Fanfic / Jericho (MLP)

aka: Jericho

"Was there a way to just hold up a hoof and tell them I’d spent a lifetime learning how to use this sword to mercilessly end lives in the name of the good and just? Was there a way in the nine Hells to tell them that I was their death, plain and simple?"

Jericho is the result if you take a possibly insane author, the plot and characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and play everything for cool points, funnies, or drama as the story progresses.

Alternatively, this fic is what happens when you take a sociopathic First-Person Smartass and Deadpan Snarker whose native language is German, throw him into a nation whose culture creates instant Culture Clash with a bunch of MLP:FiM characters, and then sit back and watch as hilarity ensues.

Not to be confused with the 2006 TV series, the 1966 TV series. the British series Jericho of Scotland Yard, or the video game Clive Barker's Jericho.

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Jericho provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Cards' mother, Blackout. Even in an alternate universe, still the same.
  • And Lightning Dust's alcoholic father, whom she nevertheless wanted to respect her. Lampshaded and made fun of by the companion perk she has:
  Companion Perk Added: Dust to Dust — ... Her keen eye for telling when her father was in a Hitting-Me-And-Mommy mood gives you a +1 to perception. And though he didn’t hit often, when he did, it hurt. This somehow gives you both +10% critical hit damage. Hooray for child abuse giving you special powers, you bastard! I hope you’re proud of yourself...
• All Stallions Are Perverts: Played with. He is actually more annoyed by nudity than anything else.
  A little pony in my head assured me I didn’t have a dirty mind, just a sexy imagination.
• Ambiguously Bi: Jericho, when speaking to himself in chapter one, says: “It doesn’t matter that you’ve been on your own for so long now that even the colts are starting to look good. Do. Not. Stare.”
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Eye, horn, and foreleg. Jericho has not been having a fun time of it.
  • Worse by far is what happened to Frosty Winds, getting their arm slowly eaten by a train.
• Anti-Villain: A lot of what Duke Elkington does, he does for the good of Equestria.
• Apocalyptic Log: Surprisingly given the setting, but also downplayed. The most exact events of what's going on are told from a little girl's diary, and so it's not explicit at all what's going on. While it's not a normal example of an apocalyptic log, since the end hasn't technically happened in them, they do tell a story of things getting worse, but, at the times Jericho arrives, the dark events aren’t over yet.
• Arc Words: Three words, “That Government Boy”.
  • More recent and importantly, the whole "thy/my flesh consumed" thing from Act II, which itself is named Thy Flesh Consumed.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: When going to meet him, Jericho discusses the trope on his way to meet the Baron of Sleepy Oaks: So, a baron, eh? Ten Equestrian Bits says that he’s evil—all barons are. It’s the rule.
  • And then oddly subverted by the Baron of Sleepy Oaks himself, who appears to just be another victim of the Government Conspiracy. Make no mistake, he's a cowardly, elitist jerk, but he is at least trying to do the best for his “peasants”.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Laissez-faire economists!
  From the summary: "Still, with enough wit, some Prussian ingenuity, a droll sense of humor, and wanton murder, I might just survive this. Then again, when you’re going up against an unending list of things like government conspiracies, that guardian angel who keeps telling you to kill people, psycho Equestrian girls with allophilia, a lunatic princess, the legions of the Inferno, the Equestrian culture itself, swashbuckling sword fights, and laissez-faire economists, you begin to realize why there’s a big “if” in the middle of your life."
• Artificial Limbs: Jericho gets a skinwalker's limb grafted in the place of his own lost one, which he hacked off and cauterized because it become so infected with blood poising that it died.
• A Stallion Is Always Eager: Averted. Jericho never seems to possess any sort of a sex drive, and seems to hold in contempt mares who hit on or flirt with him. It's possibly because Jericho is a sociopath, though. This entire line of thought gets expounded when Cherry Berry meets and attempts to sleep with Jericho... after she's crippled his leg and pinned him to the ground and thinks that his cries for her to stop are foreplay and undresses out of her armor whilst atop him. Cherry Berry became a fan favorite soon thereafter.

• Badass Boast:
  "But be thou warned, he of House Sânge: I have been before challenged by gods and demons, warriors and champions, kings of ponies, titanic animals the likes of which your pea-sized brain can’t even comprehend. All have challenged me once.
  "Once. (...)
  "Just be now aware that you can’t cause me any real pain; I have been dealing with agony and pain for so long now that pain is practically an old friend of mine."
• Badass Longcoat: Invoked by Jericho.
  “One always overcompensates for disabilities. I’ve been thinking of having my entire body surgically removed. But until the day that happens, I’ll just stick to wearing awesome outfits; they make me feel cool.”
  • Overlaps with a hat, since no Badass Longcoat is complete without one.
  • Aside from that, his coat is fireproof and is hard enough to be armor.
• Bad Samaritan: Jericho suspects this of Lyra — but the idea is subverted.
  From his inner monolog: Last time a girl offered you a drink, it was poisoned. That was fun, though, trying to solve your own murder. Still surprised we managed to torture the cure out of her so easily—and all we had to do was manually remove her ovaries without the use of anesthetics.
  • Good Samaritan: Lyra, as it turns out, is really this.
• Black Comedy: Yes. If anything, listing this trope here is an understatement worthy of monument.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Jericho may be weird, very weird, but he quickly establishes why he's not a pony you want to mess around with.
• Body Horror: The unknown mare mentioned in the Apocalyptic Log, apparently.
  • Also almost anything to do with the skinwalker
• Butt-Monkey: Cards. Jericho to an extent, but Cards most definitely.
• Captain Ersatz: Cards resembles a smaller, more fragile Blackjack.
• Cannibalism Superpower: It is stated that demons can gain the ability to speak your language by ripping out your tongue while you're alive and eating it then and there. When Jericho and his two companions meet and confront the Devil's Backbone, said demon notes having eaten tongues to gain his understand of Equestrian. We then get to see a live demonstration when the Devil's Backbone summons forth C, a skinwalker—which is basically a horrifying monster who is entirely composed of Body Horror. C rips the Backbone's tongue out of his mouth, eats it, states, "I have great hunger", and proceeds to rip and tear apart and wholly eat the still-screaming Devil's Backbone.
  • When C appears later, his speech mannerisms have changed. When asked why this was, C casually explains that this was because he ate the tongues of several Equestrians, thus gaining a far better command and grasp of the language.
  • At some point, Jericho notes that he and the ponies of his country actually eat the flesh of sentient demons for symbolic reasons of power and dominance... and because sentient demon's flesh is high in nutrients.
• Chekhov's Gun: A few appear.
  • Chekhov's News: Chapter 2 has two. Oddly, the newspaper which seems most like a red herring is the one that comes up immediately in the next chapter.
  • Chekov's Gunmare: Lyra, and even Jericho points this out. Jericho: “Wait. Haven’t I seen you before? Earlier this night, in that inn?”
• Cloudcuckoolander: Jericho is weird. Very, very weird. Trying to understand him is an exercise in Madness.
• Code of Honour: Justified. The titular Jericho has a very simple one, with only two specific entries about rules he must not break. Jericho explains that they exist to keep him from becoming an irredeemable monster, since Jericho is a sociopath. The code is:
  • "Harm not children. Commit not rape."
  • However, the Code/Kodex only gets elaborated upon after Jericho accidentally breaks it when he kills a child. And then willingly kills several more children. And their parents. And ends up murdering every single member of the small town of Sleepy Oaks. Because they're trying to murder him after enervation drives them all homicidally mad, giving Jericho no choice. After breaking the Code, for the first time ever does Jericho break down and lose his sense of optimistically dark humor, becoming a Stepford Smiler as he tries to hide his sins from his companions.
• Collapsing Lair: The lair of the Devil's Backbone, which the ever Genre Savvy Jericho points out would likely happen when he first sees the explosive runes.
  Ten Mark say that those explosive runes only activate as the Backbone dies
• Combat Pragmatist: Jericho.
• Crapsaccharine World: Most of Equestria appears to actually be sweet, but there are... darker parts. It gets lampshaded.
  “What the hell is going on with this country?” I sighed, shaking my head. “It all looked so sugary and nice up until an hour or so ago.”
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The story plays this trope straight, but does so in a very interesting way with the religion of the Teutschen. Word of God states that the religion is based off Christianity, but is not it. They share the sign of the cross—which the narrator calls das Kreuzzeichen—wear crosses, and even refer to their deity as “God” (or “Adonai”, an old Hebrew name meaning “Lord”).
  • However, the more details the story gives about the religion, the less Christian it seems. Like how they believe that Kain to be a dark hero. Or, for one interesting example:
  “... the sixth tenant of the faith is ‘you shall not murder’. It does not say ‘you shall not kill’. I mean, yes, you could interchange those two things sometimes, but to murder and to kill are two different concepts. Murder is wrong. Killing is just a fact of life in this world we live in. The faith makes the distinction quite clearly. The faith teaches that there is no shame in taking somebody’s life for the right reasons.”
  • And their version of the sign of cross is spoken with a different phrase, which means “in the name of the Father, and of the Prophet, and of the Machine Spirit.” Or, as it is said in the fic:
  “In Nomine Patris, et Prophetae, et Spiritus Machinae.”
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The is the actual entire description of the first fight scene in Jericho:
  I gave the guy a side-neck chop as I pivoted and let him fall past me.
• Death of a Child: Every stallion, mare, and foal in Sleepy Oaks gets killed.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of Jericho's defining character traits.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Heavily deconstructed with Cards. She joins forces with Jericho only after he murders her only friend.
• Determinator: Possibly Jericho, since he appears to half walked across the whole planet to get to Equestria, which is where the story begins.
  • See the summary above under Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, wherein it becomes pretty clear Jericho is this.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Thoroughly averted, lampshaded, and given a multi-paragraph lecture/insult-filled tirade on why this is wrong
  "You know, if we lived in a weird gender-swapped universe, you’d be an utterly monstrous figure. You tried to rape me, Dame Cherry Berry. That’s not cool, and your insistence that girls cannot commit such vile acts is utterly horrifying to me."
  "I flat-out refuse to accept anyone has ever slept with you and afterwards concluded that ‘Yes, this was a satisfactory experience’. I mean, not even in terms of sex, I mean in terms of anything at all. You are a sick, twisted, narcissistic, sexist witch who thinks only of herself. I don’t care if you were the queen bitch of Equestria and the sun herself, what I’m telling you is the honest-to-God truth! By the Prophet and her holy virginity, you have less charisma and sexual aptitude than Cards! And it’d take more than just a sexy look and lifting your tail for me to even contemplate entertaining the notion that you were anything but!"
• Everything Sounds Sexier In German. Lyra's reaction to Jericho speaking Teutsch, his native tongue.
  “Oh, my,” she almost crooned, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t know what you said, but I liked it. A. Lot. There’s just something—” she hesitated, “—spooky about it! There’s, like, a certain throaty toughness to it, I think.”
  • And then immediately lampshaded: “Is it really that big of a deal?”
• Eye Scream: Courtesy of an explosive rune, and described in explicit detail. And then Jericho has to cut through his optic nerve and sew his eyelid shut.
• First-Person Smartass: Jericho himself is perhaps one of the quintessential examples of this trope. Whereas most narrators of this type only occasionally snark in the narrative, Jericho's narration style is literally founded upon it. Granted, Jericho resides on the part of this trope with focuses more on the entertaining stream-of-consciousnesses thoughts, which usually ends with Jericho making some truly ludicrous analogies or similes or just indulging his own dementedly hilarious thoughts. Without breaking the fourth wall, he is constantly making fun of the story he's in and the world and characters therein to the point that Jericho's narration is easily described as being like a "maliciously demented Douglas Adams". The fact is, the story and plot of Jericho would be a dead-baby depressing slog of angst were it not for Jericho being the narrator; with him, the story is a ludicrously amusing and optimistic romp through a terribly grimdark adventure as told by a likeable sociopath.
  • Hearing Voices: Possibly. It's unclear if it's his thoughts mocking him, or it if he's really just that snarky.
• Excalibur: Although it is never once actually described, the sword that Jericho carries is suggested to be this. When Snechta, the High Priestess of the Cult of Chêngrêla, sees the sword, she goes wide-eyed and asks the sword is Caledfwlch, the blade of this world's King Arthur, Aloysius der Lichtbringer. Jericho shrugs and says that, in the Reich whence he comes, they called the sword Kaledfulch, but suggests that the two swords are "likely the same thing". Although, the story of how he came by it is... odd:
  I stole it from a museum, but it’s just a superb weapon that laughs at light armor and scoffs at cover. Plus, that museum dressed like a slut and totally had it coming.
  • It should also be noted that Jericho carries a pair of ammo-less revolvers, which, he notes, were given to him by a lady in a lake. The particular story almost exactly resembles the Lady in the Lake who gave King Arthur Excalibur.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: The Baron of Sleepy Oaks
• Fantastic Racism: “Half-breed freaks,” as one pony put it, referring to mules, a hybrid of a male horse and a female donkey. Needless to say, mules are not seen too highly by some ponies.
• First-Person Smartass: Jericho is doing that to himself.
• Gender Bender: Referenced as part of Jericho's interesting past.
  "And yes, I am single. Unless you count that one weird time I got turned into a girl and, because of an incredibly obscure tribal practice of that one tribe, I ended up married to the lesbian daughter of the Warchief. That was weird. I really prefer having male tools, really. When they bleed, I’m supposed to go to the hospital and I know there’s something horribly wrong. Not girls, though."
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Subverted.
  "Listen here," I bellowed without warning, "you gosh darn little pencil-pricked, own-mother-sodomizing, mouth-breathing, pen-pushing, slack-jawed, jelly-and-blue-balled, drooling aristocratic dickball, son of a filthy, rotten whore of a mare who was nevertheless well-respected in her small community!"
• Government Conspiracy: Appears to be the major conflict, with the people in the town of Sleepy Oaks & its local Baron under oppression from a shadowy government organization. It's clearly a conspiracy because they love Princess Celestia, their de facto head of state and government, and hope she'll find about about the conspiracy, but still hate the local government guys.
• Hospital Hottie:
  "That, like the myth of the slutty nurse, is ultimately untrue. Trust me, when you’re a nurse, you see some pretty terrible things: lots of sickly, naked ponies covered in their own filth, so much that your whole day is basically one big turn-off."
• I Am a Monster: Jericho himself, by many accounts. If you strip away his bubbly demeanor and constant humor, he is sort of a mass-murdering sociopath with absolutely no care, pity, or empathy and is an adroit liar with absolutely no guilt or remorse for all but one of the actions he performs in the course of the story. In fact, it's been suggested that Jericho is perfectly aware of this, which is exactly why he's constantly trying to hold onto his bubbly demeanor and constant humor, all in an attempt to hide this essential fact. He even says that his Code of Honor was created purely to prevent Jericho's more monstrous side from coming out.
• Inner Monologue: Jericho. All. The. Time.
• In-Series Nickname: Jericho gets known as “that government boy”.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Downplayed in that it's only part of an ear instead of an entire limb, but otherwise played disturbingly straight
  • Avoiding-A-Fate-Worse-Than-Death Or Limb Decision: Jericho tries biting his arm off to escape the Cherrypillar
• Load-Bearing Boss: Backbone has is entire lair covered in explosive runes set to activate if he dies.
• Meaningful Echo:
  "No mother should ever have to outlive her daughter."
• Meaningful Name: Jericho is Canaanite for "moon", the same meaning as Princess Luna's name.
• Metaphorgotten: All the damn time
• Mistaken Identity: When he walks into Sleepy Oaks, the townsfolk think he's an agent from the Government Conspiracy, and so proceed to get violent with him.
• Mood Dissonance: During the dark scene in chapter 3, which had earlier had an Apocalyptic Log wherein a little girl watched her parents beaten up by agents of a Government Conspiracy, we get this little gem—By the operating table was a little table with various tools: scalpels, an unused IV drip, a bottle of whiskey ( half full, because optimism was something I really needed right now ), a full syringe of morphine, and a bottle of something called “laudanum”.
  • Then, during a conversation with the Baron of Sleepy Oaks, which was going all fine and dandy:
  My mind was suddenly filled with the inexplicable terribly attractive vision of the Baron being mauled by a pack of feral dogs—their leader being the three-headed one with all the medals pinned to its chest—which the baron tried to flee from, only to gallop straight into a crowd of rowdy stallions who proceeded to beat him to death with rubber chickens. All that clucking…
• Mood Whiplash: Due to the tone of the narration; the situation can be genuinely horrifying, then Jericho makes some off-the-wall observation.
• Naked First Impression. Exaggerated, but justified. Jericho meets every Equestrian as they are naked, since Equestrians don't usually wear clothes.
  • His first reaction into walking into a tavern and seeing everypony naked?
  "This is a whorehouse!"
  • Then, in a monologue:
  “Does this mean that the Princesses will also be naked? Oh, Father above, that’s gonna be fun. Why, hello there, so-called deities of sun and moon. No, I swear I wasn’t leering creepily at your haunches. I can’t even say I know what ‘leering’ means. Is it a type of frog?”
  • Overlaps with Naked People Are Funny. Jericho it still the only pony wearing pants. Hilarity continues to ensue.
• Noodle Incident: Quoth one of Jericho's monologs: ‘The idea of that reminded me of the first case I’d ever worked on, where a psychotic professor at some prestigious medical school had been going around murdering girls, stuffing their dead bodies full of extra organs because “aliens told him to do it”.’
  • This is actually something a Call-Back, sorta. It's a reference to one of Jericho's earlier lines, when he was talking about his time as a Spezialagent: “It was things like that which probably contributed a great deal to making me the psychological mess I am today.”
• Offscreen Teleportation: lampshaded
  "How the hell did you get up over there so fast?"
  "Oh, it’s a habit of mine. When folker aren’t looking, I quietly sprint really fast around the room to make it look like I can teleport and be anywhere."
  "Huh," I grunted. "So is that how bad guys do it?"
  "Yhar,” he said. “But it requires good cardio -— you need be running all around without having to pant, else folker will wise up."
• One-Man Army: Jericho
• Once More, with Clarity: When Jericho looks back at the inn, realizes that everypony is Equestria is naked, not that he stumbled into a mislabeled whorehouse
  • Later on in chapter 3, when he looks back on the scene with that mare at the train station, Selena, he begins to realize something was wrong with that whole thing, but isn't yet sure to what end.
  • Then he looks back on the letter his guardian angel gave him, quoting the line “by this time tomorrow, you will again have blood on your hooves”. That's when re realizes what the angel had meant, that he was to murder the agents of the Government Conspiracy and unravel it all.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Jericho stops being able to find everything funny after killing the filly.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Lampshaded.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Jericho, dressed like a cowboy, walks up to a fortified plantation house. When the guards calls him out on being “that government boy”, Jericho says, “No, I’m here to fix the plumbing.” And then awesomely subverted—see The Guards Must Be Crazy below.
• Physical Goddess: Princess Celestia and Luna, while not expressly referenced in the show, Jericho, a foreigner, seems to think this. A monologue of his references them as “deities of sun and moon”, respectively.
  • Fallen Angels: According to Jericho, Princesses Celestia and Luna are actually these.
  This was the mythical motherland, Equestria, where Princesses Celestia and Luna — fallen angels, as many back home said — ruled.
• Pretty Boy: Jericho himself. He is mentioned not to be very muscular or super manly -— being that he enjoys manicures, for one thing -— but he is noted as being tall and slender, and many ladies often end up hitting on or flirting with him, much to his annoyance. At one point, Snechta even says that he has a face that "looks like it were chiseled from hardest stone by a savage god". Word of God says that this trope was invoked by the writing team for the sole purposing of making Jericho's life worse, and boy does it ever. See anything related to Cherry Berry
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: One of only two things Jericho's Code prohibits, the other being harming children.
• Sarcastic Confession: played with; although the supporting details are obviously fake, the main statements are completely accurate
  “Oh, I’m that guy you’re trying to arrest. You can tell by the armor I’m wearing, the fact that I’m running away from you right now, and my outrageous accent,” I said amicably, standing still. “I most certainly don’t just work here or anything.”
  “Oh, you can tell by my equicidal demeanor, incoherence, and plethora of weapons that I, in fact, am the Butcher of Songnam.”
• See the Invisible: In chapter 19, when the elite Carolean solider/agent named Proud is preparing for an epic battle against the invisible mirage-pony, Jericho just scoffs at the idea and covers the invisible monster with pink paint. Jericho's very practical like that.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Reich is basically Imperium of Man crossed over with Germany.
  • Cards has a calendar with -D-o-n-'-t- Panic written on it in big friendly letters.
  • When asked why he killed Glasses, Jericho claims self defense, stating that he attacked him first... just like that orphanage he had burned down once.
  • Jericho is an avid Dunkelheit und Drachen player.
  • Jericho uses what he calls the Bardic Knock Spell to get to the old clinic.
  • In chapter 7, Jericho offhandedly mentions vampires, and that, once cured, you become immune, just like with Poryphic Hemophilia.
  • Jericho and company hitch a ride on S.S. SSSSS, named so because the captain only had a stencil for the letter S.
  • In chapter 8, Jericho silently shouts "Hell's bells", just like a certain FirstPersonSmartass magical detective.
  • In the same chapter: "Good morning, Songnam!"
  • The zebra shopkeeper in Chapter 10 has what appears to be a sentient fetus growing out of his body.
  • In chapter 10: Rule #32 of adventuring: Kill all the elves. Well, no, rule #32 for me was “I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over”.
  • In chapter 11: Ding dong, the Duke is dead.
  • In chapter 12, Jericho is telling Sugar Cane about his group's encounter with the pony version of Noh.
  • There is one Agent Snagglepuss working for MI5.
  • From chapter 21: Hell of a thing, killing a pony. You take away all he’s got and all he’ll ever be. And let me tell you what, Jericho: Dying isn’t much of a living.
  • From chapter 24: “See? I love it when a plan that I made up and then pretended to have been following this whole time comes together.”

• Stalker with a Crush: Duke Elkington towards Celestia, although far less creepy than the norm.
• Tap on the Head: Amazingly played straight, lampshaded, subverted, and deconstructed—all in one chapter! First Jericho knocks a guy unconscious with a side-neck chop, has a What the Hell, Hero? moment on himself wherein he lampshades this; then when Jericho himself get a nightstick upside the head, he only gets a nasty, nasty bruise. (The deconstruction is the head injury he gets, plus having possibly hairline-fractured his shoulder in the fight.)
• Tarot Motifs: Jericho features a deck of unique cards mixed with traditional ones. The Oracle, a demoness who offers prophecies to a 15-year-old girl in exchange for essentially being allowed to rape the girl, offers to tell Jericho's future with them in exchange for him sparing her life.
  • There are seven in all, The Sorceress, The Gun, The High Priestess, The King, The Murderer, The Liar, and lastly The Hanged Stallion, the last one seemingly representing Jericho.
  • However, later on, the Blue-Eyed Mare notes that he is not the Hanged Stallion, despite calling him by that name earlier. Using only gestures and two tarot cards, she indicates that Jericho is, in fact, The Fool.
• The Butcher: Jericho gets called the Butcher of Songnam, for the very good reason of having killed so many people there
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Lampshaded when a guard just lets Jericho walk into a guarded compound when all Jericho offers in the flimsy excuse that he's a “plumber”.
  You are a very trusting stallion and should be fired from your job. You didn’t even check to see if I had any identification... if Equestria even uses identification like that. Huh. I should look into that.
  • And then b-e-a-utifully subverted! Jericho walks up to the Baron's plantation house, tricks the guard into letting him in, then, as Jericho is walking past, the guard attacks Jericho from behind, shouting, “That’s for my sister’s black eye, you bastard!”
• The Drifter: Jericho tends to just wander around. Possibly justified because he's doing seemingly because an unseen angel is telling him to do it. However, he doesn't fit any of the stoic character traits usually associated with this character archetype. He's too sarcastic.
• This Loser Is You: According to Word of God, Jericho's tendency toward prolifically murderous rampages is a (very, very dark) parody of Western RPG player characters, who tend to rack up an improbable body count over the course of things.
• Title Drop: The name of the main character and the story are one in the same. Oddly, Jericho is rarely referred to by name.
• Walking the Earth: Jericho, literally. He's walked across the entire world, and the story begins during the most recent new land he's exploring. But it's justified, sorta, by the fact that Jericho's doing it because an unseen angel is telling him to do it, and thus to fight evil. Jericho leans on this when he says, “It was my God-given duty as a Teutscher to do this, I resolved.”
• Weapon for Intimidation: Subverted then lampshaded when the Baron of Sleepy Oaks brandishes a knife at Jericho, Jericho isn't intimidated in the slightest.
  A bluff if ever I saw, but best not call it. I doubt this guy could so much as smack a fly, let alone murder a pony. Still,I’d rather not push him into actually having to do anything.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Jericho himself has this is shades, though it's possibly parodied. How much of his problems is actually true is unknown, since he occasionally remarks that it his father was cruel because he never forgave Jericho for killing his own mother in childbirth, and sometimes he'll randomly say things like "Oh God, this is worse than that time I got laid as my highschool prom. And I was homeschooled. By my father."
  • This is lampshaded by the level-up perk Jericho receives in chapter 12
  New Perk: Daddy Issues—Daddy never hugged you enough. This gives you a Freudian excuse to misbehave. Oh, and you now do +5% bonus damage to mothers, fathers, and expecting fathers. But you also do +10% bonus damage to expecting mothers, because you’re a giant cunt and you sicken me.
  • And Cards has so much of this that it gets sad and then funny and then sad but ultimately funny again. It culminates with Cards being forced to bludgeon her own mother to death. Because Jericho is all for Black Comedy, this too gets made fun of:
  Companion Quest Perk Added: Born of Barren Womb — What, you didn’t know that murdering your own mother gave you special quasi-supernatural powers? Well, it’s true! (If your name is Cards and your were forced to beat your mother to death, that is.) With this perk, Cards does 15% more damage with blunt weapons. She will never be able to hit someone in the head without ever thinking of her mother now, haha!
  • Even Lightning Dust has this, having always worked hard trying to earn the respect of her abusive, alcoholic father.
  “I… I loved my mother, but not my father. For him, I have a begrudging, hateful respect. He told me he didn’t want me to be stuck in a dead-end life like he was in, with nothing of value in the world. He told me that the only way to get anywhere in life was to be better than everypony else: better, faster, stronger. Leave others in the dust… the lightning dust... In a way, I should thank him. His constant… efforts to be a father got me to the top, I had my dream so close I could smell it. And in the end, because I listened to my father, I lost everything I ever had—” she looked at me, shaking her head “—and ever wanted. And sometimes we don’t ever get a second chance.”
  • Basically, everyone in Jericho. Because the author is a sociopath who enjoys making characters suffer.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Duke Elkington.
• Wham Episode: chapters 15 and 16, the latter of which is the end of the first act. Jericho kills the entire town of Sleepy Oaks, breaking the Code by killing a child; then in the next chapter we meet the demon, the demon gets killed, and Jericho loses his horn (and an eye) in an explosion.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The reaction of the little filly and her mother when Jericho, in self-defense, knocks their father out. Lampshaded by the hero himself.
  Jericho: “Oh, you mean the side-neck chop? That’s just a martial arts move. I mean, yeah, if I’d done it wrong, it would have killed him via cardiac arrest, and so, in hindsight, that was highly irresponsible of me to do but... I’m not helping my case any, am I?”
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Half of Jericho's Code. And breaking it in Sleepy Oaks is a Very Big Deal.
• You Remind Me of X: Selena says something like this to Jericho. “Um, that is, you bear resemblance to somepony I once knew.” Who this “somepony” is, we don't know.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Poor Jericho. At first it was due to blood poisoning, and now the skinwalker's flesh attached to him will eventually kill him.

Tropes present prior to the reboot:

• All There in the Manual: the author's notes are known to contains bits of this. Like the time he listed the exact square mileage of two whole continents in his head-canon
• Action Fashionista: Rarity. She knows mixed martial arts and is a master at archery.
• Action Hero: Played with. Jericho wants to be one, and indeed tries to be one, but fails most of the time.
  • Word of God: He'd be a much better Guile Hero, he just doesn't know it.
• Action Prologue: The story begins with the Jericho being beset by daemons.
• All Men Are Perverts: Played with. While Jericho does have occasionally dirty thoughts (as well as he'll freely discuss sex from a scientific point of view), he never expresses a desire to chase after girls, and indeed gets annoyed when girls hit on him.
• All Women Are Lustful: During Jericho's stay in Babylon, he seems to think this of the locals (Both Ishtar, who is the Queen, and Scarlet both seem to really want to sleep with him, even at the same time) . Justified in that the Babylonian whole society is built off coitus, females dominating males, and Ishtar is the goddess of fertility.
• Anti-Hero: He has no trouble taking lives for any reason at all.
• Anti-Villain: Of all possible people, it's Satan.
  Satan himself said “I will not let Kane win this; I've spent over seventy-thousand years fighting him. He's beaten me every step of the way, but at the twilight hour we have a shot of destroying Kane or otherwise setting his plans back a further seventy-thousand years. I will be the hero in the end!”
• A Man Is Always Eager: Played with. He actually gets rather annoyed when girls hit on him, though that's mostly because he knows they're trying to use him, and he hates it when mares think they can take advantage of him.
• Badass Longcoat: Invoked. Jericho wants to be cool, so he must logically dress like a cowboy, because cowboys are cool.
  • Later on, he gets another longcoat that he takes off a stallion he murders. Badassery aside, it's not a true longcoat, though; it's actually a pair of sleeves and a long battle-skirt-thing. Looks damn similar, though.

• Berserk Button: Luna – threaten or harm Jericho, and you've effectively pressed this button; ditto if you insult her looks.
  • Lampshaded by C.
  “Ooh, so I've found your berserk button, eh? So, all I gots to do is threaten your-” he paused as he glanced at me “-friends and you'll break my neck? (Lampshaded!) Fuck, I might just shoot his eyes out now, just for fun.”

  • The latter example is lampshaded by Jericho's Inner Monologue.
  Note to self: never insult Luna's physical attractiveness, or you'll die.
• BFG: C, in a Shout-Out to the Doom comic, “My cause is just... my will is strong...” He cocked something on his gun, manifesting the sound of the thick mechanical click. “And my gun is very, very big.”
• Bilingual Bonus: Earlier on, Jericho didn't bother to translate a lot of German (later on, he almost always translates). Likewise, whenever a character speaks in a language he doesn't understand, he doesn't translated for obvious reasons. Other times, his words are so vulgar that he thinks its funnier to leave its is.
  • “Yob tvoyu mat',” I said, my tone coy. That's Russian for fuck your mother.
• Body Horror: Jericho, in one scenes, has swords growing out of his skin. It made the Author's skin crawl just thinking about it.
• Bond One-Liner: After Jericho shoots Scarlet in the heart, he remarks: “Heartless? You should see the Wizard of Oz about that.”
  • Lampshaded by the Whore of Babylon when she openly calls him a monster for this behavior.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall. Practically everything C says after chapter 34.
  • No Fourth Wall at times.
  In the words of one comment from chapter 35, "You didn't even stop at breaking the fourth wall. You kicked it over, stomped it to pieces, and then urinated on its childhood photos."
• Clothing Damage: Downplayed; possibly deconstructed. In the prologue Jericho gashed open his side, cutting his duster and causing him to bleed nearly to death. He later repaired the damage.
  • Chapter 29 exaggerated this, when Luna's attack completely destroys C's entire outfit. Jericho then sort of deconstructs this when he mentions the horrific scars that mutilate C, describing them as so horrible they were downright beautiful.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Chapter 33 "Girls, Girls, Girls", wherein Jericho gets into a friendly sparring match with his ex-girlfriend and proceed to maul her until she's unconscious and bleeds halfway to death. And he legitimately cannot comprehend what was so wrong about what he did.
• Determined Defeatist: Jericho believes that this adventure will kill him, yet that doesn't stop him from trying to look good doing it.
  • C suggest that both Satan and Kane are also this
• Enemy Within: Jericho wonders if Luna is this, speculating that Nightmare Moon is just the part of Luna's personality that she repressed.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French. Played straight and inverted. Equestrians see it as the language of love and fashion, while Prussians (like Jericho) see French as the vulgar tongue of hate and anger. In fact, Jericho once ranted to Rarity (who speaks French) that Prussians associated it hatred, mass murder, and warfare, much to Rarity's evident disgust,
  • Everything Sounds Scarier In German. The Equestrians think this about Prussian (which is more-or-less German). Jericho, however, thinks it sounds much prettier than Equestrian (which is their version of English)
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Princess Luna.
  • Some of her mannerism are still inexplicable, even by this trope's standards. Thus, Jericho thought long and hard about it, trying to figure her out; at one point, he honestly considered whether or not Luna was legitimately retarded, which, as he put it, "was sad for a girl so pretty."
• Forgets to Eat: Jericho. Word of God, this started out as the author lampshading the lack of eating scenes. And then the Author deconstructed this trope; Jericho almost dies because of this. In fact, the only way to get Jericho to remember to eat is for him to be borderline dying.
• Fourth-Wall Observer. Pinkie Pie and, especially, C.
• Gratuitous Prussian: Jericho often has a good bit of ponies speaking foreign languages, Prussian being the foremost aside from Equestrian. Justified when the story takes place in Prussia. Also, a bunch of the bad grammar is justified in-universe, whee Prussian had a very different path to get to where it is. C, who speaks German, points this out, finding it endlessly annoying.
• Genre Savvy: At times, Jericho.
  • Chapter 34 is called "Genre Savvy", and it's all about this trope.

• God Save Us from the Queen!: Subverted. Queen Ishtar the Whore of Babylon is actually doing all she can for her people.
• Hearing Voices: From Chapter 31 onwards, Jericho has the AI Lauren in his head.
• Healing Potion: Deconstructed. The way they work is almost as, if not even more, dangerous than the wounds they cure. One girl even yells at him for being so careless and drinking health potions.
  • Chancellor Bismarck mentions that using potions for major wounds will cause the wounds to be healed with new flesh, but the new tissues would all be cancerous (at worst) or tumorous (at best!).
• Hurricane of Puns: Oddly, the storm of puns is in German, and the biggest offender is the line "Ich bin Gott...los!" The 41st chapter is named after Jericho's storm of puns based on the German word "los".
  From the Author's Notes: Lastly, this chapter's name, Los, is something of a pun. In Spanish 'los' is the masculine plural form of the word 'the'. In German it can mean -less (as in, the suffix, like helpsLESS), off or loose (as an adjective), or “Go!” (as a command)... Basically, Jericho was saying “go!” as well as remarking upon his loose (or, more accurately, lack thereof) morals. Though the line “Ich bin Gott...los!” can either mean “I am God. Go!”, or “I am Godless”, or even “I am free from God”, that last one possibly also meaning “I am free of morality” or “I have no morals”. Whereas the spell “Es wurde zeit...los!” can mean “It became timeless” or “It was time, go!” And finally, Jericho's remark “Ich bin los” can be interpreted to mean “I am -less” or “I am off!”, and “I am off” can further be interpreted multiples ways, either as “I'm off [to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz]” or “I'm crazy”. Basically, Jericho just made a storm of puns in only a few words. Nifty, eh?//
• I Just Want to Be Badass: One of Jericho's biggest desires.
• Informed Attractiveness. Justified. The character are all ponies, and so is Jericho.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Downplayed. Jericho has the tendency to just take things that aren't his without even sparring a second thought, but only if he really wants/needs them.
• Lampshade Hanging: It gets meta.
  “Furthermore,” C said, raising an index finger to the sky, “I know Satan's also read the Evil Overlord List, thus he's functionally invincible 'cause he's also genre savvy like moi.” He took his skyward finger and jabbed it in Celestia's direction. “And I know that I'm the bad guy because the main characters and heroes are the six who bear the Elements of Harmony... I think Luna might count, too, if you want. They cannot be defeated no matter what save for us baddies being extremely, extremely, and ludicrously genre savvy. However, because Satan and I are so genre savvy, if we screw up even once, we will unequivocally die. As in dead for good. It's God's way of making sure that the good guys always win. I'm also a master of lampshades.” He snapped his fingers, causing a literal lampshade to appear at his feet. C crouched down, grabbing the lampshade and putting it on his head, then stood back up. “I still can't believe this snapping my fingers thing still works. Watch how quickly it stops working altogether.” He cleared his throat. “And now I'm lampshading lampshading by wearing a lampshade as I lampshade how I lampshade.”
• Legions of Hell: Word of God, this trope was invoked by Satan, because the Devil needs to have daemons servants, right?
• Naked First Impression. Exaggerated, but justified. Jericho meets every Equestrian as they are naked, since Equestrians don't usually wear clothes.
  • When Jericho first properly sees Twilight and Fluttershy, he flips out, absolutely terrified that they are naked and that they, while he was unconscious, undressed him. The girl don't understand the problem.
    • He constantly gripes about every girl (especially the hot ones, like the Princesses) being naked. He's trying not to be a pervert, but it's rather hard not to stare when everypony is naked and really hot.
• Name Of Kane. Kane himself, of course. And Jericho's middle name.
• Non Human Side Kick. Jericho has Steve, a giant roach that knows how to write and is probably One of Us; he's Jericho's familiar. Then there's Mr. Cuddlesworth, who is basically a juvenile deathclaw from Fallout 3.
• Private Eye Monologue: Parodied. In one scene, Jericho is monologing out loud, much to Luna's annoyance.
  Jericho: She stalked in like a tigress in Mörmease orphanage — blue hair and legs for hours. No dame her age could afford a dress like that, and the makeup she had one gave me a good idea how she got. She had bad news written on her like October of 2010. With that quiet hum of saxophones playing in my head, she must've been Femme Fatale — the kind vibe she was givin' off. And behind me, the rain was coming down like God had broken down crying, and the angels had joined in on it. When you're in a situation like mine, you can only think it metaphors.
  Luna: Who are you talking to?
  Jericho: She asks, her kinda voice the kind that can make 'good morning' sound like an invitation to bed. The mare cocked a brow—
  Luna: Seriously, who are you talking to? And it's not raining.
  [this goes on for some time, with Luna getting more and more annoyed]
• Physical Goddess: Princess Celestia and Luna. Though the story does mention that they are, in fact, Fallen Angels, they are still fully divine.
• Shout-Out: Way, way, way too many to name. Some notable examples are: AlChestBreach, for Steve and Mr. Cuddlesworth. Rammstein, Eisbrecher, Oopmh and their songs are often quoted (and acknowledges as song quotes), but never once is the band named. I Am Skantarios, as Skantarios is one of Jericho's ancestors, and one chapter opens with a long quote from this.
• Shown Their Work: The Author, oh so many times. He likes to make note of intriguing bits of Prussian grammar, symbology, and Old English banter.

• One-Letter Name: C; see page quote.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Lauren, the voice in Jericho's head.
• What the Hell, Hero?: To Jericho, with regards to how he mauled his [[spiler:ex-girlfriend]] during a sparring match. Everyone points this out to him. Even the voice in his head.
• Who Writes This Crap?!. Jericho says nearly these exact words after he has a short-lived mental breakdown.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Beautifully averted. Every time somepony speaks in Old English, they actually speak in the authentic Anglo-Saxon language.
  • The author actually wrote an entire ballad in Old English with splotches of Lowlands Scots, and the narrator hears it as Luna sings in the shower.
  Hwi don eower sweord dryppan vith blod,
  min sorhlufu, min sorhlufu,
  Hwi don eower sweord dryppan vith blod?
  don naht tellan me thæt eal is goed.
  moder, moder,
  don naht tellan me thæt eal is goed.
  O ik habben crang min hauke swa guid.
  Moder, moder.
  O ik habben crong min hauke swa guid.
  Thu wepan blod wæs næfres swa rad,
  min sorhlufu, min sorhlufu.
  Thu wepan blod wæs næfres swa rad.
  Min lufu ik tellan thu O.
  O ik habeen crong min blasphemi fædad,
  moder, moder.
  O ik habben crang min blasphemi fædad.
  Ik lufian thu, swte æoeling
  Hwy don naht thu lufian min?

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