History RedDeadRedemption2 / TropesAToL

* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** One of the first things Dutch and his group do in the game is save a woman from bandits... and accidentally burn down her house. Just a harbinger of how the Van der Linde gang tends to make things worse despite whatever ideals Dutch preaches.
** At the start of the cinematic ride during "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", one of the notable landmarks in the distance is the top of Mount Hagen, [[spoiler:the setting of the final mission in the story.]]
** Unlike all the other [[spoiler: debt collections]], the one for the [[spoiler: Downes family is mandatory. Arthur ends up catching the same disease that afflicted Mr. Downes: tuberculosis. And it's implied he got it either from beating him up or from him coughing up blood on his face.]]
*** [[spoiler:When riding back to camp from the Downes farm, the scene is eerily quiet, with the only sound being your horse snorting in the distance like coughs; once he begins to get within range, Arthur dabs the blood off his face and solemnly stares at it. Novice players will feel disquieted that an innocent family man -- and a sick one at that -- was hurt so badly, while veteran players will feel the added discomfort that Arthur has just pointlessly doomed himself by his own brutality and Strauss's greed, and he doesn't even know it.]]
** In his very first scene where he begs Arthur to back down and spar Tommy, Mr. Downes briefly coughs, hinting to his health problems.
** During the second train robbery, as Sean moans about his head injury,[[spoiler: Arthur replies "Least you ain't got a hole in it." Next chapter...]]
** Before a game of dominoes, Tilly will ask Arthur if Dutch would be mad if she killed Miss Grimshaw. [[spoiler:Micah shooting Grimshaw is what causes Dutch to initiate a MexicanStandoff.]]
** When getting the tour from one of Bronte's StreetUrchin grifters after arriving in Saint Denis during chapter 4, Arthur and the kid [[spoiler:pass by the doctor's office. The kid opining you don't want to visit there. Arthur receives his terminal diagnosis in the same doctor's office.]]
** Related, [[spoiler: Arthur will cough numerous times in cutscenes and in-game before he collapses toward the end of Chapter 5. There's also numerous times where Arthur seems unusually winded, which makes no sense since he's in excellent shape and in the prime of his life. These coughs also escalate in severity throughout the game, beginning as small coughs before turning into large hacking fits. If the player takes a good look at Arthur's face before the mission "A Fork in the Road" (particulary at the Barber's to shave his Guarma beard), his unhealthy complexion alone should indicate he is very badly ill.]]
** Molly tries to ask Arthur at one point if he genuinely thinks Dutch loves her. She can also be seen talking to Abigail about it. [[spoiler: This, as well as her constant whingeing and anxiety, seems to set her up as a classic HystericalWoman for Dutch, and she's killed upon drunkenly admitting that she was the one who ratted them out in Saint Denis. In reality, this is a RedHerring, and Micah was the actual mole.]]
** In an early chapter, [[spoiler:when Hosea asks Arthur how he's going to die or be buried, Arthur tells him to "Face me to the west so I can watch the setting sun and remember all the fine times we had that way." These words become a contrast in the High Honor ending of Chapter 6 (if you go with John) when, instead of being a bad man who watches the sunset and reminisces about the old days of being an outlaw, Arthur becomes a good man who looks forward to a better future in store while watching the sunrise on the mountaintop and dying at peace with himself. However, it would later be revealed in the epilogue that Charles laid Arthur's body to rest on the quiet hilltop in a grave that perfectly faces the evening sun, thus fulfilling Arthur's request to Hosea.]]
** "Mountain Hymn" has lyrics that foreshadow [[spoiler:what happens to Arthur in both High Honor endings, as well as if Arthur helped John in the Low Honor ending]]:
--->''Your day is done, the time has come.''\\
''You battled hard, the war is won.''\\
''You did your worst, you tried your best;''\\
''Now it's time to rest.''\\
''Now it's time to rest.''
** A classic western trope is that the good guy, usually a sheriff or other gunslinger aligned with the law, wears a white hat; the bad guy, usually an outlaw or other AntiHero, wears a black one. Now think, who is the only member of the Van der Linde gang who is hardly ever seen without a white hat? [[spoiler:[[LightIsNotGood It's Micah, and it turns out that he is really a stool pigeon for the Pinkertons.]]]]
** At the very beginning of the story, Arthur will ask Micah if he was [[spoiler:talking to someone, to which Micah nervously refuses.]]
** Pay attention to the dialogues immediately after the opening cutscenes while discussing the botched robbery. [[spoiler:Dutch notes that the Blackwater Heist was a setup since the Pinkertons knew about it. Micah was the one who goaded Dutch into shooting Heidi [=McCourt=], after which the heist turned into a massacre. It was as if the Pinkertons were counting on Dutch making a mistake before rushing in, and someone was assigned to ensure it.]]
** When Micah and Lenny were arguing, Lenny says "When you fall, there would be a party!". [[spoiler:After Micah's death, John and Abigail marry and festivities ensure, though sadly, Lenny isn't around to see it.]]
** In "A Fisher of Men", Agent Milton tells Arthur, "You people venerate savagery, and you will die... savagely... all of you!" [[spoiler:This foreshadows how some of the gang (like Hosea, Sean, and Lenny) have met their bloody end, and the same could happen to Arthur if his honor is low. And of course, the {{Futureshadowing}} of the deaths of Bill, John and Dutch himself with Javier optionally in the first game.]]
*** [[spoiler: Furthermore, during this exchange, Arthur replies "We're all gonna die, Agent." to which Milton shoots back with "Some of us sooner than others." Milton ironically ends up dying a few hours sooner than Arthur during "Red Dead Redemption".]]
** Starting around chapter 4, Dutch starts wanting to use Micah on jobs more and at one point in a tirade at Arthur says that Micah is the only one who's still loyal. [[spoiler:Micah has been worming his way into Dutch's confidence to turn him against everyone else to make the gang easier pickings for the Pinkertons.]]
** Speaking of Chapter 4, during the time you mingle with the party guests in "The Gilded Cage", you can overhear one of the three women you need to serve drinks with speaking about her husband on his journey while he's sick, and wishing that he would die a quick death, and the other woman replies, [[spoiler:"Tuberculosis is a strange disease," a clear indication of what will happen to Arthur in the next chapter, since he got it from Thomas Downes two chapters ago and its latency period is getting a little weaker...]]
** In the Stranger mission "Of Men and Angels", Arthur tells Sister Calderon that all he wanted was a dignified death. [[spoiler:That's because he's very sick and in pain with tuberculosis; but if he maintains his high honor by the end of the game, then it's very likely that he'll get one in either of the two good endings.]]
** At the end of "Goodbye, Dear Friend", [[spoiler:Arthur comes across a letter from Mary, which says, "There's a good man within you, Arthur... but he is wrestling with a giant." This foreshadows his final battle at the end of Chapter 6, in which the "good man" symbolizes Arthur, while the "giant" symbolizes Micah. Furthermore, her following sentence, "And the giant... wins, time and again," foreshadows what Micah will do to Arthur if his low honor gets the better of him. If Arthur has high honor, though, he will defy the odds and come out on top, albeit critically wounded by Micah in his final stages of TB, and thus pass on to his heavenly reward of redemption.]]
** At the start of the mission "That's Murfree Country", Dutch and Arthur discuss the gang's situation in chess terms, and Dutch mentions the game isn't over until he's made his move. [[spoiler:This is exactly what happens in the final mission of the game, as Dutch resolves the game's only remaining conflict by shooting Micah. While John finishes Micah off immediately afterwards, it's still Dutch's move that effectively ends the game.]]
** During a camp interaction, when Micah jokingly asks Arthur if he'd like to get shot, Arthur retorts that from a close up range, he'd miss. [[spoiler: During the final mission, Micah attempts to shoot John from close up range several times, but misses every shot.]]
** Another camp intercation from Chapter 1 shows Dutch plainly saying that he expects Arthur to turn on him, saying that, "You seem the type". [[spoiler: Indeed Dutch believed Arthur to turn on him near the end of the game.]]
** When Bill is seen sitting around a table with Lenny and Sean, he goes off an unusually aggressive tangent that if he were to lead a gang, it would be with such ferocity and determination that no one would question him, to which Lenny and Sean quickly agree. Bill would go on to start his own gang in Red Dead Redemption 1.
** When Hosea is teaching Jack to read with Abigail, Jack will remark that he wants to be a gunslinger when he grows up, to which Abigail says, "Over my dead body". [[spoiler: In Red Dead Redemption 1, we experience Jack's first gunslinger moments shortly after he mourns over Abigail's grave]]

** [[spoiler: The ending itself is a tragic example of this trope. Arthur sacrifice his life to help John and his family escape from the outlaw lifestyle. However by the time VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption it will end badly for John and his family just a few years after the events of this game.]]

* FedToPigs: Pigs will chew through any corpse in their vicinity. This is a handy way for you to dispose of bodies, and there is a scenario where you can help a prostitute by disposing of a dead customer in this manner.

* AnAxeToGrind:
** Hatchets are a powerful melee weapon.
** Tomahawks are a throwable variant.

* TheAlcoholic: The Van der Linde gang sure has some notable alcoholics. Uncle is rarely found without a drink in his hand, Karen is described in the Rockstar Promotionals as being 'able to drink anyone from under the table' before [[spoiler: her drinking spirals out of control in the last chapter, and is presumed in the Epilogue to have drunk herself to death]]. Bill Williamson is almost always seen with a drink in his hand and is quite prone to AlcoholInducedIdiocy. Perhaps the biggest example of an alcoholic is Reverend Swanson who's, almost literally, never seen sober around camp. [[spoiler:He does get better in chapter 6 and quits drinking altogether.]]

* TheAlcoholic: The Van der Linde gang sure has some notable alcoholics. Uncle is rarely found without a drink in his hand, Karen becomes one later in the story and, in the Epilogue, [[spoiler:is presumed to have drunk herself to death]]. Bill Williamson is almost always seen with a drink in his hand and is quite prone to AlcoholInducedIdiocy. Perhaps the biggest example of an alcoholic is Reverend Swanson who's, almost literally, never seen sober around camp. [[spoiler:He does get better in chapter 6 and quits drinking altogether.]]

* AwesomeMcCoolName: ''Tacitus Kilgore'', one of Arthur's aliases.

* AmbiguousDisorder:
** While the ''cause'' of Dutch's declining mental state throughout the game (and into the first game) is up for intense debate, there is no hiding his paranoia, impulsiveness, narcissism, and delusions of grandeur. You can see it early on when he out of the blue [[spoiler:tells Arthur that he knows he will betray him in early Chapter 2, long before he really loses control]].
** Arthur's self-deprecating nature, grumpy personality, pessimist attitude, and occasional bursts of anger might indicate Depression (then known as Melancholia) but it's never said outright. [[spoiler:And this is before he gets TB.]]
** Micah is quite likely a sociopath: He lacks empathy, is manipulative, and back stabs anyone without a second thought. [[spoiler: The player can learn in Chapter 6 that he once tried to lure Jack, a little boy, away from camp, implying that he might be a pedophile.]]

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** A vaudeville singer in St. Denis sings "Hello! Ma Baby!", which seems out of place in the setting. However, the song was written in 1899 (when the game takes place), and was a Tin Pan Alley hit in New York that same year. So this isn't totally unrealistic. However, the arrangement contains blues elements, which wouldn't enter popular culture until the UsefulNotes/WorldWarI time frame, and the singer's vocal style is more appropriate to the 1940s.
** A Mafia boss in the 19th century DeepSouth seems ridiculous, or Rockstar trying to inject more ''GTA'' into their Western. However New Orleans, which Saint Denis is based on, did in fact have significant Italian organized crime all the way back in the 1880s. Existing independently of their more famous Northern cousins, the New Orleans Mafia still exists today and is older than many of the more famous Mafia families.
** While not available as chewing gum, cocaine was a commercially available stimulant in the 1890s and could be bought from drugstores.
** Skinning a small animal quickly and cleanly with just your bare hands may seem ludicrous, but it's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RENhcR0BPLo completely possible in real life]].
** Occasionally, when entering into camp gang members will greet the player by saying "Roll out the red carpet!". At first this might seem like a case of AnachronismStew considering the Hollywood version of the red carpet would not come into existence until 1961, uses of red carpets to greet people of high-importance actually go back as far as Ancient Greece.
** It may be anachronistic at a glance, but the remote-controlled boat that Marko Dragic demonstrates in his first mission [[https://www.engadget.com/2014-01-19-nikola-teslas-remote-control-boat.html is completely identical to one that Nikola Tesla actually demonstrated in 1898]].

** Jack refers to the adult male gang members as "Uncle" including Arthur and Hosea.

* ImAHumanitarian: The Night Folk and the Murfree Brood are cannibalistic.

* ImprovisedWeapon: Arthur's horse can be used to run over and kill bandits or witnesses. He can also deliberately crash into other horses so their riders will fall and either die from the impact or be stunned enough to be finished off.

** The "best weapons" to use for hunting certain species of game can make a real life hunter cringe. In real life, a .22 caliber like the Varmint Rifle can reasonably used for game up to the size of a fox or raccoon without much fuss. Here, they can shrug off multiple shots while ruining their pelts. Further, it is perhaps the most popular caliber for small game like squirrels, but here, it will ruin their pelts and small game arrows (which would be incredibly difficult to use in reality for game that small) must be used instead. Finally, shotguns are one of the most versatile firearms for hunting in reality with slugs and buckshot for larger game, and birdshot for smaller species. In-game, using slugs will only result in a perfect kill against very large animals like bears and alligators. Against anything else, any type of shotgun ammo will ruin pelts and carcasses.

* InstantDeathBullet: A headshot with most weapons on a human enemy will kill them instantly. This is also true for most animals, however, larger animals like bears and buffalo can shrug off single headshots from weaker weapons.

** The camp. While in the gang's camp, Arthur can sleep, play minigames, change clothes, shave his beard and socialize with the other members. This base's location changes several times throughout the story. In the epilogue, [[spoiler:as the gang has dispanded and John replaces Arthur, the camp is replaced by first the Pronghorn ranch and later Beecher's Hope.]]

* BagOfHolding: Your satchel, even without upgrades, can hold far more than it should be able given its size. Taken UpToEleven with the Legend of the East satchel, which can hold 99 of every item.

* AFistfulOfRehashes: Two rival families with ties to crime, one of whom includes the town sheriff. A third party looking to benefit by playing them off of each other. A couple of StarCrossedLovers. A (supposedly) hidden stash of gold. Are we referring to Chapter 3 or ''Film/AFistfulOfDollars''?

* FantasyKitchenSink: Both games in the series suggest many more sinister, mysterious narratives brewing just beneath the surface of what is primarily a tale on Old Western bandits, and some of these oddities even have far-reaching implications far beyond the scope of what the main characters are able to perceive. Encounters with certain strangers, side quests, and Easter eggs directly allude to the existence of many fantastical things: a captured European princess; a town said to be cursed with a demonic presence, where a pentagram burns red beneath a dilapidated farmhouse at 4 in the morning, and a mentally ill woman locked away by her own family who rambles numbers that lead to the town's coordinates; a vampire directly based off the bat-like Count Orlok from the 1922 German silent film "Nosferatu", who terrorizes the city of Saint Denis; witches (and their familiars); a time traveler; a forest of whispering voices; a Gypsy seller of antique goods with the gift of clairvoyance, whose cryptic fortunes always come true; a marionette doll in the abandoned caravan of a traveling freak show who gives ominous warnings; unnaturally pale, silent murderers known as the Night Folk who ritualistically kill unfortunate travelers (one of which cries in a white dress until she is approached and grows hostile, who bares a striking resemblance to the Mexican folktale of La Larona); ghosts; the skeletal remains of giants; ancient Greek and Nordic gods; unidentified flying objects said to belong to enigmatic alien beings by the cults who sacrifice themselves in worship of them; an inventor similar to Nicola Tesla who dies creating a sentient robot; the strung-up animal hybrid creation of a Dr. Frankenstein-like mad scientist who sought to bring his monster to life, and a Strange Man who is very likely God, the Devil, or the Grim Reaper himself. The DLC "Undead Nightmare" further adds to this, including a zombie curse from an ancient temple mask, the steeds of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Bigfoot.

** Another camp intercation from Chapter 1 shows Dutch plainly asking Arthur if he would betray him, saying that, "You seem the type". [[spoiler: Indeed Dutch believed Arthur to turn on him near the end of the game.]]
** When Bill is seen sitting around a table with Lenny and Sean, he goes off an unusually aggressive tangent that if he were to lead a gang, it would be with such ferocity and determination that no one would question him, to which Lenny and Sean quickly agree. Bill would go on to start his own gang in Red Dead Redemption 1.