacrifice.
• Rule of Three: It took three arrows in order to kill Chris in Episode 3.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Michael in the first episode; their death just sets the tone for there being a murderer out and about.
  • The Gavins in the second episode may also count, with their gorey death proving that the murderer is not fooling around.
• Sanity Slippage: Whilst nobody seems to be completely sane to begin with, you get the sense that some people are starting to lose their grip on their sanity one would expect from being locked in an inescapable place with the promise that all of you will be murdered one by one, having no clue when you'll go, and until then having to watch your friends die.
  • Miles is easily the first to go this way in episode 2, gaining a Slasher Smile when he decides it's time to "put on The Suit". Episode 3 reveals that "The Suit" was the Ruby Rose costume. However, despite this, he is notably the only one to keep attempting outside communication so that the police will be summoned, which might make him more level-headed than his co-workers who hide, try to find the killer alone, or just write poetry during the crisis.
  • Ryan definitely has the most prominent moments of sanity slippage from episode 3 onward. First he thinks he might be the killer after questioning his involvement in the deaths of Michael and the Gavins. In episode 4 he starts talking to himself, posters and some dolls to try and reassure himself that he didn't commit any murders, then he hallucinates a Creeper attacking him. He really loses it in episode 6 after being trapped in the underground prop room, possibly due to the lack of oxygen in the room.
  • Lindsay gets stuck in an imagine spot stroking an imaginary cat, and later is hiding out in front of a green screen and acting like she's actually in the environments projected onto it. Also she pets a mounted deer head. Her other attempts to hide or blend into other work environments show that she's slowly but surely losing it, though she too at least attempts to contact the outside world and tell them to call the police as well. Ultimately it manifests in her belief that she can "speak puma" and while she saves Ryan from a terrible fate she dies quite horribly.
  • Adam's is more subtle than any of the above, but it's there. Initially, he's really confident and gung-ho about stopping the killer himself, but after finding his emergency bow-and-arrows stolen and seeing the Gavins' death, he loses all composure and spends all his time hiding. As more and more Roosters start dying, his hiding strategy devolves into wearing dark clothing and pressing himself flat against dark walls "like a mollusk". He also starts wearing noise-cancelling headphones to drown out any scary background music he might hear.
  • Barbara's had happened even before the gathering took place. Through studying Gus' poetry she believed herself to have 'ascended puns' and therefore was above everyone else at the company - therefore they all needed to die. She does a good job of not actually showing it though.
• Scare Chord:
  • One is played in episode 3 when Miles sees Ryan wielding a hammer through the door of the sound booth.
  • Discussed in episode 5, where Adam mentions that he's wearing noise-cancelling headphones to "make things less scary" and drown out any of these.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Miles is so far off gone, he's gone into this in episode 6. Of course he is getting chased by a puma at the time...
• Screw Destiny: Episode 6 shows Ryan slowly running out of air in the hole. The scene fades. The death portrait is shown... Ryan isn't having any of that though and breaks free as the portrait falls from the wall.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Miles looks prepared to fight the puma when it confronts him, only for him to realize he's way over his head, toss his rapier and run like a little girl.
  • In the finale, this is Played for Laughs. After standing around being pelted by fruit for about a minute, Ryan gets bored/tired of it and leaves the room.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Chris' death is this seeing as Burnie dies the next episode.
• Serious Business: Episode 1 contains a blackmail scheme and the murder of Michael. To say things escalate quickly would be an understatement...
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Lindsay thought they could speak puma. Nope.
• Split Personality: Miles thinks that the killer is Ryan using a second personality in order to take out his sociopathic tendencies on everyone. It's not.
• Sole Survivor: The poem and the rules state there will be one. The question is who survives. It ends up being Ryan.
• Spanner in the Works: Burnie had the killer dead to rights... if Chris would have just hurried up and died.
  • Miles has the plan to go seek out Monty's police beacon, only to forget all about it as he's mesmerized more by the mocap of Adam being strangled and thinking otherwise.
  • Barbara's plan to frame Ryan as the murderer hit two snags: using a tie to bind them and mistaking the 100% Accurate Creeper Suit for a green screen suit.
• Stock Sound Effects: The sounds of the Puma are the classic Hollywood big cat sounds. Most likely deliberate.
• Story-Breaker Power: Chris, possessing a magical sword that glows whenever the killer is near, obviously had to be taken out of the story before he was reunited with the main cast, otherwise it would have been impossible to keep the killer's identity secret.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Gus's largely nonsensical poetry just so happens to coincide exactly with what Lindsay is doing, slowly but surely losing her mind as she ineffectually searches for places to hide.
• Stylistic Suck: The puma.
• Taking the Bullet: Chris takes an arrow for Burnie. Several times in a row.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: It's a Whole-Plot Reference to this, with the twist that the killer is one of the victims.
• The Un-Reveal: Miles' crime/blackmail photo. Twice.
• The Unsmile: Miles's smile towards the end his monologue in Episode 2 is...disconcerting. He also tries smiling reassuringly to Adam, which has the exact opposite effect.
• Together in Death: The show's creators said that whatever happens to Gavin must happen to his clone as well - if one gets murdered, then the other one must die in the exact same way at the same time. This happens to be their fate in episode 2.
• Too Dumb to Live: A lot of people avoided choosing the Gavins as the victims of the second episode as they assumed the writers would subvert this trope to make the mystery more difficult. Turns out they played it straight as the Gavins did indeed die second.
  • Miles's death could have easily been avoided if he just placed his feet on the treadmill rails. This is extra jarring, since partway through his execution he even tries this, only to slip off of them and not re-attempt it again.
• Undercover Cop Reveal: Burnie reveals himself as one to Ryan in the second episode.
• Villain Ball: Barbara uses a slip-on tie as a way to hold Ryan's hands together, which he could easily escape from. Ryan even lampshades this.
• Visual Pun: Burnie's death. He gets stung by a scorpion, then the camera pulls up to reveal the Scorpion Tank "Sheila".
• Wham Line:
  • More like a Wham Sound, but Episode 6 leads us to assume Ryan died in the hole (even cutting to his portrait prior to it)...and then we hear the sound of glass breaking.
  • In the finale, after the survivor has been revealed and the credits have rolled, Tolkien's "All that is gold does not glitter" poem — the same poem that Chris quoted in the first episode — appears onscreen. All the lines of the poem fade from the screen except for the last: "The crownless again shall be king." Not only is this a clever reference to Ryan being the last one alive, but it also turns Chris' offhand comment into a huge Chekhov's Gun, meaning that viewers could have predicted the survivor from the very first episode.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Did nobody think to pick up Michael's gun? Though to be fair, firearms and other weapons have been picked up around the office, so it may have just been seen as unnecessary.
  • The gasoline and lighter the killer was holding in Episode 2 seemed important at the time, only to not crop up again.
  • In the first episode everyone gets an envelope that contains evidence for blackmail except for Miles, who just find doodles of dicks in the envelopes he receives. Whilst the situation is mentioned again in the finale as Barbara misplacing Miles' blackmail envelope, it's never revealed what was originally supposed to be in Miles' envelope.
  • See Forgotten Fallen Friend above for people examples.
  • In Episode 6 and 7, the objective of Miles is to locate the emergency distress beacon beneath Monty's workstation. Shortly after reaching their destination, said person gets distracted by the disturbing motion-capture video (for the wrong reason) and leaves, seemingly forgetting all about the beacon.
  • The puma is forgotten about after mauling Lindsay.
• What Would X Do?: In episode 2, Miles utters "What would Ruby do?" as he's trying to figure out how he can survive. Cue him singing the RWBY theme.
• Wimp Fight: Ryan's fight with the Creeper. All they do is slap Ryan around a bunch as he meekly tries to defend himself. When Ryan actually starts to fight back, he knocks them out in one punch. This foreshadows his fight with Barbara, who also fights like this.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Cop!Burnie was trying to track the killer down even before the dinner party and it seems that with his training, he's the most qualified to take the killer out. All his experience, preparation, and weaponry don't save him when a scorpion stings him.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Chris, due to his obsession with The Lord of the Rings, keeps thinking like he's in a high fantasy despite really being in a murder mystery. For instance, in episode 2 he encounters a mysterious figure wearing a skull mask in a dark hallway. Instead of assuming this person is the killer and running like a sane person would, he assumes they want to challenge him to Riddles in the Dark. He also ultimately screws up Burnie's confrontation with the killer by having an overly long and dramatic death sequence which physically blocks Burnie's line of fire.
  • We see in the third episode that, rather than taking a stand or actively searching for the murderer, a lot of the employees are doing the most reasonable thing: hiding and waiting for the cleaning lady to come in the morning and let them out. This ends up working against Gus, who is impaled by the murderer, and Adam, who is strangled by the murderer.
  • Adam's decision not to team up with Barbara and merely hide winds up leaving him open for ambush by the murderer. Though given that Barbara was revealed to be the murderer, it wouldn't have made much difference.
  • Miles has convinced himself that by acting like Ruby Rose, he can make himself the hero of the story, and thus, the Sole Survivor. Although he does last until the final three, his determination isn't enough to help him survive the treadmill trap.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Burnie says this in exasperation as Chris keeps taking arrows dramatically for him, getting in the way of his attempts to apprehend his killer.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Chris finds the killer in episode 2 and goes to tell Burnie, but his warnings are brushed off because Burnie thinks he's just babbling about Lord of the Rings. Same thing happens when Chris claims the killer is nearby because his sword starts glowing.

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The killer was killed... and then there was one.