Fanfic / In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium, Nobody Beats G.I. Joe!

They'll fight for freedom wherever there's Chaos, G.I. Joe is there! G.I. Joe! Fake Imperial Heroes- wait, what?

In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium, Nobody Beats G.I. Joe! is a Crossover quest between G.I. Joe (with elements of other Hasbro properties like Transformers) and Warhammer 40,000 written by Sun Tzu, author of A Champion in Earth-Bet and Saga of Soul. It uses the mechanics from the G.I. Joe Tabletop RPG published by Renegade Game Studios, its progression, rolls and votes are collated on fiction.live, and completed segments are posted to Sufficient Velocity.^note Updated February 2024.

The war is over - Cobra has been defeated. The Autobots have driven the Decepticons off Earth, and departed to finish their war on Cybertron. But just when it looks like peace has been achieved, an attack by Unicron and the activation of a Transmuter device to escape throws the entire Solar System into a different dimension. More specifically, the hellish galaxy of perpetual war of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise - and the fascistic Imperium of Man has detected their arrival.

Trapped smack-dab in the middle of the Imperium, the people of Earth realize their only way to survive long enough to find a way back home is to convince the Imperium that they are loyal Imperial subjects. As part of the long con thus involved, G.I. Joe (expanded with elite members from all over the world) becomes a regiment of the Imperial Guard, the 1st Organitron Expeditionary Regiment. The Joes must thus fight the Imperium's enemies on planets all across the Xanadu Sector while dealing with the general dystopian nature of the Imperium itself.

The quest follows the POV of the relative newcomer Joe, Powered Armor technician and "Tech-Priest" Solomon Orville Savella, Code Name "Ironhide"^note in honor of the fallen Autobot. Can he help G.I. Joe keep Organitron alive and in good standing with the Imperium in this Galagrim galaxy until a way back to their home dimension can be found? Good luck, and Yo Joe.

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In The Grim Darkness Of The 41st Millennium, Nobody Beats G.I. Joe! provides examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • When Magos Gamma of Cavitus's Ad Mechanicus branch requested that Ironhide and Menlo show their capabilities by repairing an archeotech graviton gun, he didn't tell them that no Magos in centuries had been able to repair it, nor did he expect them to actually succeed.
• Action Girl: G.I. Joe includes many of those, from canon characters like Lady Jaye and Scarlet to OCs like Bifrost and Paragon. To a lesser extent, Commissar Kaltberg - she isn't an over-the-top action hero like the Joes, but she's able to pull her weight in a fight, as expected of a Commissar.
• Affably Evil: Colonel Rastapopoulos is always putting on a friendly, polite facade even as he engages in shameless war profiteering and political assassination.
  • Many of G.I. Joe's allies among the Imperium qualify, even (or especially) Kaltberg. While they may have some redeeming qualities, and Kaltberg in particular is slowly overcoming her indoctrination, for the most part anyone native to the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millenium is A Lighter Shade of Black. For the genocidal racism against aliens if nothing else.
• Alien Invasion: Cavitus, the first Imperium world G.I. Joe is deployed to, has been fighting an Ork invasion for three decades by that point. The Joes' native world underwent its own invasion years earlier in the form of the Decepticons, but helped the Autobots repel them.
• Alternate History: The Joes' world is in the 1990s, and History significantly diverged in the 80s with the arrival of the Cybertronians and the Cobra War.
• Androids Are People, Too: The Joes certainly think so, having worked with the Autobots before. ...Not that they're stupid enough to say it where the Imperium can hear, of course.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: In wars of tanks, spaceships, lasers and cyborgs, there are Power Klaws, Power Swords, and Chainswords on the W40K side, and ninjas, swordsmen, martial artists and regular old brawlers on the G.I. Joe side.
• Armor-Piercing Question: While Storm Shadow is talking to Spirit and Snake-Eyes about how he remained on Cobra Commander's side and supported his atrocities and war crimes for the sake of honoring his debt to him, Spirit turns it around on him by asking him how all the innocent lives lost in to Cobra Commander's ambition and their honor factors into the equation.
  Spirit: Then, did his victims owe you a debt? [...] You say your debt to him meant you were obligated to support him. Your debt did not give you the right to harm third parties. They held no debt toward you, nor toward Cobra Commander, and you acted as if your debt was theirs to repay.
• Artificial Stupidity: It doesn't take Ironhide long to identify a big weakness in how battle servitors function: all the emotion-suppressing the servitors' implants need to do to keep them obedient also heavily suppress their human survival instincts, meaning if they (erroneously) decide that they need to do something insane, dangerous and counterintuitive to win a fight (like fire on their own position), they will do it without hesitation. And after Poker Face transmits his analysis to the Joes fighting in gladitorial combat against some of said battle servitors, Duke, Scarlet and Jinx soon have their opponents firing on each other.
• Ascended Extra: A few minor characters from some of the cartoon episodes become full Joes.
  • Amber, the martial arts student from "Lasers in the Night" that dated Quick Kick for a spell, became his student, wife and the close-combatant Moonboot, able to break metal with her bare hands and KO an entire Ork squad single-handedly. And got his habit of spouting movie quotes mid-combat.
  • Ali Razuli Jabal, monarch of Alwaha from the episode "Hearts and Cannons" that had his country liberated by Dusty and Footloose, becomes The Social Expert and diplomat Assault (with his country democratized, he can afford to be Active Royalty). Also, he married Dr. Winters, the expert on plasma weaponry.
  • The Cobra chef B.A. Lacarr from "Raise the Flagg!" that managed to survive for a whole year inside a sunken ship becomes the engineer Bon Appetit, specializing in MacGyvering solutions out of anything, including Imperial archeotech.
• Assassin Outclassin':
  • When the Joes go to the jungles of Devoir, they find themselves hunted by Tyranid predators like burrowing Raveners and camouflaged Licters. But once jungle expert Recondo gets a feel for their tricks, the Tyranids' ambush attempts end in them getting spotted and blown to pieces before they have a chance to strike.
  • A Tyranid infiltrator cell tries to use subverted peasants to lure Ironhide into a trap with a Genestealer, but Ironhide is savvy enough to spot the trap and fast enough on the draw to shoot down the Genestealer before they can get a good blow in.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Ironhide is a technician and engineer, meaning he can identify the exact weak points on enemy machines like joints, ammo stores and fuel tanks, and his Powered Armor enhances his aim for him to either pull off said explosive shots, or spot for other sniping Joes to do it for him.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Sci-Fi is amused that Ironhide, who is codenamed after an Autobot, doesn't think very highly of giant bipedal mecha. Ironhide replies that Cybertronians are sleek, can move as agilely or better than a human, and have vehicle-modes, while Imperial mechs are slow, cumbersome, and have kneecaps.
  • On a similar note, the Ork combiner Gargant is an airborne rocket-firing menace whose Wartrukk components mean that it can move around undetected, but its method of flight involves precariously balancing on all its boosters, meaning that once Ironhide works out which rockets to shoot out, it comes crashing down rather easily.
• Badass Army: Take a guess.
• Badass Boast:
  • Ironhide gets a nice one when he sees a fresh-faced Guardsman trying to man an AA cannon, and as a Tech-Priest, tells him there's a problem with the cannon and he needs to get out. After the recruit gets out of his seat and Ironhide takes his place...
    Rookie: "So? What's wrong with it?"
    Ironhide: "What was wrong with it," [shoots down a bomber] "is that I wasn't in the gunner's chair."
  • A handful of underhive gangers try to threaten G.I. Joe's Ironhide and Striker. The latter two are... unconcerned.
    Ironhide: "My friends, I appreciate the support, but there is no need. My friend and I are not in danger."
    Striker: "I dunno, if we're not careful, they might bleed on us a little."
    Ironhide: "Then by the grace of the God-Emperor, we shall clean those stains!"
• Battle Thralls: The Imperium has them in multiple forms - penal regiments, Battle Servitors, Arco-Flagellants... all of which horrify G.I. Joe.
• Bargain with Heaven: It's mentioned that back on Organitron, the governments of Earth are negotiating a defense treaty with Horus and the Egyptian pantheon to defend the planet against any Chaos or daemonic incursions.
• The Battlestar: The Flag of Unrelenting Justice serves as G.I. Joe's warship and mobile base while they are serving on Imperial fronts across the galaxy, named as both a tribute to the original Flagg aircraft carrier and to fit Imperial naming conventions without sounding too fanatic. Although it only qualifies as an Escort ship by Imperial standards (and it's a Mile-Long Ship already), it's a dedicated escort carrier that can house full complements of Thunderbolt Space Fighters and Marauder bombers, while still hosting a fair amount of cannons for Standard Starship Scuffles or Orbital Bombardment, allowing it to destroy ships that outmass and outgun it several times over. And that's not counting the Cybertronian technology secretly installed into it, like a working spacebridge.
• Beeping Computers: Invoked. When Ironhide needs a distraction to reset the passwords on a supercomputer they are fixing in front of an Ad Mech Magos, Bon Appetit makes the computer beep and flash to draw the Magos's attention away.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Bifrost, one of the newer Joes. She may look like a fresh-faced recruit out of ROTC wearing rainbow patches and a horsehair bracelet, and one of her specialties may be hostage negotiation (she once talked a group of Cobra troops into defecting), but said negotiation is also good at getting in her opponent's heads, and her other specialty is counter-sorcery, possessing a rainbow-shooting magic relic that can incinerate Weirdboyz and match the worst dark magic Cobra could get its hands on. Oh, and if you want to know who she is, she calls that relic the Rainbow of Light.
• Black Comedy: The only description of the scene where Ironhide distracts an entire hangar full of Mekboy Orks and Gretchins by pretending to be a Mekboy on the loudspeaker, and claiming that a Gretchin swallowed his flash bitz, ran off before he could gut it to get it back, and is now offering a thousand teef reward to the Ork that guts the Gretchin and gets back his flash bitz. Cue a gory evisceration of every Gretchin in the hangar while G.I. Joe covertly goes about their business.
  Gung-Ho: Ruthless, but effective.
  • And to cap everything off, to destroy all the Ork hardware in the hangar, Ironhide hijacks a Gargant and starts blasting everything in sight while yelling in Ork, "ZOG THIS, IF I CANNA GET THAT FLASH BITZ, I'LL JUST TAKE ALL YER TEEF!"
• Black Mail: After Captain Almadero becomes the new King Cadencio the First, he sidelines Bishop-Praetor Cortez and Magos Gamma to be replaced with more moral individuals, under threat of telling Revelation that the former has been turning pilgrims into slaves, and informing the Adamantine Fists that the latter has been hoarding some of their relics.
• Blessed with Suck: Meridian Septentrion is a sanctioned psyker. Having psychic powers largely means he was snatched from his home, put through hellish condition to be trained by the Adeptus Telepathica, and then essentially became a slave in service to his assigned regiment and abusive Commissar.
• Boarding School of Horrors: Cadet Commissar Kaltberg's description of her time at the Schola Progenium leads the Joes to realize the Schola is this taken to extremes.
• Boxed Crook: Major Bludd and Storm Shadow are the only two Cobra executives allowed out of prison to assist the Joes; Bludd to provide training to new recruits on Earth, Storm Shadow to join the regiment off-world.
• Bullying a Dragon: During the expedition to the underhive, a group of gangers tries to cause trouble for Ironhide and Striker. At no point are they treated as any kind of threat.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Corporal Diaz, a PDF gunner who fought alongside Ironhide in a battle against impossible Ork odds that still resulted in a total Joe victory, found the entire life-changing experience to be the most insane and intense ever to everyone in her unit, and asks if it was just Tuesday to the Joes. Ironhide says that it was a tense battle but concedes that he has experienced worse.
• Can't Catch Up: Ironhide joined G.I. Joe in the later half of the Cobra War and is one of the newer members, and he finds it hard to shake off the impostor syndrome of doing feats comperable to the team veterans like Sci-Fi's laser tech and sniping or Mainframe's mastery of technology.
• Cassandra Truth: Ironhide doesn't believe Bifrost when she says that the rainbow-shooting amulet she wears is "the Rainbow of Light", obtained when she went to another land full of magical ponies.
  Ironhide:…You could have just said it was classified.
  Bifrost: Such is my curse, none ever believe my pony tales.
• Character Filibuster: Sometimes when Ironhide encounters some terrible behavior that the Imperium implements, he takes the time to think about and compare similar behaviors implemented in Earth's own societies.
  • When talking with Teela about the slums of the hive cities and how sometimes the upper class want there to be a criminal underclass they can abuse with impunity, he thinks about how American politicians make it difficult to legally immigrate to the U.S., creating an underclass of undocumented immigrants that employers can underpay, whom cannot legally protest lest they be deported.
  • When Teela discusses the wealthy Navigators and how they are abhumans, not mutants, yet are still disliked by the mutant-hating Ecclesiarchy, Ironhide mentally compares the hatred to how bigots on Earth particularly detest well-off minorities, with the Tulsa Massacre coming to mind.
  • When talking about how cults of mutants that worship the Ruinous Powers are allegedly stirring in the underhive and that a mini-crusade needs to be sent against them, he and Lady Jaye bring up the Red Scare and the Japanese internment camps as parallels of governments vastly exaggerating the threat of internal traitors and implementing harsh measures for their own gain.
• Character Witness: During G.I. Joe's very first day on Cavitus, Ironhide's squad rescues a squad of Tempestus Scionis who are trapped behind enemy lines. During the climactic battle that concludes the war for Cavitus, the leader of that same Tempestus Scionis squad shows up to assist Ironhide and others.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Many members of G.I. Joe have this issue to some extent. Ironhide and Lifeline are both depressed by the fact that everything they did in the underhive only amounted to helping a tiny fraction of its people.
  • On Ironhide's first day on the medieval world of Devoir, while undercover, he runs into a peasant demanding satisfaction for his raped daughter and murdered son at the hands of a knight, and when the knight's retinue declares a Trial by Combat, Ironhide steps up to be the peasant's champion even though he knows it'll blow his cover.
• Closet Gay: This may be the one aspect in which (some parts of) the Imperium of Man is more liberal than Organitron (which is basically 90s Earth) - several members of G.I. Joe have to hide their sexuality because their governments back on Earth wouldn't accept gay people in their military. This comes up when Ironhide teases Menlo over how flustered she gets from being flirted with by lesbian Imperial Rolande; Poker Face, General Hawk's administrative assistant, pulls him aside to chew him out.
  Poker Face: This is the 90s, and even now, mere rumors of homosexuality can destroy a military career.
  Ironhide: Oh. I mean… There's zero chance that everyone in G.I. Joe is straight.
  Poker Face: And as long as anyone who isn't completely, 100% straight doesn't let it slip, General Hawk has less effort to put into not knowing anything he'd be legally required to discharge them over.
  Ironhide: …I'll watch my bloody mouth, ma'am.
• Commonality Connection: Whenever the Joes serve alongside an Imperial regiment from Kiboutan, they can't help but sympathize with a planet with a much more liberal form of government than the Imperium (though not to the level of Earth), and whose regiments have to perform above and beyond most other Imperial regiments in order to maintain their usefulness to the wider empire.
• Competence Porn: While the failures and foibles of the Imperium in general and the Imperial Guard in particular are mostly played for drama, the contrasting hypercompetence of G.I. Joe is often played for laughs.
• The Con: To prevent the Imperium of Man from crushing and subjugating what they would see as a heretic planet under their thumb, the governments of Earth engaged in the biggest disinformation op in history - that "Organitron" is a loyal planet to the God-Emperor and all its religions worship him in different ways. To that end, all of the Joes sent off-world to serve the Imperium have been coached to play specific roles; Ironhide, specifically, has to pretend to be a Tech-Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Also, the reason Organitron negotiated for their military tithe to be the small elite regiment of G.I. Joe, instead of the usual millions of Imperial Guard conscripts, is because a larger army has much more chances to let the secret slip.
• Continuity Nod: Many references to previous episodes of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero are made.
• Corrupt Church: The Ecclesiarchy is both obscenely wealthy, full of fanatics, and responsible in no small part for the horrific state of the Imperium. Its local leader on Cavitus, Bishop-Praetor Cortez, attempts to have countless thousands of underhive residents slaughtered as part of a plot to put his puppet on the throne of Cavitus. On top of that, he has been selling pilgrims into slavery for years.
• Crapsack World: One of the biggest examples of this trope in fiction.
• Crazy-Prepared: Ironhide thinks this of Flint when he needs to get up to a damaged sentry gun to quickly repair it, only to find that Flint had rigged up a climbing rope just for this occasion to save him a few seconds on the ascent.
• Crossover: Between G.I. Joe / Warhammer 40,000, obviously, but there are other Hasbro properties in the mix.
  • Transformers are explicitly part of G.I. Joe's home dimension, and much of the technology G.I. Joe use is Cybertronian in nature... even if the Transformers don't show up in the quest proper.
  • Bifrost is is Megan Williams, years after her adventures in Dream Valley, having grown up and joined G.I. Joe late in the war with Cobra. Also, her siblings Danny and Molly appear as magic consultants for Project Ruby Slipper, and the Ponies have also offered the use of the Heart of Ponyland to power Earth's defenses against Chaos, with Wind Whistler as a representative and consultant.
  • One of the magic consultants for Project Ruby Slipper, the global initiative to get Earth back to their own dimension, is Albert "Presto" Preston, who has first-hand experience of being stuck in another world. Dungeon Master is also working with the Egyptian God Horus, Dr. March, and Wind Whistler to defend Earth from Chaos.
  • Jem and the Misfits' songs play on the radio at one point.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: G.I. Joe introduce themselves to Cavitus by inflicting this on the Orkish forces fighting Colonel Rustrod's men.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Low-Light, G.I. Joe's night-time combat expert and best marksman, is noted as a fairly terrifying Cold Sniper who spends most of his time in the dark even off-duty, and who Ironhide considers the scariest man in the Joes. He's still as heroic as the rest of the team.
• David Versus Goliath:
  • Despite the size of Orks like Nobs and Meganobs, close-combat Joes like Moonboot, Quick Kick and Sergeant Slaughter can still kill them with their bare hands.
  • Ironhide goes up against an oath-blade named "The Titan" in a Trial by Combat - a gigantic landed knight wielding a plasteel shield, a chain sword and bulletproof armor - without his armor or guns. What he does get, however, is prep time, and he manages to topple the Titan with some round seeds, a hidden Bifrost with a mirror, a sling and a gold-weighted bullet, and a pair of daggers right to the eye.
• Deadly Decadent Court: Cavitus, full stop. Between a tyrannical King who's using the Planetary Defense Force to keep his vassals in check instead of defending the planet and is trying to assassinate his nephew as a potential contender for his throne, the Bishop-Praetor who's trying to start a pogrom to put his puppet on the throne, the Mechanicus Magos who's playing politics in order to turn millions of underhivers into Battle Servitors, and the corrupt elements of the Imperial Guard, the planet's political chessboard is effectively ruled by Complete Monsters. Luckily, G.I. Joe runs across a royal heir with a good head on his shoulders that they can put on the throne themselves.
• Deceptively Human Robots: The Joes make a lot of use of synthoids to deceive the Imperium, from creating fake Ork armies to use as faux-enemies, or as useful Body Doubles.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: Ironhide and the Joes can easily see that Commissar Cadet Teela Kaltberg is a curious Book Worm who geeks out over libraries, has a close bond with her brother, and is devoted to her duty... who was also put through the Schola Progenium that indoctrinated her into following all orders unflinchingly, including the ones that got her to kill her classmate to prove her obedience. So, they do her best to not only keep her away from her more zealous Commissar superior, but also direct her into seeing the inefficiencies in the Imperium and the corruption of its topmost authority, to both redirect her focus into rooting out the worst offenders and become more open to Ironhide's more positive advice.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: There is a lot of differences between the ways the settings clash with both each other and the real world.
  • One instance is that the Future of the Eighties is still homophobic compared to both Real Life and even the 40th Millennium. Ironhide laments to his family that this is the one way the Imperium is more progressive than the US Army.
  • Invoked when Ironhide reads one of Kaltberg's recommended Imperium stories, about a Guardsman who cowardly abandons his post, is taken in by a tribe of friendly hospitable xenos who nurse him back to health and welcome him into their community, until the Guardsman finds his courage again to call in his position, exterminate the xenos and himself, and be welcomed by the God-Emperor. Ironhide finds it... problematic.
• Deteriorates Into Gibberish: When Commissar Popov and his cadet Kaltberg meet up after their first missions alongside the Joes, they try to explain to each other what they saw but eventually just run out of words.
  Popov: "Kaltberg."
  Kaltberg: "Commissar."
  Popov: "What."
  Kaltberg: "I can't."
  Popov: "With a grav-chute!"
  Kaltberg: "Grappling hook!"
  Popov: "The Nob! With a suplex!"
  Kaltberg: "Assassin!"
  Popov: "The whole camp! With swords!"
  Kaltberg: "On the roofs! Sentinel!"
  Popov: "The Killa Khan! On the Big Mek!"
  Kaltberg: "Rainbow!"
  Popov: "Three in a single second!"
  Kaltberg: "Didn't stop driving!"
  Popov: "From two miles away!"
  Kaltberg: "All the rockets!"
  Popov: "The Orks' own vox!"
  Kaltberg: "Meganob!"
  Popov: "All the tanks! With the crossbow!"
  Kaltberg: "Taunted!"
  Popov: "Ewehehehehehehe..."
  Kaltberg: "Rrrrrrrrghghghghgh."
  Ironhide: [thinking] They seem to be doing fine.
• Diagonal Cut: Snake-Eyes goes out ahead to cull the leadership of an incoming Ork horde, and Meganob Bloodred's lieutenant doesn't notice a thing until he wonders why his boss is so quiet and pokes him, whereupon the Meganob's stoically-frowning head falls off. Cue Flat "What".
• Didn't See That Coming: The Imperial crusade to cleanse the Ciudad Underhive of "chaos-worshiping mutants" (in actuality a scheme for Bishop-Praetor Cortez to prop up his protégé Viscount Aragon as a mutant-purging hero) runs into a snag when they get down there and encounter, not helpless civilians, but an entire Ork warband (secretly made out of Joe-manufactured synthoids).
• Didn't Think This Through: When Ironhide's squad gets pinned down by Orks because someone spotted a ziplining Lifeline, he suggests that someone lead them away on a Roof Hopping goose chase to give the others time to regroup. He loses his grin when Bifrost points out that the only one of them who is wearing red like Lifeline, is in the right place, and is equipped with Grasshopper Braces is Ironhide himself... for a moment before he steps up to the challenge.
• Dirty Business: Flint and General Hawk agree that although they have been authorized by the governments of Earth/Organitron to implement partial regime change on Cavitus (like replacing the current government with a more sympathetic and safer political ally via staged assassinations), they are not and should not be comfortable with doing so. Especially when it means reading from the Cobra playbook.
• Doing In the Wizard: For a specific instance; while the occasional Artificial Intelligence does exist in Imperial machines, for the most part, "machine-spirits" are not actually a thing and all the Adeptus Mechanicus's prayers and rituals to appease machines to perform basic functions are due to their lack of understanding of how technology actually works.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Between several Masters of Disguise like Scarlet and Zarana and synthoid technology, the Joes are able to pull this not only on some members of the Imperium, but even Orks.
• Easy Logistics: To a degree. G.I. Joe's interstellar warship The Flag of Unrelenting Justice has many fabricators onboard to produce whatever they need, as well as a Cybertronian spacebridge that allows easy supply to and from Earth. They have to be careful of overusing it lest the Imperium finds out about it.
• Elite Mook: The Kommandoes are this on the Orkish side, and the Tempestus Scionis (or just "stormtroopers") are this on the Imperium's side.
• Engineered Heroics: When Ironhide needs to get into a secret royal vault with a bunch of guards, he remotely accesses the vault door to act like it has a glitch, and then conveniently be the Tech-Priest in the area that the guards demand to/beg for help. All he then has to do is close the door once inside, claim that "the machine spirit still needs appeasing" and snoop to his heart's content.
• Excalibur: Wielded by Pendragon, a Hong Kong-born recent G.I. Joe recruit.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Ironhide is pleased that with G.I. Joe's help, the Imperial Guard led by Colonel Rastapopoulos is close to breaking out of the Zeta Pocket where they'd been encircled by Ork forces. Poker Face has to talk him through the Imperial Guard's most likely actions (escape the pocket, move south to encircle the Orks), whereupon Ironhide realizes that Rastapopoulos would in the process abandon the northern flank and leave all civilians in the Zeta Pocket to be overrun by Orks.
• Expy:
  • A couple of Joe recruits are taken from the author's other works: the French swordsman Bleu-Blanc-Rouge comes from his superhero universe The Avatar's World and the genius technician Menlo is another version of the Tinker protagonist of The Electrifying Adventures of Doctor Menlo. Also, Eriko Watanabe from Saga of Soul shows up as a programming consultant for Project Ruby Slipper.
  • Fyodor Ryabov a.k.a. Turnabout is basically Ukrainian Phoenix Wright in his hobo phase - Turnabout, after being disbarred by the Soviet regime, proceeded to mastermind its downfall.
  • Paragon is a German Commander Shepard (female).
  • Colonel Rastapopoulos is, well, Rastapopoulos as a military officer with political ambition instead of an international smuggling tycoon with ambition.
  • Commissar Cadet Teela Kaltberg is a curious Book Worm who loves studying and writing reports, and has a strong bond with her Stormtrooper older brother Sean Kaltberg. Add their first initials to a scene in their childhood where she had purple-dyed hair and he had blue, and there are clear parallels to Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. Not to mention, Sean is theorized to be in a relationship with his royal comrade Almadero, and when Almadero takes the throne of Cavitus, his first name is revealed to be Cadencio, making him the equivalent to Princess Cadance.
  • When the Joes land on the medieval-age world of Devoir, some of the nobles take inspiration from A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • The Greater House of Lamedor is a major player on this planet, gets its wealth from praseodymium mines, and has saber-toothed tigers as their house symbol. Its head, Tyrant Lamedor, is a ruthless political and military genius, and has three sons, the martial-minded Justin, the ambitious, arrogant Ciceron and the studious, snarky Tyranicus. It's not hard to see the resemblances to Tywin Lannister and his children, though Tyrion's counterpart is just as tall and handsome as his siblings and Cersei's counterpart is male.
    • One of Lamedor's vassal oath-blades (knights) is a monster of a man called "The Titan" with a proclivity for rape and murder, in a clear reference to "the Mountain" Gregor Clegane.
• Ensign Newbie: Commissar Parvasky Popov and his cadet Teela Kaltberg are the Commissars assigned to monitor G.I. Joe, and while they technically have license to kill any member not sufficiently loyal to the Imperium, they are constantly left off-balance by G.I. Joe's eccentricity, unorthodoxy, and sheer effectiveness, to say nothing of General Hawk and the upper brass constantly giving them the runaround.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: After Tyranicus spells out to Ironhide just how important Sir Grand-Shield was to House Lamedor (Oath-Blades are used to settle petty disputes between lords via Trial by Combat, and Sir Grand-Shield was a peerless melee fighter), Ironhide realizes that effectively, the powerfully-martial but monstrously-behaved Oath-Blade was House Lamedor's lawyer.
• Fake Faith Healer: As part of the Masquerade, all G.I. Joe technologists and engineers have to disguise themselves as members of the local Organitron chapter of the Adeptus Mechanicus, tech-priests that pray to the machine-spirit of technology every time they use or work on them. Ironhide finds it the most humiliating part of his new role, but needs must.
• Faking the Dead:
  • When the Joes get wind of the Officio Assassinorum putting out a hit on Captain Madrigal (an incognito son of Archduke Almadero) on Colonel Rastapopoulos's orders, they decide to help him out by replacing him with a synthoid that the assassins would kill in his place.
  • When the AWOL Psyker G.I. Joe is tasked to retrieve turns out to be a witness to his Imperial Guard superior's crimes of Unfriendly Fire, G.I. Joe takes him into their ranks, changes his appearance, and gives his staff to the Imperial Guard as proof of his demise.
  • The Joes' regime change operation on Cavitus climaxes in King Cortoban arresting General Leonidas, claiming in public that he had Leonidas killed in custody, and then being sniped by an Assassinorum agent. In reality, the Joes had again used synthoids to stage the public assassinations, and had Cortoban, Leonidas, and Rastapopoulos shipped to Earth in custody.
• False Flag Operation:
  • The Joes, especially their psy-ops specialists, have taken advantage of the Orks' idiocy in several operations by pretending to be Orks themselves - despite their Commissars' protests on adopting a xeno's mindset.
    • On Ironhide's first mission, his squad needs to preoccupy a whole airfield of Ork pilots, so he breaks into their communications, disguises his voice and tells them about a contest that requires the toughest Ork pilot around, prompting the pilots to start beating the tar out of each other.
  • In the beginning of the war, Earth got on the Imperium expedition's good side and demonstrated the military prowess of G.I. Joe by manufacturing an entire squadron of Ork synthoids and having them "attack" Earth, only to be driven off by the Joes in a re-enactment of some of their greatest battles against Cobra.
    • This tactic is again replicated to stymie Cortez's pogrom on the Cavitus underhives, by first getting the civilians out of the way and then creating a fake Ork warband out of synthoids to intercept the crusaders.
    • Towards the end of the Joes' time on Cavitus, the Assassinorum agents are informed of another assignment and leave in disguise for Kiboutan, while elsewhere, Chuckles sighs at how boring it was to monitor their communication protocols for months in order to mimic them.
• Fantastic Racism: In addition to the Imperium's uncompromising hatred for all aliens, it also despises mutants. On the world of Cavitus, G.I. Joe quickly runs into a marginalized minority of mutants (and those aren't even people transformed by the Warp, merely people with benign birth defects).
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Ironhide finds it very easy to look at the tactics used by the Imperial Guard and the Imperium as a whole and compare them to the worst of the Nazis and Cobra - as well as how the use of these draconian tactics and allowing corruption to run rampant are actually putting them at a disadvantage against the Imperium's enemies. For example, two Imperial Guard colonels are in a vitriolic Interservice Rivalry and even actively lob Unfriendly Fire at each other, but General Leonidas keeps deploying their regiments to the same front because they are politically connected and their feud keeps them too busy to plot against him.
• The Farmer and the Viper: An in-universe novel, allegedly based on the tale of one Gunner Androkles, tells of an Imperial Guardsman who, upon crash-landing among a primitive xeno tribe, is nursed back to health and treated like a friend by the aliens. He repays them by radioing the Imperium and giving them the tribe's location, leading to both the tribe and him being killed in the subsequent orbital bombardment. Naturally, to Imperial readers this is meant to come across as ''inspirational''; Ironhide just finds it horrifying.
• Fate Worse than Death: G.I. Joe considers being turned into an Arco-Flagellant to be this. Which is why they destroy all of Cortez's Arco-Flagellants when the opportunity presents itself.
• Faux Horrific: Ironhide gets a cold sweat when he reads a mathematics book published by the Imperium, which just states mathematical definitions, theorems and corollaries without giving any actual proof. What particularly horrifies him are the implications: proving why mathematical theories work is the foundation for teaching people logic and how to think and prove things, and a book that just gives theories without proof and expects the reader to believe them unconditionally only primes the reader to follow any rule given to them without rational thought.
• Feed It a Bomb: On more than one occasion, a Joe has scored a kill on an Ork by throwing a grenade right into their mouth.
• Flamethrower Backfire: The Orks' glitch-ridden flamethrowers are prone to getting blown up by a particularly accurate Joe. Ironhide and his aim-assisted Equilibrium Armor are particularly good at it.
  • He even helps do this on a Humongous Mecha scale; where he pinpoints the fuel-tank on an Ork Gargant's flamethrower for their allied Imperial Knight to slash open.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Ironhide knows the Egyptian Gods are real - after all G.I. Joe once met them. But he doesn't worship them, he just considers them powerful and useful... as well as somewhat stupid and oblivious.
• Framing the Guilty Party: The ambitious Colonel Rastapopoulos wants to gain King Cortoban's favor, which means supplanting General Leonidas. It isn't hard for the Joes to frame him for conspiring with King Cortoban to assassinate General Leonidas, giving their new royal ally King Cadencio just cause to arrest him and get him out of the way.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: The Joes aren't allowed intoxicants during their deployment due to the risk of breaking The Masquerade, but Ironhide just pretends his grape juice is hard while he rants about all the Orks being psychic and holding their glitchy tech together.
• Gladiator Games: While the Joes are in the hive-city Ciudad, Duke, Scarlet and Jinx take the time to participate in the Coliseum and easily flatten the competition, including several battle servitors created by Magos Gamma himself, which was deliberate to make sure Magos Gamma's demonstration of his pet project falls flat on its face. And also making Ironhide and the Kaltberg siblings a mint in bet winnings.
• Going Native: In a fight with a Nob on top of a steel beam, Cadet-Commissar Kaltberg pulls off an unorthodox strategy by slicing the beam out from under both of them and letting a grapple-hooking Alpine catch her while her opponent falls to his doom, for which Alpine compliments her for thinking like a Joe. She tells him not to say that again.
• Good Is Not Dumb: The Joes are uniquely idealistic, in contrast to the Evil Versus Evil factions of Warhammer 40,000. They spend the Cavitus arc running circles around every faction.
• Good Is Not Soft: Being the good guys doesn't stop G.I. Joe from massacring Orks... or arranging a coup to replace Cavitus's scumbag King with one of their allies.
• Good Old Fisticuffs:
  • Bazooka takes care of an Ork trying to grab a launcher by jumping out of a Chimera and socking the Ork in the face.
  • Sergeant Slaughter, one of the greatest hand-to-hand combatants in the Joes, is only made deadlier when he dons a pair of Power Fists. He's even taken down a Meganob solo with his two armored hands.
• Grenade Tag:
  • Subverted. When Ironhide finds out that the Gargant he's trying to hijack has a Mekboy in the cockpit, he just tosses a grenade in with a grin. The Mekboy is so terrified he leaps out of the cockpit and gets tripped to his death, allowing Ironhide to take his place, as well as retrieve the grenade that he didn't pull the pin out of.
• Guile Hero: The Joes' ability to pull fast ones on everyone they come across - both their enemies and erstwhile allies - is as important for their continued success and survival as their combat prowess. Intelligence officers like Scarlet are masters at it, while Ironhide himself is no slouch; General Hawk has commented on his silver tongue and the things he can convince the Orks to do with a vox and a voice changer.
• Heroic Safe Mode: Ironhide and Menlo can barely keep themselves out of a Heroic BSoD when Magos Gamma shows them his legion of lobotomized, roboticized Battle Servitors, says he could swell their ranks with people taken from the underhives, and requests their help in getting G.I. Joe's support for a plan to do just that. They just manage to excuse themselves with grace and not hurl.
  • And it gets even worse when they learn about arco-flagellants.
• Hide Your Otherness: A number of Cavitus war refugees with birth defects are secretly provided with surgery by G.I. Joe to appear normal, to protect them from Imperial hatred of mutants.
• Higher-Tech Species: The Cybertronians, who have shared much of their technology with G.I. Joe's world.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum:
  • The Cybertronian technology available to Earth and G.I. Joe, such as FTL communication and space bridges, is leagues better than anything the Imperium has to offer (except maybe archeotech), but they have to keep usage of it limited and secret, lest the Imperium and their fanatical hatred of xenotech find out and fall on them like a ton of bricks.
  • The Transmuter device that brought the Solar System to the W40K universe could technically be used to get them out again... but with no way to aim it, they could end up shunting everyone into a universe even less hospitable than their current one, like one full of antimatter. Trying to improve the device until it works reliably is a key goal of Project Ruby Slippers.
• Holding the Floor: Lifeline offers talk and medical treatment to an underhive gang (with Striker serving as his bodyguard), while Ironhide sneaks into their factory base to rig up a few suppression surprises.
• Hold the Line: In one mission, G.I. Joe has to hold off an Ork war band of more than 100,000 Orks to keep them from massacring a town, with only a percentage of men and no chance of backup. The Orks lose half of their number just getting past the first line of defense, and lose the other half to burning urban warfare.
• Honor Before Reason: Commissar Parvasky Popov is the kind of commissar who views deceit and subterfuge as cowardice, and is only barely restraining himself from court-martialling G.I. Joe and its unorthodox tactics. Not only does he insist on coming along on an infiltration of an Ork naval fortress, not only does he protest pretending to be captured by Orks (Scarlet in disguise), but even when Scarlet asks him to be her lookout, he ends up charging out with his chainsword and getting captured.
  • The Joes themselves often go far above and beyond what is required for their role, or even safe for keeping the Earth's secrets. While they do their best to be smart about it, and realize they can't save everyone, Ironhide often thinks to himself that there would be no point in being G.I. Joe if they were willing to let evil slide when it can possibly be avoided.
• Hopeless with Tech: Relatively speaking. The Adeptus Mechanicus is supposed to be the premier source of technology knowledge in the Imperium, but all their expertise is filtered through belief in "machine-spirits" and prayers and rituals to appease them in order to get the Imperium's tech to do anything, with no actual knowledge of how it actually works. The technicians in G.I. Joe, on the other hand, actually know the underlying principles on how to use technology and have worked with super-advanced Cybertronian tech for years, so not only can they operate and repair technology much better than the Ad Mech, but they can bamboozle them with the Adeptus's own ritualistic flash.
• How We Got Here: The chapter "The Fate of Cavitus" begins with Ironhide and his squad pinned down in Ork territory, with Bifrost suffering a concussion, and Ironhide wondering how they got here. It then flashes back to the Joes getting their mission briefing and setting off, followed by their aircraft getting downed by anti-air fire.
• Humongous Mecha: Both of the Imperium's side (such as Rolande's Knight) and the Orks' side (such as Gargants). Ironhide reflects that Cobra experimented with those, before concluding that they were just not cost-effective.
• Important Haircut: Children on Vectorime, the native world of the Kaltbergs, traditionally dye their hair; Teela Kaltberg removed the dye when she started attending the Schola Progenium in order to better fit in. At the end of the Cavitus arc, filled with doubts about whether she's being a good Commissar for G.I. Joe and about whether she even should be, she decides to re-dye her hair purple.
• Indy Ploy: One of G.I. Joe's strengths is its ability to come up with these very, very quickly.
• Insistent Terminology: G.I. Joe will sometimes refer to Orks as "bogeys", but never as "greenskins".
• Interdimensional Travel Device: The Transmuter (from the old Sunbow episode Worlds Without End) is how the backstory happened. It was used to transport the whole Solar System out of Unicron's way, right into another dimension.
• It Was Here, I Swear!: Bishop-Praetor Cortez can't believe Viscount Aragorn when according to him, the holy crusade army he marched into the Underhive to clear of mutants instead ran into an Ork warband (when the hive city is miles away from the front line of any Ork fighting), which the crusaders somehow fought off while barely suffering any casualties (aside from all the arco-flagellants they brought with them), and although they didn't burn the bodies, somehow all the corpses vanished after they left. Given that G.I. Joe evacuated all the underhive civilians in the crusaders' path beforehand, constructed an entire battalion of Ork synthoids that were programmed to fight nonlethally except against the arco-flagellants, and spread rumors that Aragon wanted to sell off the arco-flagellants to rivals, this was all deliberate to torpedo Cortez's plan to build up Aragon as an Emperor-serving defender.
• Kidnapped Scientist: Lampshaded; as Eriko Watanabe notices her fellow scientists and experts in Project Ruby Slipper, including Professor Mulaney, Doctor Penser, and Doctor Shakur, she thinks about how many of them had been abducted by Cobra at some point or another.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • When the Hold the Line operation against an Ork warband transitions into urban warfare, Melta weapons, Hellhound tanks, and the flamethrower specialist Blowtorch take point to incinerate the enemy force en-masse.
  • Ironhide's first weapon used against the Tyranids is a Heavy Flamer. Later, he borrows the auxiliary flamethrower tank of a wrecked Hellhound tank and uses it to incinerate a whole horde of Termagaunts.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Imperium is a nightmarishly evil regime, but given that its enemies in the sector are Orks, Tyranids and Chaos, G.I. Joe can fight for it with a reasonably clear conscience.
  • When meeting Magos Castillo of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Ironhide reflects that one doesn't get to such a position without doing a lot of horrific things... but that having some redeeming qualities still puts Castillo ahead of his competition.
• Locked Out of the Loop: When a Joe team including Ironhide are given a side-mission to search for a lost Power Sword ostensibly from a Rogue Trader dynasty, they aren't informed of the true specifics of the mission due to rumors of mind-reading Psykers under General Leonidas's command (and even concealed an Imperial bug from Dial-Tone so as to not raise suspicions). They are only debriefed after the mission that they stole the Power Sword from King Cortoban, spread rumors about it being lost, and when Leonidas arrived to claim it from them, they gave it to him in exchange for him looking into Bishop-Praetor Cortez and Viscount Aragon, as part of their plan to aim all their attentions at each other.
• Love Martyr: An uncomfortable implication between Commissar Cadet Kaltberg and her superior Commissar Popov. She takes aspersions to her superior's character very personally, and in an internal monologue, she is rather relieved that his work with the Joes has kept him too busy to summon her to his tent at night. Other private conversations from the Joes imply that keeping Popov busy is a deliberate action on their part.
  Flint: Sometimes, it's the people who hurt us that we feel we have to excuse and justify.
• Low Clearance: Alpine takes out a group of Orks on Warbikes this way, by shooting a grappling hook to a nearby attachment point and clotheslining the entire group.
• Midair Repair: The Joes need to get from one location to another in a hurry, but one of the vehicles needs emergency repairs and there's no time to stop. So, Ironhide, who is riding in another vehicle, has to climb onto the other vehicle, perform the repairs, and climb back, all without stopping. To Cadet Kaltberg's complete disbelief, the Joes pull it off without even a blink.
• Mind over Manners: Played with. For all that he has impressive psychic abilities, sanctioned psyker Meridian Septentrion cannot actually read minds. However, many, many Imperial Guard members he has run across over the years assume he can, and threaten to kill him if he ever reveals their secrets - secrets to which he isn't actually privy.
• Moment Killer: During lunchtime, Ironhide sees Mainframe and Zarana at a table, and sits with them to give them a mission update. It takes him a while to notice them starting to glare at him and figure out the reason why, whereupon he excuses himself in embarrassment.
• Mugging the Monster: More than a few underhive gangsters come to mug or menace the upperfolk coming into their turf, but G.I. Joe is so far out of their league they barely bat an eye at their attempts. Just as an example, when a group of gangsters come to menace Ironhide while he's helping out the local community, and a bystander tries to defend him:
  Ironhide: My friends, I appreciate the support, but there is no need. My friend and I are not in danger.
  Bystander: …You aren't?
  One of the gangsters: …You aren't?
  Ironhide: None whatsoever.
• Multinational Team: G.I. Joe has effectively been upgraded into this to deal with the magnitude of the crisis, with members from all over the world.
• Nap-Inducing Speak: Variation. When Ironhide can't get to sleep before a big battle the next day, he breaks out the desperate measures - the book of Ecclesiarchy prayers. Five minutes of that is enough to cure his insomnia.
• Ninja: Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Jinx, and arguably others such as La Vipère. G.I. Joe basically has its very own ninja division.
• No MacGuffin, No Winner: Invoked. G.I. Joe tracks down a cache containing a Power Sword, but they are later accosted by General Leonidas's forces who want to claim it instead. When he doesn't listen to the argument that G.I. Joe is required to hand it over to the proper owner (like Sector Command), General Hawk orders Ironhide to destroy the sword if Leonidas doesn't back down. The Imperial general promptly shifts to negotiation tactics - which is what Hawk intended for all along.
• Non-Indicative Name: Zigzagged; Ironhide's codename may come from his armor specialization (and also in honor of the heroic Autobot), but not all of his armor suits are built for tanking raw damage. On Cavitus, he wore a set of Equilibrium Armor designed to help him dodge attacks, while on Devoir, he wears a suit of heavy Marauder Armor that is built for durability.
• No One Gets Left Behind: In stark contrast to the Imperium, who'd abandon wounded troops if they were too injured to fight, G.I. Joe will take the time to rescue the wounded and bring them back to safety. Ironhide tells a skeptical Imperial soldier that it's a key element to their success; members will fight harder and take risks if they know their regiment and comrades-in-arms values their lives and will take equal risks to keep them safe, keeping morale high and the regiment effective.
  • In a later mission, the Joes' assigned Commissar gets captured by Orks due to putting xeno-slaying Honor Before Reason and going Leeroy Jenkins, and one of the PDF troopers comments good riddance and makes to leave. Sergeant Slaughter grabs him and says they will get the commissar out, repeating his movie quote of "We all go home, or nobody goes home!"
• Original Character: A few of the newer Joe recruits are created from whole cloth.
  • Paladin, ren-faire enthusiast and APC driver.
  • Striker, Le Parkour expert, hand-to-hand combatant, and Jack of All Trades.
  • Poker Face, General Hawk's new administrative assistant.
  • Pendragon, British former union head, Hong Kong expat, anti-monarchist, and chosen wielder of Excalibur. There's a reason the British government wanted him with the Joes, in space and out of the public eye.
  • Brimstone, ex-soldier and chaplain from the Congo under the Mobutu administration, whose role in G.I. Joe is to masquerade as G.I. Joe's regimental priest of the "Catholic Imperial Church" and handle the talking with any actual Ecclesiarchy bishops.
  • Killshot, former Tzahal sniper.
  • Whisper, Mexican stealth operative and commando.
  • Crosshairs, sniper and The Vietnam Vet... for North Vietnam.
• One Riot, One Ranger: Colonel Rustrod isn't happy that the Imperial regiment sent to reinforce him has less men than his daily recorded casualty rate - until one of said regiment snipes down three Ork Deffkoptas from over a mile away.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You:
  • Ironhide notes that for all of the Imperium's hatred of xenos, aliens and mutants (even things as small as albinism or extra fingers), there is one thing that they're more progressive on than Earth and the US Army - attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals (keep in mind, this is happening during what would've been the 80s/90s). When Ironhide starts to make jokes about Menlo reciprocating Imperial Knight Rolande's advances, Poker Face pulls him aside, reminds him about what happened to Alan Turing, and tells him to not give General Hawk any knowledge that would legally require him to discharge any Joes.
  • While many Joes mock Cobra Commander screaming "Retreat!" after another Cobra defeat, they do acknowledge that being able to organize a fighting retreat without suffering catastrophic losses is a tactical skill all its own. This is contrasted with the Orks, who when faced with (synthoid) Orks screaming "Retreat!", completely panic, lose their heads, run into each other, and are completely routed by the Joes.
  • President Reagan laments the fact that the Imperium of Man have achieved his ideal of "one nation under God" and have kept it for millennia, which would be admirable if not for the fact that they worship "the wrong God".
• Opponent Instruction: Bifrost, while giving orders to the rest of her squad, also weaves in one to the enemy Meganob to confuse him.
  Bifrost: Mercer, drive Alpine next to the SAMs! Alpine, you know what to do! Ironhide, Bazooka, get the Nob on the right! Meganob, you're doing it all wrong! If you want to krump gits, you need ta get ta da gits faster than da gits can run, and that mean you gotta get da right ride ta go fasta! Running is for gits!
  Meganob: …WHAT?
• Out-Gambitted: Bishop-Praetor Cortez was working with the Navigators of House Astraides to usurp King Cortoban - who was hoarding all of the PDF's best forces for his own protection instead of on the front lines against the Orks, prolonging the war and risking Astraides's profits - and replacing him with a loyal patsy like Viscount Aragon. Not only does G.I. Joe work out what's going on, they convince the Navigators to back their own more altruistic royal heir, usurp the King themselves, and blackmail Cortez into retiring under threat of exposing his crimes of selling pilgrims into slavery.
• Our Presidents Are Different: US President Ronald Reagan, seen in an interlude, is both President Scheming and Jerkass in direct contrast to G.I. Joe. Having survived his Alzheimer's and used the Cobra War as pretext to repeal the 22nd Amendment (eliminate term limits), he is on his 4th term in office as the man who led the US through Cobra, the Deceptions, and the Soviet Union. However, in private, he and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger do not think much of the idealistic General Hawk and even less about some of his Joes like the Ukrainian Turnabout, and reassure themselves that there are still ways to keep them in line.
• Out-of-Character Alert: When they first arrive on Rolande's world Devoir they quickly discover a priest who has been crucified for Heresy. Unwilling to let him be tortured to death, Ironhide and Bifrost claim they detect some kind of Tyranid corruption on him and take him away 'to be vivisected'. Unfortunately, while most Imperials find this completely plausible, Kaltberg immediately realizes that G.I. Joe doesn't do things like that and they are forced to tell her (a version of) the truth.
• Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Variant; Ironhide is mortified when his commanding officer General Hawk walks in on an Imperial Guard lieutenant trying to invite him to a brothel. While Ironhide is babbling that he was not trying to impugn the military's honor, Hawk reassures him that he was just rescuing him from an awkward conversation.
• Pet the Dog: Literal example; General Hawk turns down rejuvenat treatments that would keep him young on grounds of professional ethics but does agree to provide it to the members of G.I. Joe who are at risk of aging out of service - the Joe animal companions like Junkyard and Order.
• Pineapple Surprise: As an unlucky Ork finds out, Spirit has taught his eagle Freedom not only how to throw grenades, but also how to steal grenade pins.
• Point Defenseless: Because of the Bigger Is Better mentality shared by both the Imperium and the Orks when it comes to their space battleships, both factions consider fighters scouts at best and worthless at worst. As such, when G.I. Joe sends out several squadrons of Thunderbolts and Marauders to take down an Ork Kill Kroozer, they are able to outfly the Ork fighters, obliterate the point defenses and take out the main guns, allowing the Flag and the bombers to finish it off, while the nearby Imperial Commodore is completely dumbfounded by the "counterintuitive" tactics.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Implied. When Cross-Country makes his first appearance, Ironhide thinks that it's a good thing that someone took him aside and explained to him why it wasn't a good idea to wear the Confederate flag on his uniform.
• Polyamory: According to Lady Jaye, Scarlet is apparently dating both Duke and Snake-Eyes at the same time, and all three seem to be comfortable with this arrangement.
• Power Nullifier: Bifrost's magical artifact, the Rainbow of Light, can be used as such against hostile psyker effects.
• Pragmatic Hero: Out of necessity. There is no way Earth could hold off the endless legions of the Imperium if it came to a direct conflict, so the only solution is to become part of it and act as its loyal subjects. In order to survive as loyal members of the Imperial Guard, the Joes, while doing what good they can where they can, have to work alongside fascistic kings, bloody-minded Commissars, xenophobic bishops and Ad Mech Magi who'd eagerly convert millions of innocents into mindless servitors, even as they walk past the suffering billions in the underhives or the legal slaves in the Spires.
  La Vipere: [talking about King Cortoban's Royal Harem] I have walked past an entire chattel of sex slaves and didn't free them. I have literally never been angrier in my life.
• Pulling the Thread:
  • On Cavitus, G.I. Joe discovering a mysterious sniper taking out Orks leads them to discover a secret struggle for the throne.
  • On Devoir, Ironhide coming across a crucified brownrobe leads G.I. Joe to discover a conspiracy to destroy the planet's biosphere and kill countless innocents just to better exterminate the Tyranids and make Devoir's knights relevant on other space battlefronts.
• Quality over Quantity: Oh, absolutely. The universe of Warhammer 40K frequently fields armies that number in the millions or more, whereas the G.I. Joe regiment has less than a thousand combat personnel. And yet with superior tactics and technology, they frequently pull off victories that inflict completely disproportionate casualties upon their opponents.
  • As an example, a mission on Cavitus has G.I. Joe and a scant Planetary Defense Force defending a settlement about to be attacked by over 100,000 Orks, with no chance of reinforcement. Not only do the Joes completely wipe out the opposing force with no survivors, they take no fatalities of their own.
• Rasputinian Death: Warboss Karkaz, as befitting a giant Ork with heavy powered armor and riding an Ork-ified Baneblade Tank, takes a lot of punishment in his battle with the Joes, including having his own tank blown up from under him, Spirit ramming him with a Chimera tank, point-blank shots from Roadblock's Heavy Bolter, slashes from Snake-Eyes wielding a Power Sword, punches from Quick Kick wearing Power Fists, and a lot of supporting fire, and he still doesn't go down until Snake-Eyes stabs a Power Knife into his eye up to his elbow. And then slashes out his throat for good measure.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Several former members of Cobra are working with G.I. Joe now: Zarana, Storm Shadow, Raven, B.A. Lacarr... Also, several Cobra experts like Destro and Scrap-Iron are consulted for Project Ruby Slipper.
• Reverse Psychology: How does General Hawk implement a military arrangement which Imperial Guard Colonel Rastapopoulos would veto? By getting one of his political rivals to publically oppose his suggestion, whereupon Rastapopoulos, seeing the opportunity to undercut them, would wholeheartedly support Hawk over his rival.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: While Doc is ranting about how Imperial rejuvenat treatments steal youth from others, Ironhide notes his glasses looking shinier and more reflective than usual.
• Science Hero: POV character Ironhide, being a military engineer, is very much this... even if, to his annoyance, he has to pretend to be a Mechanicus Tech-Priest.
• Schizo Tech: Standard for 40k, but Rolande's home of Devoir stands out in particular. A tropical Knight World, it features a largely medieval society... doing battle with Tyranids, using Laz Guns and Humongous Mecha.
• Shout-Out:
  • The final defeat of Cobra in this timeline is called "The Day of the Broken Fang".
  • The author takes some cues from The Prophet From Maine when in the middle of a mission, Ironhide steps up to be a peasant's champion in a Trial by Combat, against a monstrous brute of a knight that raped the peasant's daughter and killed his son.
• Showy Invincible Hero: The setup for this trope is here, with the stakes so high that a single defeat would mean the end of Earth (at the hands of their own "allies" the Imperium at best or any of the other factions at worst), and the Badass Army of G.I. Joe all set up with the skills, wits and smarts to outwit and defeat their opponents, save the day, and look awesome while doing so. So far, the first arcs on Cavitus with the Joes defeating the Ork invasion and committing a royal coup to replace the planetary leader with a more moralistic heir instead play this straight; time will tell if it will remain that way.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Warhammer 40,000 is on the far end of the cynicism scale, while G.I. Joe is somewhere on the idealistic side. The Joes work to inject what little idealism they can get away with into their small corner of the galaxy.
• Slippery Skid:
  • Apparently, a barrel of machine oil and ball bearings is enough to take down a Mega Dread. Much to the accompanying Imperials' disbelief.
  • Ironhide also makes effective use of some round seeds against a heavily armored knight he can't afford to face in melee.
• Smart People Play Chess: Discussed alongside its counterpart Cunning People Play Poker, as Cadet Kaltberg, after losing a chess game to Flint, talks about how games like chess, poker and go can also apply to battlefield tactics, alongside the people who are good at them. Flint is a Rhodes scholar, an expert tactician and an international master at chess, experts at poker include field commander Duke, intelligence officers Scarlet and Lady Jaye, CIA operative Chuckles and lawyer Turnabout, while expert engineer Menlo and Lifeline, who has the brain for leadership, are both talented at go. A subversion, however, is General Hawk, who always loses to Flint at chess but is absolutely the better tactician, as his tactical specialty involves thinking outside the box and looking for the unexpected angles, which regimented games can't reflect as well as the battlefield.
• Spanner in the Works: G.I. Joe ends up disrupting the schemes of practically every faction on Cavitus.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Advances in medical technology mean that President Ronald Reagan survives his Alzheimer's disease.
• Spit Take: Invoked - Poker Face gives a Commissar recaf (coffee), and General Hawk waits for the exact moment he drinks it to drop the following line:
  "Excellent," says General Hawk, with a perfectly straight face. "Now that our victory is assured, it is vital that we perform a cowardly retreat!"
  Recaf shoots out of the commissar's nose, reducing him to a coughing mess.
• Spy Speak: When an entire regiment, which includes several intelligence experts, needs to conceal their intentions from their so-called superiors, this is bound to come up.
  • If a Joe mentions "Crimson" and "Guard" in the same phrase (in a reference to Cobra's Praetorian Guard), this alerts other Joes that Imperial intelligence might be listening in and they need to be extra careful.
  • Once the Joes get wind of an Assassinorum mission in the area, they sprinkle in names of other assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald and Ignacy Hryniewiecki into their messages to alert the others.
• Staging the Eavesdrop: As master conman Snow Job can attest to, the best way to make money on betting is not just to bet on the winning side, but to also make sure a lot of rich idiots will bet that your side will lose in order to skew the odds, and the best way to do that is to find the sports nerds that everyone listens to and make it seem like they'll bet against your side. So, if a visible Tech-Priest has a conversation near some of these nobles about how the competing battle servitors are the personal creations of Magos Gamma, outfitted with invincible technology, and that Magos Gamma wouldn't show off his work in the Gladiator Games unless he was absolutely certain they were unbeatable... well, let's just say the betting odds are very lopsided, with a big payout in the rare (and completely inevitable) event that the Joes win.
• Stunned Silence: When Ironhide defeats The Titan in a trial by combat, stabbing him in both eyes and declaring it was for the girl he raped, the crowd is shocked at the upset victory and the officiating priest can barely stammer out that the Emperor empowers the righteous.
• Suddenly Shouting: The escaped Psyker Meridian Septentrion goes into a tirade the moment Ironhide gives him the excuse, venting a lifetime of frustration and stress under the Imperium.
• Suffer the Slings: Forced into a Trial by Combat without his Power Armor, with an Expy of The Mountain wielding a Chain Sword no less, Ironhide is forced to improvise. He takes inspiration from an Organitron legend, crafting a golden sling bullet for extra mass, jacketed in steel.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Literally; on at least one occasion, Turnabout manages to talk a group of Orks into shooting themselves by convincing them the best fight is in the afterlife.
• Tank Goodness: As classic of Warhammer 40k and the Imperium, the Joes get to pilot their tanks, from the Leman Russ to the Baneblade. And even Ironhide can't deny the thrill manning what amounts to a moving bunker and firebase.
• Taking You with Me: Or at least, "with my ship"; after a Tyranid horde uses Flesh-borers to critically damage Lift-Ticket's Valkyrie, he manage to maneuver the Valkyrie to crash right on top of the Tyranid Warrior acting as the horde's synapse creature, causing the horde to lose all coordination. And Bifrost is still able to get him out of the wreckage afterward.
• Technology Uplift: Discussed and defied - thanks to the Autobots, G.I. Joe has access to technology that could significantly alter the galactic balance of power in the hands of the Imperium (such as reliable faster-than-light travel and communication). However, they decide against sharing that technology with the Imperium, both because of the Imperium's fanatical rejection of xenotech, and because, well, they don't want to make a fascistic, tyrannical empire better at being fascistic.
  • They do, however, reverse-engineer Baneblade tanks and teach Magos Castillo how to build them, as part of their plan for regime change on Cavitus.
• Trial by Combat: A G.I. Joe classic. Ironhide breaks cover on a knight world, becoming the champion of a tavern keeper whose daughter was raped and her son murdered by a sworn knight. The tavern keeper made the mistake of publicly accusing him, which allowed the knight - in bulletproof armor and wielding a chain sword - to challenge him to trial by combat. Ironhide steps up as his champion.
• Took a Level in Badass: Planetary Defense Force soldiers are generally regarded as almost useless, but the group trained by Captain Madrigal (and later by Beachhead) is a cut above.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Inverted with Organitron (i.e. the Earth of G.I. Joe): The secret it must desperately hide is that it's not a dystopian hellhole ruled by authoritarianism, religious fanaticism, ignorance and hatred of aliens like the Imperium.
• Underestimating Badassery: With a dash of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good; almost every high-ranking Imperial Guard official that comes into contact with G.I. Joe - from Colonel Rastapopoulos to General Leonidas - views General Hawk as both an exemplary tactician for pulling off near-impossible military achievements and an absolutely abysmal politician due to not using said achievements to make Thrones, gain military accolades, connect with nobles or find powerful patrons. While they all plan on using Hawk as a blunt instrument for their own ends, Hawk meanwhile is fully capable of playing them like a band of fiddles, stop the worst of their plans, hold them to account, and eventually replace them with someone who will actually care about the innocent populace of their worlds.
  • It turns out that President Reagan and Henry Kissinger hold a similar opinion of Hawk.
• Victory Fakeout: Ironhide and his fellow new recruits have just finished their training exercise, cleared out a fort full of fake Orks, cheer in victory... and then Bifrost gets headshot. As she wipes the paint off, Major Bludd comes in with a warning about not letting your guard down too early.
• Visual Pun: After his assassination is successfully faked, Captain Almadero comes out of the closet. There are also rumors that he's in a romantic relationship with his Stormtrooper friend Sean Kaltberg.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As in canon, the Marine Leatherneck and the Navy SEAL Wetsuit are always shooting barbs at each other, but Leatherneck will praise Wetsuit's competency while the latter is elsewhere doing his work, carry him out of an active combat zone, and continue to squabble when they both end up in the infirmary afterward.
• Who's Laughing Now?: General Leonidas considered General Hawk a useful catspaw due to his apparent political ineptitude, but when Leonidas is under arrest due to G.I. Joe framing him for stealing from King Cortoban, he screams for Hawk to let him out, only for Hawk to coldly say that while he might benefit from Leonidas's connections, the idea of a General Ripper like him in charge of the lives of millions of soldiers is just not something he can accept.
• Wretched Hive: Ciudad's underhive is very much this - though this is largely due to harsh conditions and having been effectively abandoned by the rest of society, rather than any flaw of the inhabitants themselves.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Ironhide's brain comes very close to a Rage Quit when he sees a pack of Ork Wartrukks fly up and Combine into a Gargant.
• Zerg Rush: Admiral Keel-Haul uses this strategy to take out one of the Orks' Kill Kroozers, by going against Imperial military doctrine of Bigger Is Better and swarming the enemy ship with the Flag's entire contingent of space-fighters.