Western Animation / The Legend of Vox Machina

"We're Vox Machina. We fuck shit up!"^note Clockwise from top-left: Pike Trickfoot, Vex'ahlia, Vax'ildan, Grog Strongjaw, Keyleth of the Air Ashari, Percy de Rolo, Scanlan Shorthalt

The Legend of Vox Machina is an Animated Adaptation of the first campaign of Critical Role. The series is produced by Titmouse, and is distributed exclusively on Prime Video in weekly batches of three half-hour episodes, starting from January 28, 2022. Season two aired on January 20, 2023 in the same format, and a third season is in production.

The series follows the adventures of the eponymous adventuring party as they deal with past enemies and new ones, making a group of Fire-Forged Friends and True Companions out of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. In Perpetual Poverty and down on their luck, Vox Machina has a reputation for being constant screw-ups among mercenary groups, and it's a reputation that they're looking to shed. They get the chance once a wanted poster to deal with a deadly opponent appears: the fearsome blue dragon Brimscythe. But a dragon quickly becomes the least of their worries, as old enemies and new ones begin to come to the surface.

Related media:

• The Legend of The Legend of Vox Machina: A behind-the scenes series that explores the production of the show: plot, worldbuilding, character design, casting and voice direction. Available on YouTube via the Critical Role channel.
• Crew and A: A 6-episode mini-series that interviews some of the staff members of the series on their career, involvement with the series, and personal favorites regarding the world of Critical Role and TTRPGs in general.
• Animation101 with Sam Riegel: A short video explaining the process of creating an animated series.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: Whitestone Chronicles: An upcoming series of prequel graphic novels. Written by Marieke Nijkamp with art by Tyler Walpole.
  • Ripley: To be released in 2024.
    Tragedy strikes the renowned de Rolo family of Whitestone when they’re massacred by the vicious Briarwoods. Luckily for Dr. Anna Ripley, the bloodshed and regime change presents the perfect opportunity for her to further her own dark plans in service to Whitestone’s new ruling family. But just how much of her loyalty lies with the family, when compared to her work?
• Mighty Nein: A yet-unreleased spin-off adapting the second campaign of Critical Role.

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The Legend of Vox Machina and its related media provides examples of these tropes:

#-D

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Used on occasion to draw attention to specific objects or characters, such as the dragon Brimscythe being a 3-D model as he attacks the 2-D humanoids.
• Abusive Parents: Syldor, Vax and Vex’s father, is a racist, emotionally abusive parent. After Vex accidentally breaks an elven diadem while trying it on, he berates them for being "diluted", telling them they will never fit into elven society and that they were mistakes.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Averted in Season 2 Episode 1, where Gilmore allows Vox Machina to take whatever they want from his ruined shop, no payment necessary, as dragons destroy the city.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Brimscythe was a juvenile or young adult in the campaign, making him somewhere between large to huge sized (approximately between the size of a horse and that of an elephant). Here he is MUCH larger, looking more like an ancient blue dragon in terms of size.
  • Downplayed with the Briarwoods. In the game, they were Glass Cannons capable of dealing immense amounts of damage, but neither of them have the defense or fortitude for sustained combat, and they were much easier to hit in gameplay than villains from when Vox Machina were higher-levels. Here, they have much more staying power, with Sylas inflicting a near-effortless Curb-Stomp Battle on Grog and Delilah not taking a single hit in their first battle.
  • In the original webshow, Goran Vedmire was only a mild threat to Scanlan when the latter raided his mansion, and was defeated and captured offscreen by the people of Whitestone. Here, Scanlan barely makes it out with his life during the first encounter with him. Later, Goran returns leading a pack of giant zombies, nearly kills Scanlan again and kills Archie in combat.
  • In the stream, the fight with Captain Stonefell and his guards was a total Curb-Stomp Battle in Vox Machina's favor, as they obliterated most of the guards and Stonefell in a surprise round without taking much damage in return. In the show, the fight is a more intense prison break with the guards putting up more of a fight and several resistance members dying.
  • During the fight at the ziggurat, Percy's pepperbox pistol never once jams or misfires. On the stream, this was a common occurrence with both guns, to keep them from being too overpowered. When the fight turns from "Vox Machina versus the Briarwoods" to Percy versus Cassandra and the rest of Vox Machina, he doesn't reload and gets off more shots than is realistic, which is lampshaded by Vex saying "he has to reload sometime, right?", implying supernatural assistance.
  • The Vestiges of Divergence in stream are better than average D&D items, but have to be exalted over time to reach their true potential, and even then they fall short of true artifacts like the Sword of Kas. In the show, they are truly legendary items, much flashier and more powerful than even their fully exalted in-game counterparts.
  • The Chroma Conclave are truly unstoppable, with Vox Machina completely helpless in the attack on Emon and even unable to visibly damage Umbrasyl in their final encounter until Scanlan deals the killing blow. In the stream, they were still ancient dragons, but Vox Machina was able to put up a decent fight against Vorugal during the attack on Emon, force Umbrasyl to flee from the Herd, and eventually take him out in his lair in a straight fight. Individually, they are even larger, stronger, and tougher than they were in the stream, with Umbrasyl in particular displaying much more intelligence and magical ability than he did in-game. Thordak, meanwhile, goes from a souped-up red dragon with mostly standard abilities to a true Kaiju of monumentous size and a laser-like Breath Weapon that can level half a city.
• Adaptational Context Change: Percy’s famous “your soul is forfeit” line is now said during his interrogation with Desmond instead of during the fight with The Broker. This turns the line from a raging bellow into a menacing Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
• Adaptational Deviation: The web video and animated versions of Archibald Desnay have nothing to do with each other. The original Desnay is a crotchety, stern, kind, dark-skinned human(oid) old man, a philosopher and ex-chancellor of Lord de Rolo. The animated Desnay is a gruff, young, light-skinned dwarven rebel leader nicknamed Archie who grew up with Percy.
  • In the original stream, during the fight at the ziggurat, Delilah hits Vex with a Finger of Death spell, nearly killing her outright. In the show Keyleth leaps to Vex's defense and takes the hit instead.
  • The "bidet" Running Gag (Grog confusing it with "good day/g'day") is introduced in Vasselheim instead of Syngorn.
  • Highbearer Vord serves the Lawbearer in the show, instead of the Platinum Dragon. This could be due to Writing Around Trademarks (the Platinum Dragon being very clearly D&D's Bahamut) or to avoid a potential plot hole, as a high-ranking Cleric of the Arch-Enemy of chromatic dragons would've been far more likely to offer aid.
• Adaptation Distillation: This is a show that takes over four hundred hours of content from Critical Role and cuts it down to a few half-hour episodes. Some omissions had to be made.
  • The prestream portion of the story is condensed into their encounter with Brimscythe (which is faithfully adapted), omitting many adventures, including their encounter with the Dread Emperor.
  • They first meet Sovereign Uriel as simple mercenaries taking a contract. In the game, they saved him and his family from a powerful demon’s mind control.
  • The show also has them meet the Briarwoods immediately after beating Brimscythe, omitting the pre-stream Time Skip and the Underdark arc of the stream. The show's second arc, the introduction to Vasselheim, is incorporated into season 2.
  • As the Kraghammer and Slayer's Take arcs were skipped over, a few of the more memorable encounters were still shown to have happened as the party have a campfire chat about their "strangest kills".
  • The fight with Count Tylieri, the Briarwoods' vampiric minion, was removed and the battle with Professor Anders was moved from Whitestone Castle to fill its place.
  • The season finale has the arrival of the Chroma Conclave come directly after the conclusion of the Briarwood arc, skipping over several episodes' worth of downtime in Emon.
  • In Season 2, the group obtains a Broom of Flying from the ruins of Gilmore's Glorious Goods. In the stream, Vex stole it from a guest player's character slightly later in the arc.
  • Vax’s Boots of Haste are completely absent from the animation. Instead, their abilities are folded into the Deathwalker’s Ward.
  • Similarly, Trinket's "Pokeball" necklace was originally one of Purvon's possessions and contained Galdric, his wolf companion. To avoid complications, Zahra carries it in the show. She ordinally imprisoned an eye monster within it, but later gifted it to Vex.
  • In the show, the Fey Realm and Westruun arcs happen simultaneously due to a malfunctioning Plane Shift spell splitting the party. In the campaign, all of Vox Machina took on the Westruun arc together and went to the Feywild after defeating Umbrasyl.
  • The fight against Umbrasyl, and his eventual death, also adapts Scanlan's Character Development and awakening of Mythcarver, something which occurred in the City of Brass sub-arc much later in the campaign itself. As a result, it's Scanlan who gets the killing blow instead of Grog, in a moment similar to his killing of the Pit Fiend Ghurrix in the campaign.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Grog and Scanlan both get hit with this, with their cunning and skill being downplayed in favor of their immaturity and crassness. Grog especially falls into this, which is rather notable since he was already very dumb in the source material. He goes from uneducated and single minded to flat out childish and stupid, to the point that he’s often a liability to the party.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Lady Kima shows up as an associate or member of the Council of Tal’Dorei during the party’s first encounter with them. In the game, finding her at the request of Allura was the subject of their first streamed arc, and her connection with Allura was her only link to Tal’Dorei.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The first two episodes are an adaptation of one of the adventures of the Vox Machina campaign that occurred before the campaign was being streamed as Critical Role, and was only ever recapped for the viewing audience.
  • Since her player no longer has other commitments that limit her involvement, Pike is now much more prevalent in the Whitestone arc. She leaves the party in Episode 4 to try and restore her severed connection to the Everlight, but the show occasionally cuts back to her tribulations at the temple.
  • A flashback of the Briarwoods shows how Delilah ended up "breaking the world" to be together with Sylas again, using necromancy to revive him as an undead in desperation after he passed away.
  • The beginning of Season 2 Episode 4 adapts the story of how Vex and Trinket met, which was originally a few pages of backstory Laura gave to Matt and later shared on Twitter.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Percy is more arrogant due to his rich upbringing than he was in the original web show, and openly admits that he's embarrassed to be associated with the rest of Vox Machina. At least part of this seems to come from his simmering anger issues over his Dark and Troubled Past and tendency to bottle them up, rather than let them show, making him all-round irritable at his current circumstances. By Season 2 in the wake of the Briarwoods defeat, he's noticeably mellowed out.
  • Zahra and Kashaw both fell into Jerk with a Heart of Gold in the stream, with a heavy emphasis on the "heart of gold", and were fully supportive allies of the party during the Sunken Tomb adventure. In the show their alliance is more pragmatic, and they plan on abandoning Vox Machina to their deaths if it means getting the Vestige first.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • In the stream, Lady Kima was a paladin of Bahamut from the holy city of Vasselheim. Here, she's a member of the Council of Tal'Dorei, which is on a whole other continent.
  • Jarett Howarth is a Captain of the Arms of Emon instead of a mere guard at Greyskull Keep for Vox Machina.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Scanlan, while as much a Lovable Pervert as always, no longer openly lusts after and sexually harasses Pike. In fact, when the two share a Held Gaze after a battle in the first episode, Scanlan is the one to turn away and blush.
• Adaptation Personality Change: In Critical Role, Pike is a polite, motherly Nice Girl who mostly kept her vices under the surface. In the show, while still a kind and compassionate person, she's also a crass, somewhat short tempered lover of alcohol who's far more likely to be involved in the wacky antics of the party. This actually end up becoming a plot point, as Pike is secretly worried that indulging in her vices and 'sins' alongside the party, despite being fun, is unbecoming of a follower of the Everlight, believe she has to be more in line with her original characterisation to be worthy of her Incorruptible Pure Pureness abilities. This doubt eventually ends up severing her connection to the Everlight when Pike's holy symbol is cracked, as Pike subconsciously lacked faith in herself to still be capable/worthy of said powers even with a damaged symbol.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In the original game, Lady Allura was very friendly with Vox Machina by the time of the Briarwood arc. Here, she barely knows them, and their exploits are much less impressive by Episode 3. As such, this version of Lady Allura is barely tolerant of Vox Machina.
  • It's the other way around with Zahra. In the campaign, she met the party as a stranger and ended up becoming Fire-Forged Friends with Vex. In the show, she and Vex already knew eachother from prior jobs.
  • In the campaign, Scanlan was a member of Dr. Dranzel's troupe as part of his backstory. In the show, they meet for the first time in Westruun.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Downplayed by Ripley. She was always a horrible person, what with serving the Briarwoods and spreading guns throughout Exandria, but here she scrys on Vox Machina and tells Umbrasyl about their hunt for Vestiges. She sat out the Conclave's domination of Tal'Dorei in the original stream, believing that people would rise up to take them out.
  • Instead of the Beholder being an independent denizen of the Sunken Tomb as in the campaign, Zahra actually summons it (well, a copyright-friendly substitute called an Onlooker) to fight Vox Machina so they can steal the Vestige. In fact, Zahra was the one who killed it on-stream. She does help fight it and apologize afterwards, however.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • In the original web video, Percy managed to sit through the entire dinner with the Briarwoods with his rage just under boiling point. In the series, Percy eventually snaps at Delilah’s taunting, roaring that she is a liar after she slandered the de Rolo family. Justified in that the circumstances surrounding the dinner differ significantly from those in the original. In the stream, Percy knew in advance the Briarwoods would be attending, and was disguised as Vax upon dining with them. Here, he was completely blindsided and therefore couldn't prepare himself mentally or emotionally.
  • Vox Machina in general gets hit with this. Due to the accelerated timeline of events, they are facing the Briarwoods as still-coming-into-their-own adventurers with a weakness for synergy, and are infamously known for being an incompetent group of adventurers instead of seasoned badasses with several incredible achievements and nearly a year of teamwork experience under their belt. This is especially notable in the first battle with the Briarwoods, where only Percy and Grog are able to land one strike each on Sylas, while Delilah escapes unscathed; in the original stream, Vox Machina nearly killed Sylas and dealt a decent amount of damage to Delilah before the Briarwoods had to flee.
  • Keyleth and Pike get hit with it pretty bad, being unable to even use their magic without significant amounts of mental struggle and anguish. The stream, by contrast, played by D&D rules where all it takes to cast a spell is to have it available, and the spell automatically succeeds unless resisted or otherwise interfered with by some outside agency. This becomes subverted in the latter's case after she gets the Everlight's blessing, and Keyleth develops confidence over time.
  • Grog and Scanlan especially get this compared to the stream. The show, however, de-emphasizes Grog and Scanlan’s guile and skill in favor of their humorous comedic relief traits. This is downplayed in Scanlan’s raid on Vedmire's house; in the stream, it was some very poor rolls from Matt (at least three natural ones during the encounter) and some clever improvising from Sam that allowed Scanlan to get out relatively unscathed, while in the show Scanlan survives by the skin of his teeth, and gets badly bloodied and wounded. Scanlan did however exhaust all his spell slots and was unable to offer any assistance after, to either the party or the rebelling towns people, so it's likely the change was done to convey the same amount of effort in an adaptation where magic users lack the spell slot limitation.
  • Downplayed with Orthax. While just as dangerous as before, in the original web series, Orthax was capable of leaving the host's body if it wanted to engage in combat. Here, he requires being in the host's body to fight.
• Adapted Out:
  • Due to Orion Acaba leaving Critical Role during the first campaign, Tiberius is completely absent from the show. The show gets around this by adapting the first quest of the home game, and skipping over the majority of the adventures that Tiberius was part of, with Orion originally departing a few episodes into the Briarwood arc.
  • In the web series canon, Percy had six siblings: Julius, Vesper, Ludwig, Oliver, Whitney, and Cassandra. Here, Ludwig seems to be missing; we see Julius, Oliver, and Whitney, (the latter two have also been made younger than Cassandra, who was originally the youngest) and Percy name-drops Vesper at one point.
  • The vampiric servant of the Briarwoods, Count Tylieri, is removed from the show; Countess Jazna Graben, another minion of the Briarwoods, is also removed, though she was also The Unfought on stream and was rather quickly executed by Grog when she finally appeared.
  • The third living member of Allura's old adventuring party, the dwarven elementalist Drake Thunderbrand, doesn't appear. He is notably absent from the flashback that does show the other five members of the party.
  • Kevdak's right hand man, Greenbeard, is completely absent.
  • One member of Dr. Dranzel's band, the elven vocalist Eselmyr, is absent. Downplayed in that she had no speaking lines in the original stream.
• Advice Backfire: In "The Feast of Realms", Vex advises Percy that emotions are not to be bottled up and that he could do with cutting loose once in a while. It backfires horribly. Percy snaps at the dinner table after having had enough of Delilah Briarwood slandering the murdered de Rolo family. Later, his usual restraint gives way to unbridled rage as he rounds on Vox Machina for "letting" the Briarwoods get away, and then brutally shooting off Desmond's fingers to find out why the Briarwoods left Whitestone.
• Aerith and Bob: All of Vox Machina have fantasy or otherwise atypical names... and then there's Percy.
• Affectionate Nickname: Vax likes to call Pike "Pickle" and Keyleth "Kiki" though it's obviously out of affection and neither seems to mind.
• After Action Patch Up: After Vox Machina help to close the rift in Zephra, Kima and Allura are seen patching up the former.
• Age Lift:
  • In the original stream, Cassandra was the youngest of the de Rolo siblings. While her age remains the same in the adaptation, two of her and Percy's siblings (presumably the twins Oliver and Whitney) were made younger than Cassandra, shown to have been children when they and the rest of the de Rolos were killed.
  • In addition to other changes, Archibald Desnay is a young dwarf around Percy's age, rather than the very elderly man he was on the original stream.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • In "The Terror of Tal'Dorei, Part 1", an orc who tries to pick a tavern fight with Vox Machina loses a hand courtesy of Grog's battle axe. Grog even asks Vax if he can keep the severed hand.
  • After the Briarwoods escape in "The Feast of Realms", Percy shoots off the hand of their carriage driver Desmond when he starts giving answers that Percy doesn't like.
  • Percy shoots Kerrion Stonefell's arm off before killing him in "A Spark of Rebellion".
  • In "The Tide Of Bone" Scanlan's forearm has a chunk torn out of it by one of the Zombie horde besieging the town of whitestone, an act that is particularly devastating for him due to the size difference. His arm is left barely functional afterwards and quickly starts turning necrotic, with Keyleth estimating he has less than an hour before it rots completely, with the rapid decay either being caused by the black magic animating the undead abomination or simply being bitten by something as unsanitary as a rotting body. Grog even offers to chop the arm off completely before it gets any worse, but rather than stopping Scanlan from turning into a zombie, it's merely so the rot doesn't poison his body as well as his arm. Luckily, Pike returns and swiftly heals the wound before it gets any worse.
  • Percy blows off Goran Vedmire's leg at the knee when he tries to flee the fight, making sure he's incapacitated so the citizens of Whitestone can take their revenge on him for all the misery he's caused them, and to avenge Archie as well.
• Anachronism Stew: Discussed in one of the interviews, when Sam Riegel talks about the worldbuilding and whether things like glass windows and indoor plumbing exist. Percy's prototype firearm has a quickload device. A fancy party has champagne flutes (invented in the 1700s, in a style that comes from the 1900s). This was most likely done deliberately because Exandria is a fantasy world with magic, and the timeline is neither accurate nor relevant to that of the audience's world.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Vasselheim is world's oldest and most defensive city. Is the home to many ancient secrets and different religious factions of patron deities. It's advantage sits on its very isolated geographical position on the continent of Issylra.
• Animesque: The series has a typical anime intro with an animation similar to Sakuga style, characters fighting enemies they will never meet in the show, solo character shot and all the main characters doing the typical Team Shot watching the sunset. The character designer is none other than Phil Bourassa, who also did Young Justice (2010) and DC Universe Animated Original Movies, and some of animation renderings were made by Production Reve, which is specialized in other Animesque shows like Voltron: Legendary Defender, DOTA: Dragon's Blood and The Legend of Korra.
• Artistic License – Biology: Trinket is incorrectly shown with digitigrade rear legs in "The Terror of Tal'Dorei, Part 2". Bears have plantigrade feet, meaning the heels of their feet rest on the ground like a human's.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Percy gained the nickname "No Mercy Percy" from fans of Critical Role due to his brutal kills and willingness to be more intimidating than his fellow members of Vox Machina. In this show, the music track in "A Spark of Rebellion" where Percy destroys Kerrion Stonefell's weapon, shoots his arm off, and then empties his gun into him is titled "No Mercy Percy".
  • Similarly, Scanlan earned the nickname "Scanbo" for his one-man rampage upon Vedmire's manor in the original stream. "Scanbo" is track 27 on the score album, and the title of episode 7.
• Ass Shove: Done twice.
  • The first time is when Grog has to take a comically large suppository after he loses his muscles.
  • The second time is when during a battle with a dragon in the penultimate episode of Season 2, Vax and Scanlan shove themselves up the dragon's ass to attack it from the inside.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Inverted in the party's first encounter with the dragon Brimscythe, where Percy suggesting everyone run was followed immediately by Grog's vehement "Fuck that! We fight!"
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Crops up a few times, mostly from Scanlon. Justified as music is his weapon, and his stronger spells are more fast-paced and his lute starts sounding like an electric guitar.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • Vex and Vax stand back-to-back on the Kickstarter trailer, first as part of a group shot and again when their names appear onscreen.
  • Keyleth and Vax also stand back-to-back as they fight off undead hordes in Whitestone.
• Bag of Holding: Vox Machina has a plain bag which seems to fit things far larger than the bag itself. Axes, sniper rifles, mounds of magical treasures, whatever, if they have it, it fits in there.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Series-wide. Episodes 1 and 2 deal with Vox Machina investigating and uncovering a plot using a blue dragon to attack and destabilise Tal'Dorei, including a traitor inside the council working in tandem with the attacks to eliminate the Kingdom's military might. The team encounter evidence that there were multiple parties involved in the scheme and it's clear that the plan's success was only part of a larger overarching goal, with Uriel even arranging a diplomatic banquet to entry allies from other kingdoms to land their aid to discovering the purpose of the attacks, but from episode 3 onwards, the plot instead deals with Percy's Dark and Troubled Past with the Briarwoods, who attend said meeting to apparently further their own, separate, plans involving Whitestone and swiftly become hostile towards Vox Machina thanks to their beef with Percy. Then season one ends with the Chroma Conclave arriving at Emon right as everything looks to be wrapping up.
  • In episode one, Vex senses the beast approaching and warns everyone to be on their guard. The bush in front of them rustles, and out jumps a baby lamb. Grog starts laughing and making fun of Vex for the "mistake". The lamb prances off and gets brutally crushed underfoot by the actual beast, Brimscythe.
  • As Grog is fighting an opponent, Percy (having finally joined the fray) yells for him to step aside in order to get a clear shot with the Pepperbox. Grog does, but the gun jams.
  • Traveling through a creepy forest, Vex notices they are being tracked. Percy stops the cart. Vox Machina gets off, readying themselves for battle. Dog shadows approach, whimpering and drooling. Friend to All Living Things Keyleth approaches the creatures, calling them "poor little puppers" and "little guy" and asking if it's hurt. Cue three undead canine abominations attacking Vox Machina.
  • Delilah strikes at Vex in retaliation for a lucky shot that pierces her arcane defenses. However, it’s Keyleth who takes it as she jumps in its path to protect her, nearly killing her.
  • For a brief moment, Scanlan seems convinced by Percy's argument that Orthax has been destroyed and the Pepperbox can be used as a normal weapon. He makes as if to hand the gun back, then then wheels around and chucks it into the acid vat instead.
• Bar Brawl: Instigated by an orc in the pilot episode who insulted Keyleth, then Vox Machina, and got his hand chopped off for it. Cue melee as the orc's crew and Vox Machina charge at each other.
• Barred from Every Bar: As part of Vox Machina's Establishing Character Moment, the party ends up getting banned from every tavern in Emon after their antics caused a lot of collateral damage without being able to pay due to being in Perpetual Poverty.
• Beam-O-War: In "Whispers at the Ziggurat", Delilah Briarwood and Pike shoot beams at each other—dark necrotic energy and light energy, respectively.
• Bears Are Bad News: For opponents of Vox Machina, Trinket—a fully armored bear loyal to Vex—heralds nothing good. In his first appearance in battle, he bashes through a wall when summoned, then effortlessly catches a bar brawler in his mouth and carries them out.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Episode 3 has Vex tell Percy that emotions aren't meant to be bottled up, and suggests that he should cut loose once in a while. The end of that episode has him explode in pent-up rage, yelling at Vox Machina for letting the Briarwoods get away, viciously interrogating Desmond and blowing his fingers off when he doesn't give Percy the answers he wants.
• Being Good Sucks: After the Bar Brawl, Pike suggests doing "some good" when their previous job prospects paid them pennies. She is met with an emphatic "Nah" (plus Grog chiming in "BORING!") in reply, with Percy stating that they can't afford to have morals.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Scanlan (a Chivalrous Pervert in this adaptation) repeatedly accuses Sir Fince (who he finds creepy and that the party suspects is in league with the blue dragon) of having sex with farm animals.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Keyleth is the most nervous and indecisive member of Vox Machina. But when her friends are in danger, she can pull off feats of magic greater than any of them, like calling down gigantic lightning strikes and creating massive walls of rock-solid vines.
• Black Comedy: A large degree of it, as sometimes funny moments happen during fights when people are being brutally killed or maimed. Particularly done when Keyleth is relating her strangest kill during their adventures, where she blew a duergar into a pit of lava and pushed him further in in order to get him to stop screaming.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: When Orthax exerts his influence, Percy's sclerae turn pitch black and his irises turn gold. The plague doctor mask hides this.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Saundor has pitch-black eyes without irises. It seems to be the result of The Corruption, as when Vex falls into and snaps out of his thrall, black ichor seems to spread into and recede from her Mind-Control Eyes.
• Blade Reflection: Grog often sees the reflection of his own face when he's wielding Craven Edge. This is especially poignant when he's looking in horror at the blade for the harm he's wrought with it.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Vax, caught going through the Briarwoods' things, attempts to claim that he was in the room to turn up their covers and had forgotten the pillow mints, then tries to flirt with them, then straight up says he has to go and tries to dash through the Briarwoods. They buy exactly zero percent of it.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted with Percy's guns. He finds out his Pepperbox is out of bullets as he tries to fire at the Briarwoods' retreating carriage and has to reload for his interrogation of Desmond.
  • Played Straight while he is possessed by Orthax. He just keeps firing without needing to reload, which Vex brings up at one point, noting that he should have run out of bullets by now. The combination of the pepperbox apparently gaining unlimited attacks and Percy being physically augmented by Orthax directly controlling him after three targets on the list have perished makes him more than dangerous enough to keep the rest of Vox Machina running for cover, especially since they don't want to resort to lethal violence against him. Apart from Grog. During the Twitch watch party for the last three episodes of Season 1, the cast remarks on how much easier it was to script and storyboard episode 12 because they didn't have to worry about averting this trope as opposed to carefully keeping track of Percy's bullet use and reloading throughout the rest of the season.
• Bond One-Liner: During the storming of Anders' estate, a Pale Guard tries asking Vex for "private lessons", admitting it's "a long shot". Then she shoots him in the head through his own arrow:
  Vex: Wasn't a long shot, really.
• Canon Foreigner: Bryn, played by Stacey Raymond, participates in the Whitestone uprising and is original to the adaptation.
• Cant Hold Their Liquor: Keyleth only had one mug of ale in a drinking contest, and then it all comes back up as she throws up onto the floor.
• Call-Forward:
  • Vex and Grog use an early version of the "fluffernutter" (shooting a projectile at a flying source of fuel and lighting it on fire, in this case a flaming arrow and a barrel of ale) during the fight in the prison. Jester Lavorre and Nott the Brave would later shoot a flaming crossbow bolt at a wooden keg filled with black powder, calling the technique "fluffernutter".
  • In "Pass Through Fire", Vex tries to guess the incantation that will make the broomstick fly, listing "Viridian" as one of the possibilities. "Viridian" is the name Keyleth's mother Vilya (who appears in flashback earlier in the same episode) took on when she lost her memory on Rumblecusp, as discovered by the Mighty Nein in Campaign 2.
  • In "The Fey Realm", Garmelie calls himself "merely a traveler on this journey." In Campaign 2, he would walk the material plane in a God Guise known as The Traveler.
• Cassandra Truth: Percy tried to tell many people over the years about the massacre of his house, but no one believed him. He is reluctant to try again until Vox Machina successfully persuades him.
• Catapult Nightmare: In Episode 3, Percy's Past Experience Nightmare ends with him gasping and quickly sitting up in bed, grabbing his neck (his dream-self having gotten a knife slice in the neck).
• Civilization Destroyer: Season 2 opens with 4 mysterious ancient dragons completely obliterating Emon, the capital city of an entire continent. Thordak, a fire-breathing dragon, tells the survivors their monuments should fall and their civilization erazed before destroying the Royal Palace with his shout.
  Gilmore: This could be the end of civilization as we know it.
• Childhood Friends: Percy and Archibald "Archie" Desnay grew up together, with Percy being the son of Lord de Rolo and Archie's father working in Castle Whitestone's kitchen.
• City in a Bottle: Syldor moved Syngorn to the Fey Realm to avoid the Chroma Conclave's wrath by using the powerful plane-shifting system of the city.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Season 1 ends with warning bells tolling as four ancient chromatic dragons descend on Emon, ready to wreck the city.
  • The third episode of season 2 ends as Vex dies from Percy setting off a trap, with Vax cradling his sister's body in his arms while crying.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Archie is subjected to this, as the Briarwoods wants to know where Vox Machina is. Both Kerrion Stonefell and Goran Vedmire seem to relish the violence and are equally brutal, but Stonefell is more brutish while Duke Vedmire is a Soft-Spoken Sadist, even Wicked Cultured, as he suggests that Archie "engage in a stimulating conversation" while torturing the rebel leader.
  • Percy and Cassandra de Rolo endured weeks of torture before they attempted to escape Whitestone.
• Clear My Name: Vox Machina tries to translate Delilah Briarwood's book, and then travel to Whitestone proper, in order to prove that they were justified in attacking the Briarwoods at Uriel's dinner.
• Closest Thing We Got: Lampshaded in the Red Band trailer. After the "chosen warriors" are unceremoniously butchered by an offscreen force, the narrator reluctantly asks "Who else have we got?" Cut to Vox Machina drinking, and even in-universe, the higher-ups of Tal'Dorei are reluctant to entrust them with the fate of the world.
• Code Name: The Whitestone rebellion's spy on the inside is codenamed "the Kestrel".
• Coin Walk Flexing: Vax impresses a little boy by deftly moving a silver coin through his fingers. Gilmore later does the same thing when Vax and Pike visits his shop.
• Covert Pervert: Battle-hardened, jovial, and actual dragon General Krieg doesn't seem the type to have a gigantic, practically nude painting of a dragonborn woman hanging in his office. Although given that it turns out to be a portal that leads directly into Brimscythe's horde, this may have been an addition made by the dragon.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In Episode 2, the Arms of Emon come under attack by the blue dragon Brimscythe. The dragon wipes the floor with the army, ripping through the soldiers and showering the ground in their blood. Even two guards who say "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" get picked up by Brimscythe and dropped to the ground, killing them instantly. Meanwhile, Brimscythe himself doesn't take a single hit. This is because General Krieg is Brimscythe, and knew exactly what the troops were going to do.
  • In Episode 3, Vox Machina faces off against the Briarwoods. Sylas's vampiric abilities allow him to make short work of Vax while withstanding everything Grog throws at him, while Delilah's black magic proves more than equal to Keyleth and Pike.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: While Vox Machina get their collective ass handed to them by the Briarwoods, Grog's axe being enchanted with Pike's holy energy leaves a cut on Sylas that his Healing Factor can't recover from. Grog even says "I'll bet that hurt!" after the wound doesn't close. Keyleth also prevents Sylas from grievously injuring (or even killing) Pike with a well-placed wall of thorns.
• Creator Cameo: In addition to voicing Trinket, Sylas, and other characters, Matthew Mercer appears as a beleaguered elf (or possibly a set of identical elven brothers) who finds himself/themselves a victim(s) of Vox Machina's shenanigans:
  • Episode 1: He is putting up a help wanted poster when Scanlan accidentally pisses on his clothes.
  • Episode 2: He is carting barrels of ale, one of which Grog and Scanlan hurriedly appropriate to hide from Fince.
  • Episode 3: He is placed in charge of keeping weapons in storage for banquet attendees. When Vox Machina lose the tickets for their belongings, Grog throws him across the hall.
  • Episode 4: He is drained of his life force and killed by the wraiths that Lady Delilah Briarwood sent to retrieve her spellbook (that Vox Machina had managed to swipe). Lending evidence to the "group of brothers" theory as he reappears next episode.
  • Episode 5: Already having an eyepatch, he gets crushed to death by a giant in Whitestone.
• Death by Adaptation: In episode 9, both Archibald Desnay and Goran Vedmire are killed off, the former being bisected by the latter, and the latter being Killed Offscreen by the townsfolk before his corpse is hanged from the Sun Tree. Both characters survived in the original campaign, though Archibald was also pretty much an entirely different character than he is here.
• Death Glare: If looks could kill, Percy wouldn't need his pepperbox pistol to kill the Briarwoods as he glared daggers at them across the table during the banquet.
• A Death in the Limelight: The third episode of season two puts a lot of focus on Vax's relationship with Vex, his dependence on her, and their childhood together. At the end of the episode, Vex dies as one final flashback of her and her brother plays.
• Death of a Child: One of the many kid-unfriendly things the show features is the bloodied and burnt corpse of a child. Two other corpses of children are shown hanging from the Sun Tree as effigies of Scanlan and Pike, and the corpses of Percy's two young twin siblings are nailed to a wall by arrows in Percy's flashbacks.
• Decoy Protagonist: The opening narration of the pilot episode leads us to a group of adventurers out to defeat a great evil. They are all killed in less than a minute.
• Demoted to Extra: In the original campaign, Seeker Assum Emring was one of Vox Machina's major allies among the Tal'Dorei Council. Here his only appearances are non-speaking cameos, and his major role as the one who Raishan impersonated is instead given to Keeper Yennen.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The behind-the-scenes series The Legend of the Legend of Vox Machina all have titles in the format of The Legend of the X of the Legend of Vox Machina. It's taken to an extreme with The Legend of the Voices of the Legend of Vox Machina, where Machina is the only word not repeated, as "vox" is Latin for "voice".
• Diagonal Billing: The twins Vax and Vex are billed diagonally on the Kickstarter teaser trailer, making it hard to tell which is which.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: The young boy at the Shale Steps dies in Vax's arms after Pike tries and fails to heal him.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Vax confesses love to Keyleth during a zombie battle, and she does not reciprocate after the battle is over, citing duty to her aramente. By source material, they would not officially hook up until much latter.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!: The undead direwolf Delilah summons to retrieve her journal is barely fazed by being hurled down a cliff and bisected on the rocks below. Its front half simply gets up and runs off with the book on its own.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • The Story of Vox Machina states that during the campaign, Brimscythe died when Vax'ildan sliced down its neck. In the show, while Vax's throat slash heavily wounded Brimscythe, the dragon didn't die from it; instead, an axe to the skull by Grog splits Brimscythe's head down the middle.
  • In the original web series, Orthax was killed in combat by a combination of Grog and Trinket. In the cartoon, Orthax retreats into Percy's gun after Percy shoots himself to dispel Orthax's control of his body and is dissolved alongside Percy's weapon after Scanlan throws it in acid.
  • In the campaign, Grog got the killing blow on Umbrasyl, smashing his head in almost the exact same way he kills Brimscythe in the show. So to avoid redundancy, he's instead killed by Scanlan awakening Mythcarver.
• Disney Death: Scanlan goes off the cliff after the chase with the canine abominations. Vex tries to pull the rope that she had shot for him to grab onto, but it's revealed the rope had snapped off. For a moment Vox Machina thought their bard was dead. Then, he rises up over the cliff, standing on Scanlan's Hand.
• Distracted by the Sexy: In Episode 2, Grog gets distracted by a nude dragonborn woman in a painting. Keyleth gets angry at Grog for being "gross" and throws a book at him, which hits Grog in the back of the head and vanishes through the painting, revealing that it's a portal.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Saundor sweet-talks Vex and preys on her trauma to seduce her into giving him her heart, until the moment she rejects him. He makes a token protest (that disparages her judgment) and she rejects him again. Without missing a beat, he then calls her a bitch, says she's just like the rest, and physically attacks her. This calls to mind real-world incel behavior, fitting for a character whose stream counterpart has been referred to as "an acrimonious tree spirit with deep-seated toxic masculinity".
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The Kickstarter trailer used a rearranged version of "Your Turn to Roll" from the second streaming campaign, and was written by Sam Riegel (music and lyrics), with vocals from him, Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, and Ashley Johnson. "Your Turn to Roll" is used extensively in the score as a Leitmotif for Vox Machina, and the title sequence is a rousing orchestral arrangement/variation by Neal Acree.
• Do with Him as You Will: Percy blows off Goran Vedmire's leg at the knee when he tries to flee the fight in Episode 9, making sure he's incapacitated so the citizens of Whitestone can take their revenge on him for all the misery he's caused them, and to avenge Archie as well. All Vedmire can do is insult the townspeople before he's bludgeoned to death by the angry mob.
• Dragon Hoard: Vox Machina finds one after going through a portal in Episode 2. The party is initially ecstatic, since they were in Perpetual Poverty beforehand and there's a literal mountain of gold in front of them. However, after the shock wears off, Vex realizes that "this gold didn't fall out of the fucking sky", and that they're in a dragon's lair. Sure enough, Keyleth gets the group spotted moments later.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Vox Machina plays a drinking game in their introductory scene, chugging tankards of ale, befitting their status as a band of mercenaries.
  • Boisterous Blood Knight Grog handily wins, then stands up and cheers when he does. His face isn't flushed from alcohol in spite of having won repeatedly, showing he has a strong constitution.
  • Naïve Newcomer Keyleth can't hold her liquor and chucks it all up even though she'd only had one, after blatantly claiming she isn't drunk and that they should go to another bar.
  • Percy isn't participating, instead standing off to the side sipping a glass of wine, establishing him as nobility and slightly standoffish. He's also the only other Vox Machina member besides Grog whose face isn't flushed from alcohol, marking him as more restrained. However, during the drinking contest, he watches with a slight smile on his face and dryly announces the victor, showing that he's at least somewhat willing to indulge in the others' antics.
  • This stands in sharp contrast with Vax'ildan, the Designated Point Man serial impulsive risk-taker who openly wonders why they keep playing drinking games with a guy who always wins, and Vex'ahlia, his more calculated, scheming, and practical twin, who retorts that it's the quickest way to get drunk.
  • Team Mom Pike, a badass gnome stronger than she looks, only starts to develop a flush after she has finished chugging her latest drink. She also starts rubbing Keyleth's back after the latter starts vomiting.
  • Scanlan isn't participating because he's too busy bedding the bartender's daughter.
• Due to the Dead: After laying Brimscythe low, Vax leaves behind the bloodied silver coin from the boy he befriended at the Shalesteps, whom Brimscythe killed, and declares "We got him, kid." before taking his leave.

E-L

• Early-Bird Cameo: Shortly before the party's showdown with Brimscythe, Keyleth discovers a wall with four magical stones embedded inside of them, and as she approaches, green reptilian eye appears in one of them, followed by a voice that called out "Intruders!" before the stones immediately break. This is Raishan, a member of the Chroma Conclave; she shows up in the first episode of Season 2, and recognizes Keyleth from the cave.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The trailer for the Kickstarter has some differences from the actual show, like Vex's dress being a darker blue, Keyleth wearing a different headdress, Percy having a different hairstyle and coat, and Grog's Facial Markings being different. Perhaps the most notable change is Sovereign Uriel, who's portrayed in the trailer having a head of shaggy brown hair and goatee but in-series is bald with a full white beard.
• Endless Winter: Keyleth describes Rimecleft as a place of eternal cold.
• Enmity with an Object: Vox Machina's natural enemy is a locked door.
  • In one case, Scanlan tries to charm the lock with magic, Pike fails to detect any magical countermeasures, and Keyleth tries to melt the lock using the wrong spell and only manages to set Scanlan on fire instead. Vax manages to pick the lock with a simple toothpick.
  • Even Vax claims that a particular locked door is cursed after he breaks his lockpicks, while Scanlan cuts his hand trying to open it with a blade and fails to break it down with a casting of Scanlan's Hand (technically Bigby's Hand) shaped like a foot, and Percy ends up falling out of a window when he tries to bypass the door entirely. They only get in once a guard opens the door to empty a chamber pot.
  • When trying to set fire to Goran Vedmire's mansion as a gigantic distraction, Scanlan is discovered pretty much the second he entered and runs into a series of these in his attempts to flee his pursuers. The one door he does find that opens turns out to lead to more guards. Later, his rampage against the guards as a Forced Transformation victim is brought to an abrupt halt when he tries to charge down a door to freedom, only for the spell to run out and his normal squishy gnome head to make contact with the solid wood instead.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first appearance of Vox Machina at the Emon tavern serves to establish their personalities:
  • Grog slams down a tankard of ale and boasts to everyone around him.
  • Percy wryly watches from across the room while sipping on wine.
  • Vax complains about the drinking game before getting into an argument with an obnoxious orc and spends the subsequent Bar Brawl stealing swigs of ale and coinpurses from unaware patrons.
  • Vex bickers with Vax during the bar brawl, then tries to talk her way out of paying her party's tab (and the damages to the tavern) to no avail.
  • Keyleth proves herself to be a naive lightweight who Cant Hold Their Liquor and barfs repeatedly.
  • Team Mom Pike tends to Keyleth as she yaks and tries to caution her adoptive little brother Grog against starting a fight.
  • Scanlan is nowhere to be seen during the brawl. He's too busy bedding the tavern keeper's daughter.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Brimscythe and Sylas, natch. Percy's voice also drops down low when he holds Desmond at gunpoint thanks to Orthax's influence.
• Evil Virtues: Sylas and Delilah Briarwood are very evil, and very, very deeply in love, like an evil Morticia and Gomez Addams. When no healer could cure Sylas' disease, a distraught Delilah turned to the dark arts and made a pact with the Whispered One that turns Sylas into a Vampire, preserving him. Everything they do - though they relish in it - is because there's nothing Delilah won't do to stay with Sylas. Once Vox Machina kill Sylas, Delilah has no fight left in her.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Scanlan, captured by one of the canine abominations, yells for Vex to shoot the creature. Vex shoots, and the arrow arcs over Scanlan's head. He shrieks "You missed?!?" before it's revealed that Vex shot a rope arrow for Scanlan to grab onto.
• Exact Words: After Vax tells an orc "I'm only asking you to give me a hand" in episode one, the Literal-Minded Grog obligingly chops said orc's hand off.
  • When Kamaljiori tests Vox Machina by asking them to hurt him for the first time in his life, they all oblige. All of them fail, except for Scanlan who successfully hurts the sphinx, not with violence or brute force, but through a beautiful ballad about the love and longing for each other that Kamaljiori and Osysa share.
• Extreme Close-Up: The camera zooms closer and closer into Percy's face at an odd angle as he stands horrified a moment after seeing the Briarwoods again.
• Extreme Omnisexual: By his own admission, one of Scanlan's life goals is to "bed every being in the realm" and he's not ashamed. This gets taken to whole new levels when the gang is trading stories of their weirdest kills. Scanlan's starts off with him having sex with an attractive woman which the rest of the team remarks isn't very weird. The flashback then continues to show the woman growing a terrifying second head out of her shoulder as she's climaxing. According to Scanlan, he still finished.
• Eyed Screen: Black shadows cut off the top and bottom of the screen when Percy sees the Briarwoods, leaving only his eyes and a bit of his face in view.
• Face–Heel Turn: Percy and Cassandra are shown embracing their trusted tutor, Professor Anders, right before he and Kerrion Stonefell throw them in a jail cell.
• Face Palm:
  • Percy's reaction to Grog Flipping the Table and beginning the Bar Brawl in episode one.
  • Allura melts down into a double face palm in reaction to Scanlan stalling for Vox Machina to go save Vax at the feast in episode 3.
• Failed a Spot Check: Arcana check, in this case. Keyleth is the only one to notice Sylas magically persuading Uriel against sending troops to Whitestone. She looks around to see if anyone else caught on, but no one remarks on it, and her party members are otherwise occupied.
  • Percy misses several signs that he unwittingly made a deal with a vengeance demon. The names of his targets etched into the gun barrels of his pepperbox magically burn off when he kills them, and he begins to emit black smoke when he's particularly focused on a target of his revenge. Keyleth at one point openly asks about the smoke, and Percy dismisses it as the residue of black powder from his gun. (Taliesin Jaffe remarked during a Q&A about the show that Percy is repressing a lot, in general, which is probably why he doesn't look at the matter more closely; at one point Pike outright warns him that something is clouding his soul, but Percy refuses to deal with it because they're too close to finally killing the Briarwoods.)
• Fanservice: While the show doesn't shy away from showing sex and nudity explicitly, it's usually Played for Laughs and not taken too seriously. Which makes the portrait (secretly a portal) of a nude dragon-like humanoid woman that Vox Machina finds in General Krieg's office in "The Terror of Tal'dorei, Part 2", with her back and derrière turned towards the observer for their viewing pleasure, particularly stand out, especially with how the scene is cast from Grog's perspective.
• Fastball Special:
  • In "The Terror of Tal'Dorei, Part 2", Scanlan uses his magic music to create a big hand with which to fling Vax towards the blue dragon so that he can Attack Its Weak Point.
  • In "The Tide of Bone", he does this move to throw Grog, who descends and bisects an enemy.
• A Father to His Men: Doubling with Reasonable Authority Figure. Captain Howarth returns their weapons and lets Vox Machina go to Whitestone in order to avenge the guards killed by the wraiths.
• Favors for the Sexy: Since they're low on money, Vex sends Vax to go ask Gilmore for information on blue dragons because they have a thing. Sure enough, Vax's flirting and two silver buys him what little Gilmore knows.
• Fighting from the Inside: Percy struggles with this throughout episodes 11 and 12 as Orthax asserts control over him and tries to get him to kill not only the people on the List but also Vox Machina when they attempt to stop him.
• Fish People: The Adaro who watch the tomb made for the Matron of Ravens. The have even a mage among their warriors.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Percy's bullets just ricochet harmlessly off the animated armor. So what does he do? Just keep shooting! Justified, as his only other gun is a single-shot weapon, and Percy isn't shown to be adept with any form of hand-to-hand combat or method of projectile weaponry that isn't his pepperbox. He does eventually find the armor's weakness and shoots the joints, which does indeed render the armor inert, but it takes him a while.
• Flawed Prototype: Percy's Sniper Rifle, Bad News, is capable of taking down a zombie giant in a single shot... Which also splits the barrel.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • After Vox Machina gets thrown out of the bar, Percy gripes about someone accidentally decapitating the last person who hired Vox Machina while Grog busies himself with making a chopped-off hand flip the bird.
  • When Vax snarks at him about translating Delilah's tome, Scanlan responds with a middle finger. Vax responds in kind with two middle fingers, and he and Scanlan flash them back and forth at each other.
  • While fighting Duke Vedmire, Scanlan uses Scanlan's Hand to parry his sword with a middle finger. After besting him, Scanlan departs riding atop his magic hand, which is flipping another bird.
  • Ripley gives Delilah Briarwood the middle finger as the latter makes a disparaging comment.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The ancient champion of a death goddess resonsible for guarding her most powerful armament is named Purvan. Vox Machina immediately make jokes about people he perved on.
• Flynning: Scanlan's strategy for the duel on the rooftop mostly involves using his magical hand's middle finger to parry and block Vedmire's sword blows. This backfires when one of Vedmire's blows actually breaks the hand and leaves Scanlan on the backfoot.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Right after Sir Fince suggests capturing the beast that was terrorizing Tal’Dorei, the camera cuts to General Krieg looking unimpressed. General Krieg is actually a disguised blue dragon, the beast in question.
  • When Vex senses the dragon's presence amongst the council members arguing amongst themselves, the camera focuses upon Fince looking down upon them sinisterly. In the background, General Krieg is also looking their way.
  • When tracking down the beast's last known location, the team are surprised by it in the misty woods almost like it was waiting for them. As the dragon is really Krieg, he knew they were coming and was ready to ambush them, which is why none of the other mercenaries succeeded either. The reveal that the dragon has a human form is also hinted at by the fact its tracks turn into human footprints shortly before the team are attacked by it.
  • The reveal that the blue dragon is intelligent and not a mindless beast attacking everything in its path is hinted in the beginning of Episode 1, when it crushes one of the heroes arrayed against it with a thrown boulder, showing both its lateral thinking skills and sadism. When Pike conjures a holy barrier between Vox Machine and itself, the dragon instead fires a blast at the cliffs above them, causing a landslide that apparently buries everybody alive, demonstrating that it knows how to use the environment against its enemies rather than solely relying on its overwhelming natural strength.
  • In the beginning of the second episode, General Krieg gives his soldiers a Rousing Speech but then completely disappears and isn't seen fighting the dragon when it shows up later, yet claims he was present when telling the Council about the attack. As said above, Krieg is actually the dragon, explaining how he would have this knowledge despite not being seen during the battle.
    • During the self-same speech, Krieg comments that they need to finish setting camp, because 'a storm's blowing through tonight'. When he reveals himself as Brimscythe to Vox Machina, he proclaims himself 'The Iron Storm' revealing it was actually a veiled threat to the soldiers.
  • Also at the beginning of episode two, Allura mentions she has experience with a red dragon, not a blue one, teasing the Chroma Conclave arc and Thordak.
  • When entering Krieg's residence, it turns out to be quite an opulent and luxurious mansion, with a framed picture of himself posing heroically in the main foyer. This shows that Krieg is a lot more egotistical and materialistic than his earlier appearances indicated, hinting at the reveal that he's not at all what he appears to be.
  • As Vox Machina search underground chambers for a villain's escape route, there’s a shot of an insignia on the floor consisting of five different colored dragon heads, teasing an Arc Villain from about halfway through the original stream.
  • Delilah eats and drinks through the feast, but Sylas is only ever shown slicing the steak and pushing things around on his plate. As they pass a mirror on their way to their room, Sylas casts no reflection. This builds up to The Reveal that she's a necromancer and he's a vampire, as they corner Vax and Sylas bites him and eliminates the confusion in the original stream where the chat and fandom spent a long time believing both Briarwoods are vampires.
  • As Vax searches the Briarwoods' belongings, he finds Delilah’s journal, complete with mentions of the Whispered One.
  • When Pike approaches the temple of the Everlight to restore her connection to the goddess, the head priestess tells her, "The Everlight accepts you as you are." Sure enough, the source of Pike's disconnect from the Everlight stems from her belief that she's failed to live up to the standards of what a pious cleric should be. She reconnects with the goddess's power when she realizes that she can be her true rowdy self and do good in the Everlight's name at the same time.
  • In Percy's flashbacks to him and his sister Cassandra's attempted escape attempt from the Briarwoods, she's killed by being shot In the Back by two arrows, a relatively mild death compared to most of the on screen violence depicted against others, including a younger child being viscerally burned to death by Brimscythe's electricity. Sure enough, episode 6 reveals that the wounds weren't fatal, and Cassandra has been living with the Briarwoods ever since.
  • In episode 5 there is what seems to be a simple side gag breather moment about Scanlan being unable to control a spell scroll that causes him to shapeshift randomly. He later gets a handle on it in clutch moment by singing the incantation instead of saying it to turn himself into a Triceratops and cause havoc in an enemy strong hold, and notes he needs to memorise the spell which D&D players will recognise as Polymorph in its more Animorphism-on-self mode rather than it's turn enemy into something weak mode.
  • In episode 7, When Percy describes how he made the pepperbox, he explains that he inscribed the names of his targets along the barrels, listing Stonefell, Professor Anders, Anne de Ripley and the Briarwoods. Scanlan notes that his pepperbox has six barrels, and questions him over who the 6th one is for, but they're interrupted before Percy can elaborate. Looking at the wall right after Scanlan asks the question, Percy's shadow can be seen pointing the Pepperbox at his own head despite the actual Percy pointing the gun at the ceiling. In episode 12, Percy ends up pointing the gun at his own head in desperation when Orthax starts pushing him towards attacking his loved ones, unable to think of any other way to stop himself. Said episode also spells out that if Percy kills any more targets on the list, his soul will belong to Othax, thus committing suicide in a roundabout manner.
  • Percy's pepperbox has a magazine size of six rounds. Throughout the season, he's never shown firing it more than six times before needing to reload...except when he's confronting a person whose name is on the List. He shoots Captain Stonefell seven times without reloading; during the encounter with Professor Anders, he fires eleven times before he's shown reloading his pepperbox and then another eight times after. During all other combat, he reloads after the usual six. The pepperbox gains Bottomless Magazines whenever Percy is under Orthax's influence; during the season 1 finale, Vex notices that Percy is no longer having to reload his weapon when Orthax forces him to turn on the rest of Vox Machina. Keyleth confirms that by that point, Percy is only one List kill away from losing himself completely to Orthax.
  • Upon discovering a room with a lot of white powder, Scanlan is convinced they just found a drug factory, grabs two handfuls of the stuff, and asks if anyone has a pipe. Percy slaps the powder out of Scanlan's hands and explains that it's residuum and would make an unpleasant trip. This hints at Scanlan's later struggle with suude, a drug made from refined residuum and smoked with a pipe.
  • The Title Sequence opens with a raven flying over Emon, which splits into six golden threads that seek out the members of Vox Machina from across Tal'Dorei. In "Belly of the Beast", Vax communes with the Matron of Ravens, a goddess who explains these threads represent Fate, and she has the ability to use them to guide people towards their destiny — such as by bringing Vox Machina together, as the opening sequence suggests.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Orthax, the shadowy entity that Percy made a vengeance pact with, can be seen briefly behind him in the opening.
  • Vax goes down so quickly because on top of all the blood loss courtesy of Sylas biting and slashing him as well as the broken glass, he hit a flag pole on the way out of the window, breaking it in half.
  • A quick shot of Percy and Cassandra's hands as they reach out for each other while fleeing reveals they have no fingernails.
  • Percy names the five people who are listed on his pepperbox. When Scanlan asks Percy who the sixth barrel is for, Percy doesn't answer. However, Percy's shadow on the wall is pointing the gun at his own head.
  • The dark figure that rushes towards Pike in Episode 8 has a skull for a face, three purple eyes, and some wrappings adorning its visage, all matching iconography attributed to Vecna's portrayal in the show as the Whispered One.
• Friend to All Children: Vax easily befriends a young boy in a village near the dragon attacks, showing him his sleight-of-hand magic tricks before giving him one of the party's few silver coins as a parting gift. He takes it very hard later on when the boy dies in his arms after the dragon lays the town to waste, and is quick to recommend making another attempt at killing the dragon.
• Gaslamp Fantasy: Downplayed, but beneath the plate armour, swords and other medieval fantasy trappings, the setting is aesthetically Victorian at its core with 1890s fashion (most obviously seen in the Briarwoods and Professor Anders) and actual gaslamps.
• Gender Bender: In episode 5 Scanlan plays around with a spell scroll he has been carrying with him, he says the incantation and it turns him into a frog, then a Unicorn-Hippocampus, then a tall Elven female version of himself which leaves Grog "confused, and aroused". He is able to dismiss the spell but not before being impressed with his looks in female form.
• Gender Flip:
  • Keeper Yennen goes from an older man with a thick white moustache and receding white hair, to an older woman with dark skin and curly grey hair voiced by Gina Torres in the adaptation.
  • In Season Two, Highbearer Vord of Vasselheim is also recast as a woman, voiced by Sumalee Montano.
• Genre Savvy: The heroes stock up on anti-vampire weapons (enchanted arrows, wooden stakes, and garlic, as well as a vial of holy water Gilmore upsold them) and steal a cart for the long journey to Whitestone. It's All for Nothing, as their supplies and cart go over a cliff from the battle with the canine abominations.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: A BSOD-ing Percy gets slapped in the face by Vex. He doesn't even react to the slap (as shown by his crushing the wineglass in his hand at the feast and not reacting, Percy has a higher pain threshold than most people). What he does react to, and what brings him out of his fugue, is her impassioned speech to convince him that the people with Percy needs him.
• Giant Flyer: Although their measures are not known, Scanlan points out that the 4 dragons that attacked Emon, were twice as big as Brimscythe, who was already huge himself.
• Glorious Death: After Scanlan saves himself from falling off a cliff, he comments, "Yeah, when I die, it'll be the way the gods intended: choked to death by a disgruntled p­imp."
• Gorn: When people die or get injured, it is often bloody, visceral, and painful.
  • The chosen heroes in the prologue of Episode 1 all meet their ends in painful ways: the dwarf is crushed under a boulder, the wizard is slashed to ribbons, and the halfling and elf are crushed under the beast's tail. The human fighter's death is the least gory: he's simply vaporized by a blast of lightning.
  • In Episode 2, during the battle with Brimscythe, Grog's Rage allows him to hit the dragon on the head with his axe. This not only kills Brimscythe, it splits his head open down the middle, with Grog covered in gore.
  • In Episode 3, after the dinner party, Percy shoots off Desmond's hand with the Pepperbox. Not only is there a ton of blood, but Desmond's fingers from his severed hand go flying off. Even the rest of Vox Machina are disturbed by Percy's brutality.
  • The second half of Episode 4 is one long gore fest, first with the wraith attacks upon the guards and the party, blood leaking from the victims' wounds, eyes and mouths; and again when the tables turn, with Vox Machina resorting to repeatedly whaling on the fallen wraiths with ichor flying everywhere until Keyleth's Daylight spell runs out and the wraiths evaporate. The walls of the keep, inside and out, are covered with blood by the end of it.
  • In Episode 8, Percy lands a trick shot on Professor Anders that blows his jaw off. He then follows with a long-overdue point-blank bullet that turns Anders's head into chunky salsa.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Inverted. While the injuries seen on-screen are on a level consistent with Matthew Mercer's on-stream description, they flash off the screen quickly, or are played for laughs. Double subverted hard when only the aftermath of Percy shooting off Desmond's fingers is shown in gory close-up detail, underscoring his unnecessary brutality.
  • Played straight during Archie's torture at the hand of Vedmire. The goliath grabs the dwarf's ear and starts ripping it off. Cut to an exterior shot, with ripping sounds and screaming audible.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Percy's Pepperbox has the names of his targets magically infused on the barrels. When he kills Stonefell in Episode 6, Stonefell's name fades off of the gun.
• Gratuitous Rap: After singing one or two lines about each other hero, Scanlan puts on sunglasses and starts to rap about himself with an inexplicable beat. He gets more and more off-topic until he starts to rap about his sexual escapades and the king cuts him off.
• Groin Attack: Vax and Grog have an ongoing game of "ball tag" where they compete to see who can land the most nut-shots. Grog also tries this on Sylas Briarwood to no avail.
• Guyliner: Gilmore wears it, in keeping with his Camp Gay personality. Scanlan also wears some as part of his ensemble for the royal banquet.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Archie is bisected in the middle during the battle against the undead.
  • Pike's Big Damn Heroes entrance in Whitestone creates a beam of light that cuts an undead giant down the middle.
  • Grog and Scanlan are big fans of using the Fastball Special with Scanlan's Hand throwing Grog, who descends and halves an enemy with his Bloodaxe. When he does it against an Undead giant like Pike, due to the size disparity between them, it takes Grog several whacks with his axe to bisect the enemy vertically, like he was chopping a tree in two whilst covered in viscera.
• Healing Factor: As a vampire, Sylas is able to recover from non-holy damage almost instantaneously. The baseball-sized, see-through hole Percy's Pepperbox blasts through Sylas is healed in a matter of seconds.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Healing magic in this verse is presented as more restricted than other types of magic. While Scanlan and Keyleth can perform amazing feats on the fly, they cannot heal like Pike the cleric, and Vex doesn't do much magic at all. If Pike wants to heal someone, all she has to do is touch them. Keyleth has to sit down, make a poultice and press it against the wound long enough for the healing to stick. Even then, she says that some wounds are "beyond her", requiring Pike's aid instead. Then again, when Keyleth is down and Pike is gone, Vax is able to recreate the poultice after watching Keyleth make it once, and then Scanlan improvises a verse to make it magical enough to work.
• Hell Is That Noise: Delilah's magic is accompanied by hellish screams and shrieks whenever she summons the dark energies, in contrast to the other feats of magic showcased by Scanlan, Pike and Keyleth, showing how her magic is just wrong somehow.
• Heroic BSoD: Percy's standard reaction to traumatic events and flashbacks is a horrified Thousand-Yard Stare and occasionally hyperventilating. It disarms him enough for him to freeze in the middle of high-stress situations such as combat, or when Vox Machina tries to flee the chamber filling with acid and Grog has to grab a dissociating Percy by the collar to get him on Scanlan's Hand.
• The Hero's Journey: Percy undergoes many steps of the Hero's Journey condensed during season 1, with his flashbacks to the death of his parents representing his Call to Adventure. The List serves as a supernatural boon with Orthax as a dark mentor, who Percy faces in his Final Temptation, while the partial loss of his left hand, forgoing his right to the throne of Whitestone in favor of it going to Cassandra, and his budding relationship with Vex represents a Refusal to Return moment. All of Vox Machina gets a So What Do We Do Now? moment at the end of the series at least until the Chroma Conclave attacks Emon in the season finale.
• Home Field Advantage: In an unique example, when Vox Machina come across Brimscythe's lair they find it covered with piles of gold that he's accumulated as part of his dragon hoard. When the blue dragon attacks them, as he's breathing electricity rather than fire, the gold conducts the electricity from his missed blasts to create hazards that can shock the group even if the initial attack was successfully dodged. Conducting so much electricity also heats the metal up to create further hazards against them even if the electricity has dissipated. It's also later Subverted, as being within the cramped confines of a cavern with a closed roof restricts Brimscythe's Flight and overall mobility that allowed him to wipe out the army troops earlier in the episode with contemptuous ease, because they couldn't get close enough to attack him directly. Percy helps pin him down as part of the team's strategy by firing his pepperbox to break a stalactite and crushing one of his wings to the ground.
• Holy Burns Evil:
  • When fighting Sylas Briarwood, Grog's axe cuts him, but the Healing Factor of the vampire lord lets him shrug it off. This lasts until Pike enchants Grog's axe with holy energy, causing the axe to do damage that Sylas can't recover from. It takes Delilah's intervention before Sylas is able to turn the tables again.
  • When Pike repeats the action against the undead hordes besieging Whitestone, since she's Astrally Projecting herself from her physical body back in the temple, her mere presence burns the undead abominations like they were kindling, causing several of them to melt just getting near her. She then does one better than her previous showing and enchants all the surviving villager's weapons with her holy energy, allowing them to clean up the stragglers of the horde with ease whilst Vox Machina move onto dealing with the Briarwoods.
• How Do I Shot Web?:
  • Keyleth is unable to produce sunlight before episode 4, but when confronted by shadowy wraiths, she summons a small sun in a moment of desperation. She tries to use this ability again to restore the Sun Tree, but her light falters, leaving her ability to fight vampires in doubt.
  • Once the group enters Whitestone, Scanlan starts experimenting with new spells, specifically a lighting blast and a shapeshifting spell he learns from a scroll. The problem is, his lightning fizzles as soon as it leaves his hands and he can't actually control what he'll shapeshift into. When his life is on the line in "Scanbo," he masters both of these abilities by tying them to the most important things in his life: his dick and his music.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Aside from the twins, Grog and Pike have the closest relationship in the party. Grog is a hulking goliath whereas Pike is a gnome no taller than a young human child.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Vex tries to get a charmed Vax and Cassandra a possessed Percy to come to their senses. It works on Percy, who actively fights Orthax, but it took until Keyleth channeled the power of the Sun Tree that the charm on Vax is dispelled.
• The Illegible: According to Scanlan, Delilah Briarwood's handwriting is "craptastic scribble". He misreads "ziggurat" as "zippertwat" - Keyleth only deciphers the word because she recognizes the illustration of the ziggurat on the same page.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: As Vax chooses a wooden stake, Vex slams down enchanted arrows on the counter, and Keyleth requests for garlic, Gilmore sighs and says that he doesn't want to know the reason for the purchases, before immediately turning around and asking for details.
• Immune to Fire: Keyleth pulls off a truly impressive spell that calls down a bolt of powerful lightning onto Brimscythe. Too bad blue dragons are immune to lightning damage. Keyleth even openly panics when she sees it, thinking she just made their situation even worse.
• Impaled Palm: Percy shoots a hole through his hand in order to drive Orthax out of him.
• Improvised Lockpick: Played for Laughs in episode two. A huge, elaborate locked door resists the team's magic, only for Vax'ildan to pick it in seconds with the toothpick from Grog's Dagwood Sandwich. He even steals and eats the olive first.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: As a cleric of the Everlight, a goddess of redemption, healing, and temperance, Pike thinks that she must be pure and holy in order to stay connected to her. She is wrong. After an agonizing period where she is cut off from the Everlight, she finally manages to reach her goddess, only to learn that the Everlight did not sever their connection, Pike did. Pike's guilt about liking the depravity, violence, and vices that Vox Machina brings her is the thing that blocked her connection. The Everlight accepts her as she is, telling her that her friends share her passion and her temple shares her faith. Acceptance of this allows Pike to appear in Whitestone for a Big Damn Heroes moment, glowing gold and flying in the air just like her goddess.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Many of the characters bear some degree of resemblance to their voice actors, but it's particularly noticeable for Keyleth and Sylas.
• Insult Backfire: In episode one, an orc bar patron insults Vox Machina, including tugging Vax straight up to his face. The insult backfires when Vax takes the insult as a sincere suggestion, making the orc flustered.
  Orc: Look at your scrawny ass. Too weak to tickle your own pickle.
  Vax: [flirtatiously] You offering to help?
  Orc: Yeah. [realizing what he just said] Uh, no! Umm... Fuck you!
• In-Series Nickname: The twins Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia go by Vax and Vex. Vax calls Pike "Pickle", Keyleth "Kiki", and Vex "Stubby". "Percy" is short for "Percival".
• Interclass Friendship: Percy de Rolo and Archie Desnay grew up together and raised hell all over Whitestone Castle, with the former being the lord's son and the latter being a kitchen worker's son.
• Ironic Name: Adventuring parties or bands of mercenaries in Emon seems to have terrible tastes in names. It's mentioned that the Torian Butchers were butchered, the Murder Hobos were murdered, and the Death Dealers were dead.
• It Has Been an Honor: Percy and Vax say this to each other when it looks like they're about to be killed by the undead horde in "The Tide of Bone".
• Lame Comeback: An orc tries to intimidate Vax by saying he's "too weak to tickle [his] own pickle". When Vax offers to let the orc help, the orc gets flustered, to the point that all he can say in response is "fuck you!" to Vax.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Anyone who's seen recaps of Vox Machina's pre-stream adventures will know that General Krieg is the Blue Dragon Brimscythe.
  • Cassandra de Rolo's survival is spoiled in the red band trailer and the cast announcement, when Percy thought for years that he was the only survivor of the massacre of his house.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Vedmire boasts to Scanlan that he "strung children's corpses on a tree" (alluding to the horrific Sun Tree doubles of Vox Machina) and promises the bard that he will suffer worse. A Freeze-Frame Bonus in episode 12 shows Vedmire dangling from the Sun Tree, missing a leg after Percy blew it off at the knee and let the people of Whitestone visit justice upon the Duke.
  • In Season 2 Episode 4, Zahra summons aberration called an Onlooker to attack Vox Machina, hoping to petrify them all, steal the Vestige and have Kash restore them afterwards. When she later joins the fight against it, she almost immediately ends up petrified herself.
• Leitmotif:
  • The melody of “Your Turn To Roll” (The "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune for the Kickstarter trailer and Campaign 2) appears in various pieces of the show’s original score, such as the opening theme.
  • Not only that, but the melody of the very original theme of the Twitch show from the early days of Campaign 1 by Jason Charles Miller, simply titled "Critical Role Theme Song," plays as part of the track "Blinded By The Light" before the motif of "Your Turn To Roll" does.
  • When Percy goes on the warpath against the targets of his vengeance, Ominous Latin Chanting and foreboding orchestral music kick in. See: "No Mercy Percy" and "When Murder Entered My Heart"
• Literal-Minded: A mainstay of Grog-related gags. If a sentence or a word can be taken literally (or misheard) for comedic value, Grog will comment on it. For example, after Allura announces that Vox Machina is to be under house arrest, a distraught Grog protests, "How do you arrest a house?" He also mishears Percy saying "fulcrum" as "fuck room", due to unfamiliarity with the word.
• Littering Is No Big Deal: After Vax finishes picking the lock to General Krieg's front door, he chucks said toothpick aside.
• Living Shadow: As Scanlan asks about the sixth barrel on The List, Percy's shadow on the wall points the gun at his own head, while the real Percy has it aimed at the ceiling.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Brimscythe's lair begins to collapse almost immediately after he is killed. This is justified somewhat by the fact that Brimscythe's lightning breath tore massive chunks out of the ceiling during their fight, and Grog's finishing blow caused an explosive discharge of lightning.
• Lost Food Grievance: Vax takes a toothpick that was holding Grog's sandwich together to use as a lockpick. Grog barely has time to complain, "That was my toothpick," before some of the sandwich falls out onto the ground.
• Luke, You Are My Father: In "A Test of Pride", we are introduced to Kaylie, a tough-as-nails gnome girl with a talent for music that Scanlan takes a shine to. At the end of the following episode, however, we learn that she's his illegitimate daughter.

M-Z

• Men Are Uncultured: Scanlan, Grog and Vax enjoy playing "ball tag" and cause trouble for the party during the formal dinner in the Cloudtop District. Vex does a better job of blending in with the upper crust than her brother, and Keyleth is mostly just nervous rather than "uncultured". On the other hand, Percy is the one most looking forward to an evening of refined discourse, and he is the only guy born noble.
• Mickey Mousing: The red band trailer times the action sequences' beats to "Light Me Up" by Cobra Man.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: The massacre of the residents of the Shale Steps, particularly the death of the family Vox Machina had interacted with earlier, spurred them into taking the blue dragon on out of vengeance for the murdered instead of only for coin.
• Missing Reflection: As Sylas and Delilah Briarwood head to their room in the Palace of the Sovereign, they pass a mirror. Sylas gives no reflection, hinting that he's a vampire.
• Moment Killer:
  • Invoked when Vax and Gilmore are openly flirting with each other after Vax and Pike show up to Gilmore's shop. Here, Pike interrupts them as the two are making bedroom eyes, telling Vax that they're here to get ways to kill a blue dragon.
  • When Vex and Vax are reflecting that they finally have a new home, Keyleth darts into the scene excitedly, and then between the twins. She then lampshades this.
  • Percy kills Vox Machina's fireside bonding moment by stating that the worst monsters he's ever faced are in Whitestone and reminding the party that they'll be facing those soon.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • "The Feast of Realms" ends with Vox Machina getting arrested after Percy shoots the hand off the Briarwoods' carriage driver and nearly executes him. The end credits are set to a raunchy song by Scanlan inviting the viewer to "pull on my beads of love".
  • Done via Jump Scare in episode 8 when Keyleth attempts resurrection on Cassandra de Rolo. It looks for all the world like it didn't work... until Cassandra jolts upright and starts screaming, freaking Keyleth out into the two screaming back and forth for a few seconds, then Keyleth hugs her and heads back into battle while Cassandra passes out again.
• Mundane Solution: When Vox Machina comes upon a door they can't open, Scanlan attempts to use an unlocking spell, Keyleth tries heating the lock with magic, and Pike tries to sense what enchantments the lock has on it. None of these efforts get them any closer to opening the door. Vax, however, takes a toothpick from Grog's sandwich and just picks the lock with it.
• Mugging the Monster: Sylas Briarwood is introduced getting ambushed by highwaymen on the way to Emon. To say it ended poorly for the highwaymen would be an understatement; it's a Curb-Stomp Battle in the vampire's favor, including literally ripping out someone's heart.
• Neck Lift: Sylas initially stops Vax from getting away by grabbing a fistful of his shirt, and then graduates to a full neck lift while they fight in the fountain.
• No Communities Were Harmed: According to The Design of The Legend of Vox Machina, Emon was based on New York. The natural environments of Whitestone and the Alabaster Sierras looks like Yosemite.
• No-Gear Level:
  • The party is forced to disarm and leave their weapons at the coat check before the banquet in episode 3, though this only ends up really affecting Vax in the end, as he's ambushed by the Briarwoods and forced to ultimately defend himself with a piece of broken glass as a shiv after he tried escaping from them out a window. Sensing his plight, Vex has the rest of the team, sans Scanlan who causes a distraction, recover their weapons before engaging the Briarwoods.
  • In episode 4, as consequences for their actions in the previous episode, Vox Machina's weapons are confiscated by Captain Howarth, to be returned upon their exoneration. This proves problematic when the keep is attacked by Wraiths summoned by Delilah, and the replacement weapons Jarett gives them are ineffective because of the wraiths' intangible nature. Ironically, the one weapon they were allowed to keep, Pike's Holy Symbol, they couldn't use because of Pike's Crisis of Faith. Jarett ends up giving the party their things back as they embark on a quest to clear their names and (partially) avenge the Captain's murdered men.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Percy's mask occasionally appears on his face without him putting it on, specifically right before killing Stonefell and Anders.
• Old-School Chivalry: Percy immediately gives Vex his coat when she complains about the cold as the group traverse a snow covered mountain range.
• Only in It for the Money: Vax interrupts Lady Allura's speech about how noble heroes will be the only ones able to defeat Brimscythe by quoting the trope name. Allura remarks that they value "coin over character".
• Our Dragons Are Different: The dragons shown in the cartoon have human-level intelligence, some have 4 limbs while the other are wyvern-like, can breath lightning, acid, poison gas, or a freeze-ray instead of fire, and could give a run for money to Glaurung for how evil they are.
• Our Gods Are Different: A pantheon of pagan gods exist in this world who provide certain holy people with the ability to create Green Lantern-like light constructs and heal people. They are so mysterious and remote that they don't even have names, instead they referred to by titles like "the Knowing Mistress" or "the Matron of Ravens." They seemed to walk the world centuries before in the form of giants, but now have only appear to their followers in visions and dreams.
• Parting the Sea: The biblical miracle is replicated in the show with Keyleth using her wind powers to create a gap in a lake while Zarha uses her magic to stop the water from rushing back. Zahra's magic is even blood-red.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Like in the webshow, Grog and Pike are best friends with no romantic interest in each other. When Pike splits from the party at the end of Episode 4, they both make clear how they'll miss the other most of all.
• Pooled Funds: Scanlan goes swimming through a pile of gold coins in Episode 2. However, as he's doing this, Vex realizes that this much money can only mean a Dragon Hoard.
• The Power of Rock: Scanlan is struggling to keep the party aloft on Scanlan's Hand above a lake of acid. He complains that they're too heavy— then has a "Eureka!" Moment that his bardic music should also be "heavy", and starts shredding a heavy metal electric guitar solo on his lute, even conjuring a Mage Hand for some fretboard tapping. It's awesome enough to keep the party out of danger until Grog, Percy, and Anna Ripley can drain the acid.
• Punny Name: Crew and A, the interview series with some of the crew members of the series, is a pun on "Q and A".
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Grog tries to get Scanlan to get him a sandwich by pouting and begging, "Pleaaaaaase?" Scanlan gives in and gets Grog a huge sandwich that has to be held together with three toothpicks.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Downplayed. At the end of Episode 4, Pike splits off from the party to try and repair her connection with the Everlight. The subsequent episodes offer quick glimpses of her tribulations.
  • Trinket remains behind in Emon when the party travels to Whitestone, in what might be a Mythology Gag to the ongoing "leave the bear" joke from the tabletop campaign. As well as the fact that the animators at Titmouse have admitted they were struggling with animating quadrupeds.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Discussed Trope on The Legend of the Story of the Legend of Vox Machina.
  Eugene Son: When you're dealing with a preexisting property, like say a graphic novel, you say, okay, we have to keep this moment, this is a pivotal moment. Maybe we can lose this, maybe we can plus this. When you're going with a campaign where it's hundreds of hours of material and a lot of it is brilliant. It's like, okay, now what are the things that will translate really well to animated series? What have they not seen that we think wow, okay, we can take this and we can really do something fantastic with it and those are the things that really, really excite us.
  Matthew Mercer: Certain ideas have to be changed or altered as part of the adaptation. It's a hard process. Sometimes the harder ideas, the ones that go against what you initially expected, make the most important changes.
• Prepare to Die:
  • A subtle example in episode 2. General Krieg, the disguised human form of Brimscythe, warns his soldiers that a storm is blowing in tonight. When he fights Vox Machina later, he reveals his personal title is The Iron Storm, revealing that he was mocking the soldiers to their faces with their impending demise.
  • In Episode 3, Percy says "your soul is forfeit" to Desmond after shooting off Desmond's hand with Pepperbox, stepping on his back as he tries to crawl away, and pointing the gun at the back of Desmond's head. It's only through the timely intervention of some guards that Desmond is saved.
• Purple Is Powerful: Powerful arcane caster Delilah Briarwood has purple eyes, and her magic is black with purple edges. Scanlan's arcane magic is also purple, though it's a lighter and less ominous shade.
• Rage Breaking Point: After sitting and staring at the Briarwoods throughout dinner in stony silence and barely concealed rage, Percy finally snaps when Delilah claimed that the de Rolo family grew bored of ruling and abdicated, with their children raiding the treasury, when the Briarwoods actually massacred his whole house in a coup. He later snaps again as the Briarwoods make their escape, brutally shooting off their carriage-driver Desmond's fingers using the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique.
• Randomized Transformation: When Scanlan tries out a spell scroll found in a dragon's lair, he finds himself transformed into a frog. In his attempts to get back to normal, he turns into a unicorn and a elven female version of himself in short order before getting back to his gnome self. He later figures out how to control the transformations by singing the incantation.
• Rearrange the Song: The Kickstarter trailer used a rearrangement of “Your Turn To Roll” from the second campaign of Critical Role, which incorporated electric guitars and slightly modified lyrics.^note "Falchions and cunning" was changed to the more appropriate "Daggers and cunning”
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Sovereign Uriel Tal'Dorei, despite being charmed by Sylas. He is committed to slaying the "terror of Tal'Dorei" and protecting his people. He ordered Vox Machina arrested for mucking up a state dinner and attacking (who he perceives to be) political allies. Dragon-slayers they may be, but they are not above the law. In Episode 12, he decides to abdicate after the charming incident, and cedes rulership of Emon over to the Council, acknowledging the wisdom of the many as outweighing the wisdom of one.
  • Lady Allura Vysoren. She's willing to listen to Vox Machina's accusation of magical interference from the Briarwoods (and the Briarwoods' own account of the events), and intercedes with Uriel to mitigate their punishment from imprisonment to mere house arrest and confiscation of weapons. She also promises to organize an inquiry to investigate the matter and potentially exonerate the party.
  • Captain Jarett Howarth. He follows his orders initially — confiscating Vox Machina's weapons and ensuring they don't try to flee house arrest — but lets them go in order to investigate the Briarwoods when he realizes they're not at fault.
• Reassignment Backfire: Brimscythe mocks Vox Machina, saying he sent them because they were incompetents who were supposed to die. Not only did they not die, but they ended up killing Brimscythe with trickery and teamwork.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: Percy's pepperbox jams the very first time he tries to shoot it in the series. It jams again after two shots during the Briarwood fight at the palace - Percy is seen in the background trying to fix it before he’s able to blast a baseball-sized hole through Sylas.
• Red Herring: Fince is a rude, snobby aristocrat who hates our protagonists and wants to bribe the dragon to leave, so the audience and Vox Machina assume he's the dragon's inside man. It turns out not to be the case.
• Revenge Before Reason: The primary arc of Season 1 sees Percy struggling to maintain his moral center as his desire for vengeance against the Briarwoods and their servants for the murder of his family threatens to corrupt and wholly consume him. This is portrayed through his torture and maiming of an innocent carriage driver which results in the group getting arrested, him abandoning the group to kill Stonefell and nearly unwittingly shooting Vax in the middle of a blind fury, getting furious with his team for stealing his kills, and demanding the team leave a critically wounded Keyleth behind in order to satisfy his vengeance against Delilah. Part of this is for reasons not wholly in his control.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Attempted on the party by Brimscythe (including a rock that resembles a twenty-sided dice, no less!) but Keyleth successfully casts Grasping Vines to shield everyone.
• Rule of Symbolism: The firelight from the prison breakout shines on Cassandra's collar, symbolizing her status as the Briarwoods' captive and pawn.
• Rule of Three: Grog and Vax's game of ball-tag (that Vax never agreed to in the first place). The first two times are played for laughs, but the third time is played for drama to show how outclassed Grog is against Sylas, who No-Sells it.
• Running Gag:
  • Vox Machina, like their web video counterparts, continues to have trouble with doors, including one in their own keep.
  • Characters designed to resemble Matthew Mercer having their days ruined by Vox Machina.
• Saintly Church: The Chuch of the Everlight is full of benevolent clerics like Pike Trickfoot and the high priesteess who helps Pike with a Crisis of Faith. During a ritual, clerics are heard chanting "love and mercy cleanse the soul."
• Scare Chord: Screeching, atonal violins accompany Vox Machina's discovery of the bodies on the Sun Tree.
• Scary Shiny Glasses:
  • The opening shows Percy's glasses shine as he raises his head in a prison cell, and as he walks away from it, his glasses remain opaque.
  • His glasses are opaque right before Percy reveals that the Briarwoods killed his entire family.
  • Percy's brutal interrogation of Desmond the carriage-driver is preceded by him putting on his mask, which has opaque lenses.
  • The glasses flash again when Percy takes off his mask after literally disarming Kerrion Stonefell…and then the shine fades, revealing that he gains black sclerae and gold irises when under Orthax’s influence.
• Screaming Warrior: Grog, in the lead-up to his charge against the blue dragon.
  Grog: I... would like... to... RAAAAAAAAAGE!
• Scenery Censor: When Scanlan sneaks into Vedmire's house to create a distraction the window be picks turns out to be the privvy.... and Vedmire is there taking a poop. Vedmire's penis is censored by Scanlan himself being in between the camera and it, the camera then cuts to behind Vedmire after he stands up and one of his falling poops is not fully blocked from view (but is obscured by a Censor Shadow).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Scanlan tries to nonchalantly walk away as the party prepares to face down a monster in the Kickstarter trailer, but Vax grabs him by the collar and yanks him back before he can get very far.
  • The party attempts this collectively after they got trounced and nearly died thanks to Brimscythe, but the dragon's massacre of the Shale Steps caused Vox Machina to vow that they will destroy the dragon.
  • As Vox Machina goes through the portal in General Krieg's cellar, Scanlan attempts to stay outside the portal and be on guard as the party pursues General Krieg, but Vax grabs him and yanks him through.
• Sequel Hook: Episode 12 ends with the Chroma Conclave arriving to attack Emon during Sovereign's Uriel's abdication speech.
• Sexy Slit Dress: Vex wears a blue one during the party at the palace in episode 3, with a moderate slit on the left leg, which fits with her aesthetic as a classical beauty.
• Shield Surf: During the battle in the ziggurat, Pike slides down the staircase of the ziggurat on her round shield made of light like a surfboard.
• Ship Tease:
  • Vax/Keyleth:
    • In episode 1, Keyleth slips and drops her staff. Vax catches it, and returns it to her with a gentle and slightly sauve "You'll need this."
    • In episode 2, Vax praises Keyleth for discovering a hidden door in Krieg's mansion, causing her to blush and turn away with a smile on her face (much to Vex's annoyance).
    • Episode 5 has Vax encouraging Keyleth when she starts doubting herself over her abilities and potential as a leader, even calling her Kiki.
    • In "The Tide of Bone", Vax confesses his love for Keyleth in the middle of a heated battle with the undead; both of them lean in for an Almost Kiss before Keyleth remembers where they are and says it's the worst time for this.
  • Percy/Vex:
    • In "The Feast of Realms", after Percy's nightmare, Vex comes out of her room showing much more cleavage than normal and tries to comfort him. She tries to cover for him during the dinner, and she gets angry when Delilah mocks Percy during the fight.
    • In "Fate's Journey", Vex teases Percy about his “resting bitch face”; while Percy is trying to focus on the task at hand, he makes an aside that he has a magnificent bitch face.
    • In "Depths of Deceit", after Percy is left in a near catatonic state after Cassandra betrays and denounces him for the Briarwoods, Vex is the one to snap him out of this state, cupping his cheek and assuring him that they will never abandon him, and encouraging him to use his intelligence to find a way to save their group from the acid chamber and go save Vax and Cassandra.
    • In "The Darkness Within", Vex steps between a demonically possessed Percy and Delilah, and—seeing that Percy is fighting for control from Orthax—says the words the viewers of the original stream have been waiting for: "Darling, take off the mask".
    • Vex's voice is the most distinct one Percy hears to help him begin fight against Orthax's control; she takes the most prominent role in the scene outside of Cassandra and Percy himself, and she helps Cassandra get Percy to his feet after the ordeal.
    • As Vox Machina is running toward Keyleth's Sun Tree portal, Vex gives Percy a playful punch in the arm, a show of affection she rarely gives to anyone besides Vax.
    • In "Echo Tree", Percy makes the decision, as a flex to her Jerkass father Syldor, to make Vex a noble by naming her "Lady Vex'ahlia, Grandmistress of the Grey Hunt and Baroness of the Third House of Whitestone", a gesture that touches Vex deeply. When Syldor insults Percy afterwards, Vex stands up for him and finally tells off Syldor after trying to placate him for years. Afterwards, Percy fashions an arrowhead for Vex as a gift which Vex uses later to kill Saundor, after having resisted his mind games and telling him that her heart already belongs to another.
  • Pike/Scanlan:
    • Pike nearly faints from exhaustion after casting a spell and Scanlan tenderly catches her. He holds on a little long staring into her eyes, before the two step apart awkwardly.
    • In "The Feast of Realms", he invites her to be his date to Uriel's banquet, which she nervously declines.
    • At the end of "Shadows at the Gates", while the group is leaving Greyskull Keep, particular focus is given to Scanlan as the party leaves Pike behind so that she can regain her faith.
    • In "The Tide of Bone", Pike returns to the group in her glowing astral projection form, Scanlan notes that she looks like an angel. She then heals the necrosis on his arm, and he jokingly asks, "Marry me?" to which she responds, "Okay. Let's do it, right now." Scanlan panics, only for Pike to laugh, punch him in the arm and tell him she missed him.
  • Gilmore flirts with Vax, saying he misses the latter's visits after kissing the half-elf on the cheeks. After Gilmore gives Vax and Pike advice for slaying a dragon, Vax says he owes Gilmore dinner if Vox Machina survives this. The shopkeep corrects him, "You owe me more than that, my handsome half-elf." When he notices Vax and Keyleth having a tender moment, he looks at them wistfully while making a remark about secrets.
  • Kash/Keyleth:
    • In episode 14, he flirts with Keyleth as soon as he meets her.
    • In episode 15, while walking in the temple of the Matron of Raven, he catches Keyleth from sliping in a similar manner Vax helped her in his first Ship Tease moment with her.
    • While he and Zahra depart, her asks his partner if "Antlers" looks at his back.
• Shout-Out:
  • In this character art◊, Percy is striking the pose on the poster of Hamilton.
  • For April Fool's Day 2020, an official animatic for the show in the style of Scooby-Doo was released.
  • The "brave warriors" at the start of the first episode resemble The Fellowship of the Ring, with fewer hobbits/halflings.
  • In episode 2 Gilmore tells Vax and Pike that for a "mere" 20,000 gold he could sell Vox Machina a lance of dragon slaying.
  • While Scanlan has been depicted with a beret before, this incarnation of Scanlan mentions getting a beret as a requirement for becoming a revolutionary, a nod to Che Guevara.
  • Grog gets two Dragon Ball Z moments. Not surprising given Travis is a big Dragonball fan.
    • In episode 2, his moment of Unstoppable Rage is reminiscent of going Super Saiyan.
    • In episode 11, the moment where Grog holds Sylas in place for Keyleth to fire a Sunbeam at the both of them is practically a recreation of Goku holding Raditz in place for Piccolo to blast them with the Makankosappo.
  • Season 2 starts with the Chroma Conclave attack, where Vax briefly spots the Raven Queen, looking very similar to the depiction of Death from Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO.
  • Thordak's Breath Weapon Power-Up looks a lot like that of a certain other large, angry firebreathing reptile.
  • Craven Edge, the Evil Weapon that Grog takes from Sylas Briarwood, acts suspiciously like Stormbringer.
  • As in the livestream, Keyleth's arc contains a lot of homages to Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's taken to another level here as her mother shares her voice actress with Korra.
  • In Season 2 Episode 7, Vex summons Trinket from her necklace in a similar manner to sending out a Pokémon: yelling the creature's name while holding their device, which they them emerge from in a flash of red light. Laura often referred to the necklace as Trinket's "Pokeball" in the livestream.
• Significant Double Casting: Taliesin Jaffe plays both Lord Frederick de Rolo and his son/rightful heir/avenger Lord Percival de Rolo. Grey DeLisle plays both Lady Johanna de Rolo and the woman who had her murdered and replaced her as ruler of Whitestone, Lady Delilah Briarwood.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: The green-eyed, red-haired Keyleth is The Chosen One of the Air Ashari, traveling on her Aramenté to prove herself worthy of becoming the Voice of the Tempest.
• So Last Season: In the first episode of Season 2, Scanlan tries to distract Vorugal with an illusion after mentioning that it worked on Brimscythe. Unfortunately, Vorugal has a form of magical vision that allows him to see right through the ruse.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Scanlan serenading the tavern keep's daughter.
  Scanlan: My lady's rose I will pluck; my love, it's time for us to fuuu- (he screams as Percy is thrown through the wall onto the bed)
  • Pike does this as well after arriving in Whitestone via astral projection and casting holy magic on the townsfolk's weapons.
  Pike: May your weapons strike with the divine virtue of the Everlight... Now go crush some fucking heads!
• Speak in Unison: The twins gain this trait in the adaptation, even when they're disagreeing with each other.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Delilah Briarwood slanders the murdered de Rolo family at the feast to rile Percy - the last survivor - to the point of snapping. It's exaggerated for the purpose of cruelty, and justified because the Briarwoods massacred the de Rolos in a coup and would benefit from discrediting them and smearing their legacy in order to make themselves look good as "Whitestone's caretakers".
• Spider-Sense: Vex gets a headache whenever she's near a dragon or one of their allies, allowing her to prepare before they can strike.
• Spirit World: The Fey Realm is quite the Eldritch colorful plane of existence, where physical laws barely apply and is filled with Mix-and-Match Critters. The spirit-like creatures have mostly animal intelligence there.
• Split-Screen Reaction: Vox Machina's faces flash on screen to show their individual reactions when it's revealed that they will receive a reward for slaying the "terror of Tal'Dorei".
• Spoofy-Doo: Critical Role released an April Fools' Day video in the middle of their Kickstarter, titled an "Animatic Sneak Peek!", that depicted the Vox Machina characters in the Scooby-Doo style solving a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. Trinket the bear, who can normally only be heard by Vex using a spell, becomes a talking animal for the occasion.
• Stealth Pun: Simon, Vax's snake belt, has an eyepatch. He's an one-eyed trouser snake.
• Success Through Insanity: While in a room filling acid, Percy is able to use his engineering expertise to determine that the lever that opens the drain is at the bottom of the room...in the everrising acid. Grog happily strips and dives in before anyone has a chance to stop him. Thankfully, along with some heals from Pike, he's able to get to the lever and open the drain.
  Keyleth: In the acid?! You'd have to be insane to go in...
  Grog: I'm going in!
• Stunned Silence: The Kickstarter Q&A video starts with Matthew Mercer, Travis Willingham, and Marisha Ray staring in disbelief, unable to get out more than some incomprehensible muttering until Matt and Travis break into Tension-Cutting Laughter.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Doubling with Mind-Control Eyes. Sylas’ Red Eyes, Take Warning glow gold when he magically persuades Uriel against sending troops to investigate Whitestone, and when he paralyzes Vax. His targets’ eyes glow the same way.
• Super-Speed: In season 2, Vax gains the ability to move so fast he seems to either vanishes or turn into a black blur. This lets him run circles around massive monsters, throw what seems like dozens of daggers at once, and engage in even more Deadly Dodging than before.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: In the pilot, Vox Machina is sent to investigate the creature destroying towns because every other mercenary band sent was reduced to ash before they could report back. They aren’t even the first choice among the mercenaries left. They survive the first fight by the skin of their teeth, which is better then everyone else. Brimscythe even mocks them with this, saying he sent them because they were incompetents who were supposed to die.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: The second seaon's plot is mainly about collecting weapons called "Vestiges of Divergence," which are the only things powerful to kill the giant dragons plaguing the continent. Collecting each one comes with its own tests and perils that make for a great, contained episodic plot.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Vex and Zahra hate each other, yet they both cooperate to find a magic relic strong enough to help them fight a dragon. This doesn't stop them from one-upping each other, passive-aggressively insulting each other, or even saving each other in eager attempts to put the other in their debt. This was an aspect of their relationship that was toyed with in Zahra's first livestream appearance, but quickly went away as they bonded.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Grog mocks Sylas by calling his sword cute, mere moments before said sword absorbs his blood and grows bigger.
  • Vex tells Percy early in episode 3 that bottling up his emotions isn't good for him, and he should maybe cut loose once in a while. This turns out to be a bad idea.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The strains of "Your Turn To Roll" plays over Vox Machina's badass moments, starting from the point they decide to avenge the murdered villagers of the Shale Steps instead of being Only in It for the Money.
• Third-Person Person: Some of the Chroma Conclave, namely Thordak, and Raishan, refer to themselves in third-person mostly as a means of letting the characters and audience learn their names before our heroes flee. These lines are taken verbatim from the livestream.
• Threads of Fate: The opening title sequence shows metaphysical golden threads, cast by a raven, bringing the different characters of Vox Machina together. The raven is a symbol of the goddess of fate and death, the Raven Queen. In Season 2, Vax discovers an ability to see and bend these strings of fate as a Fate-Touched, enhanced by his pact with the Matron of Ravens.
• Title Drop: Scanlan asks whether the Tal'Dorei Council has heard of "the legend of Vox Machina", before launching into the title song that introduces the party.
• To the Pain: Ready to take his final revenge against Delilah Briarwood, unlike with the previous victims on his List, Percy or rather the demon Orthax that drives his bloodlust intends to savor the experience.

  Percy: Your pain will linger. I'll shatter your ankles for my sister Vesper. Your hands belong to Julius. Each de Rolo will have their pound of flesh, until I flay the skin from what's left of you!

• Toilet Humor: When Scanlan infiltrates Vedmire's manor, he enters through the bathroom. While Vedmire is using it. A turd falls in after Vedmire stands up.
• Total Party Kill: For all of the jokes relating to this in Critical Role, this was Played Straight with the "brave warriors" in the Red Band trailer, with them being brutally butchered on-screen.
• Town Girls: Pike is the Butch (ladette tendencies, the only one in the group wearing visible armor), Vex is the Neither (mature, diplomatic archer), and Keyleth is the Femme (shy Cute Witch interested in flowers and talking to animals).
• Trauma Button: Seeing the Briarwoods arrive at Uriel's banquet causes Percy to start suffering a panic attack. He even instinctively moves to draw his gun, even though it was being held by security at the time. For the rest of the banquet, he is on pins and needles, his fury barely contained.
• Twin Telepathy: Vex senses that something's wrong after Vax goes down in the fountain and whispers the safeword "chenga". In Season 2, it's implied that they lose this after Vax makes his deal with the Matron of Ravens, when the goddess severs the strand of fate that ties the twins together.
• The Unchosen One: Vox Machina as a whole. The "brave warriors" who were supposed to save the world were killed instead, so the kingdom has to settle for mercenaries.
• Underestimating Badassery: Played With. Brimscythe admits to being impressed at Vox Machina surviving their initial fight, noting that he only advocated they be sent on the mission because he considered them too incompetent to succeed anyway, but the subsequent fight makes it clear that he's very much still overwhelmingly powerful than them in a straight fight and can handle their best efforts with ease. Vox Machina only win in the end by playing to this trope again, having Scanlan cast an illusion of the group arguing in front of Brimscythe to trick him into lowering his guard after an 'easy kill' only from the actual team members to swiftly coordinate their efforts once the ruse is revealed to pin the dragon down and Attack Its Weak Point.
• Unstoppable Rage: In Episode 2, Grog yells "I would like to RAGE!" and charges towards the wounded Brimscythe. The end result is Grog burying his axe into Brimscythe's face, splitting his skull open and killing him.
• Vampire Bites Suck: Sylas biting Vax is a painful, bloody affair, enough for Vax to free himself from the magical paralysis and make a run for it, and he shortly thereafter passes out from the blood loss caused by his gaping neck wound.
• V-Formation Team Shot: Vox Machina stands in a V in the Kickstarter trailer as they prepare to face down a monster, with the Official Couples Vax/Keyleth, Vex/Percy, and Pike/Scanlan facing each other, and Grog (the only party member with no romantic relationships) at the lead.
• Villain Opening Scene: Season 2 opens up from where season 1 ended: with 4 ancient dragons attacking Emon. What follows is a complete massacre. The 4 dragons are, Thordak, Raishan, Umbrasyl and Vorugal, and they all establish themselves as Cerebus Knights, making the atmosphere of this season to be much darker.
• Visual Pun:
  • After Pike demonstrates her awesome power of the Everlight, a zombie's jaw drops off - literally, jawdropping.
  • In Percy's backstory, after jumping into a river to escape the Briarwoods, he's literally fished out of it, found in a fishing boat's net with the morning catch.
• Vocal Evolution: With the actors having the benefit of being in a voice recording studio working with a script, rather than improvising around a gaming table, all seven members of Vox Machina have more distinctive character voices than they did in Critical Role. Vex, Vax, Grog, and Percy, who were all played with English accents, now sport thicker ones; Keyleth and Pike, who were played with Marisha and Ashley's natural voices, sound noticeably quirkier now. Scanlan, however, sounds less posh than he did originally and thus, more like Sam's natural voice.
• Voice of the Legion: Sam sports this for a line in Animation101 while explaining how the background music perfectly matches the tone and will make the audience cry, except he's immune because he has no soul.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Keyleth, after drinking too much, throws up on the floor, which is shown on-screen. Pike mentions that Keyleth only had one mug of ale. She ends up puking a few more times as a result, including during the Bar Brawl into someone else's mouth and after Scanlan's song that introduces Vox Machina to the council.
• Waterfall Puke: Keyleth's drunken vomiting. She throws up on the floor, which is shown on-screen. Pike mentions that Keyleth only had one mug of ale.
• Weakened by the Light: In Episode 4, wraiths summoned by Delilah Briarwood can't be hurt be conventional weapons, as they just go right through the wraiths. However, the wraiths can't stand being in the light. Torches and fire aren't sustainable, so Keyleth summons a ball of bright light that not only burns the wraiths, but allows Vox Machina to physically attack them.
• We Need a Distraction: Scanlan, by his own admision, is very annoying.
  • Scanlan holds the attention of the dinner party by staging an impromptu raunchy performance as Vox Machina tries to fight the Briarwoods and rescue Vax.
  • Also the basis of his solo mission in episode 7. In order for the others to rescue Cassandra, Scanlan offers to attract the attention of several of the guards by setting fire to a separate estate. It works.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Grog will often end up running at a villain first and get quickly neutralized to show off that even the strongest and hardiest member of the group is threatened by them. We saw this when Sylas defeated him in episode 3, when Delilah took him out of the final battle with her very first spell, when Raishan's armor broke Grog's axe, and when the male sphinx sent him hurdling into he abyss with a single blow.
  • Kamaljiori is shown to defeat all of Vox Machina without suffering a wound and claims he has never felt pain in his life. Yet, in episode 6, the dragon who serves as this season's Arc Villain kills him with after just a short brawl.
• Would Hurt a Child: The series doesn’t shy away from gruesome deaths, and that extends to child characters. There are two notable incidents of this:
  • Brimscythe’s attack on the village that Vox Machina had just visited results in two onscreen deaths of children (and probably a lot more offscreen), cementing that the dragon doesn’t care about human life at all.
  • The Briarwoods are arguably worse in this regard. Not only do they invite their victims to the castle under the pretence of a feast, Delilah in particular gifting a young girl with a wooden replica of Pike’s holy symbol, but then they torture and kill them all just to send a message to Vox Machina.
• Writing Around Trademarks:
  • In general, the show attempts to use as little direct D&D IP, covered-by-Open-Gaming-License or not, as absolutely possible. Monsters are rarely even named, even if they're otherwise mythologically-sourced; as one example, the Chroma Conclave is almost never referred to by their colors, and their actual designs diverge significantly from standard D&D dragon designs.^note The sole exception is Brimscythe, who is consisently referred to as a "blue dragon" in episode 2, with his abilities and whatnot matching those of a D&D blue dragon, and Thordak is obliquely referred to as a "red dragon" in the same episode, but that's so early in the production (and the plans for the special preceeded the rest of the show) that it can almost count as Early-Installment Weirdness, as post-"Terror of Tal'dorei" is when specific monster names outside of the most generic ones possible really vanish. They're referred to as "ancient", but that's it.
  • Spell names have also been altered, and are often omitted entirely (Keyleth, for example, very rarely refers to spells by name, especially in season 2 and onward). As a particular example, Bigby's Hand, a signature spell of Scanlan's, is always referred to as "Scanlan's Hand" instead. ^note There are official alternative names to spells with D&D character names in them that make them safer for public domain use. "Scanlan's Hand", though, is certainly more on-brand for Scanlan than "Arcane Hand".
  • In the first season, people noted that a few of the deities seemed to be renamed - Sarenrae/Raei most prominently being referred to as simply "The Everlight". Season 2, Episode 2 made it clear that, for consistency, this philosophy has been applied to every single divine being in the setting - when listing off the many deities worshipped in Vasselheim, the titles of the gods are treated as their only names. This was likely done because the tabletop show's pantheon is an eclectic mix of deities from various D&D settings, along with an imported Pathfinder deity or two. Their titles are all setting-unique, so the writing team has simply stuck with those.
  • In the campaign, the players use the word "Jenga" as a safe word in case things go pear-shaped. In the show, Grog instead suggests the word "chenga".
  • "Goliath", as a D&D race, is not covered by the OGL and is under copyright, so Grog and his fellows are only ever referred to as a "half-giant" or "the Herd".
  • For character-specific examples, consult the character page.
• Younger Than They Look: Desmond, the Briarwoods' carriage driver, sounds like a young adult (his actor was born in 1990) but looks much older, gaunt and wan.

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