History Animorphs / TropesAToH

* EitherWorldDominationOrSomethingAboutBananas: Ax does something like this once when the kids are in fly morph:
-->'''Ax:''' He’s welcoming the visser back aboard the Blade ship. Or he may be telling him his brother is a meteor fragment. I understand Galard, but this morph’s hearing is very uncertain.
** Since the Visser actually does have a brother he's been trying to hunt down and is part of a species capable of faster-than-light travel, the second translation isn't actually that far-fetched.

* FightingFromTheInside

* {{Flanderization}}:
** Rachel, though it was intentional.
** All the characters were Flanderized, actually, to a lesser extent. Cassie was the most notable (other than Rachel) - she goes from a slightly more moral person than the others to someone who ''couldn't stand to kill Visser Three''. Note that her Flanderization was mostly reversed after book 45.
** Jake was noticeably Flanderized as well - his leader angst goes from mild to extreme, until the last book, at which point [[spoiler:he feels like Tom and Rachel's death was his fault and becomes clinically depressed.]]
** The Flanderization was, really, the point. The war took whatever aspect of their personalities was most useful to the fight (bloodlust, strategizing, manipulating people, etc.) and forced them to exaggerate it until it ate the rest of their lives.

* BuxomIsBetter: Subverted. Rachel is shown as upset several times in the series that she is too "top heavy" to pursue a career as a gymnast.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: Visser Three, in ''The Andalite Chronicles'', is a Hork-Bajir Controller with the respectable rank of Sub-Visser Seven. He's promoted to a low Visser rank immediately upon (and explicitly because of) his infestation of Elfangor's commanding officer and becomes the only Andalite-Controller in history. His rise turns meteoric from there.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Visser Three.

** Played straight with Ax, who, in human morph early on, is just [[UncannyValley not quite right]], thanks to a cocktail of misunderstanding human humor, taking directions too literally, and [[SenseFreak having access to taste buds]]. By the last third of the series, he's become much better at passing for human.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: While everything related to morphing can be [[HandWaved shrugged off with]] [[AWizardDidIt "alien technology"]], there's a much more basic mistake: Yeerks take over Controllers by entering through the host's ear and wrapping around the brain. There is ''no'' direct passage connecting the inside of the human ear to the brain; the Yeerk would have to chew, melt, or in some other fashion penetrate several layers of tissue to reach the inside of the skull, which would undoubtedly prove fatal.

** The Animorphs contain Ax (Elfangor's brother), Tobias [[spoiler:Elfangor's son]], Marco [[spoiler:the son of Visser One's host]], and Cassie [[spoiler:a sub-temporally grounded anomaly, meaning that her involvement/existence will eventually break down any attempt to rework reality]]. The Drode lampshades this, insisting it ''can't'' be a coincidence, and that the Ellimist stacked the deck.
--->'''Ellimist:''' ''[laughing]'' [[MagnificentBastard Did I? If I did, that would be very clever of me.]]

** One book features the [[ProudMerchantRace Iskoort]], who buy and sell memories (among other things). It basically involves copying somebody's mind and then letting other people download it. The Animorphs plus [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Erek]] see some [[KillEmAll Howler]] memories and wind up selling their own to get by. [[spoiler:These memories are later used to give the Howlers a species-wide HeelFaceTurn, since [[OmnicidalManiac Crayak]] had previously kept them ignorant of other species' sapience]].

* AllegianceAffirmation: {{Invoked}} by Ax. As Ax usually fights in his own Andalite body while the rest of the team use terrifying animals, the Yeerks speculate that it's done to announce that the "Andalite bandits" are here, and possibly that he can't morph like the others. The former is correct, as it helps fuel the impression that they're all Andalites instead of mostly humans.

* GodsHandsAreTied: Not so much gods as SufficientlyAdvancedAliens, the Ellimist and Crayak can not directly (or at least, overtly) interfere with other species under normal circumstances, generally guiding their allies or followers instead. The reason is that these two beings are basically locked in a galaxy-wide Cold War: the Ellimist is good and wants to help everyone, Crayak is evil and wants to destroy everyone, and any open conflict between them would probably be very, very bad for everyone involved. ''The Ellimist Chronicles'' shows what happens when their hands are '''not''' tied. At least 10% of the galaxy was destroyed ''before'' they became Sufficiently Advanced, and they are many orders of magnitude more powerful now than they were then. The CosmicChessGame is required to keep the fabric of reality from falling apart. Both the Ellimist and Crayak are, however, willing to put aside their usual rules and [[EnemyMine work together]] if something particularly disastrous happens. This is the case in ''Megamorphs'' #3; antagonist Visser Four finds the [[TimeMachine Time Matrix]] and uses it to completely rewrite the history of the Western world (including altering the Battle of Agincourt, the American Revolution, and World War II). The Ellimist and Crayak are the only living things able to realize that this is wrong, and combine their powers to both restore the Animorphs' memories of the lost reality and send them through time to stop Visser Four.

* CoolCar: In ''The Andalite Chronicles'', Elfangor finds a 1970s yellow Ford Mustang in the Skrit Na ship, and drives it across the Taxxon homeworld, while listening to Music/TheRollingStones and drinking Dr. Pepper through his hoof.

* NoBiochemicalBarriers/AlienFoodIsEdible:
** Andalites are a species of mouthless centaurs which absorb nutrients from the grass with their hooves. Not only is grass apparently common on two different planets, Earth's seems to be perfectly healthy for them.
** Similarly, Taxxons can apparently eat anything that bleeds (or rather, ''will,'' even if they shouldn't).
** Hork-Bajir are capable of eating the bark of Earth's trees, although they admit it doesn't taste as good as the bark back home.
** In ''Megamorphs'' #2, we find out that ''broccoli'' was brought to Earth by aliens.[[note]][[CriticalResearchFailure Broccoli was bred by humans from wild ''Brassica oleracea'', which is in a plant family that wasn't around in the Mesozoic]]...but RuleOfFunny prevails. Plus it could have just been an alien plant that happens to look and taste exactly like broccoli.[[/note]]

** Taken UpToEleven in ''The Andalite Chronicles'', where an Andalite Dome Ship is destroyed by ''living asteroids''.

* FinalSpeech: ''Hirac delest'' is an Andalite term for one's last thoughts or final words. It is a fairly common practice among Andalite warriors to record it just before their demise. ''The Andalite Chronicles'' takes this concept UpToEleven, as the ''entire text'' actually serves as Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul's ''hirac delest.''

* FamilyUnfriendlyViolence / FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: The fight scenes in this series are quite graphic. Ripping out throats, hacking off limbs, stabbing, shooting, maiming, disemboweling - you name it, someone's done it. What makes the violence notable is that because morphing heals every wound the Animorphs have, the same character can have the same limb hacked off ''multiple times''.

* HavingAGayOldTime: The phrase "hooking up" makes many appearances. In context, it just means "meet up," but the phrase has taken on quite a different meaning ten years later!

** Ax also often goes into battle unmorphed, since Andalites are plenty dangerous in their natural state (''extremely'' sharp tail blades, remember?)

* In the flashbacks from the book "Visser", Visser One and her companions are shocked to find that humans have split hemisphere brains upon first infesting them, and attribute this physical feature with being responsible for Humans' ability to hold internal debate over their own choices and harbor doubts and contradictions in their behavior.

* FiveManBand: Jake is [[TheLeader one of those people who are natural leaders]], Marco is [[TheLancer his best friend who is always disagreeing with him]], Rachel is [[TheBigGuy always ready for action]], Tobias is [[TheSmartGuy stuck in hawk morph so he scouts out the mission for the team]], and Cassie [[TheChick reminds them how important people and animals are]].