History AudioPlay / HorribleHistories

-->'''Announcer:''' Uh, he didn't [[IncrediblyLamePun sail on a date; he sailed on a ship]]!

* IncrediblyLamePun: Throughout.
** A butcher convicted of fraud in the ''Vile Victorians'' is sentenced and charged, to which he questions if there was "anyone that could save my bacon?"
** William the Conqueror tries to invade a town, but the locals bar it up and stand on the guarding walls and shout ''terrible'' shoe jokes at him, because his father used to be a shoemaker. William is rather angry and embarrassed, and [[ChangingTheUncomfortableSubject doesn't want to discuss the topic any further]].
** If there is a criminal sentenced to having their hands chopped off, you can guarantee that they'll claim that this'll ruin their career as a "handyman".

* AbusiveDad: The father character in the [[ShowWithinAShow play]] called "[[LongTitle Please Don't Send Me To The Workhouse, Daddy! (I'm Only A Helpless Child)]]" from ''The Vile Victorians''.

* LongTitle:
** From ''The Vile Victorians'', a ShowWithinAShow is named ''Please Don't Send Me To The Workhouse, Daddy! (I'm Only A Helpless Child)''.
** From ''The Rotten Romans'', there's a blockbuster film arriving in theaters soon called ''Film/TheEagleHasLanded Again (And Again, And Again...)''.

* BadassBaritone
** The voice that marks the end (or beginning) of a chapter that says "Horrible Histories".
** Unnamed henchmen that works for certain powerful characters.
*** Characters like these are usually the opposite of the SimpletonVoice examples below.

* NamesTheSame: [[invoked]] In ''The Stormin' Normans'', Harald Hardrada orders his army to march to Stanford Bridge, which makes the army chant "[[UsefulNotes/BritishFootyTeams Chelsea]]! Chelsea!" He snaps at them that he means the actual bridge called Stanford in [[OopNorth Yorkshire]].

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: William the Conqueror demanding to be called a Norman because he is of Scandinavian descent. Anyone who calls him a Frenchman doesn't know what they've got themselves into. [[note]]This relies a lot on history because the Scandinavian people settled in France. The French allowed them to stay and nicknamed them Normans because they were from the North.[[/note]]

* AdultFear: Occasionally.
** The ChildSoldiers-attribute of ''The Frightful First World War''. Many of the soldiers in the armies were as young as fourteen (Tommy and George were this age at the beginning) and were unwillingly thrown on the front line after being indoctrinated with advertisements of patriotism and returning home as a hero that would be treated like royalty; when said soldiers returned home, they had heads filled with traumatic war experiences, and considering all the drama that had been happening in the native countries (German government with no leader, [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishFlu Spanish Flu]] that killed more people than the war, for example), they might've returned to a home that was either destroyed in a bombing attack, or discovered that their family was either missing or dead.
** Some of the evacuees that were treated badly by their new carers for no reason during ''The Woeful Second World War''. After that disgusting period in their lives, many returned home to find that their parents had either lost their home and was forced to move away, or killed in an air-raid attack.

* UnfortunateNames: The discussion on the development of weapons in a ''Frightful First World War'' meeting decide to call the army tanks "little willies".

%%* AlliterativeTitle: All except ''The Stormin' Normans''.
* AmericansHaveWackyNames: We find out in ''The Vicious Vikings'' that the American tourist's son is named Elmer Rubinstone III.

* CallingTheOldManOut: The series' main intention. In many cases, Terry Deary often points out that history teachers like to teach students about the nicer sides of history instead of the gruesome parts. For instance, ''The Rotten Romans'' has Terry and Felicity disrupt their teacher's lectures whenever he overlooks the darker sides of Ancient Rome -- mostly how supposedly "civilised" the Romans were, but the two students state that most of the Roman culture was a rehash in the first place.

* ManOfAThousandVoices: Or the entire cast. You wouldn't believe that there are only four voice actors ([[AndZoidberg and Terry Deary]]) on all the tapes.
** This leads into UniversalAdaptorCast.

* HitlerAteSugar: In many classroom scenes, Terry is scalded by his teacher for comparing certain historical figures to UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, but Terry had enough evidence on said historical figure to compare them to Nazi leader. For instance, after hearing about UsefulNotes/HenryVIII having Protestants [[ANaziByAnyOtherName burnt at the stake because they refused to convert to Catholicism]] (much like how Hitler had people who were against his views -- Jewish people especially -- arrested and/or executed), Terry points out that Henry VIII was basically doing what Hitler had done, to which the teacher crossly snaps, "You can't say that!"

* {{Adorkable}}:
** UsefulNotes/AlfredTheGreat is portrayed as this, from his terrible poetry to his nervous laughter. It makes you feel really sorry for him when he does burn the old woman's cakes. Also doubles as a DorkKnight.
** A monk in the ''Stormin' Normans'' who is given the job of writing the diary of 1066, and later appears again and again throughout the tape.
** Ijalf the clumsy Viking who constantly drops his sword, steps on his cat, and accidentally punches the scariest local in the village after getting excitable about the horse races. Then he tries to stop the man from killing him by selling him all the sheep on his farm.