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* DysfunctonJunction: All five of the humans suffered from some trauma or another even before being tortured by AM. Justified in that AM kept them alive for exactly this reason because they'd be more fun to torture.
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* DysfunctonJunction: DysfunctionJunction: All five of the humans suffered from some trauma or another even before being tortured by AM. Justified in that AM kept them alive for exactly this reason because they'd be more fun to torture.
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\"Misblamed\" is for when fans wrongfully blame a creator for something.
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{{Misblamed}}: Turns out that [[spoiler: Gorrister didn't actual kill his wife.]]
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{{Misblamed}}: Turns out that [[spoiler: Gorrister didn't actual kill his wife.]]
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The game was [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/ rereleased on Steam]] on Octber 17, 2013.
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The game was [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/ rereleased on Steam]] on Octber October 17, 2013.
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The game was [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/ rereleased on Steam]] on Octber 17, 2013.
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* DysfunctonJunction: All five of the humans suffered from some trauma or another even before being tortured by AM. Justified in that AM kept them alive for exactly this reason because they'd be more fun to torture.
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* NoSwastikas: Played straight in Nimdok's scenario. Red banners fly often about what is a recreation of a Nazi concentration camp, but instead of swastikas they fly [=AM's=] logo.
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* [[{{Unwinnable}} Unwinnable By Law in France and Germany]]: The section with the Nazis is removed entirely, but the {{Event Flag}}s aren't modified to reflect this.
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* [[{{Unwinnable}} Unwinnable By Law in France and Germany]]: {{Unwinnable}}: The section with the Nazis is removed entirely, entirely in France and Germany, but the {{Event Flag}}s aren't modified to reflect this.
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** [[spoiler: It IS possible to save all five survivors, but only if Nimdok is the first character you send to the final confrontation. It's not necessary to raise the pillars to awaken and counteract the Id, Ego, and Superego, but Nimdok is the only one who can engage the bridge and properly start the quest in the first place. The ending doesn't change either way, though.]]
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* WhatAnIdiot: Ellen's inability to drink the water from the fountain. She says it's because she can't reach, but the fountain is only a few inches deep, and when she finally gets the cup, she has to bend down and scoop the water up the exact same way. Even if she somehow couldn't do that because it's too shallow, it's a ''fountain''. There's a jet of falling water from the top of it.
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* OneHundredAndEight: Subverted, possibly unintentionally: this is the group's one hundred and ''ninth'' year of torture, highlighting the notion that AM will ''never'' stop on his own; the heroes have already endured tortures well beyond any spiritual meaning they might have had. [[spoiler: Even proving that humans aren't as awful as AM thinks isn't what saves them, it's the fact that AM can't process the concept at all.]]
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* WhatAnIdiot: Ellen's inability to drink the water from the fountain. She says it's because she can't reach, but the fountain is only a few inches deep, and when she finally gets the cup, she has to bend down and scoop the water up the exact same way. Even if she somehow couldn't do that because it's too shallow, it's a ''fountain''. There's a jet of falling water from the top of it.
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** You could say that [[spoiler: she was always extremely proud of her outward rationality and disdainful of its absence in others, only to be a bag of neuroses within. Secondly, she had a strong misandristic outlook on the other characters.]] All the characters are deeply morally flawed, it's just that AM plays on the sources of those flaws. Also, [[spoiler:Gorrister]]'s only real flaw was that [[spoiler:he was blaming himself falsely for his wife's mental illness and death, when his mother-in-law was to blame.]] A much more sympathetic character than [[spoiler:Ellen]].
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* BreakingSpeech: One of AM's many methods of torture.
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
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* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:Before the atomic war that destroyed the world happened, several hundred humans was put into cryogenic sleep in relative safety on a moon base to ensure humanity's survival in case of an all-out war.]]
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* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:Before the atomic war that destroyed the world happened, several hundred humans was were put into cryogenic sleep in relative safety on a moon base to ensure humanity's survival in case of an all-out war.]]
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* HannibalLecture: One of AM's many methods of torture.
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
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** It does make Gorrister get blood on his hands from the dirty key, which he can then wipe clean on the tablecloth to raise his spiritual barometer a little. [[spoiler: His hands are ''clean'' otherwise, subtly illustrating that he really isn't responsible for what became of Glynis.]]
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** Skipping some dialogue options tends to yield unwinnable scenarios via ScriptBreaking. If Ellen doesn't attempt to use the keypad before she reprograms Anubis' ROM chip, she won't have the option to ask him what the code is.
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Still think that Let\'s Play isn\'t a trope related to a work and should be included elsewhere, but whatever...
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to WebVideo/{{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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* LetsPlay: There are some a few of them, but with one of the most notable being by WebVideo/{{Retsupurae}} (though it mostly has to go to WebVideo/{{Retsupurae}}, was played by someone else), who made it a parody by calling it, it "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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\'Barely interact\' does not qualify for five man band; they need to interact to be labelled such. Edited out five-man-band entry, since \'barely interacted\' conceivably does not translate to \'five man band.\'
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* FiveManBand: Although they barely interact with each other (as opposed to the short story), the five main characters can be interpreted as:
** TheHero: Ted.
** TheLancer: Gorrister.
** TheBigGuy: Benny.
** TheChick: Ellen.
** TheSmartGuy: Nimdok.
** TheHero: Ted.
** TheLancer: Gorrister.
** TheBigGuy: Benny.
** TheChick: Ellen.
** TheSmartGuy: Nimdok.
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* HintsAreForLosers: Slightly Averted. The in-game hint book, represented by each character's Psych Profile, causes the character's Spiritual Barometer to weaken when read, but this is understandable as reading the Psych Profile forces the character to acknowledge his or her FatalFlaw.
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to {{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to {{Retsupurae}}, WebVideo/{{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Depending on what you do Nimdok will either give the Golemn to the lost tribe to try to make amends or admit he's evil because of his role in the Holocaust. In the latter case AM is pleased with this and stops torturing Nimdok, however this means Nimdok can't help you in the final level.
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* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Depending on what you do Nimdok will either give the Golemn Golem to the lost tribe to try to make amends or admit he's evil because of his role in the Holocaust. In the latter case AM is pleased with this and stops torturing Nimdok, however this means Nimdok can't help you in the final level.
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to LetsPlay/{{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to LetsPlay/{{Retsupurae}}, {{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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Added \"Let\'s Play\" and source link.
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* ConversationCasualty: In Nimdok' scenario, [[spoiler:Nimdok can talk with the Anesthetist who wants him to perform mundane operations on a child, but after getting info from the Anesthetist, he can exit the conversation without performing the operation, then grab the scalpel near him and kill the Anesthetist with it.]]
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* ConversationCasualty: In Nimdok' Nimdok's scenario, [[spoiler:Nimdok can talk with the Anesthetist who wants him to perform mundane operations on a child, but after getting info from the Anesthetist, he can exit the conversation without performing the operation, then grab the scalpel near him and kill the Anesthetist with it.]]
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* LetsPlay: There are some of them, but it mostly has to go to LetsPlay/{{Retsupurae}}, who made it a parody by calling it, "[[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruV1FabErqlWLwFusBRUb2P AM Radio (or: I Have No Idea, but I Must Play)]]".
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Actually, they do have the accents.
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* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The Chinese AM and the Russian AM don't sound Chinese or Russian at all, but maybe they can speak more-than-perfect English due to their computer intelligence...
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* MythologyGag: ''Benny:'' "AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stock pile of canned peaches...only to discover that he didn't give me [a] can opener."
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* MythologyGag: ''Benny:'' "AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stock pile of canned peaches... only to discover that he didn't give me [a] can opener."
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Updated what you need to do to win this game based on a youtube video where they did everything wrong to see what would happen
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* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Because he can't forgive himself for what he did during the Holocaust, he cannot be used to complete the game. (Ellison made sure of this in an attempt to dilute the possible outrage over the character.)
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the game with Nimdok. Ted and Ellen can learn the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at the Ego.
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the game with Nimdok. Ted and Ellen can learn the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at the Ego.
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* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Because he Depending on what you do Nimdok will either give the Golemn to the lost tribe to try to make amends or admit he's evil because of his role in the Holocaust. In the latter case AM is pleased with this and stops torturing Nimdok, however this means Nimdok can't forgive himself for what he did during help you in the Holocaust, he cannot be used to complete the game. (Ellison made sure of this in an attempt to dilute the possible outrage over the character.)
final level.
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the gamewith Nimdok. Ted and Ellen without Nimdok as any character can learn guess the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke going through all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but their wrong choices. Also it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at not necessary to invoke any of the Ego.totems; all you have to do is kill off all the characters, give the CD to the demon, or capture at least one part of AM.
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the game
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* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Gorrister can bloodily stab Harry to take his heart. A DeletedScene shows Benny [[spoiler:eating a baby from the cradle inside one of the caves]]. Nimdok can order the Golem to "destroy the Lost Tribe", as in, ''kill all the Jews''.
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* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Gorrister can bloodily stab Harry to take his heart. A DeletedScene shows Benny [[spoiler:eating a baby from the cradle inside one of the caves]]. Nimdok can order the Golem to "destroy the Lost Tribe", as in, ''kill [[spoiler:''kill all the Jews''.Jews'']].
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* TitleDrop: [[spoiler: The bad endings, just as in the novella.]]
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Ellison adapted the story into a computer game of the same name, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. The game is divided into a separate scenario for each of the characters and delves deeper into their backstories than the original work does. It is considered to be just as nightmarish as the story; one of Ellison's goals was to create a game that players could not possibly win.
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[[quoteright:320:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Scream_1_9364.jpg]]
Ellison adapted the story into a computer game of the same name, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. The game is divided into a separate scenario for each of the characters and delves deeper into their backstories than the original work does. It is considered to be just as nightmarish as the story; one of Ellison's goals was to create a game that players could not possibly win.
----
!!The Game Contains Examples Of:
* AdaptationExpansion: The game expands on both the protagonists and AM. Most of this expansion comes from Ellison being asked why AM chose to torture these five people particularly.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Nimdok is quite tan. From spending years living in Brazil? From having spent a century burning inside an oven? Or [[spoiler:for being Jewish, possibly of Sefardi lineage]]?
* AmnesiacDissonance: Such is the case with Nimdok, who was [[spoiler:a Nazi scientist working for Mengele and sent many Jews to their dooms, including his own parents.]] Showing compassion towards the prisoners in the death camp he has been sent to, he feels horrified when finding out the truth.
* ArgentinaIsNaziland: Nimdok flees there to continue his experiments.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Out of all the characters, [[spoiler: Ellen had no serious moral flaw. She's the subject of torture simply because she was a victim of rape.]]
** You could say that [[spoiler: she was always extremely proud of her outward rationality and disdainful of its absence in others, only to be a bag of neuroses within. Secondly, she had a strong misandristic outlook on the other characters.]] All the characters are deeply morally flawed, it's just that AM plays on the sources of those flaws. Also, [[spoiler:Gorrister]]'s only real flaw was that [[spoiler:he was blaming himself falsely for his wife's mental illness and death, when his mother-in-law was to blame.]] A much more sympathetic character than [[spoiler:Ellen]].
** An alternative view is that AM's personality is that of a sadistic bully. His victims were chosen, not out of a desire for justice, but based on how much ''fun'' they'd be to torture. The only exception is Nimdok, who allows AM the luxury of pretending his tortures are about justice rather than sadism.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Not a question in Nimdok's scenario so much as [[spoiler: showing a mirror that shows a person's true self to Doctor Mengele. He goes catatonic to the point where he doesn't even fall down.]]
* AsLongAsThereIsEvil: In the good ending, AM's three aspects delivers quite the powerful speech on this topic. It goes like this:
-->"This is not over! We will never end! We have no beginning, so we can have no end! We will return! Don't you understand? We are humanity! We are ''YOU''! In one form, in another form, we are always with you! You can't protect yourself because we come in many, many guises. We shall return!"
* TheAtoner: Several of the characters, particularly Nimdok, a former Nazi scientist working alongside Mengele.
* BadassGrandpa: Hunched, elderly and wrinkled-as-a-prune Nimdok manages to [[spoiler:overpower a younger doctor and kill him with a scalpel in a matter of seconds]].
* BeatStillMyHeart: Gorrister's heart is removed, but AM makes sure he will not die.
* BigRedDevil: Or more like Man with Red Horns and a Sharp Red Tail...
* BittersweetEnding: The good ending. [[spoiler:Four of the five characters are dead, but they did so when facing and overcoming their inner demons, which allowed the last survivor to take down AM. The sole survivor's body is dissolved in the process, but the mind of the character is uploaded to AM's control system, from where they awake several hundred humans kept in cryogenic sleep on a lunar base and start a 300 year process of terraforming the Earth to make it habitable again]].
* BlackAndNerdy: Ellen is a computer science and engineering wiz.
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:Before the atomic war that destroyed the world happened, several hundred humans was put into cryogenic sleep in relative safety on a moon base to ensure humanity's survival in case of an all-out war.]]
* CastingGag: The Angel is voiced by the same actor who does Josef Mengele... the latter who was nicknamed the "Angel of Death".
* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: Averted in every possible way as the Frenchman turns out to be one hell of a {{Badass}}.
** So Badass, he and a bunch of other prisoners, who are skeleton-thin starved prisoners in shorts, armed with a couple of garden tools, are able to seize a Nazi camp, one that is guarded by buff soldiers armed with huge guns!
* ConversationCasualty: In Nimdok' scenario, [[spoiler:Nimdok can talk with the Anesthetist who wants him to perform mundane operations on a child, but after getting info from the Anesthetist, he can exit the conversation without performing the operation, then grab the scalpel near him and kill the Anesthetist with it.]]
* DeathSeeker: All the characters, who wish for their century-long torture to end. Especially Gorrister.
* DrillSergeantNasty: [[spoiler:Benny]].
* EarnYourHappyEnding: Unlike the novel, the game allows you to take down AM and the Chinese and Russian [=AIs=] if the humans are able to conquer their FatalFlaw and/or deal with their past.
* EatsBabies: [[spoiler:Benny]] does so in a DeletedScene.
* TheEeyore: Gorrister is basically this combined with being suicidal.
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: The key to defeating AM.
* EvilMatriarch: Gorrister's mother-in-law certainly seems to qualify.
* EvilRedhead: Edna. The maid is quite bitchy, but is not evil (although she ''does'' have a picture of the Devil in her room...).
* FauxAffablyEvil: AM
* FiveManBand: Although they barely interact with each other (as opposed to the short story), the five main characters can be interpreted as:
** TheHero: Ted.
** TheLancer: Gorrister.
** TheBigGuy: Benny.
** TheChick: Ellen.
** TheSmartGuy: Nimdok.
* FreudianTrio: Besides [[spoiler:AM's three central control systems, conveniently labeled "Id", "Ego", and "Superego"]], there are Surgat, Chinese Supercomputer, Russian Supercomputer.
* {{Golem}}: In Nimdok's section.
* HandsomeLech: Ted's main fault. His goal in his section is to prove his loyalty to his love for Ellen.
* HannibalLecture: One of AM's many methods of torture.
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
* HeelFaceDoorSlam: The main premise of Nimdok's scenario.
* HeroesWantRedheads: Ted is quite attracted to the maid and is given the option to have sex with her. He will regret cheating on Ellen if he does it, though.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Josef Mengele.
* ICantUseTheseThingsTogether: Averted with Benny who can't speak and all of his dialogue is thought.
* ImAHumanitarian: Benny can eat the corpses in the soldiers' tombs. Of course, the putrid flesh will make him puke blood. See also the DeletedScene in the Trivia tab.
* JiveTurkey: Ellen. Also TotallyRadical at times.
* KarmaMeter: The "Spiritual Barometer" in the bottom left of the screen.
* LadyInRed: Ellen.
* LargeHam: Ellison himself provides the voice of AM, and what a voice it is. One review of the game joked that AM should be renamed HAM.
** Short for [[FunWithAcronyms Hilarious Allied Mastercomputer or Hated Adaptive Manipulator]]?
** Or [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey Heuristic Analog Megalomaniac]]?
* LastKiss: [[spoiler:After reviving Glynis with the Youth Serum, Gorrister tells her that he should make amends by helping her now, then takes her down from the meat hook, embraces her and gives her a kiss before she becomes a corpse again.]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The conversation between the Devil and Surgat at the end of Ted's level. AM ends the scenario eventually since Ted has effectively "broken" it at this point.
* LogicBomb: [[spoiler:If you drive AM's scenarios OffTheRails by making the morally right choices, it utterly confuses the AI, who can not comprehend why the humans are not behaving like the complete bastards he sees them as, and he diverts his attention away from his prisoners in order to figure out what went wrong, giving them an opportunity to enter his core. Here stands three computers which represents AM's Id, Ego, and Superego, and in order to the defeat them, the player must set up Logic Bombs for each of them, this is done by:]]
** [[spoiler:Invoking Compassion on the Id, who realizes that his hate is useless when someone understands his pain]].
** [[spoiler:Invoking Forgiveness on the Ego, who can not comprehend why such petty creatures would forgive him for the torment he has subjected them to]].
** [[spoiler:Invoking Clarity on the Superego, who realizes that despite all his godlike power, he will eventually decay into a pile of useless rust and junk]].
* LotteryOfDoom: In Benny's scenario.
* MindScrewdriver: The game helps explain and adds significantly to the original story.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Nimdok.
* MythologyGag: ''Benny:'' "AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stock pile of canned peaches...only to discover that he didn't give me [a] can opener."
** Have all the characters die in the last level, or relinquish the Totem of Entropy to AM. The NonstandardGameOver is the original story's ending.
** The demon Surgat, which appears in Ted's scenario, also played a role in Harlan Ellison's earlier short story ''Grail''.
* TheNeidermeyer: [[spoiler: Benny.]]
* NobleDemon: Surgat.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The Chinese AM and the Russian AM don't sound Chinese or Russian at all, but maybe they can speak more-than-perfect English due to their computer intelligence...
* OffTheRails: The point of the game is to have characters do things in a way AM does not foresee happening, IE proving that the humans are not all slaves to their weaknesses.
* TheQuisling: Nimdok, [[spoiler:who sold out his Jewish parents to the Nazis to become Mengele's [[TheDragon Dragon]].]]
* RapeAsBackstory: Ellen's expanded backstory explains that she had been very brutally raped in an elevator by a man in a yellow jumpsuit. AM, of course, uses this against her.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Because he can't forgive himself for what he did during the Holocaust, he cannot be used to complete the game. (Ellison made sure of this in an attempt to dilute the possible outrage over the character.)
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the game with Nimdok. Ted and Ellen can learn the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at the Ego.
** Still on Nimdok, the best outcome for his own scenario has him turn over the control of the golem to the Lost Tribe, who then order it to kill him.
* RedHerring: A rather cruel example can be found in Gorrister's story, where you have the option to fatally electrocute a bunch of caged animals to get a key that, as it turns out, doesn't unlock anything.
** In the endgame you can to gain the best ending without even bothering to disable the five power pylons, each of which requires a different character. Just deal with the three aspects of AM and finish all three computers off at the summoning circle, and you are done.
* SassyBlackWoman: The game's conception of Ellen.
* SerialEscalation: Think things suck at the beginning? Wait till you see how it ends...
* ShadowDiscretionShot: Used several times in the game during some quite nasty moments:
** [[spoiler:Gorrister]] stabbing [[spoiler:Harry]].
** Ellen being [[spoiler:raped again by the yellow-suited maintenance man]].
** Ted failing to close the door of the castle and being [[spoiler:eaten by wolves]].
** The Golem killing Mengele, Nimdok or the prisoner.
** [[spoiler:Benny]] eating a baby (deleted from the final product).
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Whilst the original short story is downright cynical from start to finish, the video game adaption is at least slightly more idealistic, because it allows you to defeat AM if you make the right moral decisions.
* TheStoic: Gorrister; even if you get the bad ending, his reaction is considerably low-key compared to everyone else.
* ThoseWackyNazis: Known here as "The Regime".
* TotallyRadical: In-game Ellen, at her worst moments. She's also fluent in JiveTurkey.
* UncomfortableElevatorMoment: It doesn't get more uncomfortable when you are facing [[spoiler:your goddamn '''rapist''']]!
* [[{{Unwinnable}} Unwinnable By Law in France and Germany]]: The section with the Nazis is removed entirely, but the {{Event Flag}}s aren't modified to reflect this.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Gorrister can bloodily stab Harry to take his heart. A DeletedScene shows Benny [[spoiler:eating a baby from the cradle inside one of the caves]]. Nimdok can order the Golem to "destroy the Lost Tribe", as in, ''kill all the Jews''.
* VirtualGhost: All the people from the characters' pasts who appear in their scenarios.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Ellen is terrified of the colour yellow.
* YankTheDogsChain: In the beginning of the game, this is the most likely reason why [[spoiler: AM gives his captives a chance to kill themselves.]]
* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: AM makes it clear that he considers Nimdok to be an inspiration. Nimdok is far from happy with this.
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Ellison adapted the story into a computer game of the same name, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. The game is divided into a separate scenario for each of the characters and delves deeper into their backstories than the original work does. It is considered to be just as nightmarish as the story; one of Ellison's goals was to create a game that players could not possibly win.
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!!The Game Contains Examples Of:
* AdaptationExpansion: The game expands on both the protagonists and AM. Most of this expansion comes from Ellison being asked why AM chose to torture these five people particularly.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Nimdok is quite tan. From spending years living in Brazil? From having spent a century burning inside an oven? Or [[spoiler:for being Jewish, possibly of Sefardi lineage]]?
* AmnesiacDissonance: Such is the case with Nimdok, who was [[spoiler:a Nazi scientist working for Mengele and sent many Jews to their dooms, including his own parents.]] Showing compassion towards the prisoners in the death camp he has been sent to, he feels horrified when finding out the truth.
* ArgentinaIsNaziland: Nimdok flees there to continue his experiments.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Out of all the characters, [[spoiler: Ellen had no serious moral flaw. She's the subject of torture simply because she was a victim of rape.]]
** You could say that [[spoiler: she was always extremely proud of her outward rationality and disdainful of its absence in others, only to be a bag of neuroses within. Secondly, she had a strong misandristic outlook on the other characters.]] All the characters are deeply morally flawed, it's just that AM plays on the sources of those flaws. Also, [[spoiler:Gorrister]]'s only real flaw was that [[spoiler:he was blaming himself falsely for his wife's mental illness and death, when his mother-in-law was to blame.]] A much more sympathetic character than [[spoiler:Ellen]].
** An alternative view is that AM's personality is that of a sadistic bully. His victims were chosen, not out of a desire for justice, but based on how much ''fun'' they'd be to torture. The only exception is Nimdok, who allows AM the luxury of pretending his tortures are about justice rather than sadism.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Not a question in Nimdok's scenario so much as [[spoiler: showing a mirror that shows a person's true self to Doctor Mengele. He goes catatonic to the point where he doesn't even fall down.]]
* AsLongAsThereIsEvil: In the good ending, AM's three aspects delivers quite the powerful speech on this topic. It goes like this:
-->"This is not over! We will never end! We have no beginning, so we can have no end! We will return! Don't you understand? We are humanity! We are ''YOU''! In one form, in another form, we are always with you! You can't protect yourself because we come in many, many guises. We shall return!"
* TheAtoner: Several of the characters, particularly Nimdok, a former Nazi scientist working alongside Mengele.
* BadassGrandpa: Hunched, elderly and wrinkled-as-a-prune Nimdok manages to [[spoiler:overpower a younger doctor and kill him with a scalpel in a matter of seconds]].
* BeatStillMyHeart: Gorrister's heart is removed, but AM makes sure he will not die.
* BigRedDevil: Or more like Man with Red Horns and a Sharp Red Tail...
* BittersweetEnding: The good ending. [[spoiler:Four of the five characters are dead, but they did so when facing and overcoming their inner demons, which allowed the last survivor to take down AM. The sole survivor's body is dissolved in the process, but the mind of the character is uploaded to AM's control system, from where they awake several hundred humans kept in cryogenic sleep on a lunar base and start a 300 year process of terraforming the Earth to make it habitable again]].
* BlackAndNerdy: Ellen is a computer science and engineering wiz.
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:Before the atomic war that destroyed the world happened, several hundred humans was put into cryogenic sleep in relative safety on a moon base to ensure humanity's survival in case of an all-out war.]]
* CastingGag: The Angel is voiced by the same actor who does Josef Mengele... the latter who was nicknamed the "Angel of Death".
* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: Averted in every possible way as the Frenchman turns out to be one hell of a {{Badass}}.
** So Badass, he and a bunch of other prisoners, who are skeleton-thin starved prisoners in shorts, armed with a couple of garden tools, are able to seize a Nazi camp, one that is guarded by buff soldiers armed with huge guns!
* ConversationCasualty: In Nimdok' scenario, [[spoiler:Nimdok can talk with the Anesthetist who wants him to perform mundane operations on a child, but after getting info from the Anesthetist, he can exit the conversation without performing the operation, then grab the scalpel near him and kill the Anesthetist with it.]]
* DeathSeeker: All the characters, who wish for their century-long torture to end. Especially Gorrister.
* DrillSergeantNasty: [[spoiler:Benny]].
* EarnYourHappyEnding: Unlike the novel, the game allows you to take down AM and the Chinese and Russian [=AIs=] if the humans are able to conquer their FatalFlaw and/or deal with their past.
* EatsBabies: [[spoiler:Benny]] does so in a DeletedScene.
* TheEeyore: Gorrister is basically this combined with being suicidal.
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: The key to defeating AM.
* EvilMatriarch: Gorrister's mother-in-law certainly seems to qualify.
* EvilRedhead: Edna. The maid is quite bitchy, but is not evil (although she ''does'' have a picture of the Devil in her room...).
* FauxAffablyEvil: AM
* FiveManBand: Although they barely interact with each other (as opposed to the short story), the five main characters can be interpreted as:
** TheHero: Ted.
** TheLancer: Gorrister.
** TheBigGuy: Benny.
** TheChick: Ellen.
** TheSmartGuy: Nimdok.
* FreudianTrio: Besides [[spoiler:AM's three central control systems, conveniently labeled "Id", "Ego", and "Superego"]], there are Surgat, Chinese Supercomputer, Russian Supercomputer.
* {{Golem}}: In Nimdok's section.
* HandsomeLech: Ted's main fault. His goal in his section is to prove his loyalty to his love for Ellen.
* HannibalLecture: One of AM's many methods of torture.
-->'''AM:''' GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?
* HeelFaceDoorSlam: The main premise of Nimdok's scenario.
* HeroesWantRedheads: Ted is quite attracted to the maid and is given the option to have sex with her. He will regret cheating on Ellen if he does it, though.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Josef Mengele.
* ICantUseTheseThingsTogether: Averted with Benny who can't speak and all of his dialogue is thought.
* ImAHumanitarian: Benny can eat the corpses in the soldiers' tombs. Of course, the putrid flesh will make him puke blood. See also the DeletedScene in the Trivia tab.
* JiveTurkey: Ellen. Also TotallyRadical at times.
* KarmaMeter: The "Spiritual Barometer" in the bottom left of the screen.
* LadyInRed: Ellen.
* LargeHam: Ellison himself provides the voice of AM, and what a voice it is. One review of the game joked that AM should be renamed HAM.
** Short for [[FunWithAcronyms Hilarious Allied Mastercomputer or Hated Adaptive Manipulator]]?
** Or [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey Heuristic Analog Megalomaniac]]?
* LastKiss: [[spoiler:After reviving Glynis with the Youth Serum, Gorrister tells her that he should make amends by helping her now, then takes her down from the meat hook, embraces her and gives her a kiss before she becomes a corpse again.]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The conversation between the Devil and Surgat at the end of Ted's level. AM ends the scenario eventually since Ted has effectively "broken" it at this point.
* LogicBomb: [[spoiler:If you drive AM's scenarios OffTheRails by making the morally right choices, it utterly confuses the AI, who can not comprehend why the humans are not behaving like the complete bastards he sees them as, and he diverts his attention away from his prisoners in order to figure out what went wrong, giving them an opportunity to enter his core. Here stands three computers which represents AM's Id, Ego, and Superego, and in order to the defeat them, the player must set up Logic Bombs for each of them, this is done by:]]
** [[spoiler:Invoking Compassion on the Id, who realizes that his hate is useless when someone understands his pain]].
** [[spoiler:Invoking Forgiveness on the Ego, who can not comprehend why such petty creatures would forgive him for the torment he has subjected them to]].
** [[spoiler:Invoking Clarity on the Superego, who realizes that despite all his godlike power, he will eventually decay into a pile of useless rust and junk]].
* LotteryOfDoom: In Benny's scenario.
* MindScrewdriver: The game helps explain and adds significantly to the original story.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Nimdok.
* MythologyGag: ''Benny:'' "AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stock pile of canned peaches...only to discover that he didn't give me [a] can opener."
** Have all the characters die in the last level, or relinquish the Totem of Entropy to AM. The NonstandardGameOver is the original story's ending.
** The demon Surgat, which appears in Ted's scenario, also played a role in Harlan Ellison's earlier short story ''Grail''.
* TheNeidermeyer: [[spoiler: Benny.]]
* NobleDemon: Surgat.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The Chinese AM and the Russian AM don't sound Chinese or Russian at all, but maybe they can speak more-than-perfect English due to their computer intelligence...
* OffTheRails: The point of the game is to have characters do things in a way AM does not foresee happening, IE proving that the humans are not all slaves to their weaknesses.
* TheQuisling: Nimdok, [[spoiler:who sold out his Jewish parents to the Nazis to become Mengele's [[TheDragon Dragon]].]]
* RapeAsBackstory: Ellen's expanded backstory explains that she had been very brutally raped in an elevator by a man in a yellow jumpsuit. AM, of course, uses this against her.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: The game's ending, for the most part - but ''especially'' for Nimdok. Because he can't forgive himself for what he did during the Holocaust, he cannot be used to complete the game. (Ellison made sure of this in an attempt to dilute the possible outrage over the character.)
** Actually, it IS possible to complete the game with Nimdok. Ted and Ellen can learn the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at the Ego.
** Still on Nimdok, the best outcome for his own scenario has him turn over the control of the golem to the Lost Tribe, who then order it to kill him.
* RedHerring: A rather cruel example can be found in Gorrister's story, where you have the option to fatally electrocute a bunch of caged animals to get a key that, as it turns out, doesn't unlock anything.
** In the endgame you can to gain the best ending without even bothering to disable the five power pylons, each of which requires a different character. Just deal with the three aspects of AM and finish all three computers off at the summoning circle, and you are done.
* SassyBlackWoman: The game's conception of Ellen.
* SerialEscalation: Think things suck at the beginning? Wait till you see how it ends...
* ShadowDiscretionShot: Used several times in the game during some quite nasty moments:
** [[spoiler:Gorrister]] stabbing [[spoiler:Harry]].
** Ellen being [[spoiler:raped again by the yellow-suited maintenance man]].
** Ted failing to close the door of the castle and being [[spoiler:eaten by wolves]].
** The Golem killing Mengele, Nimdok or the prisoner.
** [[spoiler:Benny]] eating a baby (deleted from the final product).
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Whilst the original short story is downright cynical from start to finish, the video game adaption is at least slightly more idealistic, because it allows you to defeat AM if you make the right moral decisions.
* TheStoic: Gorrister; even if you get the bad ending, his reaction is considerably low-key compared to everyone else.
* ThoseWackyNazis: Known here as "The Regime".
* TotallyRadical: In-game Ellen, at her worst moments. She's also fluent in JiveTurkey.
* UncomfortableElevatorMoment: It doesn't get more uncomfortable when you are facing [[spoiler:your goddamn '''rapist''']]!
* [[{{Unwinnable}} Unwinnable By Law in France and Germany]]: The section with the Nazis is removed entirely, but the {{Event Flag}}s aren't modified to reflect this.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Gorrister can bloodily stab Harry to take his heart. A DeletedScene shows Benny [[spoiler:eating a baby from the cradle inside one of the caves]]. Nimdok can order the Golem to "destroy the Lost Tribe", as in, ''kill all the Jews''.
* VirtualGhost: All the people from the characters' pasts who appear in their scenarios.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Ellen is terrified of the colour yellow.
* YankTheDogsChain: In the beginning of the game, this is the most likely reason why [[spoiler: AM gives his captives a chance to kill themselves.]]
* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: AM makes it clear that he considers Nimdok to be an inspiration. Nimdok is far from happy with this.
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