History Literature / OldMansWar

* KickedUpstairs: At the end of the sixth book it's speculated that has been given the prestigious (yet difficult) job of overseeing the constiututional convention partially out of spite for committing the CU government to that convention (which is necessary for both the short and long-term survival of the Colonial Union, but costs the big wigs some of their power and ego).

* AMillionIsAstatistic:

* NobodyOver50IsGay: Averted. Alan, one of John Perry's fellow recruits, is 75, and his "arousal test" was administered by a naked man.

** In ''The Human Division'', this maneuver is used [[spoiler:for Wilson and Danielle to escape the destruction of Earth Station.]]

** ''The Ghost Brigades'' introduces the Gamerans, whose collective name [[Franchise/{{Gamera}} is itself a shout out]], and who take their individual names from science fiction writers, including [[Creator/CharlesStross Stross]] and [[Creator/GeorgeRRMartin Martin]]. The members of the Special Forces are similarly assigned surnames that are shoutouts to famous scientists of the past.

** ''The Ghost Brigades'' has the main character, John Dirac, assigned to research pop culture depictions of ArtificialHumans; he starts by reading Literature/{{Frankenstein}} and later runs across [[Creator/IsaacAsimov R. Daneel Olivaw]], [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Data]], [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey HAL]], Manga/AstroBoy, and [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} the Terminators]].

** Central to the series. The CDF recruits retirees and transfers their adult consciousness into a speed-grown SuperSoldier body partially based on their DNA. Their Special Forces are ''fully'' synthetic people given a 'starter personality' by nanotech in their brains, but these soldiers - while superior - lack emotional maturity... and [[FantasticRacism aren't completely trusted]] by their GenreSavvy creators.

** In the later novels the CDF starts phasing out the cybernetic [[BrainComputerInterface BrainPals]] in favor of completely biotech ones. It's implied that their long-term goal is to introduce the genes to the baseline human population.

* PunyEarthlings: The reason why the Colonial Union no longer uses unaltered humans as soldiers. They didn't want to - the cost of producing CDF super soldiers is pretty high - but it was the only way to keep up with the neighbors: the first Battle of Coral was a PyrrhicVictory with a staggering death toll.

* ''The End of All Things'': The sequel to ''The Human Division''. Despite what the name suggests, this novel is by no means necessarily the final chapter in the Old Man's War universe. It resolved the previous book's titular human division (between Earth and the Colonial Union), and revealed the nature and extent of [[spoiler: TheConspiracy exacerbating the division and playing the Earth, the CU, and the Conclave against one another]].

* GovernmentConspiracy

* SarcasticDevotee: Savitri

* NoSocialSkills/PsychopathicManchild: A common opinion of the Special Forces soldiers, combat-trained clones who rarely have ages in the double digits. They resent it, and ''The Ghost Brigades'' shows that this is mostly due to ElectronicTelepathy being their preferred mode of communication.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Charles Boutin.

** ''Ghost Brigades'' has a horrifying sequence in which [[spoiler: the trope is taken literally]].

** ''The Ghost Brigades'' introduces the Gamerans, whose collective name [[Franchise/{{Gamera}} is itself a shout out]], and who take their individual names from science fiction writers, including [[Creator/CharlesStross Stross]] and [[Creator/GeorgeRRMartin Martin]].

** ''The Ghost Brigades'' introduces the Gamerans, whose collective name [[{{Gamera}} is itself a shout out]], and who take their individual names from science fiction writers, including [[Creator/CharlesStross Stross]] and [[Creator/GeorgeRRMartin Martin]].

* WhatDidYouExpectWhenYouNamedIt: Roanoke, which is very much ''intended'' to act like its namesake.

* EasySexChange: Doesn't show up in the novels themselves, but [[WordOfGod in an interview]], Scalzi said that a transgender soldier would be given a body that matched their gender identity as part of the effort to insure that soldiers liked themselves.

* DeusExMachina: The Consu are [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens far ahead of every other species]] and willing to share bits of their technology... for a horrific price. First, the ones asking must fight and win against a force of Consu. Sometimes this is enough, but other times they may demand the deaths of thousands of the asker's own species as a sacrifice.

** The Consu. Curiously enough, though, that dogma makes them ''less'' dangerous than they might be - they could easily steamroll everyone else in the galaxy, but their philosophy/religion calls on them to fight 'fairly' in their continued effort to help other races 'perfect' themselves. In their eyes, it's a species-wide EarnYourHappyEnding: in the eyes of most of their neighbors, it's random, scary mayhem.