Films
- Complete Monster: Munkar overthrows King Tulak to gain total control of the land he reigns over, inducting Tulak's daughter Codille into his personal harem of sex slaves and casting out Tulak. To eliminate any potential challengers to his regime, Munkar hosts a tournament to draw in the strongest warriors of the land to his domain in the guise of making the last survivor his heir, securing their trust by allowing them to rape and kill at their own whim. Munkar's true intention is to simply have all the warriors slaughter each other before killing the survivor himself so he can rule unopposed as an evil tyrant.
- Designated Hero: Deathstalker is clearly supposed to be the hero of the movie, but he is just as prone to raping like all the other warriors. Hell, he even tries to rape the girl he’s supposed to rescue in the first place until he finds out that she’s one of Munkar’s male minions in disguise.
Novels
- Anti-Climax Boss: Valentine Wolfe, who dies to a single disruptor shot to the chest from Finlay Campbell in Deathstalker Honor. He gets better, though.
- Complete Monster:
- Empress Lionstone XIV, aka the "Iron Bitch", is the quintessence of every Evil Overlord of every Evil Empire rolled into one beautiful, soulless package. Known for her wicked and lethal sense of humor, Lionstone won't just kill someone for fun; she'll think up an entertaining—to her—way to go about it. Lionstone is attended by handmaiden bodyguards culled from the ranks of rebels and malcontents because she finds it amusing to turn those into her loyal servants, has their tongues cut out, replaces their eyes and ears with more controllable cybernetics, and has them mindwiped and reconditioned into absolutely loyal attendants and bodyguards. Projects under Lionstone's reign range from the annihilation of the planet Virimonde for daring to engage in democracy, and threatening the same for others; to trying to yoke the ridiculously lethal Grendels into shock troops; to Wormboy Hell, an oubliette where rebel espers are kept imprisoned in states of constant mental violation and agony.
- Valentine Wolfe is a drug-taking psychopath who rises to lead Clan Wolfe by murdering his own father during their attack on their rivals, Clan Campbell. Valentine leads the barbaric sack of Virimonde and distributes an Esper drug with a huge fatality rate, using the corpses of those he's killed to enhance the drug before serving them to unwitting guests. Allying with Shub to annihilate humanity, Valentine intends to become emperor before he razes the empire to nothing and dances in the ashes, killing anyone who ever spited or annoyed him while violating every taboo known to mankind and others not yet discovered.
- Finn Durandal was the finest of Paragons upstaged by Lewis Deathstalker and decided to burn the empire down out of sheer spite. Organizing the Church Militant with himself at its head, Finn arranges for a riot and massacre with his "Esper Liberation Force", also imprisoning the souls and minds of other Paragons, trapping them in their minds as he uses their bodies before he begins massacring the entire Deathstalker clan. Succumbing to hedonism and barbarity, Finn kills and eats numerous alien ambassadors; destroys a planet for boredom and spite; slaughters his own men; and massacres Parliament. Once a hero, Finn shows how far one can fall for spite and gleefully admits things such as love and friendship do not exist for him.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: When going back to confront her father, Evangeline Shreck thinks of her father as an ogre.
- Ho Yay: Kit and David. Heck, Kit even kisses David on the lips when David dies, calling him "his love".
- In the last three books, Finn Durandal and Stuart Lennox. Finn sets about "seducing" (his words) the young Paragon, the narrative talks about Finn takes him drinking, laughs with him, "kissed and cuddled" him, and so on. Lennox even tearfully says he's in love with Finn when he goes to Emma Steel about the Paragon's increasingly-insane behavior.
- Les Yay: As part of massive character assassination against Jesamine Flowers, Anne Barclay reveals the details of her sordid love affairs, many of them with women, only some of them completely made up.
- Nina Malapert seems to have had at least a little bit of a crush on Emma Steel.
- Moral Event Horizon: For many citizens and people in the series, it had to take Lionstone ordering mass murder in Virimonde for them to conclude that she had gone batshit insane. Why they didn't realize that she had already passed the Moral Event Horizon long ago might be a mystery.
- Finn plunges through it with gleeful abandon every chance he gets.
- Anne Barclay's well-planned, beautifully executed, and utterly thorough character assassination of Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers.
- Narm: Pick a story — it's in there somewhere.
- Haceldama, or Shannon's World, in War. Think of a peaceful sanctuary turned into a horrific crypt, and you might start to approach it.
- Nightmare Fuel: Wormboy Hell, Legion, the fate of the people of Virimonde.
- Haceldama again. Picture a planet-wide Disneyworld, where you can pay good money to just go and play and be a kid again amongst all your fictional childhood heroes and friends. Now picture Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Optimus Prime, and Winnie the Pooh popping out vicious steel claws and coming at you like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers, and you can see why just about anyone who actually went to the planet and survived went insane.
- Spiritual Adaptation: The series will be immediately familiar and fun territory to any Warhammer 40,000 player.
- Tear Jerker:
- In Deathstalker Coda, Lewis realizing the entire population of the planet Virimonde is with him for justice against Finn, as well as seeing what Finn had done to the Deathstalker Standing.
