History VideoGame / GadgetPastAsFuture

* SpinningClockHands: When Thomas Reich sets off a chain reaction in a pile of Xenium ingots, Elena sees a clock's minute hand dart back and forth until a whole hour flies past.

* TheSpook: Horselover Frost. He's not listed among the scientists, but is a member of the Third Force. [[spoiler: He also appears to Elena from the future, riding the shockwaves of the Xenium bomb to cross time into the past before it hits.]]

* HumanoidAbomination: Slowslop is very much this. He orchestrated the scientists' pursuit into building the Empire's xenium-based technology, and collected clusters of Xenium for his own ends. [[spoiler: When Louis and Elena frame him for murdering Orlovsky, he [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion ''explodes'' ]] under the Sensorama's rays, disintegrating several guards and leaving nothing but another Xenium shard behind.]]

* HumanoidAbomination: Slowslop is very much this. He orchestrated the scientists' pursuit into building the Empire's xenium-based technology, and collected clusters of Xenium for his own ends. [[spoiler: When Louis and Elena frame him for murdering Orlovsky, he [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion ''explodes'']] under the Sensorama's rays, disintegrating several guards and leaving nothing but another Xenium shard behind.]]

* LivingBattery: Late into the novel, some of the scientists theorize that every ounce of Xenium ore is sentient to a degree, including the incoming comet.

* SpinningClockHands: When Thomas Thomas Reich sets off a chain reaction in a pile of Xenium ingots, Elena sees a clock's minute hand dart back and forth until a whole hour flies past.

* SpinningClockHands: When Thomas McNaughton sets off a chain reaction in a pile of Xenium ingots, Elena sees a clock's minute hand dart back and forth until a whole hour goes past.

* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: [[spoiler: When Slowslop discovers Gondarev's betrayal, Orlovsky has him subjected to the very Sensorama he supervised. His reaction is so strong that Gondarev eventually [[DrivenToSuicide kills himself]] near the end. His dead face is also the same one in the swamp at the end of the game.]]

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Bernhard Diaghilev, one of the Third Force's members, loathes riding trains after surviving a crash that took the lives of his wife and child.

* VillainousCrush: When Orlovsky shows Elena around his place under the West End Hotel, one of the things she sees is an album of *dozens of photos* of herself throughout the years, some of them taken from surveillance cameras. Orlovsky's [[DirtyOldMan unicorn fetish]] doesn't help.

* VillainousCrush: When Orlovsky shows Elena around his place under the West End Hotel, one of the things she sees is an album of *dozens of photos* of herself throughout the years, some of them taken from surveillance cameras. Orlovsky's [[Dirty OldMan unicorn fetish]] doesn't help.

* ConvenientComa: The mysterious boy first appears in a coma, having been found in the Restricted Zone and kept at the Army Hospital for study. Louis accidentally wakes him up when trying to scan his body with the data recorder.

* BlatantLies: Early on, Charles Reif talks you into using the Sensorama by claiming the it awakens latent powers. The experience couldn't be further from the truth.

* AbandonedMine: At one point, Louis Hausmann joins Slowslop in exploring an old army mine on the outskirts of the Empire, where the scientists have been digging up Xenium from a meteorite that crashed here. [[spoiler: The Ark turns out to also be here at the end, disguised as an excavating machine.]]

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Bernhard Diaghilev, one of the Third Force's members, loathes riding trains after surviving a crash that took the lives of his wife and child.

+ Most of the trains being depicted are based on real-life streamlined steam locomotives from gbe 1930's and 40's. The cover art features the Pennsylvania Railroad's experimental [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_S1 S1]] locomotive.

* ReverseMole: [[spoiler: Oskar Gondarev was secretly a spy from the Republic chairman Onegin, observing Orlovsky's work and leaking it to the Republic, which the Third Force intercepted.]]

* AfterTheEnd: The tie-in novel reveals that the meteor ore which powers several of the machines in the game (possibly including the sensorama) warps time. It is heavily-implied that the protagonist was brainwashed by the sensorama prior to the start of the game. As such, the aforementioned scenes set in a swamp might be visions of the future, after the Empire is destroyed by the impact of the comet, which the sensorama beamed into the protagonist's brain.

* ConvenientComa: The mysterious boy first appears in a coma, having been found in the Restricted Zone and kept at the Army Hospital for study. Slowslop accidentally wakes him up when trying to scan his body with the data recorder.

* DownerEnding: Possibly. What happens at the end of the game is maddeningly unclear, but a distinct possibility is that the scientists + Slowslop abandon you on Earth to live through the impact of the comet and go insane from Sensorama exposure after having no more use for you.

* WhereItAllBegan: The game starts and ends in the same hotel room. Quite how you wind up back in it at the end is unclear, to say the least, but it's possible that you never actually even left it at all.

* Room101: Room 306 in the West End Hotel. Dissedents are sent here to be brainwashed by the Sensorama.