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Ainz Ooal Gown and the Guardians of Nazarick note 

"World conquest, huh? That certainly is an interesting thought."
Ainz Ooal Gown

Overlord is a Japanese Light Novel series by Kugane Maruyama, based on a Web Serial Novel of same name that began publication in 2010. It is published by Enterbrain and illustrated by So-bin, a monthly manga by Miyama Fugin, and a 2015 anime series produced by Madhouse. A second season aired starting January 2018 and a third in July 2018. A fourth season and a movie, collectively covering light novel volumes 10-14, began airing in July 2022.

Its story begins on the last day of a once popular virtual reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game called YGGDRASIL. One of the game's dedicated guildmasters, a salaryman known as "Momonga", decides to remain logged in until the servers are shut down. However, instead of being logged out at the scheduled time, Momonga finds himself stuck in the body of his in-game avatar, a skeletal lich who serves as the Evil Overlord of a tomb of monsters. Before long, the Non-Player Characters begin coming to life and exhibiting personalities of their own as well, and Momonga's entire guild is seemingly transported to a new world.

Having no parents, friends, or other connections in the old world, Momonga decides to take the name of his guild, "Ainz Ooal Gown", and make this new reality his home. Even if that means taking it over.

The TV airing of the anime was accompanied by a series of comedic web shorts. Titled Ple-Ple-Pleiades~!, these focused on Momonga's interactions with Nazarick's Quirky Miniboss Squad, the Pleiades Combat Maids, who, barring Narberal Gamma, were never given ample focus in-series. Each web short focused on a particular Pleiades, and detailed their race and personalities. For Halloween 2023 it had a crossover with The Eminence in Shadow's Kagejitsu!.

Both the original light novel and the manga adaptation have been licensed by Yen Press.

Not to be confused with the video game series Overlord or the film of the same name. A video game adaptation of this series was eventually released in July 2019... and it was, of all things, a Picross game.

A Turn Based RPG for mobile, Overlord: Mass for the Dead had its Japanese release in 2019 and 2020 for English.

A Metroidvania game for Steam and Nintendo Switch, Overlord: Escape from Nazarick was released on June 16, 2022. The reveal trailer can be found here.

The main characters are part of the parody crossover Isekai Quartet, alongside the casts of KonoSuba, Re:Zero, The Saga of Tanya the Evil, and as of the second season, The Rising of the Shield Hero.

A movie is in the works, adapting the Holy Kingdom arc set to premier in Japanese theaters in Fall 2024. Its first trailer can be seen here.


Overlord contains examples of:

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    Tropes #-H 
  • 0% Approval Rating: The nobles of Re-Estize Kingdom are headed towards this after the events of Light Novel Volume 6. They effectively abandoned the people of the capital and concentrated their efforts in reinforcing their own holdings. This endears them to the peasantry not at all.
  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects:
    • The skeletal dragons in episode 9 are clearly CG, still, they move and flow organically, and the battle is truly seamless.
    • Most other monsters are also CG, like the skeleton horde or orcs/ogres/trolls/goblins, though it's much less noticeable usually. It makes sense though since this is an anime about a Video Game and giving enemies a "different" look makes it easier to distance from them emotionally and thus easier to kill them. Interestingly, the friendly goblins that guard Carne Village are an aversion of this trope, being drawn in the same style as other characters.
    • Armies are also CGI, which leads to a moment when several kingdom soldiers rush Enri's goblins and bounce back as though the goblins' shields were made of rubber. Similarly, the 70,000 soldiers Momonga wipes out with his "Ia Shub Niggurath" spell simply fall down like rag dolls.
    • Momonga's "Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown" looks drawn and fits the scene really well, but when released it has a tendency to float and rotate perfectly in a way that's a dead giveaway to being CG, possibly intentionally so as to give it a magical air.
  • Above the Influence: Played with in the anime. On the one hand (literally) among Momonga's first "experiments", he gropes Albedo's chest (after requesting and getting her permission, and she greatly enjoyed it). On the other hand, when she excitedly asked him to take her virginity, he turned her down as there were more pressing matters to contend with at the moment. Ultimately subverted in the light novel because although he is still attracted to both Shalltear and Albedo, often times very strongly, he actually can't have sex with them due to lacking the proper equipment thanks to his skeletal body. This secretly frustrates him to no end, despite how he appears in public, especially around Albedo and/or Shalltear.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade:
    • Several of the "heroic" weapons in Ainz's arsenal work like this. He can slice ogres in half vertically or horizontally with one strike like a hot knife through butter.
    • He also has a spell called "Reality Slash" which creates a Sword Beam sharp enough to cut through the fabric of reality itself. Touch Me is said to have used an even stronger version of this attack called "World Break".
    • A special mention goes to Gazef's sword, one of the treasures of the kingdom, the sword "Razor Edge". It is already a fabled weapon in-universe, being able to cut through steel like it was paper, but what makes it really special is the fact that, while it is just a low-level enchanted item by YGGDRASIL standards, it is uniquely capable of bypassing the natural defenses of beings like Ainz that would ordinarily repel weaker attacks. It is the only native weapon that Ainz confirmed could actually hurt or even kill him. That said, it would have to be wielded by someone strong enough to actually threaten him, and Ainz demonstrates the ability to grab the blade barehanded to stop an incoming attack. It can also be stopped by more powerful weapons.
  • Action Girl: Quite a few badass females have appeared in the series, such as Albedo, Shalltear, Aura, the Pleiades, and especially Blue Rose, an adventurer group full of only women and one of the few Adamantite ranked adventurers in the Kingdom.
  • A-Cup Angst: Shalltear has small breasts, so she stuffs her bra. It's one of the many things that makes her so opposed to Albedo, who has quite large breasts.
  • Adapted Out: The anime adaptation skips the Roble Holy Kingdom arc of the story in favor of focusing on the Re-Estize Kingdom arc that followed after it. This is because it is set to be adapted into a movie instead.
  • Adaptation Distillation: Brain's fight with Shalltear was condensed to being a very brief "fight" where after a few swings he ends up fleeing. The light novels had it be a bigger deal by showing Brain fighting as hard as he to try and beat Shalltear, but gradually losing his confidence as it became clear she was so far above him. Likely this is because the ability to show Brain's thoughts is harder to do the way the source material did.
  • Adaptation Explanation Extrication: Plenty. A notable one is when Solution is doing surgery on Tuare, her fingers formed a surgical tool used for abortion, which revealed that Tuare also had an unborn child inside her and Solution ate it.
  • Adaptation Expansion: In an unusual way, as the original web novel focused more on the Guardians of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, while the light novel focuses more on Momonga.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The framing devices used to adapt the Gacha Game Mass for the Dead out of the franchise, while in some cases very appropriate for a setting derived partially from a fictional MMORPG, do clash a bit with the storyline being drawn from.
    • A notable characterization point for Shalltear Bloodfallen was a speech in which she endorsed Hard Work Hardly Works: as an elevated NPC granted all her impressive skills and powerset from the moment of creation, she has no understanding of the concept of self-improvement, no empathy for those who believe in it, and the discrepancies in power are so great nothing the native-born can accomplish would convince her of its merit. In the continuity of Mass for the Dead she makes the same speech, to the same person, after spending at least half a year Level Grinding herself back up to some semblance of her former powers (as in order to re-balance the power of the characters and teams under the player character's direction, and create a plethora of "generic" opponents to fight, the transplanting of Nazarick and its inhabitants came at a high cost and with serious issues to the world in general). This isn't even Gameplay and Story Segregation (although plenty of that does happen): working out the validity, suitable means and shift schedules for safely Level Grinding the floor guardians and select others (which also helps with the Cracks in reality operating inside the Great Tomb and at select spots in the outside world) forms a significant and ongoing part of the expanded storyline.
  • Aerith and Bob: Nazarick's inhabitants have mostly Japanese or English names, while the new world's inhabitants are mostly made up of English words (Climb, Succulent, Brain...), especially among the nobility (such as King Ranpossa, Princess Renner or Prince Zanac). It comes as a surprise when a Philip shows up in volume 10.
  • Albinos Are Freaks: The acting chief of the Red Eye Lizard Folk tribe is a dorky albino lizardwoman named Crusch Lulu. She believes herself to be ugly because of her albinism, but Zaryusu instantly falls in love with her when he first sees her. Ainz finds her interesting since albinism is so rare. Crusch and Zaryusu's son is also an albino like his mother.
  • Alliance with an Abomination: This is what everyone considers the Baharut Empire to have done In-Universe (including the Emperor himself) after they ask for Ainz' help with their yearly battle with Re-Estize (in fact, a ploy by the Emperor to gauge Ainz' power and convince the other nations to gang up on him). After Ainz summons several Lovecraftian monstrosities by murdering a third of the opposing army, everyone thinks the Emperor asked Ainz to do something so horrible. After the Empire becomes Ainz' Voluntary Vassal, everything starts going a lot better for the Empire's citizens due to the constant threat of immediate and unstoppable annihilation being lifted from them.
  • All There in the Manual: Most of the floor guardians and Pleiades, Momonga himself, and some other NPCs have character-sheet style information pages detailing Karma level (unsurprisingly negative for most), some more prominent class/racial levels taken, and other gameplay-mechanic information.
  • Always a Bigger Fish: All the members of Momonga's guild, including the Guardians, are leaps and bounds more powerful than even the strongest of the New World's enemies. If any of them ever decide to fight seriously, their opponents might as well already be dead.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Most undead are primarily driven by an instinctive hatred for all life, even the ones who have free will. Evileye, Yuri Alpha and Ainz are the only exceptions so far, though Ainz is just a different flavor of evil and is actually a person inside the body of a video game character with a portion of his humanity intact, but he explains to the natives that the undead under his command don't attack and eat the living, at his command.
  • Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Inverted. Ainz (who is practically like a father to all of Nazarick) is utterly embarrassed about his creation Pandora's Actor who acts like a drama queen and over exaggerates every possible movement. It was hard for readers to understand Ainz's embarrassment in the light novels but once the anime debuted him, everyone finally understood how he felt.
    Ainz: Wow... He's so lame!
  • Anachronic Order: The light novel starts with Ainz (identity yet unknown to the reader) rescuing two Carne village girls, cuts back to Momonga and the last few seconds of YGGDRASIL, back to the attack on the village that leads to Ainz' rescue, then to Momonga's realizing he's in the new world...
  • Anyone Can Die: If you're not a Nazarick NPC, there's a very high chance you will die somewhere in the novel sooner or later, be it killed by Ainz or one of Ainz's minions, underestimating Ainz or his minions and getting killed and/or tortured as a result, being backstabbed by a fellow human, or killed by a horrific criminal with hundreds of deaths on their tally count.
  • Arcology: Most people on Earth live in "complete environment cities". The light novels theories that The Great Tomb of Nazarick was designed to be one with its shops, bars and beauty Parlours inside it.
  • The Archmage: Several characters can claim this mantle, not surprising since it is based off D&D.
    • Fluder Paradyne is quite likely the greatest arcane spellcaster in the New World, having achieved 6th tier magic. Usually 4th Tier magic is enough to qualify you as a master mage among the humans which is as high as most of his apprentices get.
    • Tabula Smaragdina and Ulbert Alain Odle both fulfill the "magical artillery" aspect of their class with excellent burst damage.
    • Ainz himself is inferior to his guildmates in sheer damage but has a huge variety of spells instead. Normally each spell casting class can learn up to 300 spells. Ainz knows 718 spells.
  • Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Albedo is downright eager for Momonga to take her virginity.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: The nobles in the Kingdom, particular those of the Noble Faction, are generally composed of greedy short-sighted nobles with no real regard for anyone but themselves. That said, the only named noble who gets mentioned more than once in the story, Raeven (leader of the Royal Faction), is a good man trying his best to keep the Noble Faction and the Royal Faction from causing too many problems for the Kingdom. He, ironically, is seen as one of the worst examples of this in-universe since he keeps the peace by constantly going back and forth between the two factions.
  • Arrested for Heroism: Pestonya and Nigredo were imprisoned for freeing the humans captured by Demiurge when he attacked the Re-Estize Kingdom. This is also a case of For Your Own Good as Ainz was willing to forgive them for their defiance, while the other NPCs wanted them executed.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
    • Lizardmen tribes tend to choose their leaders based on martial and magical prowess. Ainz's conscription of the Lizardmen is made much easier because of this part of their culture: his incredible feats of magical might impress them so much that they willingly bow down to him and worship him as a god. Made more impressive since the lizardmen didn't originally worship deities.
    • This comes up again later after Ainz founds the Sorcerer Kingdom. Part of the territory ceded to Nazarick after the "Battle" of the Katze Plains includes the Great Forest of Tob and the Katze Plains. By the time of volume 12, Ainz has taken control of the demi-humans and beasts of the Great Forest of Tob by negotiating with the leaders of the various tribes to come under the rule of Nazarick (essentially Ainz saying "Join up or I'll annihilate your species to a man but if you bow to me I will guarantee your prosperity"). The Katze Plains was relatively easier as Ainz is a powerful undead Overlord and has many spells and magic which allow him to control all manner of undead from mindless zombies to intelligent undead (he apparently has the ghost ship that was haunting the plains and the spectral sailors aboard flying his banner while acting as border patrol).
    • Averted within the Tomb Of Nazarick. While Ainz is the unambiguous leader, and is regarded as a Supreme Being by the NPCs, he is by no means the most powerful fighter, with most of the Guardians expecting him to lose in his fight against a mind-controlled Shalltear. Likewise, his second-in-command, Albedo is noted to be less combat-able than Shalltear, and that Demiurge is superior to her in terms of intelligence. It is also stated that, despite his position as the guild leader of Ainz Ooal Gown, many of Momonga's former guild mates are stronger than him.
    • Played straight back when Touch Me was the leader of the clan that would eventually become Ainz Ooal Gown, as a World Champion, he was pretty unambiguously the strongest player of the guild. Also an example of why this trope is not ideal in a realistic setting. As strong and skilled as he was, Touch Me was apparently pretty confrontational (despite, or maybe because of, his obsession with justice), and was at the core of several severe internal conflicts in the guild. Momonga, meanwhile, was nowhere near as powerful or daring, but got along uniquely well with everyone and served as the glue that bound the guild members together (at least until most, through no fault of his own, had to quit due to personal life issues).
  • Atrocious Alias:
    • As the light novel describes in affectionate detail, one of the most powerful players in YGGDRASIL, who founded Ainz Ooal Gown and brought together its first nine members, who even Momonga looked up to, named himself "Touch Me."
    • Ainz's original username "Momonga" as well, as it's the Japanese name of a type of particularly adorable species of flying dwarf squirrel.
  • Author on Board: The author seems to have a particular dislike for anything like genuine heroism, seeming to revel instead in brutal villains or at best antiheroes.
    • While Ainz may idolize Touch Me, the narrative implies that he was a pampered rich guy who could only get away with his lofty ideals because he was both wealthy and very lucky. He also tended to be pushy and controlling when it came to what he believed in, which alienated some people.
    • Remedios seems to be designed to tear down the Ideal Hero by setting up situations where her morals get in the way of actually getting anything done. Her basic stupidity is also shown as a massive liability when there aren't smarter people around to keep her in check.
    • While Ainz himself is something of a loser who skates by on luck, power and blindly fanatic underlings, his policies are generally supported by the narrative even when they're based on slavery, intimidation and conning the local kingdoms.
    • As the single unambiguous exception to this, Gazef Stronoff is entirely heroic, entirely capable within the limits of his abilities and an inspiration to others. Even Ainz respects him. That being said, he tended to be a supporting character and was killed off because of his unwavering beliefs, though the story does portray this having been the right thing to do, especially based on what he knew.
    • Climb is a subversion of the Chivalric Romance and Courtly Love. While Climb himself is a good and heroic character, his mistress decidedly is NOT. She basically serves a Yandere who is also The Quisling that also wants to chain him up like a dog until the end of his days.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Jircniv figures out Fluder sold the Empire out to Nazarick because he didn't beg for the chance to study magic under him during their visit, an act so out of character it must have been negotiated earlier, before they even knew about Nazarick.
  • Ax-Crazy: It's probably easier to list which citizens of Nazarick weren't made this way: Sebas (who was created by the Token Good Teammate), Pestonya (who's something of a Team Mom) and Yuri (in charge of keeping the Pleiades from killing first and asking questions never), and Tsuare (who's a native of the New World). Even taking them or Nazarick aside, almost every native from the new world, who is not a regular citizen, adventurer or heroic figure, is either psychotic, racist, smug, depraved or dangerous, with some being even worse than the citizens of Nazarick (which is no easy, really). The main difference being that they are not half dangerous or powerful as them.
  • Babies Make Everything Better: For Raeven of all people. This cynical, manipulative, backstabbing, cold-hearted bastard just melts when his son comes to see him, and it's what caused him to abandon all thoughts of taking the throne for himself. It's also what causes him to retire from politics completely after the massacre of the Katze plains.
  • Back from the Dead: Resurrecting a dead Non-Player Character like one of the Guardians is relatively simple, though expensive. Resurrecting someone from the New World is a bit trickier but still doable with resurrection wands, unless their level is too low. However, it is not possible to bring someone back if they refuse to be revived. The New World has a few other methods of resurrection, although they're not as convenient.
  • Badass Adorable: The "Wise King of the Forest" is a giant hamster. Momonga is rather disappointed. Oddly enough, everyone else in the New world is deeply impressed by the King and see it as a wise and powerful beast. Momonga wonders if there's something wrong with his sense of aesthetics. Though the King is a weakling compared to the rest of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, his average "level" is around 30, making him stronger than most in the setting (although Ainz discovers tales of its prowess were likely vastly exaggerated by whatever adventurer first ran into it).
  • Badass Crew:
    • You got the Great Tomb of Nazarick, Blue Rose, and the Black Scripture.
    • The first summoned goblin team's official art shows them this way.
  • Badass Family: The residents of Nazarick may be cruel and unmerciful monsters that won't hesitate to kill humans if ordered too, they're quite close to one another and act like one big happy family. Case in point, Ainz had to restrain the urge to kill Evileye right on the spot when he heard that she harmed Entoma, whom he cares for like his own daughter.
  • Bad Boss:
    • Averted with Momonga, who goes out of his way to reinforce he's not one, which earns him tremendous fawning from his followers (despite resisting his well-intentioned reforms on the grounds of their not deserving it).
    • Most denizens of Nazarick however are not above fatally punishing their own minions. Demiurge and Shalltear are notorious for being vicious if a lieutenant fails at an easy task, while Albedo is quite vocal about issuing severe punishment for the smallest slights against Momonga or Nazarick as a whole. They even hold this behavior on themselves as well, since they consider failing Momonga as an unforgivable sin that must be paid with a gruesome punishment, and always expect (and basically insist) Momonga to punish them whenever they feel they've failed/disrespected him, which Momonga always refuses.
  • Battle Against the Sunset: Gazef's battle against the Slane Theocracy's Sunlight Scripture begins in the evening. By the time Ainz switches places with Gazef, the sun has already begun to set. The ensuing Curb-Stomp Battle reaches its end by dusk, right as Ainz obliterates Dominion Authority with Black Hole. Only then does Nigun realize how hopelessly fucked he is.
  • Battle Butler: Sebas Tian fills this role as leader to the Ninja Maid Pleiades.
  • Be Careful What You Say: As a godlike figure whose every word is considered unbreakable law by his followers, Momonga realizes this a bit too late before discovering the ramifications of several offhand comments he makes within earshot of the Floor Guardians.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Jircniv is fully convinced that the only way to stop Ainz is to get him to show his true power before witnesses, so as to convince the other nations to unite against Nazarick. So he asks Ainz to use his most powerful spell to signal the beginning of the attack. His aides consider it impossible that Ainz could kill as many as a thousand men with a single spell, but Ainz casts one that instakills 70,000 people before summoning monsters that raise the death toll to 180,000 (out of 250,000). As a result, everyone thinks Jircniv was overall responsible for the massacre, undermining the goodwill other nations have towards him, and leading some countries to believe uniting against Nazarick is suicide.
  • Beauty Is Bad: The Pleiades and Albedo, at the very least, are considered so beautiful that they can't be human. They make some people very uncomfortable even as much as people desire them.
  • Becoming the Mask: This slowly but surely happens to Momonga. At first he was mostly concerned with just figuring out how the world he found himself in works, but after it's revealed there are powers that can threaten the denizens of Nazarick he steps up his game considerably. He quickly becomes an extremely dangerous No-Nonsense Nemesis prone to Pragmatic Villainy. He's arguably a deconstruction of standard fantasy villains.
  • Begin with a Finisher: Zero, the leader of the Six Arms, starts his fight with Sebas by using up all of his buffs at once, charging up his strongest attack, and punching Sebas with all of his might. Sebas doesn't even bother putting up his guard, and the attack still fails to deal any damage. Zero isn't weak by New World standards, but Sebas is beyond the standards of the New World.
  • Beleaguered Boss: Much of the drama/humor in the series comes from Ainz being a (relatively) good person, but all but 3 of his underlings are unapologetically evil and he's incapable of understanding that they simply can't relate to humans at all, other than as pawns to be sacrificed or obstacles to be removed*. Compounding the problem is that he still thinks as though he was a powerless salaryman while the Guardians can't be persuaded that he isn't the godlike and omniscient evil lich he roleplayed as, and he feels guilty about changing the behavior of characters created by his former guildmates.
    • At the start of the series, Ainz makes an offhand comment about taking over the world, which the Guardians take as a direct order and start acting on. When he finally finds out what they've been up to (in season 3), he decides to make the best of it and eventually creates a kingdom where people of all races can live in peace and tolerance.
    • Ainz assigns Lupusregina to keep watch over Carne village. She doesn't bother to report things like giant monsters leading armies near the village, because who cares if a bunch of humans (including, unbeknownst to her, those Ainz had plans for) get wiped out? Ainz has to make it clear she is to defend the important people in the village for her to do so (and even then she'd gladly watch them die screaming, something the village goblins are quick to pick up on).
    • Ainz' every attempt at being a Benevolent Boss (paying the underlings, giving them days off...) ends in failure because they consider it an honor if not a religious duty to serve him. He ends up having to install a rotation for the maids because otherwise they all try to attend to him every single day.
    • Yuri the head maid brings Solution before Ainz for stealing something from Ainz. After Yuri takes it on herself to try and beat Solution to death, twice, Ainz finally gets Yuri to understand he just wants Solution to explain herself (Solution was jealous of an ordinary slime being used to scrub Ainz' skeleton clean and hid the slime because she wanted that job herself). Both leave alive, astounded at Ainz' boundless forgiveness and benevolence.
  • Benevolent Boss: One of the reasons the people of Nazarick are so loyal to Momonga: While they treat him like a god he never takes advantage of it (even when they want him to), from their point of view is both very kind and viciously protective of them. Unfortunately, most of his human-inspired acts of benevolence like salaries or vacations don't work because they believe themselves unworthy of such things.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Aura Bella Fiora is the dominant sibling of the dark elf twins, but Mare Bello Fiore has a significantly higher stat total (120 points more). Mare lacks the aggressive streak that Aura has, but when push comes to shove, is deadlier in one-on-one combat.
  • Bigger on the Inside: In the first Drama CD, Ainz uses the base-building item "Green Secret House" to create a small cottage as a temporary shelter. Externally, it's nothing special, but on the inside, it contains several rooms that can fit a large number of people.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
    • Princess Renner isn't nearly as nice as she pretends to be particularly since she's willing to ally herself with Nazarick.
    • Among her comrades, Albedo tries to portray herself as a prim-and-proper woman who stays professional at all times, but she's actually a raging engine of emotion. The façade completely breaks down whenever Momonga is involved (emotionally and physically) or Nazarick is somehow insulted (imagined or not). Otherwise she's always seen smiling, acting kind, and maintaining a beautiful appearance. Her creator had a thing for gap moe, or women acting contrary to their real personalities (Albedo's sister is an insane Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl that is actually one of the nicest NPCs in Nazarick if she is holding a doll).
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: A potential fail-safe plan Demiurge has for Momonga is getting Albedo or Shalltear to carry his child. If he abandons them or dies, the Great Tomb of Nazarick would then have an heir they could obey in his absence. However, Momonga being a full skeletal lich, should make that rather difficult to execute. They still think that there is a way to make this work. It is either this trope, some kind of magic, or ignorance.
  • Black Box: For the New World denizens, even the most insignificant magic items from the YGGDRASIL MMO are these, since the New World lacks the infrastructure and knowledge to replicate them. For the denizens of Nazarick, many features of the Great Tomb (for example, how the realistic world environment of the Sixth Floor is actually generated) falls into this category and is just attributed as impossible feats only the Supreme Beings could create.
  • Black Humor:
    • It's entirely possible to read the series as a comedy in which a bumbling moron accidentally takes over the world, slaughtering anyone in his path largely by accident.
    • The Pure Pure Pleiades episodes give us cute chibi meidos showing us what they really are: Man-eating monsters. But... they're tiny. And silly. And therefore funny even as they devour humans alive.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation:
    • In the Yen Press translation, the Sorcerer Kingdom (Madou-koku in Japanese) and its sovereign, the Sorcerer King, are instead called the Kingdom of Darkness and the King of Darkness. Not only is it wildly inaccurate but Ainz goes to great pains to be a Villain with Good Publicity and would never call himself something so Obviously Evil as "King of Darkness".
    • Early Crunchyroll translations of season 4, especially in the episodes adapting volume 14, repeatedly refer to the Holy Kingdom as the Theocracy. Considering that those two kingdoms are completely different in their relation to the Sorceror Kingdom,note  many anime-only viewers were left confused and wondering why the Theocracy was apparently in the Sorcerer Kingdom's debt when, only a few episodes ago, they were planning what to do about the undead nation. This was not helped by the fact that season 4 skipped the arc involving the Holy Kingdom, with plans to compress it into a single movie that would air years later.
  • Blood Bath: Inverted Trope. Shalltear Bloodfallen normally appears as an Elegant Gothic Lolita, but when she bathes in blood, her glamour breaks and she turns into what can best be described as a humanoid lamprey abomination.
  • Bond One-Liner: Before Ainz's fight with Clementine, Clementine is disappointed that Ainz isn't going to fight her looking to avenge he Swords of Darkness. Ainz simply states that since he would have done the same thing if it were to benefit him, it would be hypocritical of him to seek revenge. After giving her a slow, excruciating, humiliating death, Ainz quips to Clementine's dead body that he is indeed very hypocritical.
  • Born Winner: Dragons. They essentially are winners of the evolutionary lottery, as they grow stronger with age, have extremely long lifespans, are incredibly strong and durable, and are the only beings capable of Wild Magic. All these advantages are what allowed them to rule over the New World, completely unrivaled for thousands of years. Then, everything changed when the Players attacked.
  • Boxing Lessons for Superman: Volume 4 and the first Audio Drama have Ainz trying to instill tactical thinking and teamwork respectively on the Guardians of Nazarick, as their only recently developed egos mean they rely largely on their overwhelming power to win battles.
    • Ainz himself is able to be a shockingly effective Evil Overlord by applying his mundane experiences as a Japanese Salaryman, Player Versus Player video gamer, and adventurer in a guild. He also regularly trains as a warrior class to increase his tactics and understanding of his passive abilities.
  • Bread and Circuses: YGGDRASIL, and other games of its kind are acknowledged by everyone to be this, giving the common folk a way to distract themselves from the hellhole of the real world.
  • Breather Episode: The first episode of Season 3 of the anime essentially involves the Floor Guardians taking a day off, and the antics that ensue.
  • Brick Joke:
    • In the third novel, while Lord Ainz is away, Albedo rolls around in his bed to try to imprint her scent on it; she also meets with other guardians while sitting in it. Demiurge finds this ridiculous partly because he doubts the undead Lord Ainz, who never sleeps, would even notice. In the fourth novel, Ainz does indeed lie down on it while alone, and wonders if rich people's beds just always smell like flowers.
    • Demiurge stated that it was much easier to predict the actions of someone that was slightly intelligent compared to someone who wasn't. A few arcs later he is completed blindsided by Philip because he is just that stupid.
  • Bullying a Dragon: An unnamed adventurer who harasses Momon in episode 5. Regardless of his adventurer ranking at the time, Momon is completely clad in a full suit of armour that most people can tell just by looking is incredibly high quality. That's not to mention that Momon himself towers over most people.
  • Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The Wise King of the Forest is referred to by Momon as a Djungarian hamster, which is the real-life name of a species. But Djungarian hamsters certainly do not have long tails that are apparently as strong as steel, nor are that large overall.
  • Calling Your Attacks:
    • Not only are spells cast with words spoken, but so are martial arts used by warriors such as Gazef.
    • Justified back in YGGDRASSIL: Calling the name of the spell being cast is essential in battles so teammates know whether to fall back, take cover, take advantage of their buffs, etc.
  • Can't Have Sex, Ever: As a Lich, Momonga / Ainz not only lacks a libido, but also, well, the fleshy bits involved in having sex. Despite this, most of Nazarick still seems to want him to hook up with Shalltear or Albedo, however that would work.
    • There's the vague implication that because the denizens of Nazarick see him as an all-powerful Supreme Being, they just sort of expect Ainz to eventually magic up a solution for this particular problem. For Ainz's part, he's either dubious about this possibility at best or simply hasn't considered it.
  • Cast from Money: Most, if not all, of Nazarick's special abilities, like traps and monster summons works this way. Prior to volume 10, Ainz has striven solely to find ways to get more YGGDRASIL gold. In volume 10, he gets loftier goals.
  • Catching the Speedster: Fragile Speedster and all around psychopath Clementine uses her speed enhancing techniques to perform strike and run hits on Momonga (Ainz's Adventurer Guild alter ego). Unfortunately, once Ainz has decided he's learned all he needs about her techniques, he catches Clementine with an arm against his chest and pins her with the second. What comes next is several minutes of Ainz slowly crushing the life out of his opponent as she struggles and slashes ineffectively against him.
  • Chainmail Bikini: For being based on video games, the series does a very good job of averting the trope. Both Albedo and Shalltear, despite otherwise being quite fanservicey, wear very practical battle armors. Played straight by Clementine, but justified by the fact that she is Ax-Crazy, overconfident, and enjoys trolling her enemies (she doesn't even wear chainmail: the only protection she has are the adventurer's plates looted from her victims).
  • Cheap Gold Coins: YGGDRASIL featured real monetary transactions and gold coins (that often floated around defeated enemies) while the New World features a Gold–Silver–Copper Standard variation of economics.
  • The Chessmaster: While Momonga does have his moments, often if he doesn't know what he should say, he'll bluff his way through, causing the Guardians to misinterpret him as a supreme chessmaster.
  • Combat Sado Masochist: Vampires, especially powerful ones like Shalltear seem to live on this trope.
    • Clementine, as a human example.
  • Compilation Movie: The first season got two called Overlord: The Undead King and Overlord: The Dark Warrior.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: While Shalltear was feeling guilty for having been mind controlled, Albedo suggested to Ains to give her a punishment to help her atone. Though he already decided to forgive her, Ains agreed, and would eventually use her as a chair for a while. Albedo was less than pleased, while Shalltear endured it with a little too much enthusiasm, and Ains was deeply uncomfortable throughout the ordeal.note 
  • Cool Mask: Momonga uses a mask to hide his skeletal face (along with gloves to conceal his bony fingers) when he realizes that his being a horrifying lich is not exactly convenient for making the humans trust him.
  • Crapsack World:
    • The world Satoru came from is a completely and utterly awful corporate dystopia. In 2138, Earth has become a polluted cesspool where going outside required gasmasks, Mega Corps rule the world, class oppression is a thing to the point that people work themselves to death to send their children to elementary school as the mandatory education system was abolished, and fresh meat and vegetables are a delicacy reserved for the elite. Several offhand historic quips indicate World War III ended at least 20 years ago, involved a resurgent Fourth Reich, and never specify if the second Nazi Germany was defeated. It's worth noting that despite the initial loneliness he felt in YGGDRASIL, Momonga questioned if he should even bother trying to go back home.
    • It isn't outright dystopian, but that's not to say that the New World was any better. It's not exactly a pleasant place to live in, for most of society. There are lots of demi-human tribes that view humans as nothing but prey, magic isn't something that can be learnt liberally and used to improve lives, humanity is in general an extremely weak species that usually can't even get past YGGDRASIL level 30, and some of the Kingdoms are shockingly corrupt and underpowered. In fact, if the Six Gods (an YGGDRASIL guild) didn't get deported in one day and displaced Wild Magic for Tier Magic, humanity will be annihilated by nigh-omnipotent dragonlords. The sudden introduction of a nigh-invulnerable Lich Overlord, and his army composed mostly of nigh unstoppable, psychotic, genocidal followers who see people as insects, at best, is actually an improvement in most circumstances.
  • Crapsack World, Escapist Sanctuary: In the face of all the misery going on in the real world, virtual reality MMORPGs are popular, as was the case with the now-defunct YGGDRASIL; though the escapism falters somewhat when main character Momonga finds himself stuck inside the game, but even when he slowly turns into a horrible monstrosity devoid of any human empathy, Momonga wonders if he should really bother trying to leave when the real world is so unrelentingly terrible.
  • Crazy-Prepared:
    • Ainz's battle with Shalltear was nothing but this. After arriving on the scene but before actually attacking, we watched him cast over two dozen spells to boost his abilities, protect himself, lay traps, etc., and there was plenty more he had done to prepare that was revealed as the battle raged on.
    • Albedo made clothing for the children she 'plans to have' with Momonga. For both genders, up to age five.
  • Creepy-Crawly Torture: The Guardians manage to completely and utterly break a criminal syndicate to their will by throwing them into the Black Capsule, where Kyouhukou's cockroaches repeatedly devour them from the inside and then healing them back to full health before they die. Even once restored they can't eat solid food, but are desperate to do anything to please their masters for fear of it happening again. Even in the real world (Satoru's original home), there are people who are so revolted by the Black Capsule that they logged out the moment they stepped in and found out what's going on, and entire threads in imageboards were created to complain about it.
  • Cringe Comedy: Ainz is repeatedly put in situations where a normal person would welcome spontaneous combustion, thanks to his inability to show shame.
    • Pandora's Actor is an overacting doppelganger dressing like a Nazi and spouting German phrases... because that's what Satoru thought was cool during his chuunibyou phase. He is very much aware of the Old Shame.
    • Ainz' invasion of the Holy Kingdom amounts to his trying to shill his runic weapons, and is just awful to watch.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: Ainz doesn't want to punish Shalltear for her betrayal because she was being Mind Controlled. Albedo points out that she's wracked with guilt over it, so punishing Shalltear would let her forgive herself.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: Averted when one minor character introduces himself as a Buddhist from the South (which seems to be the New World's equivalent of Japan).
  • Cult:
    • How the denizens of Nazarick worship Momonga and the other Supreme Beings. A lot of the amusing mistakes Momonga makes is not recognizing this, and how he tries to operate Nazarick like a corporation instead.
    • After Neia is brought back to life by Ainz, she unknowingly has new levels in classes that make her the leader of a cult dedicated to spreading the glory of the Sorcerer Kingdom.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: This happens a lot whenever Momonga or his forces are involved. It might as well be "Curbstomp: The Anime".
    • In his first battle, Ainz summons a Death Knight, a mid-level monster... that in the new world, is known to single-handedly destroy cities. He later forces an angel summoner to bring out his trump card to do a tiny bit of damage... and it still gets instakilled.
    • Brain fights at his absolute maximum ability... and is unable to get past Shalltear blocking him with a single fingernail. During the rematch, he manages to clip that fingernail, which makes him deliriously happy, to Shalltear's confusion.
    • Cocytus' fight against the Lizardmen ends when they manage to use tactics, spells and misdirection to deliver a powerful blow... that's no selled because they just weren't strong enough.
    • Ainz fights a troll without removing his magical protections, leading to the troll attacking one of its minions to check if his sword was still working properly.
    • The battle of the Katze Plains ends with almost two hundred thousand dead for the Kingdom (all from Ainz' spells) and less than two hundred for the Empire... all of them self-inflicted as they tried to get the hell away from the battlefield.
    • Gazef requesting a duel against Ainz. The outcome is in no way surprising to either participant or the audience, but it's made even more of a curbstomp when Ainz simply uses a [Time Stop] spell followed by an instant death spell on Gazef, who dies before he even finishes swinging his sword.
    • Ainz shows up to fight an intelligent troll in the Empire's arena, deliberately not using magic (including his melee protection) and only using a staff and a pair of daggers. He still wins handily, causing Jircniv to willingly surrender to him.
    • Ainz's "battle" with Frost Dragon Lord lasts as long as it takes for him to say "Grasp Heart". This cows most of the Frost Dragons into agreeing to serve him. Any lingering doubts were erased when one of Frost Dragon Lord's sons tries to challenge Ainz too. Ainz lets the son last a bit longer than his father and get a single hit in...which does nothing to Ainz. One "Grasp Heart" later, the dragon joins his father in death. The remaining Frost Dragons see this and prostrate themselves even harder.
    • Shalltear versus 60,000 Quagoa isn't even close. The one-sided massacre is so awful that it breaks their leader Riyuro's spirit completely to the point that he agrees to carry out the systemic slaughter of his own race to only 10,000 as per Shalltear's order.
    • In a change of pace, Red Drop's leader Azuth Aindra in his Armor of Reinforcement easily defeats a Death Knight and a Death Warrior. It helps that the Powered Suits like the Armor of Reinforcement work by replacing their wielder's stats with its own save for Hit Points and Mana, and Power Suits have higher stats than said undead. Then he gets curbstomped in turn by Albedo. None of his Armor's weaponry or spells can even scratch Albedo.
    • The decisive final battle in volume 14 between the Kingdom of Re-Estize's 400,000 strong army and Ainz's forces led by Mare and Cocytus is so one-sided it doesn't even get described in detail. The narration simply mentions that the entire army was slain in one hour.
    • Brain faces Cocytus in volume 14 and realizes immediately he has no chance of winning. Despite this, he goes all out anyway. Brain takes multiple enhancement potions and activates more Martial Arts than he ever had in his life, breaking his natural limits. Cocytus still kills him before his attack can even reach Cocytus. Cocytus nonetheless pays respect to Brain, noting that his last attack was around level 40 in terms of strength.
    • Vesture Kloff Di Laufen is a former Adamantite Adventurer (and the one who taught Gazef Stronoff swordsmanship) whose reputation as a badass is built up throughout the series. When he finally appears in volume 14 as a last line of defense for the Kingdom of Re-Estize's Magicians' Guild Aura immediately splits his head open with an arrow when he makes it clear he won't cooperate with her. He doesn't even get a chance to finish saying his name.
    • Zig-Zagged when Entoma fights several members of Blue Rose. She thoroughly dominates Gargaran and Tia until Evileye shows up with her Verminbane spell. Entoma is then nearly killed until Demiurge saves her, at which point they decide to retreat. Demiurge kills Gargaran and Tia with a single spell and would have killed Evileye too if Momon hadn't shown up to save her.
  • Dawn of an Era: The Great Tomb of Nazarick upon entering the New World, with it ushering a Rising Empire feeling.
  • Death Glare:
    • Say something negative or contradicting about Momonga in front of a Nazarick denizen and you will instantly be hit with one of these. Albedo is also prone to flashing these for a brief instant when she becomes jealous of something or someone having Momonga's affection.
    • Aura manages an epic one from several kilometers during the fight with Shalltear, interrupting her just long enough for Ainz to win.
  • Death is Cheap: Subverted. There exists a resurrection spell in the New World called Raise Dead. However, it cannot be used to resurrect just anybody as the person being resurrected must have a great amount of life force in order for it to work, and those who do not fit the requirement are simply turned to ash. Even after being resurrected, the person would be left in a very weakened state, requiring a long recovery time. Additionally, it is a fifth level spell, and humans rarely ever manage to reach even the third level of magic, so mostly, the creatures able to cast it are the powerful monster races which are also the least likely to want to help someone in the first place. A rare exception would be the occasional Token Heroic Orc and those humans who have supernatural ancestry. A literal averted example is when Ainz resurrected Shalltear, the cost of resurrection being a huge amount of Nazarick's treasures.
  • Deathbringer the Adorable: Ainz refers to the Dark Young (nightmarish masses of teeth and tentacles) as cute baby goats.
  • Deconstruction:
    • Humans are not in fact the most abundant race nor are they very dominant over the world scene in general. While in many fantasy settings and stories, humans are the ones with the most influence by virtue of numbers, in the New World outside of predominantly human kingdoms and countries, humans are at the bottom of the pecking order/food chain. The story answers the question of how humans in any fantasy setting filled with magical creatures, monsters, and peoples that at a basic level are superior to them with special senses and abilities could be the dominant race. The answer? They wouldn't be and before the coming of the Six Great Gods, humanity was on the verge of extinction.
    • Trying to take over the world or even a single country via overwhelming power and brutal force isn't a great way to secure your rule in the long run. Hell, trying to get your way by being seemingly the toughest bastard around is also not a great idea. To the first, several hundred years before in story, the Eight Greed Kings tried to do just that. They had great resources and were stronger than 99% of anything around. Their rule lasted all of 5 minutes before they turned on each other threw away everything they gained because they, big shock, couldn't share. As to the second, well, a lot of powerful (by normal standards) New World fighters, assassins, and magicians operated this way...right up until they met somebody from Nazarick. Best case they escape with their lives though mentally traumatized. Worst case they end up with a Fate Worse than Death. This is in fact one of the primary reasons Ainz prefers force as a last resort and keeps looking for ways to get stronger. Nazarick may be the biggest fish now but who's to say that will always hold true.
    • At the same time, it also presents a very cynical world view that deconstructs many tropes common especially to shounen anime to hammer in the idea that "power is power". The Good Guys Always Win? Not on Ainz's watch. The Power of Friendship? No siree, we don't do that here. It doesn't matter how "justified" your cause is or how much you want to win when you're going up against someone who can kill you with a sneeze. This is played for both laughs and drama at several points. One case occurs when Brain Unglaus, fresh off some Character Development, has a rematch against Shalltear, and, after a dramatic sequence where he reminisces on his friends and how he's got a cause worth fighting for... manages to chop off one of her fingernails. Which is admittedly better than he did last time. Another example occurs in Ainz's battle against Foresight. They fight as a cohesive team bound by unbreakable bonds of friendship, and it's impossible not to sympathize with Arche's cause to take care of her little sisters. Ainz's ultimately comparatively petty cause of fighting for the mere shadow of a guild long gone and friends who have long since moved on still handily triumphs by virtue of his sheer power, the Workers die horrific torturous deaths, and Maruyama himself makes sure to let us know that without Arche, her sisters were sold into slavery and died from overwork, just to twist the knife.
  • Decoy Protagonist: In the opening of the first anime episode, the narrator talks about the immersive game world of YGGDRASIL, while a team of heroes battle hordes of the undead, before confronting a powerful lich and his minions. A cutscene later, the heroes are all defeated. The lich is actually Momonga, the real protagonist and the "minions" are his fellow guiltmates Touch Me, Ulbert, Bukubukuchagama, Peroroncino, Tabula Smaragdina and Warrior Takemikazuchi.
  • Defeat Means Friendship:
    • This is how Momonga makes The Wise King of the Forest, Hamsuke, his pet.
    • Brain and Gazef are a longer example: After Gazef beat Brain in a duel, he joined a bandit crew in the hopes of getting into more fights. When Shalltear left him a broken shell, Gazef found him and slowly brought him back to normal.
  • Dem Bones: As a necromantic lich, Momonga has no flesh on him and is comprised solely of bones.
  • Despair Event Horizon: The aftermath of the Battle of the Katze Plains in Volume 9 of the light novels is explored in Volume 10 which is pretty much "People Cross the Despair Event Horizon: The Novel".
    • Marquis Raeven retires to his estate and keeps out of Kingdom politics.
    • The surviving Eight Fingers all show significant signs of PTSD to the point where none of them can eat solid food due to having their innards eating by cockroaches, healed, eaten, healed, eaten...
    • King Ranpossa III is despondent after the death of Gazef.
    • The Thousand Mile Astrologer, a diviner who works for the Slane Theocracy, locks herself in her room after witnessing, through magic, the events at the Katze Plains.
    • The leadership of the Slane Theocracy experience something similar when they read her report.
    • Emperor Jirciv crosses over it several times over the course of the novel. From physical ailments like an ulcer and thinning hair to a desperate attempt to ally with the Temples and the Slane Theocracy. Ainz accidentally foils it by showing up unannounced and demonstrating that even giving his opponent every opportunity to kill him and not using magic, he's still too strong. The Emperor then proposes making his Empire a vassal state to the Sorcererous Kingdom of Nazarick. He gets a lot better after he does that, as the specter of being powerless to stop Ainz destroying his empire is no more.
  • "Dinner, Bath, or Sex" Offer: Albedo pulls this on Ainz (clearly hoping for the third one), before realizing she forgot to do so wearing only an apron and begs for Ainz' forgiveness. As Ainz is a walking skeleton and thus incapable of reciprocating, it makes no difference to him either way. The fact that he unintentionally rewrote her settings to be this way towards him is also a factor in his not wanting to take advantage of her.
  • Divided We Fall: The Re-Estize Kingdom is split between the Royal faction and the Greater Nobility faction. It's hard to say which is worse: the Nobles' actions are primarily selfish and short-sighted, but the ailing king is the Only Sane Man of his family.
  • Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: There are many people who are apex predators in the New World ecosystem who mistake Ainz (or any of the other Nazarick denizens they run into) as weaklings and/or commonfolk who can be brought, manipulated or extorted like any other person they ruined, and promptly try to brag their superiority in front of them or extort them. They quickly learn that this is definitely not the case with their life.
  • The Door Slams You: Before heading off to posing as adventurers, Momonga witnesses Shalltear "accidentally" slam Albedo with the door as she arrived to meet with him in the manga.
  • Draconic Humanoid: Sebas Tian's true form is a dragonoid.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: Albedo wants to kill the other Supreme Beings.
  • Dramatic Irony: There are a number scenes involving people from the New World talking and thinking about Momonga as if he were a normal person. Part of the charm of the story is how they react as he gradually reveals the full extent of his power a fraction at a time.
    • On a more disturbing note, however... Demiurge's tendency to use double-meanings in his statements ultimately causes Momonga to misinterpret his "cattle" experiments as actual cattle. Momonga doesn't care about it because he doesn't realize he's actually tormenting otherwise-harmless/innocent beastmen. Even when confronted with them, Ainz is genuinely confused and doesn't put two and two together.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The English dub of the first season refers to E-Rantel as the capital of the Re-Estize Kingdom, instead of being a large fortress city - still a major territory, but not exactly necessary for the Kingdom's existence. The dubs for later seasons do fix this error, though, just in time for Nazarick's annexation of E-Rantel from the Kingdom.
  • Dungeon Bypass:
    • Discussed in regards to the Great Tomb of Nazarick's teleportation system. If any invaders were to find and kill Aureole Omega, the NPC in charge of teleportation within Nazarick, they would have full access to the entirety of the Tomb, turning it from a Nintendo Hard Marathon Level into a far simpler affair, allowing raiders to easily leave, restock, and return to where they left off, or just travel straight to the 10th floor.
    • The route between Feo Jera and Feo Berkana in the Aserlisia Mountains is marked by three deadly trials - the Great Chasm, a sea of magma and its Lavalord Anglerfish, and a massive labyrinth that spewed toxic gases. When Ainz and company were traveling to Feo Berkana to reclaim the dwarven capital, they simply flew over the Chasm and the lava sea. As for the labyrinth, he applied poison resistance to his non undead comrades and used a spell to find the best route through.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: The tomb is buried deep underground, and has 9 floors. It is big enough to house towering monstrosities such as Gargantua.
  • Eldritch Abomination: It turns out at least one type, the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, exist or at least can be summoned in the New World. They're extremely powerful (over level 90, though the exact number is not known) and cause fear and insanity in those who see them. Momonga has a spell to summon them, and when he does, is extremely pleased at establishing a new record by managing to summon five at once, who then bulldoze through an army almost 200 000 strong without breaking a sweat.
  • Eldritch Location: The whole place is guarded by legions of unholy creatures of which every single one could wipe anything from a city to a whole country off the surface of the map, a mess of portals and traps makes navigation incredibly confusing and prone to dumping intruders basically anywhere except where they want to go, trying your own teleportation spells gets you redirected into a sealed chamber where a Miko sics an army of monstrously powerful Yōkai on you, and past the very first floors, the "Tomb" completely and utterly stops even looking like a tomb. The Great Tomb of Nazarick was a habitat designed in a game that didn't have to make too many concessions to reality and it shows. One floor is inexplicably a Slippy-Slidey Ice World, another is a Fire and Brimstone Hell, meanwhile the sixth floor looks like a totally convincing simulation of being outside, complete with a vast forest and an open sky. Arche from Foresight finds out the hard way that she's underground when she tries to fly away to safety only to encounter an invisible wall in the "sky".
  • Elite Mook: Death Knights are level 35 monsters that were one of Momonga's favorite creatures to summon in Yggdrasil. Not because they were particularly strong or anything, but because their ability to always endure a single attack makes them an ideal meat shield against much stronger enemies. In the New World however, they are among the most feared undead. Ainz's foes tend to panic when they discover that he is able to summon and control hundreds of them at once. One of these are already a death threat to the New World and they're so rare there that one only naturally spawns once every century.
  • End of an Age: The Great Tomb of Nazarick at the close of Yggdrasil. Momonga comments that a mere 4 of the original 41 guild members were still active in the final months, of whom only he and Herohero were online at the last few minutes (though the latter logged out before server shutdown). Also has elements of Vestigial Empire, as the guild was far more powerful when all its player characters were active.
  • Engineered Heroics: In the New World, Ainz is infamous for manipulating and occupying entire Kingdoms by creating or deploying threats that he (or his other minions, usually Demiurge) deployed, then driving them away.
    • A demonic invasion led by a powerful demon named Jaldabaoth begins attacking the Re-Estize kingdom and throws it into panic until a Dark Warrior named Momon finally drives off Jaldabaoth after a bout of intense combat. In actuality, Jaldabaoth is really Ainz's loyal subordinate Demiurge and the Warrior is Ainz, and the attack was to draw the Nobles and Royals off from Nazarick's actual target, the Eight Fingers.
    • An accidental version occurs when Shalltear is mind-controlled into an indiscriminate rampage. Momon declares he'll take care of the vampire, but after ensuring there are no witnesses, takes her out as Ainz (since he needs all his spells for it). The victory is credited to Momon anyway.
    • The entire Holy Kingdom arc consists of "Jaldabaoth" (actually a copy of one of Demiurge's high-level minions) curbstomping their forces with conscripted demihumans, requiring them to ask Ainz for help. He declares that he can't use his army to help them for diplomatic reasons... so he'll go by himself (and there's a scene where he has to talk with the Nazarick forces posing as the demons, telling them to actually fight back). It ends with the Holy Kingdom nearly destroyed, some survivors starting a cult dedicated to Ainz, several of the demihumans now serving Ainz, and the Holy Kingdom's ruler replaced by a doppelganger who plans to play up internal rivalries until the people beg Ainz to take over.
    • After Ainz kills the Giant of the East and subdues the Serpent of the West, he has their monster minions attack Carne Village, which is one of his own Protectorates. Then he sends his envoy to the village, Lupusregina Beta, to swoop in and help repel the attack, thus putting the villagers even further into his debt.
    • In order to allow Aura and Mare to gain a good reputation among the dark elf village, Ainz releases an Ankyloursus Lord in the village's vicinity and instructs Aura to drive it off, giving her a great reputation among the dark elves.
  • Entertainingly Wrong:
    • Demiurge interprets Momonga's command on fostering a relationship the New World's denizens and Ainz Ooal Gown as an intent to invade and conquer the entire planet.
    • Various people's interpretations of Ainz' actions come across as this, not helped by his being coincidentally right (for example, coughing while looking at a door is interpreted as his knowing about the person hiding behind it).
    • Demiurge's plan to conquer the Empire would have taken months and would only happen after taking down the Kingdom. Ainz did it in a few days by complete accident, prompting Demiurge to praise his master for his omniscience.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Most denizens of the Great Tomb of Nazarick are Chaotic Evil warmongers who'd genocide an entire continent just For the Evulz. However, everyone within the guild treat each other like family, and take extremely violent offense when accused of betrayal or going against their master's wishes. Until a certain World Class Item became known, the notion of a Nazarick member turning against another was unimaginable, and in fact Ainz can't convince any of them that he didn't hold the affected guardian responsible, including said guardian.
  • Expository Theme Tune: The anime's OP song Clattanoia directly addresses Ainz's situation and the effect it's having on his mind, including lyrics like "I feel overflowing power, and find myself starting to laugh" and "I reach for the mask's edge, but all I feel is bones".
  • False Flag Operation:
    • The attack on Carne Village in volume 8 in the first part (from Enri's point of view) is revealed in the second part (from Ainz's point of view) to have been arranged by Ainz as a pretense to give Guu's sword to the village to improve their defenses and to help convince Nfirea to keep the results of his research a secret.
    • Everything Demiurge did under the alias of "demon emperor Jaldabaoth" in the kingdom and later on by proxy in the Holy Kingdom was essentially a huge false threat to occupy entire kindgoms and make Ainz look good when he deals with them. It's especially effective since it leaves entire nations in debt of Ainz's newfound country.
  • Fantastic Livestock: In order to supply the monster denizens of Nazarick with a steady and reliable stream of low-tier scrolls to cast spells, Demiurge is tasked with finding suitable livestock to harvest, which he finds in the the skin of Abelion Sheep. Horrifically subverted when it's revealed the "Abelion Sheep" Demiurge has rounded up in his pastures are actually humans; the moniker simply arose from Demiurge mistakenly assuming Ainz already knew they were humans and chose to name them "Abelion Sheep" to even further dehumanize them when Ainz simply, and genuinely, believed they really were sheep.
  • Fantastic Racism: The reason the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown was created and apparently encouraged by the Yggdrasil admins, since PK'ing Heteromorphic players was actually a prerequisite for unlocking some powerful classes, making them popular targets. This could explain why most of Nazarick's NPCs hate humans as much as they do. This is also heavily implied to be the reason why the Slane Theocracy is so human supremacist, as their "Gods" are likely YGGDRASIL players who PKed heteromorphs for classes and other benefits.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
    • The south apparently serves as Japan/the Far East: Nabe and Ainz' illusory face are said to look southern, Brain's Katana comes from there, and they apparently have Buddhism as one of their religions. May be averted in that the area may have been founded by Players from Japan. The Eight Greed Kings' castle is also to the south.
    • Additionally, the Baharuth Empire shares many similarities, from clothing to architecture to an administration managed by a Senate-like Council and a centralized bureaucracy, with the Byzantine Empire.
  • Fastball Special: In the manga, Shalltear punts a newly-created Lesser Vampire at the bandit guards to attack the hideout (even with a comment of "Strike!" and her Vampiress Brides clapping for her), rather than simply getting into a frenzy immediately.
  • Feigning Intelligence: While he's fast to adapt and a quick learner, Ainz is not half the genius his NPC followers believe him to be. He often pretends to be all knowing, but words conversations for the speaker to reveal their complicated idea, without giving away that Ainz was in the dark and needed a detailed explanation. Often times the person will praise Ainz for giving them the inspiration for said plan, and how without him it could have never happened. He's very grateful for the fact that his undead visage is incapable of making facial expressions or nervous sweating. He does something similar in his guise as Momon the adventurer when he wants to accept a quest but doesn't want to reveal that he can't read the New World's written language.
  • First Injury Reaction: When the Sunlight Scripture summon a Dominion Authority to fight Ainz, it unleashes a holy attack that deals noticeable damage to him. He stands in the pillar of light and remarks on how he's feeling for himself the damage his in-game character always experienced, before dismissing it as a threat and obliterating it with Black Hole moments later. Albedo takes it a lot worse than him.
  • Flight: The third-tier spell "Fly". It's very useful for Magic Casters who don't do well in close-range combat, though it's a drain on their mana reserves.
  • Foil: The Re-Estize Kingdom and the Baharuth Empire serve as this for each other in several aspects including the personality of their monarch, their military and the trajectory of their nation.
    • The Kingdom is ruled by King Lanposa III who is elderly and highly benevolent. However Being Good Sucks and his power is checked by the Noble Faction making his court a fractious affair with his nobles divided into various warring factions. His military is comprised of his nobles' peasant levies that Zerg Rush the enemy. The constant disruption to harvest due to skirmishes with the Empire and the infighting between his nobles has put the kingdom in dire straits. Even his advisers believe that the Kingdom will fall in a generation unless something drastic is done. Finally as a father he loves his children dearly and has a certain degree of rose tinted glasses when dealing with them. The Kingdom is also highly classist with the nobles rejecting some of the most talented individuals of their nation due to their humble birth. Unlike The Empire, which surrendered without a fight to Ainz, the Kingdom gets conquered by a bloody Curb-Stomp Battle.
    • The Empire is ruled by Emperor Jircniv Rune Farlord el Nix, a ruthless young tyrant that has honestly earned his moniker as the "Blood Emperor". However his purge of the nobles, enacted when he was 13 means that his power is uncontested and the nation is largely unified. Rather than reign cruelly, Jircniv works tirelessly to administer his Empire and forge a strong bureaucracy that will underpin the Empire long after his death. The Empire fields a professional military that guarantee the nation's security. While the Kingdom is a subversion of the Good Old Ways, the Empire is progressive with Jircniv employing talent where he finds it. Jircniv does have some affection for his children but does not really love them. He considers talent the only benchmark for selecting his heir and will gladly remove a child from succession that does not meet his standards. The Empire also surrender to Ainz without a fight, sparing them the massacre that the Kingdom received.
  • Food Porn: The menu that Ainz shows to Nemu Emmot, Enri Emmot, and Enfi Nfirea, as well as the meal he has his maids prepare would not be out of place in a very high-class restaurant.
  • Formula with a Twist: The series asks the question: what if The Demon Lord which gets summoned to a fantasy world was merely an Otaku playing the avatar of said Demon Lord? It was one of the first of its kind.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: The human-appearing Guardians of the Great Tomb of Nazarick are actually nightmarish creatures when they unleash their full power. Even the beautiful Albedo and Shalltear are horrific looking in their true monster forms. Momonga also plays this trope with his undercover identity as Momon, wearing full plate black armor and illusion spells to conceal his undead appearance.
  • Four Is Death: Ainz gets around sharing food with the Swords of Darkness (he has an illusion of his face, but it'd just go through his jaw and ribcage) by claiming his religion forbids eating with more than four people after taking a life.
  • Friendless Background: Jircniv took the throne as a teenager, and ruling the Empire day-to-day has left him with no time for making friends. Once the burden of leadership is lifted from him, he becomes fast friends with Riyuro, who also had control of his empire removed from him by Ainz.
  • Friendship Moment: Although Albedo and Shalltear often squabble, after Shalltear got mind controlled and fought Ainz, Albedo mentions to Ainz, with genuine concern, that Shalltear is ridden with guilt. Though Ainz reasonably didn't hold her accountable over the incident, Shalltear could only blame herself for the situation out of a need to atone, and Albedo suggests to Ainz to assign her a punishment for her mental well-being.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Momonga and the other members of guild Ainz Ooal Gown were just players who often got discriminated against for playing as non-human races instead of the more popular options. And then they thought if people were going to treat them as monsters, then let them be one. They then became one of the best-known and powerful guilds in YGGDRASIL, and their base became a dungeon infamous for being totally unbeatable. And then their guildmaster, one less strong than his guild's heavy hitters, was transported to a fantasy world and had real tangible power. This also does, to some extent, provide SOME believable logic (beyond the simple fact that they were programmed that way) as to why most of the NPC's in Nazarick hate humans with such a vile hatred to begin with.
  • Functional Magic: Yggdrasil magic and artifacts work in the New World, but because it's an actual world and not a game the effects aren't always predictable. Momonga spends a lot of time trying to figure out how his in-game stats and abilities work in the New World.
  • Genre Deconstruction: The series heavily takes aim at the Trapped in Another World genre and presents it in a dark and more realistic take on the concept. The main character, Momonga/Ainz, is overpowered and has a legion of loyal followers including a harem of sorts, but he also gradually becomes the monster he appears as in his quest to create a kingdom for those who serve him. Furthermore, Ainz being overpowered causes a complete breakdown of the status-quo in the world, as his appearance changes how powerful things like magic can truly be, and makes everyone realize they have no chance of stopping someone whose weaker spells are comparable to the strongest spells their most trained magic uses can use. Even the harem aspect is given this, as the Floor Guardians worship him as a God, and believe they owe their beings to him, instead of being attracted out of genuine affection, and none of those romantically interested in Ainz are good people. Bluntly speaking, the series shows that an overpowered main character showing up in a fantasy world would be a horrible idea as time goes on, especially for the original inhabitants of the fantasy world. And it's not so much better for the main character himself, since he gradually loses his humanity and morals because of the lack of any challenge or equals in his life, and he can't be himself or connect with anyone because everybody considers him as either a god, a leader, an unstoppable force of evil, a monster, or an unhealthy lust object.
  • Giver of Lame Names: Momonga/Ainz has horrible naming sense. Some of the names he chooses are downright unpronounceable.
  • Giving Radio to the Romans: A lot of magic items can be seen as this.
    • A magical version of this trope was done by the Six Gods of the Slane Theocracy. Before their coming, humanity as a whole was on the ropes and were possibly facing extinction in the near future. Giving a whole new (and powerful) magical and item crafting system in the form of YGGDRASIL Tier Magic not only displaced the native Wild Magic but also acted as a Game Changer for humanity. It is also possible that they also used their twenty-first century knowledge of economics and politics to help organize the resulting human kingdoms.
    • Deconstructed when we learn that a minotaur player ended up being called the Boastful Sage because he was unable to explain the technology behind the items he proposed, such as boxes that keep food cold or devices that propel air to cool a room.
  • Glad I Thought of It: When faced with a problem he has no solution for, a not-infrequent tactic Momonga will employ is to let his underlings examine the issue and try to guess the plan he has supposedly already formulated, then congratulate one of them when they come up with something he can use.
  • Global Currency Exception: YGGDRASIL currency isn't recognized in the New World, despite it sharing many of the same traits otherwise, though the metal itself is still incredibly valuable since it's mostly pure gold. Ainz as "Momon" avoids using it since he doesn't want that persona to be associated with Nazarick. One of the reasons for the adventurer guise is to earn some New World currency.
  • Godlike Gamer: Satoru was one, being a hardcore MMORPG gamer with an unbelievably powerful lich avatar before he finds himself trapped in the game world he played in as his overpowered avatar Ainz. His character has been maxed out so virtually no one poses any challenge to him, even though he tries to keep the extent of his true power a secret. He wasn't in the top-tier in YGGDRASIL, but there's only a handful of people in the New World that are even close to his level.
  • Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: New World currency uses the gold/silver/bronze standard, in the form of poorly minted coins. Ainz quickly learns that while his YGGDRASIL currency isn't legal tender in the New World, the gold the coins are made of still has value, given their higher quality compared to the New World currency.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Arche, who has the ability to detect a person's magical potential, initially thinks Ainz is unable to cast magic. And then he removes the ring that suppresses his magic aura. Arche immediately doubles over vomiting and is pretty much incapacitated just from the sheer magical pressure emanating from him, and Roberdyck is forced to cast a courage spell on her just to get her back on her feet. The anime shows that a first tier magic caster has a slightly visible magic aura around them, by contrast, Ainz (who can cast Super Tier magic) has a huge roiling maelstrom of raging magic force around him that seems to stretch all the way to the sky.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: This usually happens to people who try to go against Nazarick.
    • Jircniv's request that Ainz use his most powerful spell on the battlefield against the Kingdom's army was an attempt to gauge Ainz's strength in preparation for eventually turning on him. This backfired spectacularly: the spell was so powerful and horrifying that it drove the Empire's knights to run away in sheer terror (the only casualties on their side were the ones who were trampled by their fleeing comrades), with many of the survivors quitting military service (and the Empire can't replace knights as quickly as the Kingdom can replace their soldiers) and blaming Jircniv for making the request in the first place. And though they don't know it, that wasn't actually Ainz's strongest spell (though it was one of the flashier ones) so the Empire still doesn't know Ainz's true power.
    • The Slane Theocracy considers the Kingdom to be this. The Slane Theocracy founded the Kingdom long ago in the hopes that it would be a breeding ground for future heroes of humanity. Instead, the Kingdom became a cesspool of infighting and corruption. Worse, the crime syndicates that took root in the Kingdom are trafficking drugs to the other human nations, depleting humanity's overall strength.
  • Good Powers, Bad People: Ainz can summons angels as easily as he can summon undead.
  • Gratuitous English: At the very least Momonga is being played from a Japanese client with distinctly Japanese ideas and terminology thrown around, and this is the main language of the out-of-universe series. The spell, ability, and buff names are all in English in the anime, however.
  • Gratuitous Latin: In episode 11 of the first season, the treasury holds a door with a password written in latin that needs to be translated the text reads "ascendit a terra in coelum, iterumque descendit in terram et recipit via superiorum et inferiorum"note  which is from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
  • Gruesome Goat:
    • During the Katze Plains Massacre, Ainz' Dark Young spell (a Shout-Out to Lovecraft's Shub-Niggurath) summons colossal goat-footed Eldritch Abominations that sound like regular goats, which only makes them seem all the more alien and wrong as they stomp on tens of thousands of people. The light novel goes into further detail, noting that one soldier was left with such tremendous mental scarring that whenever he hears a goat bleating, he goes into a fugue state where he snaps to attention and starts screaming "ALL HAIL AINZ OOAL GOWN!" as he cries and wets himself. Not one of his squadmates mocks him for it, as they were there too.
    • Ainz' former guildmate Ulbert Alain Odle (also know as World Destruction and Demon of Great Disaster, and an even stronger mage than Ainz) had the form of a goat-headed man. From Ainz' memories and the personality of his custom-designed NPC Demiurge, it's clear he had a serious edgelord problem.
  • Guide Dang It!: The YGGDRASIL game had this built into its core gameplay. Of the three common playstyles, it encouraged exploration the most and thus there were many hidden secrets to be found in the game. Ainz commented to himself that information was the most precious commodity among the YGGDRASIL community and that websites purporting to have the "inside scoop" were often wrong or worse, purposeful red herrings.
  • Happiness in Mind Control: As a joke, protagonist Momonga rewrote the command code on the NPC Albedo so that she'd be madly in love with him, since the game was going offline in an hour anyway. When they're transported to a new world in which NPCs like Albedo are now real people, he regrets the decision because it tarnished his friend's beloved NPC and took away her agency. When he apologizes to her, she cheerfully tells him that she's fine with it and wouldn't want to be any other way.
  • Happiness in Slavery: Ainz makes a point of ordering Cocytus to treat the Lizardmen in this manner.
    Ainz: That's enough of the 'stick.' You must use the 'carrot' from this point on. Under no circumstances are you to treat the lizardmen with a 'reign of terror'.
  • Hellish Horse: Volume 9 has a couple of these courtesy of Ainz. The first is the creature that pulls Ainz's carriage when he arrives at the Empire's fortress. It's a muscular scaly fanged beast which is described as an avatar of brutality and violence that is vaguely horse-shaped. The mounts carrying the small escort army he brings with him consisting of hundreds of Death Knights and Old Guarders are Soul Eaters: skeletal horses with an unearthly aura that shines in their chests, three of which apparently slaughtered over 100,000 beastmen in the past.
  • Hell Is That Noise: [in-universe] The Dark Young make sounds like a perfectly ordinary goat. One of the more traumatized survivors suffers mental breakdowns if they hear goats bleating afterwards.
  • Hero's Slave Harem: Ainz Ooal Gown is the supreme ruler of The Great Tomb of Nazarick, and because every resident besides himself were once videogame NPCs, they are bound to obey his will. Several female NPCs in the Tomb are also either in love with him (Albedo, Shalltear) or greatly lust after him (Solution Epsilon and Neuronist Painkill). While Ainz is a Villain Protagonist, he is A Lighter Shade of Black who is both aware of the interests of his female subjects and in fact disturbed by it. He confesses to Albedo at one point that he reset her settings to be in love with him, but she dismisses it and says that if her love doesn't bother him, then she sees no problem.
  • Hidden Depths: In a bid to find out whether his Floor Guardians can learn and grow, he sets them tasks they are not suited for to see how well they perform. As a result, they end up developing surprising talents. For example, Blood Knight Cocytus ends up a competent administrator and overseer for a race of Lizardmen while The Berserker Shalltear turns out to be an effective strategist so long as she does not belittle her opponent and avoids going into a blood rage.
  • High Turnover Rate: The Slane Theocracy's Black Scripture is composed of its most elite agents, all of whom are on par with adamantite adventurers and equipped with powerful YGGDRASIL gear that once belonged to the Six Gods. Despite this, they still have a high attrition rate because they are sent on the Theocracy's most dangerous missions.
  • Hold the Line: Sebas Tian and the Pleiades were designed for this task so that the Nazarick player characters could prepare for a Last Stand in the throne room.
  • Hope Spot:
    • The Lizardmen have one during their arc. Having successfully repelled Cocytus's forces, and defeated the Disc-One Final Boss lich who the Lizardmen assume was their leader, they take a moment to celebrate. Ains then later shows up again with yet another undead army, along with his floor guardians. A giant golem also tosses a ridiculously large stone block into the swamp so as to show off his true power. He tells them that he's going to attack again, this time with Cocytus.
    • Arche recives one in the 7th book, after her friends preform a Heroic Sacrifice to allow her to escape, she tries to make her way out of the forest she was teleported to, then Shalltear finds her and she attempts to fly away, thats when she finds out she's actually in an Artificial Outdoors Display.
    • Jircniv asks Fluder's top acolyte about taking over his mentor's position. The acolyte instantly perks up... then Jircniv explains that would make him the Empire's first line of defense against Ainz.
    • Ainz claims Gazef's sword Razor Edge is one of the few weapons capable of harming him, within earshot of Brain and Climb. He kills Gazef with unblockable magic before the latter can even get in range.
  • Honor Before Reason: Gazef chooses to fight Ainz despite knowing his chances are zero, as he swore to serve his country.
  • Horrifying Hero: Enri and Nemu are naturally terrified of Ainz rather than the knights slaughtering them, as Ainz is an undead lich with a skull for a face, and his first acts were to fry the enemy knight, and make a Death Knight from the corpse of another. It's only when Ainz became more personable to Carne Village, and they got to know him better, then only they became friendly with him.
  • Horse of a Different Color: After taming the Wise King of the Forest, Momonga uses her as his mount. Interestingly, while everyone around him is awestruck by him riding on such a powerful beast, Momonga himself just feels embarrassed of riding on what he perceives to be an oversized hamster.
  • Hot Springs Episode: Parodied. When the characters visit the "Nazarick Spa Resort", we only see the males bathing, with little fanservice and with Ainz comically wearing a Modesty Towel on his skeletal waist. Then the guys overhear Shalltear and Albedo trying to peek on him and the girls end up being attacked by the guardian golem for the crime of peeking, with their fight going unseen as the men lament their bath being disturbed.
  • Humans Are Insects: A fairly common train of thought among the most of Nazarick's denizens since the main rule in the guild Ainz Ooal Gown was "no humans allowed", and humanity in the New World is one of the weakest races of all and they've nearly gone extinct twice in the past 600 years. To many kinds of demihumans, who are oftentimes predators, they see humans the same way humans see livestock.
  • Human Subspecies: The traditional "human" race of YGGDRASIL are not Homo Sapiens. In-game, the category of human even includes the likes of elves and dwarves! This is in contrast to the categories of demi-human (orcs, beastmen) and actual monsters (99% of the Tomb of Nazarick, but notably excluding Mare, Aura, and Aureole Omega).

    Tropes I-Q 
  • I Control My Minions Through...: While Ainz mainlines (Fanatical) Loyalty, traces of all options can be seen as the series expands.
  • Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: The New World has a much lower average of strength than the MMORPG YGGDRASIL. In the New World, level 30 characters are considered legendary and 99% of the total world population (from all races, not just humans) fall into the 30 or under category. Also, the way Tier magic leveling works is that a magic user goes up 1 tier per 7 levels in a spell-casting class. This means that the strongest magic casters rarely achieve spells beyond the 4th tier (around level 28). All this combined with the fact that YGGDRASIL players only show up once ever 100 years or so means that on a fundamental level beyond simply Underestimating Badassery towards the Tomb Of Nazarick, the New World inhabitants really have no idea what they're dealing with whenever facing off against Ainz and his people. When the residents of Nazarick start to show off what they can really do, it's so far outside the experience and imagination of the New World people that just viewing what level 50 and above characters can do makes them Go Mad from the Revelation.
  • Immortal Breaker: Due to running on Wrong Context Magic, Razor's Edge is one of the only things that can hurt or kill Ainz. Ironically, it isn't even a highly-enchanted weapon and would likely do Scratch Damage against him at best (if it even lands a hit, of course).
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: When beginning an infiltration mission, CZ accidentally says that they're going to the city in part to get information from the demihumans about the local surroundings, but Neia knows that they didn't talk about that in front of her. Still, with her blind loyalty to Ainz, she ignores it.
  • Indestructibility Montage: The series has a few set up just to show how powerful Ainz is.
    • Ainz demonstrates his superiority to Clementine by taking everything she can dish out to him. She tries everything, from stabbing him to martial arts to simply flailing around with Super-Strength. But Ainz is a Physical God who remains completely unfazed by it all while slowly crushing her to death in his embrace.
    • The Raiders arc is essentially a long, excruciating montage of how invincible Nazarick is (Ainz had to specifically disable most of the tomb's defenses and set teleport traps so some of the raiders could actually face him), with the adventurers suffering entirely overly grim deaths (the one Asshole Victim got off with an almost instantaneous death).
  • Infinity -1 Sword: In the YGGDRASIL MMO these were various Pay-To-Win items, Divine Class Items, and spells such as Wish Upon a Star. Some were rare or Too Awesome to Use, but did not change the Metagame or cause an Instant-Win Condition like World Class Items did.
  • Infinity +1 Sword:
    • Practically anything from the Great Tomb of Nazarick armory are considered to be these by the native New World population, as the guild's collection eclipses most anything in the New World.
    • For the denizens of YGGDRASIL, World Class Items fall into this category. They grant powerful benefits/abilities that override all other forms of protection and can only be countered or blocked by other World Items. When Shalltear was brainwashed by one, Ainz had no choice but to kill and resurrect her at great cost because he couldn't remove its effect otherwise. The Great Tomb of Nazarick has 11 of them.
  • Informed Flaw: Some of the characters comment about their flaws in their build and character, (i.e. Ainz being weak to fire and holy, Cocytus being a Glass Cannon, etc…,) but everyone in the New World is so damn weak that denizens of Nazarick can just stomp them to the ground.
  • Ironic Echo: Before logging out, Herohero tells Momonga that it would be exciting if all the guild player characters were to reunite in a new MMO together. Momonga becomes upset at the comment, because he believes it will never happen. After being transported into the New World, Momonga hopes he can find his old guild mates there, and several long term plans he puts into effect are designed to somehow attract their attention if they transferred with him.
  • Jaw Drop: Ainz does this on occasion. Notable since as a lich his mouth normally doesn't move even while talking, but if he's surprised (or angry) enough his jaw drops open (since he doesn't have an Expressive Skull in the manga, instead his entire body goes to a chibi art style).
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Jircniv feels an instinctive dislike for Renner, which is why he doesn't consider her as a possible empress. He recognizes the value of her populist measures, however, and keeps himself informed about them to apply them to the Empire, and is always impressed by how well they work.
  • Karma Houdini: Ainz and basically the entire Great Tomb of Nazarick. They commit a very long variety of crimes, and almost every citizen in Nazarick is an evil and racist monster. But since they are invincible and unstoppable in the new world, no one can stop them, let alone make them pay for their crimes and atrocities.
  • Keystone Army:
    • Ainz is one to the Great Tomb Of Nazarick. When discussing the merits of having an heir, Cocytus makes it clear that without a master to serve, the denizens of Nazarick would fracture into independent groups or collapse into civil war. The differing factions are unified by their absolute and unwavering loyalty to Ainz. Without that, incompatible desires and personalities will cause conflict.
    • Also, the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown will cease to exist if the Staff of Ains Ooal Gown is destroyed, and simply possess it allows for administrator-level control over the Great Tomb of Nazarick and its NPCs. It's not clear if the same applies to the New World, though obviously Ainz isn't about to risk testing the theory.
  • Killer Bear Hug: Ainz kills one of his victims by crushing them in his arms specifically to make it a Cruel and Unusual Death and draws out the experience for his victim as Revenge. A fountain of High-Pressure Blood spurts out of his victim's mouth when Ainz finishes the deed.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Discussed: an innkeeper mentions that going into other people's rooms is not allowed, something that would be obvious in normal society, but given how much of society owes to former RPG players...
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Gazef Stronoff, the Re-Estize Kingdom's strongest warrior, in everything but name. Technically, only Nobles can become "Knights", so his official title is "Warrior Captain".
  • Lack of Empathy: Momonga shows signs of this, and is aware of it. He wonders if this is because of his transformation into an undead being. He's still better than most of his servants, who outright despise humans (being created by a guild that allowed only nonhuman races).
  • Large Ham: Played with. Momonga isn't actually hammy (though he does have his moments), but has to pretend to be one in front of the Guardians because he believes he must play their expectations as an Evil Overlord in order to maintain their loyalty. In his downtime, he's often in his room posing in front of his mirror and writing down lines he believes are befitting of an evil overlord.
  • Legendary Weapon: The Razor Edge is one of the Kingdom's Five Treasures. This magical sword cuts through metal as if it were paper and according to Ainz it can overcome his passive resistance to low-tier attacks even though other weapons and attacks imbued with the same level of mana as Razor Edge can't scratch him. Wielding the sword is an honor reserved only for the warrior officially recognized as the strongest in the Kingdom.
  • A Lesson Learned Too Well: Demiurge hears Ainz' musing on conquering the world and takes it as a direct order to get the guardians to help him do so.
  • Lethal Joke Item: The two Horns of the Goblin General that Ainz gives to Enri are normally one-shot items that summon a small troop of Goblins. However, if the summoner meets three currently unknown conditions, the Horn will instead summon an entire army of Goblins. An army consisting of thousands of elite Goblins. This saves Carne Village from the Kingdom's army in volume 9, since Enri somehow met the conditions before blowing the second Horn in desperation.
  • Licking the Blade: Clementine does this in the anime on two occasions: Kidnapping Nphirea, and fighting Momon.
  • Lighter and Softer:
    • To an extent (and coupled with Denser and Wackier), the manga adaptation compared to the anime. Common silly anime/manga tropes are prevalent (Momonga's Sweat Drops, a super-deformed skeleton head appearing when he's in shock), the more graphically violent scenes are skimmed over, and the timing and presentation on Albedo showing off her hand-made Momonga body pillow to a shocked Demiurge is funnier (shown before any of the Clementine/Khajit plot really kicks off, so there's no tension).
    • Even the anime is this compared to the light novel. It heavily tones down the darker aspects of the characters' personalities, and even outright omits a lot of the really dark background details, such as Demiurge's "sheep farm". It's to the point that, when the 3rd season showed the point in the story where Ainz and the Tomb directly tortured and slaughtered a bunch of mostly good and decent people on-screen, unlike the absolute scum of past seasons, a lot of anime-only viewers were aghast at how genuinely villainous Ainz could be.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: Almost to the point of grey, if you were to consider just Momonga. His reign and protection is positively benign compared to what could happen (see Carne Village); and if you became personal friends with him, you practically have a free pass from death! Unfortunately, Nazarick's denizens are definitely not "acting" evil like Momonga (sometimes) is, and he can't stop them from misinterpreting the actions they take on his behalf.
  • Light Is Not Good: The Slane Theocracy uses holy spells, summons angelic entities... and devastates villages full of innocents.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played With.
    • A first tier magic caster is just barely seen as useful as an equally leveled warrior, and only with the proper equipment and spells.
    • A third tier caster more or less outstrips a warrior of the same level, and is rare to the point where they're considered worth their weight in gold.
    • Fluder, roughly between a fifth and sixth tier caster, is considered equivalent to the military force of a small nation. The only suggested strategy against him that people believe might have even a chance of working is basically sending in wave after wave of soldiers at him until he runs out of mana.
    • Ainz, a user of Super Tier Magic, is so far beyond anybody else that just seeing the magic he casts can drive people insane.
  • Lost in Translation: In the Japanese version of the anime, Entoma shares a seiyuu with Arche as a form of Pragmatic Adaptation, as later in the story, Entoma loses her voice box but gets it replaced with Arche's, which allows for Entoma to keep the same voice. The english dub has Arche voiced by Corinne Sudberg instead of Entoma's english voice actress, Tia Ballard, which ends up ruining the intended Casting Gag of them keeping Entoma with the same voice.
  • Love Hungry: While Albedo takes the limelight in her desires, all of Nazarick to one degree or another feels incomparable joy when aiding a Supreme Being, while Momonga's status as The Needless frustrates things to no end; for example, the cooks can't fix him a meal as he can not eat.
  • Magikarp Power: The Horn of the Goblin General. Most players of YGGDRASIL dismiss it as a gimmick low level item that summons a pack of twenty or so goblins at your command. After using it once, Enri's interactions with the goblins somehow fufilled a hidden condition for the item. When forced to use the second charge of the horn, rather than another twenty low level goblins, it summoned an army of five thousand elite soldiers at her command.
  • Man of Kryptonite: Shalltear is an undead being who can wield powerful Holy magic. Since her level is comparable to his, this makes her a near-perfect opponent for Momonga, since his most powerful necromancy spells have little effect against the undead and he takes more damage from holy attacks. When Momonga is forced to fight her due to brainwashing, he bitterly wonders if her creator specifically designed her to be able to beat him.
  • Massive Race Selection: YGGDRASIL allows player a large amount of races to choose from; the total number of races reaches 700! To simplify this a bit in terms of in-game factions, they are categorized three ways: Humans (including Dwarves, Elves, etc. as "human enough"), demi-humans (orcs, beastmen, humanoids), and our favorite monsters (with a more technical term since they're more specifically defined as "not human at all", such as slimes and giant insects).
  • Mass "Oh, Crap!":
    • The Lizardmen's reaction when they see a second undead army outside their gates again. Not only that, but most of the undead rabble are wearing magical armor. Ainz then also freezes the swamp, has a giant golem toss a big stone block into it, has the undead assemble themselves into a staircase, then summons the high-level cloud monsters as heralds and destroys them as a further show of his power. Demiurge also uses a Compelling Voice to get Zaryusu and his brother to get on their knees.
    • Jircniv's diplomatic visit to Nazarick starts off badly – he's asked to wait outside so Mare can clear the clouds away and brought food better than they've ever tasted, with Death Knights as waiters. With every new room they enter, the entire contingent realizes just how outclassed they are.
    • Raeven and Gazef see a bunch of monsters in the Imperial army, with their adventurer bodyguards telling them they're called Soul Eaters, three of which killed over 100,000 people. Ainz brought 500 of them, each carrying a Death Knight. And then Ainz start casting.
  • Master of the Levitating Blades: There exist two examples of the second variant of this trope. Edström, for the Six Arms, that plays it as straight as possible, being and dressing like a dancer, while her blades move around her. Then there is Lakyus, leader of the Blue Roses, but that simply uses the floating swords on her back as another tool on her diverse arsenal.
  • Media Transmigration: Satoru is a Godlike Gamer who playing the virtual reality MMORPG, YGGDRASIL, until one day he remains logged in when the servers were supposedly getting shut down. But instead of being logged out, he finds himself stuck in the body of his video game avatar, a skeletal lich and an Evil Overlord. Renaming himself Ainz Ooal Gown, he decides to Take Over the World he's trapped in.
  • Might Makes Right: This is generally how the whole New World works. The strong can do as they please because the weak cannot stop them. The Dragon Lords once ruled the world with their unparalleled might, but were ultimately dethroned by the presence of Players. Even humans follow this law, as there's some truly ghastly abuse of social power and money in Re-Estize Kingdom.
  • Minions Customized at Creation: When he was a human, Ainz and his guild played an MMORPG called YGGDRASIL that allowed for a great deal of customization, including making Non Player Characters tweaked to the creator's preferences and allowing a lot of backstory (although this didn't play a role in the game). When Ainz finds himself transported to a different world with his entire guild's equipment and base, he discovers that the Non Player Characters are now real characters in accordance to those backstories (and because he was goofing around as he played, one of them is now deeply in love with him instead of a Really Gets Around succubus). This causes all sorts of problems since there's a lot of personality clashes and their Undying Loyalty manifests as being an Overzealous Underling to the last, but Ainz can't bring himself to change their personalities even if he could because they're all he has left to remind him of his guildmates, so doing so would be as if he were brainwashing their children.
  • Minion with an F in Evil: Inverted; Momonga is a boss with an F in evil. While Momonga has his evil moments, his minions are by far much more evil. Oddly enough, the character pages have him at -500 (the same as said minions), presumably the scale can't go lower.
  • Money Dumb: Arche's parents are disgraced nobles who either have no idea of their no-longer-rich status or are desperately shielding themselves from it, spending enormous amounts of money on Conspicuous Consumption despite the fact that their daughter is the only thing keeping them fed. The reason she became a Worker (adventurers who take on illegal but higher-paying jobs) is to get enough money to take her two younger sisters away from her irresponsible parents. In the light novel, Arche is dismembered and her sisters are sold into slavery by their parents and eventually die from overwork; in the web novel, Arche is still alive, albeit kept as a Sex Slave by Shalltear, but is reunited with her sisters. Her parents face no onscreen repercussions.
  • Mook Horror Show:
    • Occurs whenever Momonga/Ainz or one of the Floor Guardians takes the field. A notable case is Shalltear's rampage in the third volume of the Light Novel, where she completely breaks Brain into a whining, crying mess who becomes a hobo for a while.
    • Pretty much all of volume 7 is a demonstration of how useless it is to try and conquer Nazarick, seen from the would-be looters' point of view.
    • Several characters get the minimum of backstory and characterization needed for the reader to empathize with when they get steamrolled by Nazarick.
  • Morality Chain: The Floor Guardians serve as this for Momonga, which is ironic considering they themselves are completely amoral beings. They were programmed to view the Supreme Beings as essentially Gods incarnate and Momonga himself as The King of the Gods. So Momonga feels he needs to live up to their expectation, even when he has no idea what he's doing.
  • More Deadly Than the Male: Ainz views Shalltear and Albedo in this manner, when either of them get angry over things (most often for his affection). Humorously, even Demiurge prefers to allow them to scuffle and lose strength, or find another woman to intermediate things, before intervening between the two.
  • More Than Infinite: Among the 200 World Class Items, there are 20 Instant-Win Condition items feared as, appropriately enough, "The Twenty". Ainz mumbles about the Great Tomb of Nazarick possessing 2 of them, though officially it remains unanswered.
  • Moral Myopia: The denizens of Nazarick have no qualms over treating outsiders like vermin to be exploited and crushed, and gleefully subject humans and other species to murder, manipulation and torture. However, if anyone does the same to them or Ainz, even the slightest insult or sign of disrespect (even an unwitting one) towards Nazarick or Ainz is absolutely unforgivable and must be paid for with blood. Ainz embracing this mindset is one of the signs showing that he is growing into his role as a true Evil Overlord.
  • Mouth Flaps: Ainz figures out Translator Microbes are in effect because while he hears the natives speaking in Japanese (honorifics and all), their mouth movements don't match the words.
  • Move in the Frozen Time: it's mentioned that Time Stop was such a broken effect in YGGDRASIL that every high-level player worth their salt had an item or ability which protected them from it. Naturally this includes Ainz and the Floor Guardians.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Albedo is a Headturning Beauty who's perverted antics are often played for fanservice. In the anime, her cleavage, in particular, gets many close up shots, and early on there is a gratuitous shot of her naked back with Sideboob when Demiurge catches her sleeping naked.
  • Mugging the Monster: Pretty much anyone who attacks the residents of The Great Tomb of Nazarick in the first 8 books, often resulting in a Despair Event Horizon and Villainous Breakdown moment. Special note goes to The Syndicate group "Eight Fingers", many of whom end up with a Fate Worse than Death for antagonizing Sebas. And they got off easy compared to those who invade the Great Tomb itself.
  • Multiple Government Polity: After Ainz unintentionally vassalizes the Empire, there are only two major changes in the law, as Ainz has quite enough trouble ruling his own domain: the place of Nazarick denizens (above everyone else), and condemned criminals are to be shipped off to Nazarick. And it turned out one guy was framed, so he was sent back to the Empire. The Emperor is seen to be a lot happier once this occurs, both because he no longer has to worry about Ainz invading him, effortlessly destroying the work he and his ancestors worked so hard to build up over the years, but also because Nazarick now uses its own inexhaustible military to defend the Empire's borders for them. (He also finds that his workload is now vastly lightened, because whenever a complaint he can't deal with himself comes to him, he only has to send back "take it up with Ainz" for the complainer to suddenly decide it wasn't that important.)
  • Mutually Unequal Relationship:
    • All of Nazarick (especially the Guardians) see Ainz as their godlike master and ruler and have no greater joy than to serve, even if it requires their death. Ainz, on the other hand, sees them as the only link to his former friends in the guild (as they were custom-designed NPCs before gaining sentience), and the idea of one getting killed is akin to the death of a child placed under his supervision.
    • Ainz wants to rule Nazarick the way he'd have wanted an ideal Japanese corporation to be run and be a Benevolent Boss. Everyone else sees him as an undead monstrosity of incalculable power who can kill thousands with a thought (not exactly inaccurate). Thus when Ainz is fighting in the Empire's arena, he thinks of Jircniv as a fellow ruler and doesn't understand why the Emperor is rooting against him, and never seems to get that people are genuinely afraid of him (or that the Guardians are more than happy to kill people for what they perceive as insults to Ainz or Nazarick).
    • One of the Kingdom nobles believes he has a good chance of seducing Albedo and inheriting the Sorcerous Kingdom through her. Albedo already hates humans and has difficulty in restraining herself from splattering the idiot all over the walls. The other humans coerced into working for Albedo (and having witnessed firsthand how they treat potential enemies) get stomach ulcers from having to deal with such monumental arrogance and being unable to correct him.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: It's cited on several occasions that the Floor Guardians are especially loyal to the Supreme Being who created them, and in the unlikely event a Floor Guardian was forced to choose between Momonga and their creator... they'd side with their creator, even with the amount of love they feel for Momonga. Subverted with Albedo, who eventually reveals she wants to kill all the Supreme Beings other than Momonga. This is not only due to her mad love for Momonga, but also the belief that by abandoning their creations, unlike Momonga, the other Supreme Beings are no longer worthy of Nazarick's loyalty.
  • Mysterious Cube of Rubik: Zesshi Zetsumei owns a Rubik's Cube, which is considered to be a divine artifact as it was brought into the New World by an YGGDRASIL player long ago. She fiddles with it often and comments that she can never seem to get more than one side solved.
  • The Namesake: Momonga is a member of the Overlord species (one of the highest racial tiers of Undead in-universe, with the lowest tiers being basic Zombies and Skeletons) with 5 Racial levels, which grant him a number of exclusive powers and abilities. He's also Overlord of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
  • National Weapon: The Kingdom's warriors and knights favor swords, and one of the Kingdom's greatest Treasures is the sword Razor Edge.
  • Necromancer: Momonga specializes in such magic, and is surprised to discover the differences with the game with his first creation (instead of summoning a temporary Death Knight, the spell now uses a recently-killed knight to create a permanent one).
  • New Life in Another World Bonus: Ainz Ooal Gown reincarnates in his YGGDRASIL VRMMORPG avatar. He is level 100 with unique classes, possesses all of his similarly powerful comrades' equipment, their guild base (from when they were the strongest guild in-game) is completely intact and full of the guild's resources and weapons, and an entire army including eight other level 100 servants; with absolute authority over all.
  • New Year's Kiss: Referenced by one of Ainz' items, the Mask of Envy, which he uses to hide the fact that he has a Skull for a Head. It's a Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage that was given out to players who were logged in on Yggdrasil at midnight on New Year's Eve (instead of making out with their girlfriends).
  • Nightmare Fetishist: In volume 9, most of the Empire's troops flee in panic when they see one of Ainz's summoned Dark Young approaching them. Though it's not actually trying to attack them, the sight is so terrifying that it leads to a rout. Seeing Ainz slay 70,000 troops in the blink of an eye and unleashing the Dark Young he summoned with those deaths upon the remaining Kingdom troops had already horrified them to the point of tears. Except for a few who remained motionless, absolutely mesmerized by the sight of power far beyond humans.
  • Night of the Living Mooks: An undead army is raised against Momonga by enemy forces in Chapter 7 of the manga. He is able to raise even more powerful armies of undead of his own, as seen in volumes 4 and 9.
  • Nightmare Retardant: Inverted In-Universe: The Dark Young are kaiju-sized horrors made of mouths, tentacles, and hooves (if being a Lovecraft Shout-Out wasn't bad enough), but their cry is that of an ordinary goat (not even altered to sound deeper or distorted). This only makes them more horrifying, and one of the battle's survivors (on the winning side, mind you) suffers a mental breakdown and starts screaming "All Hail Ainz Ooal Gown!" and soiling himself whenever he hears a goat bleating.
  • Ninja Maid: The Pleiades are a team of combat maids loyal to Momonga.
  • Noble Demon: Guardians with "Good" Karma like Sebas Tian and Cocytus. To the point that they are actually more moral than Momonga, though they will still obey him no matter what.
  • No Item Use for You:
    • Beings from YGGDRASIL cannot learn Martial Arts or Wild Magic, which are abilities only natives to the New World can access.
    • Averted with actual items, natives can sometimes use them better than Ainz.
    • Ainz's first attempt at using a sword shows him dropping it, due to being a lich whose class doesn't allow use of that weapon type. He has means of working around that restriction, at the cost of hobbling some of his other abilities.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
    • In the original YGGDRASIL game, Momonga was just one of many players who had reached the level cap, and his build wasn't particularly suited for PVP. He believes he was in the mid-upper tier. In the new fantasy world, the average "levels" are much, much lower. There is not a single being in the New World that has been shown to match, let alone exceed his power, though Momonga isn't willing to let his guard down on that front. Other YGGDRASIL players have been ported over to the New World prior to Momonga, but this was centuries earlier in the timeline, and most of them are indicated to have perished. This explains why things from YGGDRASIL — like World Class Items, summon monsters, and magic spells — exist in the New World. They were introduced by past YGGDRASIL players. A major current question is, "what happened to them?" Another question is, "will more arrive in the future?" Momonga has yet to encounter another YGGDRASIL player, ally or enemy, but would rather try to negotiate a peaceful coexistence if he does meet one.
    • Momonga and his guild NPCs are the fourth known group to arrive from YGGDRASIL. The first set was known to the New World as the Six Gods. While their ultimate fate is unknown, one was killed at least once by the next group to arrive, and none of them have appeared again in centuries. The second set became known as the Eight Greed Kings. After conquering the world through violence and bloodshed, the eight turned against each other, ultimately killing or weakening themselves to the point natives of the New World could slay them. The third set was two players who became part of the Thirteen Heroes. Like the Greed Kings before them, the pair ultimately had a falling out and slew each other. Given the final fate of these individuals, the Dragon with an Agenda cited above makes a whole lot of sense. Of these groups, it would appear that the one closest to rivaling the Great Tomb of Nazarick was the Eight Greed Kings, as hints have been dropped they possessed at least one World Class Item, a guild dungeon, and a powerful weapon that embodied and represented their guild like Ainz's staff.
  • No-Sell: Magic resistance, high tier physical immunity and other such skills make the higher level characters in Nazarick largely immune to anything anyone can throw at them and, depending on race, they may be immune to other attacks or effects. Further, possessing a World Item makes you immune to the effects of any other World Item being used on you with the sole exception of the item that can change the rules. The programmers of YGGDRASIL apologized and said that making them immune to this effect as well would be very difficult to program.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: When he has a face-to-face conversation with Ainz in volume 14, Zanac realizes that they are similar in that both are somewhat reluctant rulers who want to protect their people. He leaves thinking that Ainz is more human than he initially assumed.
  • One-Man Army: Ainz is a level 100 MMORPG character in a world where legendary beings are equivalent to level 30. He's easily able to take on armies by himself, using spells that can One-Hit Kill 200,000 soldiers.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ainz's Final Battle with Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth is not shown in depth. All we get is a short description from Neia who says it comprised of incomprehensible phenomena which included: light, darkness, fire, lightning, and meteors, all colliding with incredible force.
  • Oh, Crap!: Many characters get these moments when Nazarick members show their power, but the most notable has to be Shalltear during her battle with Momonga. She's left staring at Momonga in slack jawed horror several times during the fight.
  • Old Magic: The Dwarf Craftsman arc sees Ainz go to the dwarf lands looking for runesmiths. However, rune magic has been more or less abandoned by the dwarves, as enchanting items with tiered magic is far more efficient and requires less training (although rune magic doesn't involve material costs). Ainz revives the art of making runic items thanks to having a few cheap runic items with him, inviting dwarf craftsmen to work in Carne. He also orders his demonic minions to fake a weakness to runic weapons so as to increase demand for them.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: The Eight Greed King's castle of Eryuentiu is this. It features weapon-building Eternal Engine areas and a Waterfall into the Abyss that feeds into the abandoned city beneath it. True to their name, the features are likely Cast from Money and still ongoing.
  • One-Hit Kill: Momonga specializes in spells that are capable of causing instant death. While few of them are surefire hits in the game, he also has a special skill "The Goal Of All Life Is Death" that allows his one-hit kills to work against opponents normally immune to one-hit kills, at the cost of a 12-second delay. In the New World, the latter isn't even needed.
  • One Nation Under Copyright: Suzuki's original world is a complete corporate dystopia run by Mega Corps who seized power from the elected government after they managed to fool the populace into blaming them for all the economic and environmental problems when they were in fact created by the corporations themselves.
  • One Size Fits All: In this setting, magical gear will alter itself to fit its current wielder. This allows a magical greatsword wielded by a Troll to later be wielded by a Goblin. Later, a magical suit of armor that was initially worn by a large goat-like demihuman is passed on to a slim human woman and fits her perfectly. In volume 14, the Guardian Armor once worn by Gazef Stronoff is later worn by the shorter and far less fit Prince Zanac. Zanac even notes that if it weren't for the armor being magical and able to adjust its size he'd never be able to wear it especially since he's put on weight due to stress over-eating.
  • Only in It for the Money: In Volume 7, "Momon" asks the Worker groups why they are willing to risk death by exploring the Tomb of Nazarick. The Workers unanimously reply "money". It's implied this is one reason Ainz felt no qualms about letting them all march to their deaths.
  • Operators Are Standing By: Ainz's advertisements for his lame-ass, not-actually-rune-crafted items urge potential customers by telling them that operators are standing by.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Undead exist to destroy all life, but demons exist to make them suffer. They have a tendency to go berserk and have special summoning and flame-based abilities. It's implied that even the mostly human-looking ones like Albedo stand out in disguise because they seem unnatural. Albedo, for example, is too beautiful to be human.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are a low-ranking type of undead that look like hairless and nearly naked humans with sharp teeth and yellowed claws. The claws are venomous and cause paralysis, which is the one thing that makes them dangerous. Ghasts exist too and are one of strongest kinds of undead.
  • Our Hydras Are Different: Saryasu keeps a pet hydra named Rororo he raised from a hatchling, which looks like a Brachiosaurus with four snake heads and necks.
  • Our Liches Are Different: A lich is a type of skeletal spellcaster above a Skeleton Mage but below an Overlord. They are either decaying corpses or outright skeletons. They naturally have the ability to cast at the third tier or higher and, it's implied, favor fire-based spells. Their abilities do not decline with age, they're immune to poison, cold, mental effects, and lightning, are weak to fire, light, holy, and bludgeoning, and resist slashing and pierce. They have relatively low physical abilities, but are still dangerous in melee due to the ability to spread negative energy as a touch attack. Overlords also possess numerous aura abilities which can either spread mental effects or cause instant death. They also do not possess a phylactery.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are almost universally incredibly ugly and monstrous. Vampire Brides are the sole exception from Yggdrasil, while Evileye appears to simply be an undead human and her appearance hasn't been affected by her status. Shalltear has a true form that looks like a lamprey despite her normally cute looks.
  • Outside-Context Problem: In YGGDRASIL, Momonga was a player character optimized for PvE and role-play instead of PvP, but his skills and knowledge made him a low upper-tier player. After coming to the New World, the Sorcerer King Ainz Ooal Gown can make nations quake in terror with alarming ease. For those who remember, PCs from YGGDRASIL aren't so outside-context...
  • Overly Long Gag: When Momonga was preparing to fight the mind-controlled Shalltear, he cast a buff spell on himself to start the fight. When she continued to stand in place afterward, he realized that she wouldn't fight back until he used an actual attack on her, so he proceeded to spend a full minute doing nothing but casting buffs on himself and laying traps; in the anime, this is in Gratuitous English and a very rapid-fire intonation. This is actually a realistic portrayal of what real life players do in MMOs when getting ready to challenge an overpowered enemy, despite how absurd it looks in a non-game setting. Didn't stop it from becoming a Memetic Mutation, though.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: This happens constantly to the inhabitants of the New World given the general power level of YGGDRASIL characters. Even a mook monster from Nazarick is a legendary monster to them. It is easy to forget that characters like Clementine or Khajit are powerful enough that only a few New World natives could challenge them, when they are nothing but speed bumps to Yggdrasil NPCs and PCs.
  • Overzealous Underling: The guardians are so eager to please Ainz the incarnation of all things evil that they interpret everything he says according to his wishes. As Ainz still has some sense of morality, this causes no end of problems (such as taking his "taking over the world might be interesting" quote as a direct order) or interpreting the slightest lack of trembling obedience as willful disrespect. Even Sebas, the nicest of all the Guardians, kills an enemy without warning just because he had the nickname of Undead King and thus qualified as a would-be usurper.
  • Painful Persona: Ainz Ooal Gown is an ancient and unfathomably powerful lich, whose intellect is matched only by his monstrous evil. Or rather, he's Satoru Suzuki's MMO character. When Satoru finds himself isekai'd into a world similar to the MMO with all his character's powers (but not his personality or intelligence), he finds himself trying his best to balance his responsibility to his underlings (formerly NPCs, now empowered with intelligence according to the backstories written for them) with his status as a Person of Mass Destruction, with no one to talk to or able to understand his situation.
  • Papa Wolf:
    • Ainz doesn't have much opportunity to demonstrate it, but the moment someone from Nazarick almost gets killed, the only reason he doesn't obliterate the would-be killer is because it's necessary to the plan. And for extra irony, his Tranquil Fury is interpreted as Anger Born of Worry by Evileye, who falls for him that much harder.
    • Earlier his fury at someone kidnapping Tuare triggers the suppression, because he declared his protection in his own name.
  • Parental Abandonment: Part of the reason Nazarick is so loyal to and protective of Ainz is they don't want him, the last of their creators, to leave them like his guildmates. Albedo even outright believes it's an unforgivable act of betrayal, and plots to kill any Supreme Being who may have made it to the new world to protect Ainz and the rest of her "family".
  • Parental Savings Splurge: Arche was a gifted student mage who had to quit her studies to become a Worker (adventurers who take on less legal, but more rewarding jobs) to support her parents and sisters, which leads to her taking on the Nazarick job and dying horribly. The reason for this is that her parents have refused to realize that they were disgraced by the Emperor and continue their Conspicuous Consumption lifestyle (buying jewelry when even the next meal isn't a certainty), eventually selling her sisters into slavery where they both died of overwork. Even worse, the Nazarick raid was supposed to be One Last Job allowing her to take her sisters away and leave their family behind.
  • Physical God: How Momonga's minions see him, complete with zealous worship. While he is technically just a very powerful lich, his strength is so off the charts in the New World, the argument could be made that he might as well be a god.
  • Player Creation Sharing: A major aspect of YGGDRASIL seems to have been the ability of player-organized guilds to turn their in-game housing into personalized raid dungeons. The tradeoff of this was that if enemy players managed to steal the guild's artifact, the guild lost their house and name. Nazarick was Ainz Ooal Gown's dungeon, and it was so brutally difficult, that not once in over 10 years did any player party manage to clear it.
  • Poor Communication Kills: The new motive of the guild is started by a miscommunication — Ainz wonders out loud that world domination would be nice to do, but because his follow-up thought that he's kidding was only in his head, Demiurge takes him at his word and later commands the rest of the guild of this goal.
  • Power Dynamics Kink: After Shalltear is freed from mind-control she insists on being punished for her actions. Ainz eventually hits on using her as a seat (to avoid sitting on a simple throne made of obviously human bones), but has to stop when he hears her audibly getting off on it (and the other Guardians get jealous). It turns out that when her creator shoved every one of his multiple and disgusting fetishes into her personality, being dominated was one of them.
  • Power is Sexy: Shalltear Bloodfallen got excited down there after she felt Ainz's Despair Aura.
  • Power Nullifier: The only way to prevent the after effects of a World Class Item, is to be equipped with another World Class Item before being attacked by it. This mechanic is how Momonga safeguards Shalltear and the other Guardians from a repeat of the problems in Volume 3.
  • Product Placement: In-Universe, Ainz uses the war in the Holy Kingdom as a chance to shill his lame, mid-level gear that he pretends are runecrafted items. The shilling is incredibly blatant and bad, but everyone thinks it's genuine and is amazed at these new runecrafted items, available now only at Sorcerous Kingdom Inc. for the low low price of 10,000 gold pieces per month, Operators Are Standing By!
  • Protectorate: Carne Village falls under Ainz's unofficial protection after the events of volume 1. He later sends one of the Pleiades, Lupusregina Beta, to watch over the village and protect a few of the inhabitants who managed to get on Ainz's good side such as Enri, Nfirea, Lizzie, and Enri's little sister Nemu after she flattered him during her visit in volume 8 by praising Nazarick as an amazing place.
  • Psycho Supporter: The Guardians with an 'Evil' Karma rating tend to act like this for Ainz. They generally think of humans as scum to be crushed beneath their feet.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Cocytus always speaks this way. One translation of the light novel renders it as speaking. In. One. Word. Sentences.
  • Quantity vs. Quality: The regularly scheduled battles between the Empire and the Kingdom go this way. The Empire fields a relatively small army of elite knights, while the Kingdom fields a much larger army of barely-trained conscripts. The only reason the Kingdom hasn't already been overrun by the Empire is because the Empire is playing the long game. The wars are bleeding out the Kingdom's civilian workforce and harvests. Thus the Kingdom will be easy pickings when the Empire decides it's finally time to conquer it.
  • The Quisling: Though otherwise lacking in most leadership abilities, Ainz has a knack for finding outsiders or prominent figures and offering them the one thing they could never otherwise have so long as they serve his will. Ainzach is given the chance to turn the Adventurer's Guild into true adventurers, a dwarven runesmith fanboy helps revive the dying art, a sociopathic princess turns on a kingdom that does not respect her, an albino female lizardman is tied to him with the revival of her lover (although Ainz lied about her betrayal undoing the revival), a human archmage is given the chance to study magic he would never otherwise be able to learn, and so on. None of them are strictly villainous, even the princess, but they sell their people out to earn the one thing they desperately desire.

    Tropes R-Z 
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The worker group Foresight are an example, the group is the equivalent of a mithril level adventure team and are made up of True Companions, at least two members of the group actively try their best to help people and they help each other out. In any other story they would be the lovable rogue heroes. Unfortunately, since this is Overlord and they are Hero of Another Story, they die during their A Day in the Limelight to the main characters for attempting to steal the riches of Nazarick.
  • Realpolitik: The Theocracy would gladly wipe out non-human kingdoms if it had the power to do so. But they are fully aware that even with the powerful "God-kin" and artifacts left behind by the Six Gods they cannot defeat all of their foes in a straight fight. They have avoided annexing the Re-estize Kingdom (an experiment of theirs that they have deemed a failure) because that would mean sharing a border with the Argland Council State, the demi-human nation led by the Dragon Lords. If this happened their own populace would demand they go to war with them thanks to the Theocracy's own pro-humanity propaganda. And the Theocracy's leadership does not want to provoke the Dragon Lords since they are some of the most powerful beings in the New World.
    • Ainz is somewhat disappointed to learn that the life of an adventurer isn't the same as "MMORPG player": they're used mostly to keep monster numbers down, but governments don't like the idea of experienced and heavily-armed sellswords not under their control, so they make sure to keep them out of the way and those with real military power don't even see the need for them. Once he establishes himself as a recognized country, he turns the Adventurer's Guild into something more in line with the RPG version.
  • Reluctant Gift: Ainz gives Albedo a ring so she can follow him around Nazarick. When he comes across Mare hiding the tomb under big hills, he tells Albedo to give Mare the ring as a reward (one he intends to give every guardian). Albedo, who's been reprogrammed to be in yandere-levels of love with Ainz, has difficulty giving the ring to Mare.
  • Resurrection Sickness: Resurrection magic drains the life force of its targets. The lowest-known resurrection spell, Lakyus's 5th-tier "Raise Dead", takes a toll severe enough that lower-ranked Adventurers would immediately die right after being revived while higher level characters will suffer Level Drain, and be unable to fight properly for a day or so. Higher-tiered resurrection spells are less draining, but all of them carry some penalty. Wild magic carries no penalties... but as it is fueled by the destruction of souls, it has its own consequences.
  • Rewatch Bonus: The sections of volumes 12 and 13 from Caspond's point of view take on a new meaning upon re-reading since the end of volume 13 reveals that this Caspond is actually a Doppelganger working under Demiurge after the real Caspond was killed.
  • Ring of Power: Rigrit's ring which is first seen worn by Gazef Stronoff and passed on to Climb. The ring was apparently made with Wild Magic and can boost a warrior's level by five. According to Word of God, if the ring were worn by a level 100 warrior like Cocytus it would boost his level past the level cap to 105.
  • RPG Episode: The "Human-Understanding Tabletop Game" Drama CD has Ainz GM a tabletop RPG for the Guardians in an effort to get them to stop looking down on humans by playing as human adventurers. What follows is a disturbingly accurate Off the Rails session with plenty of desperate improvising, backtracking, and out-of-character arguing (Albedo starts by murdering the questgiver, it goes downhill from there). And in the end, all it does is convince them that humans really are weak, powerless creatures, but even they can be of some use to Nazarick... if they display the same devotion and faith in Ainz as the Guardians do.
  • RPG Mechanics 'Verse:
    • YGGDRASIL was a typical MMORPG, and thus has all of normal tropes and a familiar rules systemnote . While Momonga and the guardians still follow those rules and speak of them frequently, things for the natives are a bit more loose.
    • In the New World, adventurers can be analyzed into YGGDRASIL classes with sufficient examination, but they frequently exist in impossible combinations, and they have no awareness of game concepts like Character Level (at least not in a concrete sense). In addition, they are capable of learning "Martial Art" skills which exist outside the level progression, and which game-based characters like Momonga cannot learn regardless of effort. Momonga theorises that, while no one in the new world is as strong as an YGGDRASIL character, they also do not possess a level cap. Since they also have natural lifespans according to their species, very few individuals can "grind" to the extent that they can match a fully-leveled MMO player character, and the few that have tend to be immortals.
    • The magic system of the New World is the same as YGGDRASIL's, in that it has tiers of magic spells that reflect their relative power and magnitude. However, the New World inhabitants are capable of inventing new spells which YGGDRASIL players cannot use. It's been canonized that the use of the similar magic systems is the result of YGGDRASIL players who arrived in the New World centuries before Momonga and taught their magic to the locals. Tier Magic was much easier to use for humans, and it partially displaced the world's native Wild Magic in the fabric of reality.
  • Runic Magic: Runic magic has been replaced by tier magic, which is a more efficient method of enchanting items (although rune magic doesn't require material components). Ainz tries to reignite interest in rune magic (and sell the low-tier rune weapons he has) by finding the one dwarf craftsman who still practices it and bringing him to Nazarick, and ordering his demonic-looking minions to fake a weakness to rune weapons.
  • Secret Test of Character:
    • When Ainz talks to Cocytus about his failure at wiping out the Lizardmen, he seems disappointed in his guardian. Later, it turns out he wanted to see if Cocytus could develop tactics and strategies on his own, hence giving him a massive but weak army, and seeing what Cocytus would do with it aside from just charging all their forces in.
    • Ainz ordering Sebas to kill Tuare. Sebas obeys, but Ainz had Cocytus block the attack and determine whether or not it was delivered with killing intent. This proves that Tuare hasn't compromised Sebas's loyalty to Ainz, which is all he wanted to know.
  • Self-Proclaimed Love Interest:
    • Albedo and Shalltear. It's worth noting while Albedo's love for Momonga was something he jokingly reprogrammed her to possess before she became real, he did no such thing for Shalltear... which likely means Peroroncino had originally configured her like that from the beginning.
    • Peroroncino had programmed Shalltear to be a necrophiliac; since Ainz is the most powerful male undead in Nazarick, Shalltear immediately saw him as an object of desire.
    • Philip (a minor Kingdom noble) is madly in love with Albedo, and while he hasn't proclaimed himself to her yet, he has taken Hilma into his confidence. She is getting stomach ulcers from not being able to show him how stupidly and deeply deluded he is, especially when news gets around that Ainz was killed, because Philip thinks that leaves the way open for him to marry Albedo and inherit Nazarick.
  • Sensing You Are Outmatched:
    • In volume 7, Arche vomits in fear the moment she sees Ainz's true power with her Aura Vision and desperately warns her teammates that their opponent is a monster that humans can't possibly defeat.
    • In volume 9, Gazef is pretty sure he's completely outmatched by the Dark Young even with the Kingdom's Treasures, but tries to fight one anyway. He at first activates the 'Sense Weakness' and 'Possibility Sense' Martial Arts to discern any possible weakness or chance of victory. This proved to be a mistake – the heightened awareness just made it crystal clear to him that he was no match for the beast.
    • Go Gin locks up in fear just before he faces Ainz. He actually thanks his trainer for the opportunity to fight a truly strong enemy.
  • Sentient Phlebotinum: The Orb of Death proves to be very chatty when Ainz gets a hold of it. The Orb is extremely impressed by Ainz's power and wishes only to serve him. The Orb becomes upset when Ainz (who is so powerful that the Orb is useless to him) hands it over to Hamsuke for safekeeping instead.
  • Sequence Breaking: In volume 11, much ado is made about three trials that one must pass in order to travel from one dwarven city to the capital. One is a massive underground bottomless canyon with any routes around it infested with powerful monsters. The second is a river of lava guarded by a powerful fish monster. Ainz and his team simply fly over both of them, and never even see the river's guardian.
  • Sex Goddess: Heavily implied to be the case with Enri Emmot after she got some "advice" from Lupusregina. Her husband, Nfirea has to make use of his "stamina potion" just so he's able to keep up with her in bed.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: The entirety of Light Novel volume 7. We are introduced to various teams of Workers (unlicensed Adventurers), many of whom are highly sympathetic. Momon joins them in a mission to explore a recently found ruin. The ruin is Nazarick. Needless to say, none of the Workers returned alive, even after the most sympathetic ones tried a You Shall Not Pass! moment to let a least one of their number escape. Many a Cruel and Unusual Death occurred due to Ainz's machinations, mainly as a data-gathering exercise. In truth, Ainz did not gain all that much from making the Workers run his maze.
  • Share the Male Pain: Lockmeyer winces when he sees Succulent take a massive kick to the balls from Climb (note that Climb is wearing metal armor and Succulent is not).
  • Shipper on Deck:
    • Demiurge becomes one for Sebas Tian and the girl Tsuare he rescued from the slave network, because he wants to find out if breeding hybrids is possible.
    • The various maids of Nazarick are divided between two major factions: one supporting Albedo being with Momonga and the other seeking a Shalltear victory. Only a handful of maids remain neutral, with both hopeful wives seeking to win them over to their camp. Because of the influence they possess among their coworkers, courting the Pleiades is considered an important milestone by Albedo.
  • Shout-Out: see the subpage.
  • Showing Off Your Powers: Played for Drama. Emperor Jircniv asks Ainz to cast his most powerful spell in the battle against the kingdom of E-Rantel. This is ostensibly to prove how powerful his new ally is, but he also hopes to convince other nations to band together against Ainz upon seeing it. Ainz dutifully casts his flashiest spell — which immediately eliminates half the opposing army — and then uses those souls to summon half a dozen Eldritch Abominations that proceed to stomp most of the remaining soldiers to death. Jircniv is left horrified by the realization that there is no magic in the world that can compare to Ainz. As per usual, Ainz is completely oblivious to all this: his only plan in casting the spell was in the hopes of attracting potential incarnated players like himself.
  • Simple Solution Won't Work: When Ainz participates in the Empire's gladiatorial arena, Emperor Jircniv hopes that Ainz (having demonstrated he can casually cast spells not even the best spellcaster in the Empire can hope to match) is a Squishy Wizard. Unfortunately, after Ainz proves he's no less invincible in melee combat by handily winning without the use of magic, Jircniv accepts the inevitable and declares the Empire a vassal state of Nazarick. This turns out to be the best decision he's taken in his life, as Nazarick has no interest in telling him how to run the Empire, demands condemned prisoners instead of crushing tribute, and even bolsters his borders with their undead troops. Best of all, any unpopular decision he makes can now be handled by saying "take it up with Nazarick" instead of surveillance and intrigue to remove dissidents.
  • Simplified Spellcasting: Super-Tier Magic would be a Game-Breaker, if it wasn't held back by an absurdly long casting time. Said casting time can be reduced to zero, however, through the use of the hourglass, which can be purchased from the Cash Shop.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Albedo is wholly in love with Momonga since he edited her data on a whim before the game was about to shut down. He feels a lot of guilt about this and even confessed to Albedo that he did this to her. She doesn't care (or can't).
  • Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: With the exception of Nazarick and the Lizardmen, this trope is in full display throughout the entire light novel. Every time a Human Subspecies is seen enslaved, that being is going to be in a living hell. Tuare gets special mention in volume 6.
  • Sleeping with the Boss: A goal that Albedo and Shalltear desire, with a rivalry to determine who gets there first. Never mind that the boss doesn't have the necessary emotions or organs and thus Can't Have Sex, Ever.
  • Sleeps in the Nude:
    • While Ainz is away from Nazarick, Albedo takes the opportunity to sleep naked in his bed. Demiurge catches her in the act, and is shocked by the fact she's seemingly cuddling Ainz under the Modesty Bedsheet, only for her to reveal it's a body pillow she made of him herself and explains she doing this so as to envelop the bed with her scent. Demiurge doesn't point out that being undead, it's likely Ains doesn't sleep and has no use for the bed.
    • The epilogue of Volume 11 reveals that Enri Sleeps in the Nude. However, this is only when sharing a bed with her husband Nfirea, and it makes him very comfortable; before that, she simply sleeps with a gown on.
  • Spanner in the Works: Ainz to Demiurge. Because Demiurge is convinced that Ainz is fully aware of Demiurge's plans, he also thinks Ainz only ever acts in a way Demiurge hadn't planned on in order to improve on them.
    • Case in point, Demiurge predicted the Empire would eventually have no choice but to surrender to Nazarick, but only after months of bloody attrition warfare and bolstered by the defeated Kingdom's forces. Ainz merely shows up in the Empire's arena, shows that there's no hope of beating him even if he willingly doesn't use magic, causing the Emperor to submit then and there, while the Kingdom is still reeling from their latest defeat. Naturally, Ainz had no clue what was going on, he only wanted to test himself and advertize his new Adventurer's Guild.
    • Ainz doesn't particularly care that Neia Bareja is among those killed by Jaldabaoth, though he does resurrect her. As a result of this (and gaining much better classes), she pretty much starts an Ainz-worshiping cult (which Demiurge plans to capitalize on).
  • Spoiler Opening:
    • Opening 1: The opening reveals Shalltear's hideous true form for a brief second during her dance with an umbrella, Shallter's crimson Valkyrie ultimate form, and that she battles Ainz in a duel. There's also a quick shot of Cocytus soloing the Lizardmen, which occurred only because the army he led got defeated by them. This last part doesn't happen until season 2.
    • Opening 2: ZigZagged with the part where Momon fights a masked Demiurge. While it spoils that the fight happens, it doesn't spoil the context. Instead of a misunderstanding, betrayal, or mind control, the fight is actually staged by both of them in advance for various reasons including bolstering Momon's reputation.
  • Starfish Language: Victim's dialogue is always very bizarre, and automatically translated in an oddly childish voice.
  • Start of Darkness: Princess Renner is a genius, with a sharp mind, able to come up with numerous plans, but with the nobles Stay in the Kitchen attitude towards her, coupled with the fact that they seem to actually fear how smart she is, isolating her, it's little wonder that she actually turned out to be The Sociopath.
  • Stepping Out to React:
    • Albedo leaves the room to vent at Shalltear apparently being favored by Ainz over her (in Ainz's mind, making Shalltear serve as his seat is a punishment, but they're both in Mad Love with him and he stops when Shalltear audibly gets off on it) by punching the wall, then returns to resume her duties.
    • Later, the Eight Fingers assigned to watch Phillip regularly have to leave the room to scream out their frustration when he grandiloquently shares his imbecilic plans (like killing Ainz and marrying Albedo to inherit the Sorcerous Kingdom), especially since they have good reason to think Phillip's idiocy will get them all killed by Albedo. They're right, but Ainz recognizes there was nothing the Fingers could have done to prevent Phillip's war-sparking actions and spares them.
  • Stone Wall: Ainz's Death Knights are offensively weak (relatively, they are still strong enough to slaughter almost anything from the new world), but very tough on the defense. Because of their ability to taunt and to endure any attack with a Last Chance Hit Point, they are an invaluable summon for Ainz, who has high offensive power but lackluster defense (also relatively, the only thing that managed to hurt him was Shalltear and a massive attack by one of the highest-tier monsters known to the locals, and even that only dealt Scratch Damage).
  • The Strategist: Demiurge. While Albedo is commander of the Floor Guardians, Demiurge is their designated tactician and mastermind.
  • Stupid Evil: Most of the Floor Guardians will default to just murdering everyone unless Ainz gives them very precise and unambiguous instructions not to. Apparently they aren't as capable of learning as he thinks because he makes it very clear that he wants to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but they still cause massacres the moment he takes his eyes off of them. Even Sebas gets in on this in a way by picking a fight with the criminal underground of the kingdom and slaughtering even helpless surrendering mooks, though that's more Good Is Not Nice in his case.
  • Succubi and Incubi: Albedo's creator programmed her to be a nymphomaniac succubus. Right before YGGDRASIL was going to be shut down, Momonga changed her settings to remove this detail, then as a joke modified her so she would be in love with him. He's understandably guilty when she becomes a real person with a personality based on those settings.
  • Summon Magic:
    • Several groups can use YGGDRASIL derived Summon Magic or necromancy to the same effect. So far the Sunlight Scripture of the Slane Theocracy and Zuranon have done this. In the New World this type of magic is something of a Game-Breaker as the summons are vastly more powerful than New World inhabitants (whereas they are speed bumps for YGGDRASIL PCs) and more importantly, they can become persistent. This makes a dedicated necromancer like Ainz far more dangerous as he can create entire armies of undead.
    • Ainz entrusts a goblin-summoning horn to Carne villagers. Not only do these not fade away, they end up training the villagers in self-defense.
    • Ainz summons a bunch of evil clouds as heralds to announce his intention to wipe out the lizard villages. Then he has Shalltear destroy them in plain sight, to reinforce the impression that he's so powerful he can summon and destroy minions for such a petty purpose.
  • Superficial Suggestion Box: Ainz installs a genuine suggestion box in Nazarick because his image as an infallible Supreme Being means that people are too afraid to approach him with complaints. He also uses it to anonymously submit his own ideas when he's not completely certain that Albedo and Demiurge will like them. However, Albedo seems to think he installed the box to weed out the traitors who would dare claim his rule is inadequate, and the first anonymous suggestion Ainz submits makes her so angry that she goes on a spiteful rant about how stupid it is.
  • Supernatural Martial Arts: Martial Arts in the New World, which are basically self-buffs people can use without relying on magic. Includes skills for boosting agility, strength, defense, etc. Beings from Yggdrasil can't use them.
  • Sure, Let's Go with That: A lot of the humor in this series comes from the way people around Ainz interpret everything he says or does to be evidence of his status as The Chessmaster. Ainz, when he's not being oblivious to this, will encourage this to maintain his reputation (though he usually has Demiurge spell it out for the benefit of those who don't get it).
  • Take a Third Option: After Cocytus' failure to wipe out the Lizardmen, Ains tells him to slaughter them all. However, Cocytus is reluctant to do so, thinking that sparing them would let Ainz summon them as undead later. However, Ainz doesn't seem too interested in it. Demiurge then suggests that they basically make the Lizardmen swear fealty to Nazarick as a test case for them ruling over many lands and races later. Ainz then changes his mind and goes with that idea (happy that Cocytus manifested an original idea), and instead has Cocytus fight their best warriors on his own to make up for his earlier loss.
  • Take Over the World: After taking an offhand comment too seriously, Demiurge leads the rest of Nazarick to conquer the New World for Ainz. Ainz spends a good chunk of the story completely unaware of this, but rolls with it when he finds out to avoid losing face.
  • Technical Virgin: Shalltear Bloodfallen. She's never slept with a male (saving herself for Momonga), but is bi and a massive sadist. Alluded to have taken the virginity of unfortunate victims and is especially active with violating her Vampire Brides to unimaginable degrees.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Sebas Tian and Demiurge are both loyal servants to Momonga, but they don't get along very well due to their radically different alignments. Sebas is one of the most Good Guardians, while Demiurge is probably the most Evil one. Albedo and Shalltear don't get along since they are both interested in Momonga.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: Teleportation magic isn't unheard of in the New World, but the highest tier teleportation magic most New-Worlders know of is the third-tier "Teleport" spell that can only transport the caster. Magic that can transport other people is considered the stuff of legends.
  • Terrifying Rescuer: Momonga is this when he first arrives to save Carne Village, finding out the hard way that everyone in the new world is terrified of the undead. The fact that he shows up as a giant skeleton, insta-kills an armored knight with magic then reanimates him as a towering undead monstrosity might have something to do with it...
  • The Extremist Was Right: Emperor Jircniv's lifelong goal is to ensure his nation will become a beacon of what humanity should look up to for generations to come. How does he do it? Takes control of the imperial knights at age 12. Establishes control of the entire county. Has all of his relatives assassinated so no one can contest his claim to the throne. Then he weeds out all incompetent members of the aristocracy, taking their money and land to use it to finance the military and increase the standard of living on every level he can think of, then elevates talented commoners to higher stations to assist in his vision. And it works. Oh, and Jircniv is only 22 years old. He did all this in just ten years.
  • This Means War!:
    • After Philip's attack on the Sorceror Kingdom's grain caravan, Albedo traveled to the Re-Estize capital city to personally inform King Ramposa that the Sorceror Kingdom is formally declaring war on the Re-Estize Kingdom.
    • During Volume 16's epilogue, Ainz finally learned that the Slane Theocracy were the ones behind Shalltear's brainwashing all the way back in Volume 3. Knowing this, Ainz commands all his armies and prepares to annhilate the Theocracy.
  • Too Awesome to Use: The 20 most powerful World Items are deliberate Game Breakers, but as a trade-off, they can only be used once.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Enri Emmot of Carne Village quite literally takes a few levels in badass. Specifically, she started out as a level 1 Farmer. By leading the Goblin troops, she has gained a few levels in commander classes. Now she's a level 1 Farmer, level 1 Sergeant, level 2 Commander, and level 2 General.
  • Training the Peaceful Villagers: After the attack on their village in the first volume, the residents of Carne Village take steps to protect themselves from any future assaults. When Momonga visits the village again in volume 2, Carne Village is almost unrecognizable. It's built more like a fortress town, and the villagers are training under the Goblin Troops Enri summoned with the Horn of the Goblin General that Momonga gave her in Volume 1. Enri herself literally took a few levels in badass commanding the Goblins.
  • Translator Microbes: Momonga notes that he can hear the denizens of the New World speak in Japanese even though their lips move differently and concluded that some magical force must be translating, though it doesn't translate their written language, which he uses a pair of Magic Glasses that allow him to read it.
  • Trauma Button: The people of Carne Village are all survivors of the Slane Theocracy's vicious attacks on their homes. In Volume 9, the forces under the Crown Prince launch fire arrows at a watchtower in an attempt to strong-arm Carne Village into submitting to the prince's demands. This has the opposite effect: seeing the tower burn before them triggers horrific memories of the attacks and enrages the villagers.
  • True Companions: Momonga saw his fellow guild members of Nazarick this way. He extends this feeling towards The Guardians, which are the creations of his fellow players. When he learned that he would have to fight Shalltear due to someone using a World Class item on her, he entered an Unstoppable Rage that even his undead body's ability to regulate emotions couldn't suppress.
  • Undead Abomination: The titular character, Satoru Suzuki/Momonga, is a rather curious example, as he initially began as a player from a video game titled Yggdrasil, when some unknown force merged him with his avatar (a skeletal lich) and thrust him into the New World. Fortunately for him, his stats came with, and despite lacking muscular tissue, he's easily killed several giant trolls, ogres, and countless other monsters using only swords and maces, and crushed at least one human to death with his bare hands. His magical prowess is even more frightening, as he is completely unrivaled (except by maybe the New World gods) and has access to hundreds of spells and skills that allow him to summon gigantic Eldritch Abominations of his own, summon massive hordes of powerful undead, kill every living and undead thing (except himself of course) within a radius of several miles, and even stop time altogether. Among many other things. The only saving grace for the New Worlders is that he will genuinely go out of his way to protect those he rules over or respects, and the lives of the ones who do live under his rule have actually significantly improved.
  • Undead Laborers:
    • The Baharuth Empire has been running tests on the viability of using skeletons to tend to their fields to free up manpower for their military forces. Progress has been slowed by opposition from their religious leaders who denounce the idea of desecrating the dead this way, as well as the well justified fear that overuse will inevitably summon stronger, more dangerous, uncontrollable, and completely hostile undead. A rather hilarious and unnerving example appears in Volume 9, when Ainz uses a team of five Death Knights — legendary undead that are greatly feared in the New World with the power to wipe out entire kingdoms by themselves — as wait staff to Emperor Jircnirv and his escorts. The hapless guests can only stare as these imposing monsters prepare refreshments for them.
    • Ainz himself starts experimenting with golem and zombie farmers while he's still adventuring.
    • In the Pleiades skits, the Death Knight is still around, holding a tea platter and not contributing much to the conversation.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Most of the Kingdom's nobility are guilty of this in volume 9. They remain unduly confident and scornful in the face of Ainz's claim to E-Rantel and its lands. It doesn't occur to them that someone whom 1) the Baharuth Empire is willing to lend its support, 2) the Slane Theocracy (the most powerful human nation in the New World) doesn't want to antagonize, and 3) their strongest Warrior Gazef warns is too powerful to defeat isn't someone they want as their enemy. Marquis Raeven is just about the only one to take the warning seriously, and makes his plans by assuming Ainz is able to inflict 10,000 casualties during the battle, out of 250,000. Try 70,000 with a single spell, and a killcount at 180,000 by the end of the battle.
  • Underling with an F in PR:
    • Ainz' underlings in general have great difficulty in being even remotely friendly towards humans (as all of them are heteromorphic species, "no humans allowed" being one of the basic rules of the guild), which goes against Ainz' dream of peace and cooperation between the many races of the new world. And while he no longer has the means to directly change their personalities, he's also loath to order them to act nice, because they aren't responsible for the personalities their creators gave them (and as some of their creators were going through an edgelord phase, quite a few of those personalities have serious issues).
    • He even tries to get them to play an RPG as humans to better understand how they think... and all it does is confirm their view that humans are worthless creatures barely fit to serve Nazarick.
    • Narberal Gamma, chosen by Ainz to accompany him in his adventurer guise as she's the most human-looking of the Pleiades combat maid squad, turns out to be incapable of referring to humans as anything other than some kind of insect or arachnid, finding a different species to use every time. The only human she shows the slightest hint of respect is Enri, and only because she expressed her admiration for Ainz out loud.
    • Ainz himself is all-too-well aware that he's improvising his "impossibly wise and powerful lich" schtick and secretly watches Emperor Jircniv to see how he does it (which does wonders for the Emperor's mounting paranoia). However, he seems blissfully unaware that a skeletal lich whose first public action was to singlehandedly slaughter more than 180,000 people with a single spell might be at odds with the friendly image he tries to project, and doesn't understand why the Emperor roots against him during a gladiatorial match.
    • The Katze Plains massacre is perhaps the best illustration:
      • Having met Ainz in person, Jircniv knows that allying with him is a temporary measure at best, and that other nations must witness Ainz' power firsthand in order to see the threat he poses and ally against him, so he asks Ainz to use his most powerful spell during the annual battle during the Empire and the Kingdom (using Ainz' territorial claims as the casus belli). Ainz dutifully casts "Ia Shub-Niggurath", a spell that eliminates three quarters of the opposing army by first instakilling 70,000 soldiers and uses their deaths as fuel to summon five Eldritch Abominations that stomp on the soldiers who didn't flee in time.
      • The actual result? Jircniv's reputation takes a dive as it's widely believed he knew what would happen and made a Deal with the Devil, meaning other nations view them with suspicion and not a little horror. Ainz, of course, is completely unaware of the implications: the reason he used such a flashy and overkill spell was to attract the attention of any other people Trapped in Another World like himself, as he could have just as easily have won the battle with the 500 Death Knights he'd brought along.
  • Undignified Death: One almost feels bad for Succulent, seeing as he was beaten by an opponent much younger than him, his illusions countered at every turn, after getting kneed in the balls by said (armor-wearing) opponent so hard another guy winced... while wearing a maid outfit. Almost.
  • Undying Loyalty:
    • The Guardians and NPCs of the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick worship Momonga like a god, simultaneously, he feels very protective of them as their leader while trying to finding a happy middle ground between their Undying Loyalty and Blind Obedience to their perfect liege.
    • On the other hand, though, custom NPC's have shown that they are ultimately most loyal to the guild member responsible for their creation and would betray Ainz for them almost immediately if they ever had to make the choice. However, Ainz is not only aware of this fact, but approves of it since it shows how much the NPC's truly care for his friends and their legacies. The sole exception to this is Albedo. This is not a good thing. For anybody.
  • Unexpected Successor: The Kingdom puts together the biggest army they've ever had for its yearly skirmish against the Empire. Unfortunately, that year was also the one Ainz chose to ally with the Empire, and he plows through half their army without effort. As a result, the Kingdom's nobility is decimated, leading to second or third sons (in some cases, spares to the Spare to the Throne) finding themselves in positions of power they never trained for and certainly never expected to have.
  • Unexpected Virgin: When Albedo, Aura and Shalltear go on a girls-day-out, Albedo summons her steed, a bicorn, but it doesn't let her ride it. So Shalltear looks the creature up in her creator's encyclopedia, and it turns out, it's the opposite of a unicorn (only allows promiscuous women to ride it), with the implication that Albedo is a virgin, shocking both her and Aura. However this is a result of Ainz messing with her original setting of being a "a total slut" to "She is in love with Momonga" with made him her Single-Target Sexuality.
  • Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: Nazarick's Non Player Characters were originally designed by players for defensive purposes, able to follow simple commands and purely cosmetic backstories and personalities. Once brought to life in the New World, they believe their only purpose is to serve Ainz's every whim as the sole remaining Supreme Being (what they call their creators), and the fact that Ainz doesn't consider them as tools and playthings frustrates them to no end (he doesn't need to eat or sleep, and his attempts to give them salaries, days off, or vacations fall flat). For his part, Ainz considers them his last link to his former guildmates and resolves to watch over them as if he'd been entrusted with their children, and finds their servile attitude disturbing.
  • Unholy Nuke:
    • The ultimate skill of the Eclipse class, and the main reason Momonga built his character to get the class in the first place, is "The Goal Of All Life Is Death", which temporarily removes the ability of anyone and anything to resist his One-Hit Kill spells (albeit it delays the effect of the spell for 12 seconds). This, combined with his "Cry Of The Banshee" spell boosted with "Widen Magic", creates a massive "Instant Death" Radius that kills everything in it — even things that shouldn't be able to die, like air.
    • Another example in Momonga's arsenal would be the spell "Ia Shub-Niggurath"; casting it kills 70,000 soldiers instantly. Those deaths are merely a sacrifice to enact the spell's true purpose, to summon Dark Young. Momonga is extremely pleased to have managed to summon five at once, which is a new record.
  • Unicorns Prefer Virgins: Inverted. On Yggdrasil, there exists a rare subspecies of unicorn called a bicorn that has two horns and is covered in black fur. The succubus Albedo keeps the ability to summon one when the whole of Nazarick gets transported to a new world. Yet when she tries to mount it, the animal keeps refusing her. The reason is that, opposite to their white and pure cousins, bicorns can only be mounted by a woman that has lost her virginity — something that Albedo hasn't done, because her loved overlord Ainz keeps refusing her advances (and he physically lacks the "equipment" to do so anyway, though that thought doesn't seem to have crossed her mind).
  • Uniqueness Value: Ainz has a collector's mentality, and spares some enemies if they'll work for him and are unique enough, including a giant hamster and an overweight frost dragon.
  • Universally Beloved Leader: Momonga's NPC allies practically worship him... largely because they were initially programmed to be loyal, but they genuinely see him as a great leader, and don't just praise him because they're forced to. He finds their faith challenging to live up to.
  • Unskilled, but Strong:
    • Momonga is fully aware that his martial skills are pathetic compared to a true warrior like Gazef Stronoff. Even if he converted his caster levels to warrior levels, he'd still be half-assed compared to a real level 100 warrior. In his "Momon" disguise, he's still a super-strong lich clad in nigh-impenetrable armor who can swing two huge swords hard enough to cleave through an ogre with a single stroke.
    • Volume 3 reveals all the denizens of Ainz Ooal Gown are like this. Their normal strategy is using a powerful attack, and if that doesn't work, just follow it up with a stronger attack. Momonga quickly takes notice of this after his battle with Shalltear, and takes steps for everyone to apply actual tactics and strategy when fighting.
  • Vader Breath: Cocytus regularly emits clouds of vapor when he talks. Justified due to his ice element.
  • Vampires Are Sex Gods: Shalltear plays this up as much as she can, given her loli appearance.
  • Villain Protagonist: Most of the point of view characters are very, very bad people.
    • Momonga/Ainz, the main point of view character the story follows, finds himself transformed from a Japanese salaryman to the Evil Overlord of a tomb of vicious monsters, a role he increasingly embraces as the story goes on.
    • The majority of other sections in the story follow Ainz's subordinates in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, who aren't just faking their way into villainy, but are demons and monsters who find almost everyone other than Ainz and themselves less than insects.
    • Even sections following those other than Ainz's group show those characters to be monstrous in their own ways. For instance, the sections following the "Golden Princess" Renner reveal her to be a sociopath who thinks just as little of other humans as the denizens of Nazarick, including her beloved Climb, who she views as a pet rather than anything close to an equal.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend:
    • Albedo is Momonga's girlfriend only in her own mind, but she fits this all the same. Her reaction when someone slightly hurt Momonga was something to behold. Shalltear also considers herself the master's romantic interest, though her role as the dungeon Wake-Up Call Boss as Guardian of Levels 1 thru 3 prevents her from having as much time standing by his side, something Albedo gleefully enjoys.
    • Renner for Climb as well. She's been killing pretty much any palace maid, who are generally the daughters of nobles trying to make connections with the royalty, who she perceives as having malign intentions against Climb.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: This was Shalltear's primary role in YGGDRASIL, as she's often regarded as at least the second most powerful NPC in the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick and is Guardian of the first three layers of the dungeon. She becomes this for Ainz after her Artifact Domination betrayal, revealing there are things in the New World that can endanger Level 100 characters.
  • We ARE Struggling Together:
    • The Re-Estize Kingdom is divided between the Noble Faction and the Royal Faction which are constantly vying for influence and power. This is despite the Baharuth Empire skirmishing with them every year. Its Lampshaded that the Baharuth Emperor is content to bleed out the Kingdom through these skirmishes while the Kingdom's factions duke it out rather than unite against him.
    • The Lizardmen are this as well. They are initially reluctant to rely on other tribes, until Ainz declares he's going to wipe them out one at a time. Zaryusu then suggest they form an alliance so that they have a chance of winning, or at least dying together. While Crusch agrees, Zenberu's tribe won't commit until Zaryusu defeats him in a one-on-one match. Ultimately however, they agree to band together.
  • Weather Manipulation: Control Weather is a spell that's been heard of, but entirely beyond the reach of most mortals. So the Imperial delegation to Nazarick is appropriately awed when Nazarick's maids have the clouds go away so they can set up a picnic table.
  • Welcome Back, Traitor: Shalltear Bloodfallen. Though it was largely due to Artifact Domination and something she greatly regrets, to the point where Ainz ends up punishes her just so she'll stop blaming herself.
  • Wham Line:
    • The post-credits scene of season 1 episode 9, when Ainz finds out what the Message he was forced to hold off earlier was.
    Albedo: Lord Ainz, I am afraid I must report that Shalltear Bloodfallen has betrayed us.
    • At the very end of the fourth episode of the second season, Crusch tells Zaryusu to impregnate her as a means of Someone to Remember Him By, knowing he's likely walking into his death by fighting Cocytus.
    • Solution calling Ainz to tell him Sebas might have betrayed them. Downplayed in that Ainz immediately questions if that's true.
    • After Ainz spends some time fighting alongside the forces of the Holy Kingdom, Demiurge asks him if there's anybody that should be spared during the upcoming battle with Jaldabaoth's forces. Ainz says no. Fortunately, he at least resurrects Neia, and she Came Back Strong.
  • World's Best Warrior:
    • Gazef Stronoff is widely considered the strongest warrior of the Re-estize Kingdom, so much so that he is its final trump card.
    • The Baharuth Empire has Fluder Paradyne, who is the World's Best Wizard... that is until Ainz showed up. Fluder can cast up to Tier 6 Magic, though it will leave him winded. Ainz can cast Tier 10 Magic (and above) and has a magic point pool that lets him spam those spells repeatedly.
    • The Baharuth Empire has the reigning Martial Lord who is the single strongest warrior in the realm, surpassing even the Four Knights of his own nation and rivalling Gazef in sheer combat prowess. It helps that he's a highly intelligent troll.
    • The Holy Kingdom has the head of the Paladin Order, Remedios Custodio. She is strong enough to kill a summoned demon from Nazarick.
  • World of Jerkass: Looking past the comedy of Ainz’s attempts to convey himself as an ideal ruler and the antics of Nazarick, to call the New World a cesspool is an understatement. A decent margin of the main cast from the New World are Ax-Crazy, depraved and evil. Morally grounded characters such as Climb and Gazef are relatively ineffective in the overall scheme of things and either die with their wishes unfulfilled or be subjected to a Fate Worse than Death. Then there’s the Great Tomb of Nazarick, where while its leader isn’t the type to just kill For the Evulz, is mostly uncaring about anyone outside of the Tomb unless they join (usually after a Curb-Stomp Battle) or serve a purpose and said leader commands an army of monsters who look down upon anyone not created by the Supreme Beings. It’s not a good place to live if one’s race is a human or even just not from Nazarick.
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks: Ainz thoughtlessly hands off two red healing potions to some local townspeople, unaware that such potions are completely unheard of in the New World (red being an almost-theoretical purest form of healing potion, while the New World could only manage lesser blue potions.) This act eventually allows Nfirea to connect the dots and figure out that, since the second potion was handed out by Momon, Momon is actually Ainz in disguise.
  • Worthy Opponent: The Lizardmen in Volume 4 to Cocytus. So much so that he begs Momonga to take them in as vassals rather than turn them into undead. When the Lizardmen's strongest warriors face Cocytus in Combat by Champion, he gives honest praise and respect for their efforts even though the vast difference in power makes his victory a Foregone Conclusion.
  • Yandere:
    • Princess Reneer is a sociopath who doesn't really care about other people. The one exception is her bodyguard and childhood friend Climb, who she wants to chain up in a dungeon forever as her own personal pet/ sex toy. It's implied that a lot of the good works she does are simply an act to make herself look better in his eyes.
    • Albedo and Shalltear are this for Momonga. The pair would happily fight to the death to win his affection if he desired it, and other Floor Guardians are careful to avoid saying things that could make them turn violent about it. However the fact that Momonga doesn't want them fighting over him (or even be the object of their lust), and it would take massive amounts of damage for one to kill the other, their rivalry is mostly Played for Laughs. There's also an interesting twist to the dynamic: it's explicitly stated that Shalltear and Albedo might be willing to share Momonga, and their aggression is determining who gets to be his wife and who gets to be his mistress... however, neither wants to be second place.
  • Yes-Man: Part of Ainz' problem is that each and every one of the servants who were brought over with him view him as their creator and Physical God and cannot even conceive of disobeying or backtalking him, which creates problems when he's genuinely trying to make their lives easier and they only want to serve him. He starts recruiting natives in order to have a different perspective on things. One scene in the light novel illustrates his first attempt at getting around this: he creates a Death Knight and uses it to take a poll. Unfortunately, a Death Knight is still a mook (and is extremely aware of this fact), but the denizens of Nazarick still treat him as the Will Of Ainz Made Manifest, which prevents the poor Death Knight from carrying out his mission properly.
  • You Do Not Want To Know: Orcs captured by Jaldabaoth are so broken by the memories of their torture they refuse to tell Ainz what it was. It very likely involved having to kill and eat each others' children and long with being flayed alive and healed.
  • Younger Than They Look: Sebas looks like an old man, having white hair and a beard, but he was created by one of Ainz Ooal Gown’s guild members within a game that is inferred to be from the previous generation which couldn’t be more than at most 20 years ago.
  • Your Soul Is Mine!: In the Web Novel, this is how the World Class Item "Avarice and Generous" works in the New World. Momonga was pretty shocked when he used it since in the Yggdrasil game it was simply a means of collecting a lot of experience at once. Witnesses were understandably terrified of the monster devouring the souls of the dead.

    Ple-Ple-Pleiades~! Spin-offs 

Ple-Ple-Pleiades~! contains examples of:

  • Balloon Belly: Solution gets fatter after eating people but returns to her usual figure once she spits them out, in contrast with the mainstream stories where she can easily hold a large number of items in her body without changing proportions. She sets a new record of 10 people in episode 9.
  • Butt-Monkey: Clementine is the Pleiades' punching bag. Exact methods are thus:
  • Combining Mecha: A proposed upgrade for CZ. She agrees that combining and separation is a young girl's dream.
  • Covert Pervert: Cocytus, after being exposed to Total Maniac - Modified, which supposedly removes "the barriers around one's heart" starts spouting raunchy nonsense.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Each episode focuses on a different member of the Pleiades, aside from the first episode (the setup) and the last episode (the wrap-up).
  • Dancing Theme: Some of the later specials like the Hamsuke and Doppleganger episodes have the Pleiades do this in 8 bit form with a chiptune version of the usual ending theme.
  • Detachment Combat: Yuri throwing her head. She finds the whole thing deeply embarrassing.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Even Ainz's emotional limiters are no match for the Pleiades' attempts at singing. Cue Freak Out.
  • Loves My Alter Ego: A non-romantic version, but CZ is disgusted by Pandora's Actor while being attached to his cat disguise.
  • Manchild: After being affected by the Total Maniac - Modified, Cocytus bursts out crying at the smallest provocation.
  • Mundanization: The second season of the OVA takes place in an Alternate Universe where Nazarick is a corporation, and the NPCs are its employees, with Ainz as the CEO, the Pleiades as the secretaries, and the Guardians holding various office roles.
  • Not Himself:
    • The Total Maniac item has the effect of disabling Ainz's Emotion Suppression. The plot of the series has him thrust into a series of bizarre situations while trying to maintain his Evil Overlord facade.
    • In season 2, he inflicts this to the Guardians, with hilarious results. Shalltear becomes even more openly sexual, Aura and Mare revert into complete children, Cocytus becomes both childish and pervert, Demiurge starts ending his sentences with weird Verbal Tics, etc.
  • Obfuscating Insanity: In "Nazarick's Greatest Crisis", Ainz activating the Total Maniac item causes the guardians to develop weird personalities. Except for Albedo and Demiurge—though the latter pretends to be affected by ending his sentences with random words. Inverted, however, with Sebas, who is heavily affected by the Total Maniac, but manages to suppress his urges to maintain his stoic persona, at least until the climax.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Played hilariously in one episode, where the Pleiades go through all sorts of trouble to find Hamsuke's Love at First Sight (actually Pandora's Actor testing out his shapeshifting abilities under Ainz's request), only for her to get over it after her mating season ended.
  • Situational Sword: Conveniently, the Total Maniac has the power to ignore all racial restrictions when there are 8 of them in one place and an Undead, Demon, Dullahan, Werewolf, Doppelganger, Slime, Arachnoid, and Automaton are all in the vicinity. Ainz lampshades the absurdly specific circumstances.
  • Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Lupusregina's's attempt at singing the credits theme ("mumblemumblemumblesofuckinggrateful!").
  • Tank-Tread Mecha: In episode 7 season 1, local Robot Girl CZ2128 Delta was rebuilt by two of her fellow Pleiades members, Solution Epsilon and Entoma Vasilissa Zeta, with the intent to further strengthen the Great Tomb of Nazarick's defenses. They've replaced her human lower half with a tank platform, a gun mounted on each shoulder, her right forearm with an Arm Cannon and her left forearm with a conical drill and to top it all off, a red super robot style crown was attached on her forehead. Finally, they call her new version "CZ2128 Delta MK-II".
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Played With. The Pleiades set up a trap to capture a creature Hamsuke wishes to mate with. The trap, when activated, drops a huge metal ball on the animal, explodes, then drop a metal cage over the remains. When Yuri worries that this excessive trap sequence would kill the creature instead, Solution flippantly responds that any creature that couldn't survive the ordeal is unworthy of being in Nazarick.
  • You Are the New Trend: In Season 3, Ainz discovers an "over-reacting trend" going on among the denizens of Nazarick, which they claim is inspired by him. In actuality, the trend was perpetrated by Pandora's Actor who was acting in Ainz's place for a while, and inspired the rest of the NPCs to follow his lead.


Alternative Title(s): Overlord 2012

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Ainz Discovers Return by Death

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