
The Hunger Games Simulation is a play-by-post game on the TV Tropes Forum Games subsection, launched by Arcada 188, and it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin: a simulator of The Hunger Games by brantsteele. The Original Generation hosted 250 seasons and saw more than 5000 unique "tributes" (combatants) participating. The Reboot, titled Beyond the Possibilities, was launched by The Gamechanger here.
The mechanics are pretty complicated, but still simple enough for newer users. Players nominate two characters as tributes eachnote , then once a sufficient amount has been reached (at least 24, with bigger games possible in multiples of 12 and a maximum of 48), a chosen player "runs" the simulator. Once they have a "good save"note , they screenshot it and send both the screens and the save privately to the host of the season, who will then narrate the events of the season to the other users in several updates, usually ranging around 2 - 4 days in real life. Starting from OG Season 12 onwards, players can also suggest custom events.
Anyone can join, but please note that usage of the Text Formatting Rules, especially the escape sequence ([==]) is very recommended (if not outright mandatory) to help everyone, due to problems rising from broken events and others throughout the HGS history.
After the end of each season, the top three contestants and the most murderous are placed in the Hall of Fame for future reference. The OG and Reboot Hall of Fames can found in the Recap pages here and here, and HGS Databases which document every single tribute submitted along with other stats can be found here and here
for the OG, and here
for the Reboot.OG Status Reboot Status
A Spin-Off thread where the players are free to run their own seasons can be found here. The Loose Canon RP Spin-Off, titled Convergence, can be found here.
A Recap page for Convergence can be found here, as well as a discussion thread here
.
On October 31st, 2019, It was announced that Convergence will be rebooted into a new RP continuing after the events of the original. The new RP, titled Another Side Another Story, can be found here, with its recap page here.
- No saves with an early arena event. These tend to wipe out an absurdly large number of tributes in the first few days, causing seasons to either end quickly or drag on with a few tributes left and low death rates in between.
- squicky/NSFW events. The save must be re-run, and if it has to be posted on the thread as a gag save, then it must be tagged with a Content Warning. Tributes who don't look their age and/or are nonhuman are not excused. Absolutely NO saves in which children or underage characters in general are involved in
This Forum Game provides examples of:
- Anachronism Stew:
- Tributes from different time periods compete in the Games, and sometimes they are sponsored by companies which haven't been established in their time, like Ultratech sponsoring the RMS Titanic in OG Season 221.
- Birthday events can establish when a season began if the celebrant has a canon birthday and/or age. If it happens to another tribute with a birthday that's far from the first's, the timeline can become... complicated.
- An Arm and a Leg: Tributes can lose one or more of their limbs, whether through fighting or falling into traps. There's even an event where a tribute amputates their arm to free themselves from being wedged between a boulder and a cliffside.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Any inanimate object nominated can somehow do things sentient tributes can do in the Games, such as in Reboot Season 147, where a block of Netherite manages to become president and an Antique Yamaha Electone Organ turns muscular and boils five tributes in cheese.
- Anyone Can Die: Oh yes. It doesn't matter how powerful or skilled a character is in their canon, everyone is fair game for getting killed by anything.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: One possible "death" scenario has a tribute do this rather than actually dying.
- One of the first tributes to ascend was Gutsman
's Ass, of all things, in OG Season 66.note
- Homura Akemi did this too in OG Season 68, just like in canon, or at least the manga.
- One of the first tributes to ascend was Gutsman
- Ascended Fridge Horror: In OG Season 208, Asgore Dreemurr, an anthropomorphic goat, drank straight from a chocolate fountain. Despite chocolate being not just dog poison, but also goat poison, he miraculously survived. Don-chan then exploited this by feeding Asgore just that, causing him to melt into a gray puddle.
- Though it most likely wasn't just ordinary chocolate, as normal chocolate isn't disgusting enough to cause you to melt into grey goo. He probably tampered with it first, just to be sure.
- Author Avatar: Occasionally, players will enter themselves as a tribute. OG Seasons 100 and 200 were
Milestone Celebrations in which every tribute was one of these.
- Ax-Crazy: Tributes with a high body count seem to be this, regardless of their canonical personalities and morals.
- Dragonite currently holds the record for the most kills made by any tribute, ending OG Season 32 with 10 kills, followed closely by Mr. Meeseeks, Goku, Frank Sinatra, and His Honorable Tyranny, with 9 whopping kills each in OG Seasons 20, 31, 92, and 233, respectively.note Technically...
- Reboot Season 19 had more than its fair share of bloodthirsty and violent tributes, with Hardcase proving to be the most murderous of the bunch.
- Alatreon ties Dragonite's record of ten kills in Reboot Season 56. Before that, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon had the record for most kills in Reboot, with 9 kills during Season 29.
- Arthur Dent became the third tribute in the thread's existence to tie Dragonite and Alatreon's record of ten kills, doing so in Reboot Season 152 (a season that Arthur also won).
- Back from the Dead: Whenever a tribute who was killed in a previous season is re-nominated in a future one; the biggest examples being the podium finishers in the Battle Royales that hadn't won their respective games.
- Reboot Season 56 infamously saw Jason's Stick and Full Frontal experience events that were supposed to be fatal, but were coded incorrectly. None of them survived two days past that, however.
- Before that in Reboot Season 51, the HGS Discord server was also supposed to Die Laughing, but survived as it was incorrectly coded.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Whenever a tribute who's a villain in their source material wins a season.
- Taken Up to Eleven in OG Seasons 113, 151, and 183, where every tribute is a villain.note
- OG Season 233 had Tamashii Hiroka win and Spacegodzilla finishing second. They were both revealed to be President Snow in that game.
- Badass Normal: Some tributes are this, particularly if they're from real life. Some examples from the OG are Chester Bennington, his bandmate Mike Shinoda, Taylor Momsen, Mark Hamill, William Shakespeare and more.
- Badass Pacifist: In theory, it's possible for a tribute to win, or at least place very high, without killing anyone, as their opponents may also die of natural causes such as starvation, eating toxic berries, or dysentery.
- In OG Season 23, the Dark Prognosticus became the first ever pacifist victor, despite being a book.
- And in OG Season 26, Sayaka Miki survived both Arena events which took out almost all of her opponents, and she never made a single kill. In other words, her surviving the phantom invasions alone is what landed her in winner territory.
- In a similar situation as Sayaka's, His Honorable Tyranny ironically survived and won OG Season 248, the final Murderers' Death Battle, without killing anyone, by surviving both arena events. This was a far cry from his first appearance in OG Season 233, where he lived up to his name and killed nine tributesnote .
- MissingNo. became the first pacifist champion in the Reboot, doing so in Season 9.
- Bag of Spilling: Any powerups or changes that a tribute acquires during a season don't carry over in their next appearance.
- Battle Rapping: Two custom events involve two tributes having an epic rap battle and five having an epic rap war.
- Black Comedy:
- The mass death in OG Season 16
, caused by Murder Kittens.
- In OG Season 181, Wander cracked open a cold one right as the other Wander note died of thirst.
- In the post-season gag save of OG Season 213, Mokap set up a kissing booth, but no other tributes showed up. He was apparently so upset about it that he went into a suicide booth the very next day.
- In Reboot Season 26, Kolin killed herself because she couldn't find an Arby's.
- During Reboot Season 61's Bloodbath, Jungkook and the Ultima Twinstars declared that it was "try to survive the Hunger Games time!", only for [[Franchise/{{Batman}] Deathstroke]] to almost immediately cut down the former on Day One.
- The mass death in OG Season 16
- Black Dude Dies First:
- In OG Season 8, Finn was killed off immediately during the Bloodbath, courtesy of a back stab by Trevor Phillips.
- OG Season 16 saw Snoop Dogg as its first casualty, having been dispatched by Duke Weaselton's poison dart.
- In OG Season 98, the Demo
pan was killed alongside Robot Santa and the souls of every human who ever lived via Big the Cat's explosive in the first fatal event of the season.
- OG Season 236 gave us Louis being fatally stabbed with a butterfly knife by Meowth in the Bloodbath.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Several events involve the tributes breaking the Wall itself, or even interacting with their nominators, including killing them for nominating them in the first place.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Dragon Ball characters, Undertale characters, Disney characters, Homestuck characters, and Kars were considered this during the earlier seasons of the Original Generation, usually being killed off either very quickly or in an undignified fashion. However, the successes of many tributes from the first four works eventually dispelled this status. Nappa's win in OG Season 11, along with Asriel getting third place in OG Season 21, Mufasa's victory in the season right after, and the Draconian Dignitary's triumph in OG Season 132, helped to dispell this theory. Kars, on the other hand, maintained his status as this throughout all of his appearances... until OG Season 243, where he finally broke his losing streak by getting 2nd Place.
- Also, superpowered or simply extremely powerful characters, who most often die first or die at the hands of a character much weaker than them.
- Special mention goes to Super Vegito, who has died in the bloodbath of three out of the eight seasons that he was nominated for. Gohan follows closely behind, having failed to dodge his way out of certain death in three different seasons.
- Ever since the input of Ben 10 tributes starting in OG Season 140, it seems that the simulator's RNG just really hates them. There have been many of them (more if you count the bootleg Ben, Ten 10, and when you note that the Ectonurite Twins and all four members of Shag Carpeting were nominated as one tribute), four of which having died in the Bloodbath, one who died on Day One, and one who died on Night One. Just about all of them aside from a few died unceremoniously and without a single kill to speak for. At least three of them were also on the receiving end of The Worf Effect. Azmuth proved to be a fair exception in Season 179, where he got three kills and managed to make it to Night Seven. He actually ended up being
The Scrappy for that season, due to how much of a Jerkass he was.
- In OG Season 205, the aforementioned bootleg dubiously breaks this curse by actually winning the season and tying for Most Kills, making HGS history by becoming the very first tribute even remotely related to Ben 10 to snag a place in the Hall of Fame. However, the RNG so far doesn't seem to have counted his win as a curse breaker, as subsequent Ben 10 tributes after him went right back to performing poorly, and he didn't make the Hall of Fame again in Battle Royale that featured him.
- The Ben 10 Curse really came to a head in OG Season 247, where it was nominated as an actual tribute and WON.
- The Reboot, on the other hand finally saw the curse being broken, when Azmuth placed third in Reboot Season 4, becoming the first canon Ben 10 tribute to place in the Hall of Fame while Malware became the first champion by claiming first place in Season 7.
- Although several My Hero Academia tributes had been nominated over the course of at least 30 seasons, only two of them made it on the Hall of Fame - Tomura Shigaraki, a villain, and Rabbit, a fanmade incarnation of the popular Villain Izuku Midoriya archetype who was forced to do villain work at a very young age. The rest of the nominated tributes tended to die really early and/or in an undignified fashion. This has been dubbed the MHA Hero Curse, as the time a hero or hero-in-training from MHA enters the Hall of Fame remained to be seen. As of OG Season 231, however, heroes in training Eijirou Kirishima and Katsuki Bakugou, who were nominated as one tribute, seem to have broken this curse... to an extent. Although theyd just barely managed to scrape a podium finish, they got there at the cost of suffering from Adaptational Villainy, cemented by destroying literally E V E R Y T H I N G. Thus, even though theyre technically heroes of My Hero Academia who finally secured a spot on the Hall of Fame, by the time they got there, they were essentially villains.
- Four seasons later, pro hero Enji Endeavour Todoroki scored a spot on the Hall of Fame as well - but he, too, suffered from Adaptational Villainy, as it was his high body count that cemented him as the seasons most murderous.
- The curse is more-or-less truly broken as of OG Season 242, where Shota Aizawa placed second, with two kills. While he did go against his heroic code by killing two tributes, he otherwise remained mostly heroic, and his crimes cant be reasonably compared to Endeavours or Eijirou and Katsukis.
- It seems that Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu can never catch a break. He was killed by a cupcakenote during OG Season 141, his first appearance, and from there he continued to suffer from early or unceremonious deaths despite his status as a Yakuza and being nominated fairly often. It doesnt help that his classmate Kazuichi Souda placed second and tied for the most kills in OG Season 179, while his sister Natsumi scored the most kills in OG Season 217 (where he died in the Bloodbath; she didnt take it very well) despite him being nominated alongside them in both cases. Whats more, in
a lost save for OG Season 238 that was intended to be a canon season, he ended up getting the most kills. He earns a spot on the Hall of Fame at last in OG Season 248, placing second.
- Outside of the tributes themselves, President Snow himself gets killednote or falls victim to some other sort of indignity or accident at the hands of one or more tributes practically Once per Episode, due to the myriad of events where such things happen to him.
- Cardboard Prison: There are some events where a tribute goes to jail, but it's almost always implied that they escape on the next day/night.
- Carnivore Confusion: In OG Season 174, Molly, a duck, munches on a bucket of popcorn chicken.
- Chained to a Railway: Some tributes try to kill others this way, but their victims are sometimes rescued.
- Characters Dropping Like Flies: Arena Events often slaughter massive numbers of tributes, but the biggest bloodshed in the entire history of the Games happened on the first day of OG Season 87, where a massacre caused by the phantom of Mahatma Gandhi brought up the body count to the record-breaking 39.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: A tribute can be VAC banned for different reasons, such as drinking too many estus flasks, practicing Thread Necromancy, or being a
Mary Sue.
- Chekhov's Gag: Sometimes an event that happened previously can be used to explain the outcome of a future one.
- In OG Season 208, at least two Chekhovs Guns went off at the same time in Day 8, where Queen Tyr'ahnee (who was implied to have gained Magical Girl powers) fought and won against 5 other tributes, including the blindnote Adine. Had the latter not have been blinded by previous events, Tyr'ahnee may have lost that bout.
- Child Soldiers: Since the minimum age for tributes in the canonical Hunger Games is 12, any tribute younger than this, or at least childlike in appearance, counts as this trope.
- Christmas Episode: OG Seasons 101, 102, 191, and Reboot Seasons 21 and 79 all had tributes with a winter or Christmas theme. In case of the first two, it was like a two-part Christmas Special because of the first one ending two days before the holiday itself.
- Chromosome Casting: The casts of OG Seasons 154 and 235 are mostly dads, with some of them bringing their sons along. Fitting for the Father's Day Specials.
- Clumsy Copyright Censorship: One of the possible death events involves a tribute being hit by a copyright violation, even if they're not copyrighted in the first place.
- Color Motif: There've been two seasons where everyone was of the same color: OG Season 109, where everyone was yellow; and OG Season 210, where everyone was green.
- The Corrupter:
- Tzeentch fit the bill in OG Season 8, recruiting a number of other Tributes to his cult. All of them died except Dawn Bellwether.
- Lord Voldemort was this to Park Jimin in Reboot S60, exploiting the latter's grief over his bandmate and best friend, V, getting killed by all of the (non-blacklisted) fatal events. He was very successful... to the point where the newly-corrupted Jimin successfully killed him with the assistance of Diamonds Droog and Navi the Fairy.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: It's actually rare for a tribute to not die in this fashion.
- Cuddle Bug: Tributes who get involved in a lot of hugging events can be this if they're on the giving end, like Tsukasa Hiiragi in OG Season 53 and WALUIGI in OG Season 104.
- Cute and Psycho: Any tributes with a high body count that are considered to be cute where they come from. And boy, are there too many to count. Amongst the most notorious in the Original Generation are Mort, Chloe Price, Judy Hopps, Cho Chang, Jerry, Marlin, Dory, Nemo, Brittany, Eleanor and Yoshi.
- Special mention goes to Cure Echo, who won OG Season 19 with the most kills as well. How does she conclude the season? By chopping off the limbs of Jeremy Clarkson, the sole remaining contestant besides her.
- In the next two seasons she appeared in, she tied with other tributes for most kills as well, making her one of the most lethal tributes in the game.
- Liechtenstein in OG Season 27 is notable for having killed - or at least injured; it's hard to tell - her adopted older brother Switzerland. She's also tied with several other tributes for most kills, which is particularly jarring since she's one of the cutest and nicest girls in Hetalia.
- There's also Mikuru, who ended OG Season 33 with a bang by blowing up Bulma and Kratos. She's one of the last people you'd expect to ever kill even one person, but in her season of the Hunger Games, she kills seven and wins the season.
- OG Season 96 sees Tiny Tina, who was already a few sandwiches short of a picnic in her home series, managing to skewer all of humanity, Sephiroth, and Gordon Ramsay with an energy spear.
- OG Season 105 gives us the youngest mass murderer in the OG, Pound Cake, a pegasus foal who skewered three tributes with an energy spear, pulled a sword from Warrick Chopper's abdomen, stabbed Neil deGrasse Tyson to death, and pummeled Grunkle Stan, among others.
- Reboot Season 60 gives us two examples of this: Miko Mitama and Park Jimin.
- Mitama is infamous for subjecting Jimin's bandmate and best friend, V, to all of the previous (non-blacklisted) fatal events at once. She had no regrets about this, either, for she went on to attack Bell before transfering her heart into Bernadetta, turning her into her vessel. The worst part? She's only a child (or at least childlike in appearance).
- Jimin himself takes V's fate very, very badly, not helped by Lord Voldemort taking him under his wing shortly afterwards and being largely responsible for him becoming the ruthless, psychotic Death Eater that he is. It doesn't help that he was actually a genuine Nice Guy prior to the V Incident, since he'd willingly given Bonkers a blood transfusion using his own blood.
- Special mention goes to Cure Echo, who won OG Season 19 with the most kills as well. How does she conclude the season? By chopping off the limbs of Jeremy Clarkson, the sole remaining contestant besides her.
- Cuteness Overload: One of the custom events involves a tribute dying of heart failure because they find another tribute too adorable. Hilarity Ensues when the other tribute isn't even remotely cute.
- An inversion of the event also appears, which has a tribute who's so ugly that three other tributes just die. The End.
- Another custom event has a tribute coming across an adorable fanart of themselves and dying from their own cuteness. There is also an inversion where a tribute comes across
cursed fanart of themselves and dies from the sheer cringe of it.
- Deader Than Dead: If a tribute is Dead to Begin With, then their "second" death counts as this.
- Deal with the Devil: One custom event involves a tribute trying to exchange their soul for wealth and power, only to be told that they never had one in the first place. Another event involves one tribute being revealed to be the devil and striking a deal with another.
- Death by Irony:
- In OG Season 63, both of the Miser Brothers died of hypothermia during a snowstorm, despite the fact that one of them can generate enough heat to melt steel on touch, and one of them lives in a sub-zero environment.
- Kirby has died in an ironic fashion at least three times, all of which had something to do with what he does best: eating.
- First, in OG Season 75, he was devoured by Maou-sama.
- More than 100 seasons later, in OG Season 192, he died of a heart attack upon realizing that he'd accidentally devoured a cockroach. Apparently, even an Extreme Omnivore like Kirby has standards.
- Finally, in OG Season 250, Bellona offed the pink puffball by tricking him into eating a poisoned apple.
- In OG Season 177, Donkey Kong died by slipping on a banana peel while Alucard had all of his bodily fluids (which includes his blood) drained by a giant leech.
- In OG Season 182, Tak Fujii killed a walking microwave by serving it... a deadly apple pie. Later, Egon Spengler, a Ghostbuster, was so scared by a ghost he died from heart failure.
- In OG Season 189, Daybreaker, who wields The Power of the Sun, was destroyed by the light within the Door to Darkness.
- In OG Season 212, Junkrat, a Mad Bomber, perished when he bought a bomb from the Devil that exploded in his hands.
- Defeat Means Friendship: A rather odd example occurs in OG Season 141, where Bill Cipher subjects Nagito Komaeda to an ironic Fate Worse than Death using his powers. The two of them form an unlikely alliance straight afterwards, and spend the next few phases helping each other out and hanging out until Bill gets killed in a ball pit.
- Demonic Possession: In one of the custom events, a tribute possesses another tribute's body and uses it to kill a third tribute.
- Denser and Wackier: As the seasons progressed, more and more silly custom events were implemented, and some of the tributes started to become... unorthodox by Simulation standards.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Occurs whenever a character deemed to be a God or Godlike being in their source material is killed off by someone way below their weight class. Examples include Giygas getting pushed off a cliff by the rapper Viper, Chloe Price tracking down and killing the Divine Personification of Art (who had earlier been enslaved by a Shroob Mook), Dr. Robotnik somehow killing the Hunger Games Simulator itself by total accident, Katana disembowling SCP-682 before going on to strangle Dark Star, Frieza bashing Nocturnal's face in with a steel chair, and of course, the infamous killing of Tzeentch by Dr. Fossil, a senile dinosaur. There's also the three-time case of Super Vegito being killed in the opening Bloodbaths of OG Seasons 14, 15 and 173.
- Die Laughing: Several events have tributes literally dying from laughter.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Sometimes, tributes retaliate harshly to petty things done to them by others by killing them.
- In OG Season 179, it was down to the final three, which consisted of Kazuichi Souda, Panther Cap, and Croire. It was Night Nine when Croire was told to go get them all some supplies. They were unamused when she came back with only a banana. Panther Cap was so unamused, in fact, that he killed Croire the very next day. Even Kazuichi, who had been just as murderous as Panther Cap at that point, called him a monster for it. That night, Panther Cap killed Kazuichi for calling him ugly, sealing his victory.
- In OG Season 183, Kurogiri groans at an incredibly corny joke that Russ Cargil made. The very next day, Russ kills Kurogiri by punching a hole in his chest.
- In that same season, OW
THE EDGE destroyed Shere Khan's computer. Shere Khan then proceeded to stretch him to death the next day.
- In that same season, OW
- In OG Season 224, Fisher kills a Droste Image with a herring after it accidentally read his porn magazine the night before.
- In OG Season 231, Eijirou Kirishima and Katsuki Bakugou has a "Your Mom" battle against everything that has existed, is existing, and will exist. The jokes were so offending to the former that they straight up destroyed E V E R Y T H I N G.
- The Dividual: Two or more characters nominated as a whole are counted as one "tribute."
- Disqualification-Induced Victory: How Queen Mother V won Season 94 of the Reboot, due to her dying in a broken event where she was supposed to kill Two-Faced, only for the latter to somehow kill the former instead. This is explained in-universe as Queen Mother V coming Back from the Dead and Two-Faced getting her award taken away for cheating.
- Driven to Suicide: Sometimes, it's all too much for a tribute, which results in them taking their own life.
- Early Installment Weirdness:
- Some of the earlier seasons in the Original Generation pale in comparison to the later ones since custom events weren't implemented until OG Season 12.
- Many of the earlier seasons were rife with early arena events because the rules for making a "good save" weren't standardized until many seasons later.
- The earlier seasons also had a rudimentary hosting format. Bulletted lists weren't used and deaths weren't spoilered.
- Eldritch Abomination: Some of the tributes are this to begin with, while others transform into them during a season, such as Starlight Glimmer in OG Season 146 and Rose Quartz in Reboot Season 22.
- Epic Fail: Any tribute who dies in the bloodbath by stepping off their podium too soon counts as this.
- Everyone Is Bi: Tributes can fall in love with anyone, regardless of gender.
- Eye Scream: Several events involve the tribute losing one or both of their eyes, or even going blind, whether it's self-inflicted or otherwise.
- The Family That Slays Together: Some tributes nominated with their family members are this, particularly if they're nominated as one tribute. Examples include Marlin and Nemo in OG Seasons 173 and 179; and Princesses Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, Luna and Cadance (the latter of whom are also Royally Screwed Up) in OG Season 219.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The Games welcomes a rather diverse cast of characters, including, among other things, monsters, anthropomorphic animals, superhumans, gods, aliens, otherworldly beings, ordinary people, countryballs, entire sports teams, tropers, real-world animals, inanimate objects, and abstract concepts.
- Fatal Method Acting: In-Universe. One custom event has six tributes reenacting a Shakespearean tragedy, where one of the actors kills everyone else.
- Filler: Gag saves, which were first implemented in OG Season 93note , carry the main purpose of tiding the players over while the canon season is being ran. While some of them are lackluster because they usually have early arena events, some of them are actually good; so good, in fact, that some players
wish that they were the canon season.
- Forgot About His Powers:
- Kirby seems to suffer from this, regardless of whether or not he has a Copy Ability.
- In OG Season 14, he could've just inhaled the rope that Dr. Canus was using to strangle him.
- In OG Season 110, he jumped off the wrong ledge while skiing, when he could've used his parasol to break his fall.
- In OG Season 192, he didn't consider gaining a Copy Ability from eating a cockroach.
- In OG Season 204, he didn't think about discarding his Copy Ability in order to eat some fettuccine, which somehow teamed up with R.O.B and the Supremacy to kill him during the Feast.
- Averted in OG Seasons 241 and 242, where for once, he didn't forget to use his powers and got 2nd Place with Freddy Kreuger in the former and got the most kills in the latter as Swiss Army Kirby.
- In Reboot Season 40, he ate a tube of Superglue... only to choke on it.
- In OG Season 14, a Jackal Ranger is pushed off a cliff and killed. This is in spite of the Jet Pack that all Covenant Rangers wear.
- It happens again in OG Season 21, with the victim this time being Fidget, which is even worse, as she naturally has wings and is canonically afraid of heights.
- OG Season 174 has Shinryu, who was pushed off a cliff by Yoshimitsu, who told him to fly. Despite the fact that he has wings and is a very powerful dragon, he fails to do so.
- In OG Season 182, Mami Tomoe and Maleficent practice parkour, only for Maleficent to mess up and fall to her death, despite the fact that she can turn into a dragon and also could have used her own teleportation abilities to save herself. In the same season, Future Trunks attempted to dropkick Egon Spengler off a cliff, only to miss and plummet to his death despite the fact that he can fly.
- In OG Season 204, Tsuyu Asui and Brutalmoose practice parkour, only for Tsuyu to misjudge the distance and fall to her death despite her frog-related Quirk and being a particularly athletic jumper in her respective canon.
- Kirby seems to suffer from this, regardless of whether or not he has a Copy Ability.
- Four Is Death:
- In general, whenever a tribute gets the 4th Place Curse, where they get 4th place without making the most kills, thus snubbing them of a Hall of Fame placement.
- In OG Season 81, Magical Kitty Len Len got 4th place and made four kills. Four seasons later, Rio Cop also made the same placement and number of kills as him.
- In OG Season 205, Jack the Ripper was inputted in District 4, got four killsnote , took 4th place, and tied for the most kills.
- Inverted in OG Season 216. Day 4 was the only full day that was bloodshed free.
- In OG Season 225, the four Teletubbies won and accumulated four killsnote .
- In OG Season 237, Viper foresaw all four Dragon Guardians collectively falling for the 4th Place Curse from buttercup poisoning.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Done to justify any mix-up with the pictures and names of the tributes.
- The traditional two-way switch happened to Kamina and Adam Torres in OG Season 70.
- The one-way switch happened to Yuuka Kazami and Kuja in OG Season 108, Sabine Wren and Shinmyoumaru Sukuna in OG Season 180, and Cooler and Jimmy Valmer in a gag save for OG Season 185.
- Averted with George Burns in OG Season 171, since he was originally intended to be the George Burns, but was passed off as a clone of Sour Cream instead, which carried over to the rest of his appearances.
- Furry Confusion: Animals on various parts of the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism compete in the Games, leading to some... confusing moments when they interact.
- In OG Season 161, Snips, a magical talking pony, tamed a horse.
- In OG Season 190, Benjamin Clawhauser, an anthropomorphic cheetah, also tried taming a horse like Snips did, only to be trampled by it.
- In OG Season 204, Cat R. Waul, an anthropomorphic cat, received a pet pomeranian from an unknown sponsor.
- In Reboot Season 51, Volk, an anthropomorphic wolf, found a pet cat, which got killed by the Gorilla Glue Gorilla.
- In Reboot Season 72, Joe, a fish, won a pet goldfish in a bag from a stall, and had to save it when the bag leaked.
- Gambit Pileup: Naturally. As all tributes aim to come out on top, alliances are made and broken with alarming frequency.
- Grand Finale: OG Season 250 was this for the first thread, culminating with all the previous tributes and their souls being nominated as two separate tributes.
- Groin Attack: An uncommon occurrence in the Games, but exagerrated in Reboot Season 94 when the entire music fanbase, composed of roughly less than 7.8 billion people at the time of nomination, collectively punched Dave Rogers in the groin.
- Halloween Episode: OG Seasons 82, 177, and Reboot Seasons 11 and 68 all had tributes who were scary or Halloween-themed. However, the first one suffered a
Schedule Slip and began the day after the holiday.
- Handicapped Badass: Tributes who are blind, deaf, amputees and/or have some other physical or mental disability and become a podium finisher qualify as these, whether the disability is canonical or brought about during the season.
- Toph Beifong and Helen Keller are the most notable OG examples of this, securing a spot on the Hall of Fame despite their blindness and deaf-blindness, respectively.
- In Reboot Season 14, Iron Man managed to survive long enough to get 3rd Place while being tinynote , de-powerednote , and deafnote , all at the same time.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- OG Season 12 saw America give his life to save Toothless from poisonous fog that had seeped into the arena.
- In Reboot Season 61, Galvatron died saving SG!Megatron from a forest fire.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Quite a lot of tributes die because of their own antics.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Occasionally, one tribute might kill and eat another in a primal craze. Saparmurat Niyazov is one of the many infamous cannibals in the Games, devouring Krizalid two days after the latter killed Forever and served him as a meal in OG Season 88. Niyazov's cooking in the following days was... questionable.
- I Surrender, Suckers: A tribute can trick another into sparing them to catch the other off-guard.
- Improbable Weapon User: The Games have seen several tributes who're this. However, the reigning champions are Marlin, Dory and Nemo, who infamously turned this trope into an art form in several of their appearances. Case in point:
- In OG Season 63, Dory, despite her short-term memory loss, somehow stabbed Doomguy with an icicle and bashed the Chameleon's head in with a baseball bat. Then in OG Season 74, she somehow drilled holes into Solar Sands and butchered Z-Group Knifeman.
- In OG Season 174, Marlin and Nemo practically embody this trope. They stabbed Mitty with taped knives in their eyes, bashed Bea's head against a rock and destroyed a (particularly murderous) guitar (with Cynder as collateral damage) with a rocket launcher. As emphasized by their nominator dave_the_assassin (who also ran the season) after the murder of Mitty:Dave: [commenting on Troper No. 9001's Lampshade Hanging on the improbable murder] Yep, that's completely what I thought when Marlin and Nemo turned into taped-knife-in-the-eyes version [sic] of Kano on Mitty as I ran this season.
- In OG Season 186, Nemo's sole kill was by spearing the Spy in the abdomen. Then it escalated in OG Season 213, where he somehow knocked Azmuth out, then dumped him into a plastic barrel and dissolved him with hydrofluoric acid, somehow shot a blow dart at Lord Geo Dampierre, and somehow launched a bottle rocket at Trubbish and Isaac Clarke (a hilarious and unintentional Call-Back to the aforementioned rocket launcher antics with his father).
- Inanimate Competitor: Some of the tributes are inanimate objects, and they're just as capable of surviving the Games as the other "normal" tributes.
- Instant Gravestone: Whenever an event involving the grave of the latest tribute to die happens at the same time as when said tribute dies.
- Interspecies Friendship/Interspecies Adoption: Both happen more than once, though not as often as Interspecies Romance.
- Interspecies Romance: Happens quite often, given the diverse cast of tributes.
- Karmic Death: Karmic retribution often comes quickly to notoriously murderous tributes, with countless examples.
- In OG Season 7, May, a Pokémon Trainer, killed Sylveon, a Generation 6 Pokémon, during the Bloodbath. She died of dysentery right after.
- In OG Season 36, four tributes ganged up on Vincent Valentine after he had pushed Rosalina off a cliff the night before.
- In OG Season 85, after he had killed the Loud Family earlier, Terry Bogard later wound up being slaughtered and cannibalized in a primal craze by Khan.
- In OG Season 144, Toriel burned a tree down. Not too long after, Mother Gothel, of all people, took her out by impaling her with a tree branch.
- And in OG Season 232, she threw Carlos off a mountaintop, only for him to jump back up and call her out for it. She then got her karmic retribution by having her port-a-potty tipped over by Indoraptor and Wario and Waluigi while she was using it and then having her heart ripped out and shown to Jessie by Burger Feet the very next day.
- In OG Season 169, Papyrus bashes his brother Sans' head in with a mace during the Bloodbath and never shows remorse for it at any point. After being subjected to several karmic hardships beforehand, Djura takes him out with an arrow to the head during the Feast.
- Also in OG Season 169, on Night 6, Chester Bennington found Vi and Doomfist dying, and decided to leave them to their fates. In the next day's Feast, the Cornucopia ate him as retribution.
- In OG Season 191, The Krampus wrongfully killed the innocent Anna during the Bloodbath. Later in the same day, it got frozen (no pun intended) and shattered by Delibird.
- In OG Season 195, BTS, a Korean boy band consisting of seven men at their 20s, collectively propose to Riley Andersen, a 12-year-old preteen girl. Riley, despite the polygamy and large age gap, says yes, officially making all of the boys her fiancés, much to the
shock and disgust (no pun intended on one of Riley's emotions) of many HGS participants. Fortunately for the audience, at the very next day, Konami decides that child marriage is beyond her standards and kills the BTS members by stabbing each member to death with an icicle.
- In OG Season 250, after Fluttershy had taken a massive level in jerkass and ruthlessly tormented the other tributes, Ares took it upon himself to put her down with a poisoned blowdart during the Feast.
- After Hardcase had spent the majority of Reboot Season 19 on a ruthless killing spree, the finale saw Michael put an end to his rampage via a lethally booby-trapped chest.
- Killed Offscreen: Some events don't show how a tribute died, but only the aftermath. Some are from natural causes, while others imply that another tribute killed them.
- Leeroy Jenkins: One custom event has a tribute screaming their name loudly as they charge at five other tributes, getting themselves killed.
- Lethal Chef: One custom event has a tribute try using a flamethrower to cook, with another tribute getting too close and being burnt up as a result.
- Lethal Joke Character: In general, any tribute who isn't, for lack of a better term, a conventional tribute (e. g. an inanimate object) that ends up making the podium or the most kills at the end of a season.
- The Dark Prognosticus kicked off this trend when it somehow managed to win OG Season 23 without killing anyone.
- In OG Season 90, Fugitive Baby, a baby in a toy car being chased by an army of police, killed quite a few tributes.
- In OG Season 187, Running Nose, a literal running nose, earned the most kills by offing a whopping seven tributes, with one of them a figurative case of The Worf Effect.
- In OG Season 225, not only did the Teletubbies get four kills, they also won.note
- Long-Lost Relative: Occasionally, one tribute will reveal to another that they're long-lost siblings or the former is the latter's parent, leading to some... unusual relations. It's worse if both of them are already related or in a relationship.
- The Lost Lenore: Given the nature of the Games, any romantic relationship established in any season is doomed to end in tragedy one way or another, and what typically happens is that one half of the couple gets killed off. Sometimes, however, the death leaves a notable impact on the tributes surviving lover. There are at least three notable cases of this happening: Corrin!Revaryks grief over the death of her lover Mettaton in OG Season 84, the way Tomura Shigaraki copes with the death of his lover Emperor Zurg in OG Season 183, almost 100 seasons later, and Kazuichi Soudas Heroic BSoD and possible suicide following the death of his lover Donkey Kong.
- Mad Bomber: Any tribute that amasses a large number of kills using explosives could be considered one of these.
- Man-Eating Plant: In Reboot Season 170, the Bowling Berries are shown to eat meat due to "having beef" with Skywarp.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: More than 5000 characters from various works compete in the Games.
- Mercy Kill: Characters will often ask for this to be their fate. Most of the time, the other character doesn't go through with it. But sometimes, the other character will reluctantly agree to do it.
- Madoka Kaname did this to Rey in OG Season 8, after the latter was distraught over the death of her friend, Finn.
- Exaggerated in Reboot Season 8, where Woshua asked five other tributes to kill him because he regretted going down the Genocide Route.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Given the sheer number of transformation events, it's possible for a tribute to be a mishmash of various creatures, such as Yuki Sohma in OG Season 223, who became a Chaosrealmer who transforms into a rat when hugged by a girl or stressed, and Kaede Akamatsu in Reboot Season 23, who became the Ultimate Psychic SCP Monster Turok.
- Offing the Offspring: Alarmingly common, to the point where the JoJo characters seem to have developed a tradition off it in the Original Generation. And if a parent and their child compete in the same season, this is often the inevitable cause of the child's death.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Tributes who kill entire universes instantly become this, and most of time they technically become the most murderous in their respective seasons because they're usually counted as singular tributes.
- Winter Amethyst was the first tribute to cement herself as such, drilling holes in the multiverse in OG Season 102.
- Bec Noir and Tweety Bird then stepped up the game by obliterating the omniverse in OG Seasons 175 and 194, respectively.
- Eijirou Kirishima and Katsuki Bakugou ultimately became the most infamous universe destroyers in OG Season 231, wiping out everything that has existed, is existing, and will exist, all because they were offended by their yo mama jokes.
- All of that culminated in the Grand Finale, where Scipion 3, after losing his hearing from fighting Peacekeepers, slowly lost his sanity and cooked the souls of all the previous tributes and fed them to Jyushimatsu Matsuno and Kanaya Maryam.
- One-Hit Polykill: There's an event where one tribute kills two or three others with a single bullet. Taken Up to Eleven if one of the victims is an absurdly large group tribute.
- One Steve Limit: Averted whenever two or more tributes with the
same name participate. Hilarity Ensues.
- Averted in OG Season 75, which had a pair of Switzerlands, a pair of Swedens, a pair of Maous, a pair of Cuddleses, and a quartet of Bobs.note
- Taken Up to Eleven in the season right after that, which had a grand total of eight Michaels. The cast has to be seen to be believed.
◊
- And topping that one is the cast of OG Season 92
◊, where almost everyone shares their name with at least one other tribute.
- OG Season 165 also averted this in a similar way as OG Season 92, encouraging participants to submit tributes with the same name. This was the result
.
- OG Season 185 averts this again, with the inclusion of Joe Cuppa and Cuppa Joe as tributes, along with two different Akiras.
- OG Season 186 averts it as well, with Nemo and his (probable) namesake Captain Nemo.note
- OG Seasons 206 and 207 avert this with two different Sabersnote .
- OG Season 208 also averts this with two different Gray Foxes nominated.
- OG Season 233 does an In-Universe aversion; it turns out that there were two President Snows competing in the Hunger Games.note
- Reboot Season 11 averted it with three Count Draculas.
- Reboot Season 40 was another "
Name's the Same" Season where participants were encouraged to submit tributes with the same name. The Season's cast looked like this
◊.
- Reboot Season 53 saw an aversion by way of having two Sarges.
- Reboot Season 70 averted it with two Lucifers.
- OOC Is Serious Business: Due to the results being randomised, characters will often do things that they're unlikely to do in their source material (such as a pacifist killing several people in an explosion or a normally merciless character sparing someone). Hilarity Ensues.
- The Other Darrin: In-Universe. A few custom events have tributes re-enacting several works, which means that another tribute may take a role someone else had played.
- Past-Life Memories: It's possible for a returning tribute to have horrifying flashbacks of their previous outings if they died previously.
- Patricide: In Reboot Season 52, Mikey killed his own father along with Killmonger, Clay Dunestrider, Maou-sama, and BTS with a shadow dragon.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Quite a lot of tributes are smaller than the average human, but some of them are more than capable of holding off on their own, with some examples being Piplup, Kion, Fur Foot, Elf Cup, Panther Cap, Marlin, Nemo, Dory, Peridot, Emmet, Jerry, Brittany and Eleanor in the OG, and Navi in the Reboot (although Nemo and Emmet also made it far in the Reboot).
- OG Season 179, aptly named the Little Cup, has a cast
◊ composed entirely of tiny tributes.note
- An in-universe example in the Reboot is Xingo, where despite shrinking after eating a food labeled "Eat Me" in the Bloodbath, he managed do well in the pilot season, even killing Steven Universe with a teddy bear long before being shrunk out of existence in the arena event.
- Another in-universe example in the Reboot is Vriska Serket. Like Xingo before her, she managed to do well in Season 8 despite shrinking early in the season because she made the same mistake as him. She turned her situation around by coming up with a cunning plan, then managing to shove HAL-9000 into a meat grinder and bash Soekarno's head against a rock, before being Swallowed Whole by This Ain't It!Kakashi.
- OG Season 179, aptly named the Little Cup, has a cast
- Potty Emergency: Some of the custom events involve this. There's one in which a tribute is holding up the line for the port-a-potty, and one of the tributes in line eventually gives up and uses a bush. There's another similar event where a tribute decides that another tribute is taking too long in the port-a-potty, so they forcibly remove them from the john with their pants still down.
- Power Creep, Power Seep: Since the outcome of the season is determined by the Random Number God, everybody, no matter how strong or weak they are in canon, is on equal footing.
- Real-Person Fic: Real people can be nominated into the Games, and they are quite frequently.
- Reference Overdosed: There are many events that are Shout-Outs to various works, so many that the forum game has its own Shout-Out page.
- Ridiculously Fast Construction: Tributes can build various shelters such as shacks, houses, or even mansions in just a single day or night.
- Running Gag:
- Every season has a
One True Pairing, and every season has at least one "cute" character - usually female - who goes on a murderous rampage.
- Just about every season has a particularly powerful tribute dying at the hands of a much smaller or significantly less powerful tribute.
- Taco Badger either nominating a clone of another tribute or nominating original characters using stock photos.
- That Idiot Man nominating "cursed" tributes in the Reboot.
- Starlight Glimmer killing Vengeful Bale's tributes in the Reboot.
- Events involving President Snow, especially those in which he's killed or a tribute gets romantic with him.
- Every season has a
- Ship Tease: This can occur amongst the characters at night, where they hold hands and snuggle with each other.
- Shoot the Medic First: This happened to the Medic twice. First, he died in OG Season 14's bloodbath. Then, he returned in OG Season 85, only to die in the bloodbath again. Averted (finally) in OG Season 229, where he survived until Day 8.
- Sibling Murder: Many tributes die at the hands of their own siblings, whether they're canonically at odds against each other or not.
- In OG Season 56, Mario stabbed his brother Luigi to death. However, he still had the sympathy to visit his brother's grave.
- In OG Season 70, Oyster immediately knifed her twin brother Slippery Jack during the bloodbath, though she seemed to regret having done so for the rest of the game and was ultimately killed shortly after erecting a memorial.
- In OG Season 142, Flim tried but failed to kill his twin brother Flam with an explosive, but eventually succeeded by flaying him alive then throwing him into a salt pit.
- The most infamous example was in OG Season 169, where Papyrus bashed his brother Sans' head in with a mace and showed no remorse for it.
- In OG Season 211, Darth Maul did this by accident. He tried shooting an apple off his brother Savage Opress' head, but hit the latter instead.
- Sniper Duel: One of the custom events involves two tributes having one of these, with various possible outcomes.
- The Starscream: With all the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder involved with the randomization, this is a tendency among tributes.
- The most famous one is Park Jimin's betrayal of Lord Voldemort, who was responsible for turning him into an insane Death Eater, alongside Diamonds Droog and Navi. This, however, ended up backfiring on Jimin, since the very next day, he himself ended up getting backstabbed by Navi.
- The Stoner: A few of the custom events involve one or more tributes getting high, so it's certainly possible for a tribute to come across as one of these, with a notable OG example of such a tribute being the Dolorosa.
- Stuff Blowing Up: One of the more dramatic ways for tributes to die involves this, often with multiple tributes dying at once. It's also not unknown for tributes to accidentally blow themselves up while trying to arm a landmine, and at least one tribute has managed to blow themselves up in the bloodbath by stepping off of their podium too early.
- Super Drowning Skills: Anyone who falls into a frozen lake,
including those who can swim, breathe underwater, or control water. Even if there's a variant where they swim out of it safely.
- Take That, Scrappy!: OG Season 213 is composed of Scrappies, Base-Breaking Characters, and Hate Sinks, whether within the HGS-universe (e. g. Papyrus in OG Season 169 and Azmuth in OG Season 179) or canonically in their source materials (e. g. Poochie and Quess Paraya). They were even given insulting nicknames to boot.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Up to five tributes can take down one. Bonus points if they're all very powerful while the victim is extremely weak. This is often referred to as 'the Aang treatment', after an incident late in OG Season 14 when Aang got gaanged up on by four other tributes.
- Sometimes, be it through the event above or through other means, a tribute getting themselves killed by somebody far stronger has this feeling.
- An unrelated event has a tribute killing another this way, just to spite a third tribute.
- Exagerrated in Reboot Season 60, where Miko Mitama infamously subjected Kim Taehyung aka V to almost all the possible death events on the first day. A few of those events involved the Infinite Death Loop and the Hourai Elixir, forcing V to die over and over again.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Any recurring tribute who dies early counts as this, but special mention has to go to President Coriolanus Snow himself, since his addition to the events as an NPC in OG Season 155.note By the time of OG Season 181, the Hunger Games' resident President Evil along with his clone was nominated as two separate tributes, they both got killed in the same season, and then he was kidnapped by Hades in the Underworld. Not that anyone has a problem, though, considering how much of an asshole he is.
- Averted in Reboot Season 40, where he Took a Level in Badass and won, even though Susie somehow managed to kill him towards the end.note
- Til Murder Do Us Part:
- In OG Season 76, Hildy Gloom shot her husband Grim in the head with a molten rebar crossbow.
- In Reboot Season 29, Lisa shot her husband Dracula with a BFG 9000. It was also implied that they had marital problems throughout the season, since they also fought each other two days before that.
- Toilet Humor: Some events involve bodily functions, and a good amount of them involve farting.
- Too Dumb to Live: Some tributes die from their own stupidity, such as when one presses a Big Red Button out of curiosity, causing the machine to explode on them.
- Too Powerful to Live:
- Dr. Fossil after killing Tzeentch. He was ultimately drowned
◊, courtesy of Moltar and Thaddeus E. Klang.
- Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu became this in OG Season 238, after being appointed as the Protector of Earthrealm by the Elder Gods and falling into radioactive waste. He and his bodyguard, Peko Pekoyama, ended up being killed by the same bullet, courtesy of the treacherous 00 agent Alec Trevelyan.f
- Dr. Fossil after killing Tzeentch. He was ultimately drowned
- Took a Level in Badass: Occurs quite frequently. As Anyone Can Die, it's entirely possible for characters who're completely unremarkable Muggles in their source material to triumph over city-destroying superhumans and literal Gods with ease.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- There's a potential event where a tribute turns a rat or another tribute into their favorite food and eats it.
- An example unrelated to the aforementioned event occurred in OG Season 174. Cynder ate a chicken parmesan sandwich two separate times. This event is a singular event, meant for only one tribute. With so many custom events, the odds of the same tribute being selected by the RNG for the same singular event more than once in a season are fairly low, so this could very much imply that chicken parmesan sandwiches are Cynder's favorite food.
- A similar event happened to Radiant Hope in OG Season 240, where she ate McDonald's McRibs on two separate occasions.
- In Reboot Season 55, Kaito Momota eats an earwax-flavoured jellybean, of all things, two updates in a row. This seems to imply that he has a bizarre taste in food.
- A tribute can exploit this by feeding another with food so delicious that they shoot straight up into the Forcefield. It's almost always implied that the food in question is the victim's favorite.
- Trap Master: Some tributes are surprisingly good at trapmaking, a few notable ones being Snowdrake and Darkrai, which was how they made the most kills in their respective debut seasons (OG Seasons 101 and 117).
- Unexpected Character: Invoked for Reboot Season 45, where players were encouraged to submit tributes that differed from the kinds they usually nominated.
- Ungrateful Bastard: There are times when tributes are kind to others, only for the recipients to repay them by hurting them, or worse, killing them.
- A mobile phone of all tributes was this towards the Elite Beat Agents in OG Season 216. After somehow getting a life-saving blood transfusion from them courtesy of Twilight Sparkle, it killed all the Elite Beat Agents with a baseball bat covered in barbed wire.note
- Valentine's Day Episode: OG Seasons 120 and 201 and Reboot Seasons 29 and 87 had tributes who were couples or have a love/Valentine's theme.
- Walk on Water: There's a custom event in which a tribute walks on water, with varied results, as well as a variant that has a tribute walking on lava.
- Welcome to Evil Mart: Several Arena Events involve the tributes going to the Villain Mall to buy weapons, fight the villains, or try to escape for their lives.
- Wham Episode: Several seasons are this.
- OG Season 87 saw the bloodiest opening the Games has ever seen at the time, due to a Day 1 Arena Eventnote , with 39 out of 48 dead at the end of the very first update. The season's aftermath saw the banning of all early arena events with high death tolls.
- OG Season 230 utterly shook the thread, due to the fact that Gundham Tanaka called his
sex with Star Swirl the Bearded the best sex evernote . While there have been many cases of this before, this turned out to be the last straw for many players. This "Gunstargate" fiasco was the primary reason that the players ultimately decided to reboot HGS, and further steps were taken in the hopes that something like that would never happen again.
- Reboot Season 60 came as a huge surprise, when Miko Mitama subjected V to all the ("Family friendly") death events, as it was pretty unprecedented.
- To a lesser extent, whenever a tribute considered a Butt-Monkey actually lands in the Hall of Fame, especially if they win the season, with a few notable examples being Super Vegito winning in the aforementioned OG Season 87, Lord Voldemort both claiming 1st Place and tying for most kills in OG Season 148, Asgore Dreemurr getting 3rd Place in OG Season 208, Kars getting 2nd Place in OG Season 243, Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu earning 2nd place in OG Season 248, and Azmuth and Malware claiming podium finishes in Reboot Seasons 4 and 7, respectively.
- Any season where a tribute, usually a canonically nice one, snaps and kills several tributes at once could also count as this to a lesser extent, with a few notable examples being Cho Changnote in OG Season 69, Yoshinote in OG Season 210, Dave "Phoenix" Farrellnote in OG Season 225, Steven Universenote in OG Season 234, Detective Gamechangernote in OG Season 240, and Mikeynote in Reboot Season 52.
- What the Hell, Player?:
- There exists a custom event in which a tribute calls out the player who nominated them for putting them in the Hunger Games. This can be Played for Laughs, but sometimes it may be more tragic, such as the case in OG Season 208 where James calls out KLS 2097 for nominating him and his partner in crime, Jessie, shortly after the latter died. He then commits suicide the following day.
- There's also an event where the tribute (somehow) outright kills the player for doing so, like when Cowbear and Galekh Xigisi beat up their respective nominators Zanreo and Troper No. 9001 to a bloody pulp in their respective Reboot Seasons 33 and 37.
- The Worf Effect: It's certainly not unheard of for characters who're known to be quite powerful in their source material to be offed either early in the game and/or by someone way below their weight class.
- A figurative case occured in OG Season 187 with Dr. Philip Sherman. Although he's just a normal (if a bit idiotic/incompetent) dentist, most of the fish characters in Finding Nemo believe that Humans Are Cthulhu, especially with their scuba gear (in fact, Dr. Sherman's the trope image); which makes his death at the hands of a literal running nose and Helmethead quite jarring.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: One custom event involves this, with the thing not being grasped being a tribute's attack.
- Your Mom: There's a custom event in which two tributes engages in a contest with this theme. A fatal version has one of them get so offended that they kill the other tribute.
- Acceptable Breaks from Canon: Given that Alternate Universes exist, some aspects of the canon universes are changed for flexibility in the RPs.
- Pokémon are allowed to use more than four moves from all the possible moves they can learn, including the moves that were excluded from the Generation VIII games, and be creative in what they can do with their moveset, akin to the anime. Fakemons such as the Original Dragon (Vahirom) and fake Mega Evolutions such as Scipion's Mega Zoroark form are also allowed since there are multiple Pokémon Worlds that run on slightly different rules, but they don't show up often.
- While the Underground where most of 6k1's tributes come from takes place in the True Pacifist timeline, Undyne and Mettaton have access to their respective Genocide timeline-exclusive forms, Undyne the Undying and Mettaton NEO.
- After Kris and Susie sealed the Eastern Fountain, Card Kingdom disappeared and its citizens turned into card and board game pieces in the unused classroom. But in CVG/ASAS, this Dark World was temporarily preserved by the Fountain of Darkness' magic surge until Kris transferred everyone from Card Kingdom to Castle Town. This explains how Ralsei went to Rouxls' shop in Card Castle to buy Power Stroke her watch party gift and how the other Darkners showed up in the Arena without turning into Light World items or stone in between Chapters 1 and 2.
- Canonically, the Delta Warriors (and Noelle in Chapter 2) can only use their spells other than Kris's ACT command when they have enough Tension Points, which is shared between them and starts at 0% in each battle, but in the RPs, they can use them as early as the first round. They also have access to special spells that are canonically exclusive to certain bosses such as Kris's Courage (exclusive to King's fight) and Ralsei's FluffyGuard (exclusive to Spamton NEO's fight). Additionally, Noelle can summon an ice wall, something that she only canonically does when defending herself in the SnowGrave Route, and she can extend this to shield nearby allies.
- Actually a Doombot:
- Whenever President Snow is killed by a tribute, it's actually a Snowclone that gets killed instead of the real him. That was until Billy secretly staged a rebellion in Reboot Season 70 to destroy the clones and have the real Snow placed in the Arena as the tributes' punching bag along with Alma Coin.
- In Reboot Season 40, Dave the Assassin gave Snow a tape, which was something to use against Valecor, before jumping off a cliff to his death. It turned out to be a Replica of himself.
- Whenever Ichigo Montoya shows up in the Arena when he's not a tribute, like when he fought the Elite Beat Agents in Reboot Season 113, it's actually an android version of him, which he made in light of tribute-nominator events happening more frequently.
- Adaptational Explanation: Explanations for the tributes' actions in seasons and their reasoning for committing some of them are naturally often given in the RPs, especially for extremely out-of-character moments such as otherwise kind characters abruptly becoming murderous card-carrying villains the minute the Bloodbath starts and the like. Given how commonplace cloning tributes for seasons has become over time, the most common assumption is Duplicate Divergence, though other cases are frequently Hand Waved as just the effects of the Arena brought about by the signal that subconsciously manipulates the tributes into doing what they do.
- Adaptational Heroism: In Deltarune, it's implied that Kris's heroic/kind actions aren't natural for them because it's actually their SOUL controlling them, but in ASAS, they genuinely care about their friends. It's possible that the SOUL is still influencing their actions, to Susie and Ralsei's concern after defeating Spamton with them, but they only know that "something about him shook Kris to the core", unaware of the truth.
- Adaptational Wimp: As of Deltarune Chapter 2, Noelle Holiday, after being afraid of Queen for most of it, stood up for herself to demand her to free her. However, Susie convinced Noelle after their adventure that everything that happened in Cyber World was just a dream, so she was back to being a coward in the Arena starting in Reboot Season 181. Then again, Noelle was pulled out of Queen's Mansion during the mission for that season, but her next appearance in Season 196 still had her freaking out. Noelle has since snapped out of it when she discovered the truth, and while she has become braver and more confident again, she still has her limits.
- Aerith and Bob:
- Besides the tributes having their fair share of unusual and ordinary names, the nominators have names such as 6k1, Gamechanger, Scipion, and Zanreo... and Dave, Billy, and Elliot.
- Even the Pokémon from the Mystery Dungeon Worlds have varying names, from James and Arthur to Persephone and Cerberus to... Lugia and Ho-Oh.
- After-Action Healing Drama: Usually happens when a nominator is sent to the Science Center's Medical Department to recover from severe injuries or their revival after their time in the Arena.
- After being killed by Nightmare Scipion, 6k1 was sent to the Recovery Room. She missed out on the first half of Reboot Season 51 due to her coma, and Twilight Sparkle and Toriel dropped everything to visit her.
- After the failed mission to storm Unfortunate Zorua's base, Dave collapsed from the wounds caused by the base's destruction. 6k1, with the help of her nominator friends, provided him first aid and sent him to the Medical Department. She then watched over him at the Recovery Room while his assistants and some of 6k1's friends paid him a visit.
- Power Stroke then had her turn after the 2nd Reboot Nominator Games (Season 100). She and 6k1 stayed in the same room, and their friends and family paid them a visit. Ichigo and Psychedelicate also visited them to make amends with each other, and also to comfort Power. The pony then woke up and burst into tears just after Ichi left, worried about him, but Dr. Rosie gave her her crystal ball so she could still talk to him. Power even refused to have her traumatic memories of the last season wiped because she didn't want to forget Ichi, fearing that her good memories with him might be erased by accident.
- 6k1's second post-Nominator Games trip to the Recovery Room was more dramatic than the first, as she was distraught when Dave didn't visit her or even join her in Reboot Season 150. As usual, her friends and family comforted her and helped her learn to accept that she can press on without him, but the Waterblight Ganon told her the harsh truth that Dave can't always be there for her.
- Alternate Self: Besides AU versions of tributes that get regularly nominated, some of the nominators and their assistants have AU versions of themselves. Power Stroke, 6k1's pony counterpart, is one of the most active alt selves, followed by Tay, Stanford Stokes' Yoshi counterpart. Stanford is confirmed to have more AU versions of himself than the other nominators and assistants, but they're all captured by his Evil Counterpart to be absorbed by him so he'll be the only Stanford in the Multiverse.
- Alternate Universe: Many tributes come from alternate versions of canon universes, and some of them are just like in canon but with a few key differences.
- All of Vengeful Bale's tributes come from AR worlds, and they were all affected by the Multiversal Convergence. AR Equestria, in particular, is mostly like the Equestria where 6k1 nominates her tributes, except that Grogar is really Grogar instead of Discord in disguise. Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow also defected from the Legion and were put under community service after the final battle instead of being turned into stone.
- There's another version of Equestria where the Changeling Kingdom's hive was destroyed, but the Changelings such as Thorax and Pharynx, the latter who's allied with Scipion, remained unreformed until around Reboot Season 162.
- The Underground, also where some of 6k1's tributes come from, had its barrier broken like in the True Pacifist Route, but Asgore opened it for tourism after hearing that the Hunger Games was opened to the Multiverse, and the monsters chose to stay there. The monsters are also fully aware of Frisk's SAVE Powers since they presumably used them in the Arena in the OT. They're also aware of Gaster's existence since he showed up in the Arena a few times in the OT and Reboot Timelines, but he remains an enigma to them, even Sans and Papyrus.
- The Wizarding World, again where some of 6k1's tributes come from, had the International Statute of Secrecy revised to allow witches and wizards to participate in the Games as it was originally a Muggle sport and they were banned from them. This was part of the Ministry of Magic's efforts to forge and improve interuniversal and wizard-Muggle relations respectively, but there's still prejudice between them, particularly with the Muggles from their universe. Because of this, the Gamemakers are required to edit the broadcast for Muggle viewing while Muggles from other universes must keep their visits to the Wizarding Worldnote a secret from the locals, lest they have their memories wiped.
- Both Gensokyo and Mugenri, where Billy nominated all its denizens, had their barriers to the outside world broken, allowing free travel and access to technology.
- June's universe, loosely based on that of We Have All Become Pokémon, is treated as a parallel universe to the RP's existing Pokémon Mystery Dungeon universe, with characters from the former who have appeared implied to not have a presence in the universe of the latter and vice versa, with the exceptions of Skyler and Dess, Scipion's counterpart in June's PMD World and vice-versa, at least to the knowledge of the characters in-universe. However, Dess is revealed to have actually come from yet another PMD World that's neither June's nor Scipion's, as Millie, who came from said universe, is looking for them alongside her rescue after Dess ended up there after a space-time distortion in their Hisui-like home universe.
- Two Spyro the Dragon continuities are represented in the RP, specifically those of The Legend of Spyro (most notably through Dark Cynder, who is part of the Dark Sisterhood) and the Reignited Trilogy (which is most heavily affiliated with Eye-Sicle and where the Greens and Anne and the Plantars are currently hiding away from the Dark Stanford and his goons). This was lampshaded in Reboot S181, which Reignited!Spyro and Dark Cynder both appeared in, and Spyro did not recognize Cynder (but nonetheless felt a sense of deja vu upon seeing her) while Cynder herself quickly deduced that this wasn't "her" Spyro.
- All of 6k1's tributes from the Magic School Bus Universe are from the original show, with the reboot taking place in an alternate timeline where Ms. Frizzle's sister Fiona replaced her as their teacher. None of the Friz Kids are aware of this since their Rides Again counterparts have yet to appear in the Gamesnote , but 6k1 keeps their existence a secret from them.
- Even Panem itself has drastically changed after the Original Rebellion against Snow since his death was intervened by GASK when they opened it to the Multiverse. After he was overthrown again in the second Rebellion secretly organized by Billy, Paylor was elected as president and is currently developing the country for the better. She also made travel between Districts unrestricted, but District 13 chose to remain autonomous.
However, Ichi once flew his jet from District 10 to District 12 during Snow's regime but didn't get caught. 6k1 was also able to evacuate to Ichi's bunkernote when the Library was set on fire and again for Villain Month despite the restrictions. This implies that either the nominators are more privileged in travel than the average Panemian or Ichi had the tech to avoid detection.
- All of Vengeful Bale's tributes come from AR worlds, and they were all affected by the Multiversal Convergence. AR Equestria, in particular, is mostly like the Equestria where 6k1 nominates her tributes, except that Grogar is really Grogar instead of Discord in disguise. Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow also defected from the Legion and were put under community service after the final battle instead of being turned into stone.
- Animate Inanimate Object: While the Games are no stranger to sentient objects fighting in the Arena, many others were brought to life by Star Energy, which came from the meteors that crashed on a hilltop just after Mr. Star's belated birthday party there.
- Arc Villain:
- Valecor and Timewrecker for almost the entirety of Convergence.
- The Legion of Doom from early Convergence until Reboot Season 99 in ASAS.
- Artificial Limbs Are Stronger: After Bill Cipher bit off their hand, Frisk had it replaced with a prosthetic by Alphys. It's painted to look exactly like their other hand, and they can summon an anti-dark magic barrier around themself with it.
- Atomic F-Bomb: Scipion dropped one when he got disqualified for getting trapped in the Minus World in the 2nd Reboot Nominator Games.
- Back for the Dead: Activities related to the Webking House went unknown for many seasons, last seen involving Libre being revived after he ended up in the Arena in Reboot Season 167, and other things. By the time we see them again, most of them have been knocked out as Libre sets off a bomb that kills all of them except him and Lily, severing The Entities from the world.
- Bad Date:
- Back when she was working in her universe's local library, Wanda Banks once went on a Valentine's date, but she lost control of her powers and accidentally destroyed the restaurant she and her date were in. He dumped her and she never saw him ever since.
- Played for Laughs in the Las Pegasus Arc when Wendy O. Koopa dragged Alex into a date amidst the battle between the heroes and her brothers. Jabberjaw had to rescue Alex from the food court since he was trapped inside Wendy's water bubble, his worst fear.
- Bag of Spilling: Any powers or weapons the tributes acquire in the Arena can't be carried over to their next season. Originally, they can't use them outside since it was illegal, but Paylor legalized it after Reboot Season 118 under Hans' request. This revision only applies to powers and self-crafted weapons, as weapons provided by the sponsors are Arena property.
- Ballroom Blitz: Happened twice in Scipion's party, once when Mr. Mind secretly transformed Bale into a Skullcrawler during the latter's battle with Giorno, and again when Flowey crashed the whole tournament to exact revenge on 6k1, believing that she abandoned him for the party.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: How Tabby was prepared to be sacrificed to Rubyfrost by Akumo to free him from his deal with the latter: by having Rubyfrost's handmaidens wash her before forcing her to wear a see-through dress. Noire assisted him with the preparations, secretly trying to help Tabby to escape because of her feelings for her.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Jorgen von Strangle warned Ichi and Power that his wish-granting abilities might not work as intended outside his universe, as he showed up at the latter's home in the Fillyppines, which is in the same universe as Equestria, to scold them for breaking Da Rules by using a You-Doo Doll to force Snow to reduce Villain Month to just Villain Week. Timewrecker, overhearing the conversation using his advanced tech, mocked them for believing that they can just wish themselves out of trouble.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Across both threads, there have been various villainous organizations that have gone out against the nominators more than once, most notably the Legion of Doom, Timewrecker's crew and the Dark Nominators, the League of Evil, ???'s (actually Dark Bale's) Legion, the Gospel of Rubyfrost, "Scattered Brain" and the Blight Ganons, the Infinite Darkness, and the Dark Sisterhood.
- Big "NO!": Power screamed this at the top of her lungs when Toriel played a Wild Draw 4 Card on her during Bale's party.
- Big "WHAT?!":
- In the interlude between Reboot Seasons 44 and 45, Dave and his travel group for Detective Gamechanger's party all had this reaction when 6k1 told them that they were running late.
- In the interlude between Reboot Seasons 47 and 48, Carlos's classmates all had this reaction when he announced that he might be sent back to the Arena for the summer.
- Bigger on the Inside: The Arena looks like it has the standard dimensions on the outside, but inside, it's big enough to house infinitely many tributes, even those larger than Earth, and host a wide array of environments. Strangely, people outside the Forcefield can see what's inside, but to them, its boundaries look smaller than they actually are.
- Bizarrchitecture: Cutegirl's 12-floor apartment complex has Escher-style rooms with stairs that move every which way, walls that twist inside-out, and floating tiles that can be used as improvised stairs. It also has an elevator that takes visitors directly to the floors they want, but it appears extremely rarely.
- Body Double:
- Over the course of the Games, the nominators eventually decided to use digital clones of their tributes to protect them from the horrors of the Arena. These clones act exactly like their originals and the memories and powers they acquire can be transferred to them if they wish.
- Starting sometime during Bale's party, Dave uses data recreation for some of his tributes so the real deals won't get traumatized in the Arena. Billy, inspired by him, also uses them for his tributes.
- Starting in Reboot Season 118, Bale employs Maquette copies of the tributes he intends to nominate, which he programs to fight in the games.
- Despite all the benefits they have over nominating tributes "traditionally", 6k1 refused to transition to them because she believed that they were "digital meat shields" only designed to rob the originals off their placements. In truth, she was so used to nominating them the old way she struggled with coming to terms with the new method. Dave, who pioneered it, tried but failed to convince her to change, though Hans had better luck when he taught her to accept it but not forget the good things of the past. It wasn't until Power and Alphys built the Cloning Capsule for her, which was specially designed to ease her with the transition by preserving the impact of almost all the events, that she was finally convinced to data clone her tributes.
- Starting in Reboot Season 143, Stanford built a cloning remote at the behest of Eye-Sicle to summon exact duplicates of his tributes. They disappear instantly if they're hit hard enough, and their memories are recorded in the remote.
- Ichi deploys android versions of himself whenever rogue tributes try to kill him or he gets forced into the Arena due to certain events. 6k1, Billy, and Eye-Sicle eventually followed suit by using bodyguard clones to protect themselves the same way, though the first one's willing to have her clone's memories transferred to her to "preserve the authenticity" of the event.
- Over the course of the Games, the nominators eventually decided to use digital clones of their tributes to protect them from the horrors of the Arena. These clones act exactly like their originals and the memories and powers they acquire can be transferred to them if they wish.
- Bowdlerise: In-universe, Billy seeks to have the seasons censored for his kid tributes, following his new policy at the time to protect them besides using data clones. 6k1 and Tabby, however, objected to this, the former fearing that he might demand the Capitol to broadcast it to the entire Multiverse and the latter calling him out for his overprotectiveness.
- "Brave the Ride" Plot: One of the subplots of the Las Pegasus Arc involved Power conquering her fear of rollercoasters that stemmed from a bad foalhood memory of her mom cancelling the family carnival trip after Power got sick on the ride when her cousins dared her to ride it. Inspired by her dream where Ichi helped her get over it, Power invited him to ride with her, and they both enjoyed it in the end. Aaron also rode with Lucian, not wanting him to ride alone, but the former ended up fainting from the speed while the latter enjoyed it thanks to the pills he took for his weak heart.
- Break the Cutie:
- Poor Mikey had it rough in the Games. His outings in the Battle Royale and Death Battle of Reboot Seasons 52 and 73, respectively, weren't his best, emotionally speaking.
- He was doing just fine in the first half of Season 52. But then he lost his friend Nemo, accidentally killed his father with his new powers, and got himself into two fights in a row. By the end of the first week, he tried summoning the Genie for his final wish, which was implied to be that he wanted to go home already, but cried when he couldn't because the latter had been killed by Shuuya Kano earlier. Tuxedo Meta Knightnote then invited him to his camp as an apology for fighting him that day. This gave Mikey a chance to repay him by remodeling his camp, only for them to have a falling out due to a misunderstanding on Tux's part about Mikey's Patricide, resulting in Tux kicking him out of his camp and torturing him alongside Goku Black.
- Things didn't look up for him in Season 73, either. While he had bonding moments with BTS early on, he was constantly pursued for several days by Alatreon, who tried killing him. While trying to escape the dragon's clutches, Mikey was concerned about BTS when they began losing their sanity after being tortured by the Legion of Doom. After having his hand bitten of by Alatreon while trying to appease it with food, he bumped into Kernel, who unwittingly offended him when he brought up the dragon winning the triathlon he competed in the other night. This stressed out Mikey so much that he killed Sarge's cat the next day just to vent, but Alatreon found that so unforgivable it punished the boy by killing him.
- Like his schoolmate in the aforementioned seasons, Ralphie also had it rough in Season 62. After losing his classmate Arnold to Daretti in the Bloodbath, he hosted a Fan Convention in memory of him and wished that he went to Billy's Business School with him. Ralphie also bottled up his emotions until he took them out on Bellona by killing her for taking too long to fix the ferris wheel. He then confessed at Dabbing Luigi's Tribute Support Group about his feelings throughout the season, even saying sorry to 6k1 for venting on her by killing Dharkon in Season 36, but despite their best efforts to comfort him, he was still a sobbing mess thanks to the Tragic Clown. Unfortunately, Ralphie met his tragic end when he failed to escape the environmental hazards in the Final Destination Arena Event, causing him to fall one place short of a podium finish.
- While Power went through trauma in the first four Nominator Games, she was put through a wringer in the 2nd one in the Reboot. She was severely wracked with grief when she witnessed Ichi being brutally murdered by his own sister, Psyche, and the pony drowned her sorrows to try relieving herself of her temptation to avenge him. It didn't work, and she was reduced to tears again when she saw TTS!Alivia reviving Ichi... only for him to shrivel up and die again. Power even started ignoring 6k1's concerns for her, and tried making amends with Psyche by making a crystal sculpture of themselves... only for Psyche to reject it out of heartbreak. Power then met her tragic end when she mutated into a horrific dragon-pony hybrid after drinking a tainted energy drink, and was put out of her misery by Sailor Tardis.
- Poor Mikey had it rough in the Games. His outings in the Battle Royale and Death Battle of Reboot Seasons 52 and 73, respectively, weren't his best, emotionally speaking.
- Brick Joke:
- When Power planned to invite Ralsei to her watch party for Reboot Season 61 along with Ichigo, the latter thought of doing his best Hagrid impression when they met... and he did exactly that during the party itself.Ichigo: Yer a wizard, Harry.Ralsei: [looks at him with a derped expression on his face] Who's Harry?
- After learning from Ichigo that a desperate 6k1 had seriously considered turning herself into a Starble while attempting to communicate with Mimi, Power contemplated drawing a Starble-ized version of the Database Manager. Come their watch party for Season 61, she does just that.
- Just before Reboot Season 65 began, Ichi tried guessing Power's Nightmare Night costume, and predicted that she'd go as Ralsei. Three seasons later, he was right.
- In the 2nd Reboot Nominator Games (Season 100), 6k1 came across a sign that said: "Eating carpet extremely prohibited". She quickly realizes that Mimi might've eaten the one in her basement just as she said that, and it turned out to be the case when the Starble apologized for it after the season.
- Before he and Power left for the Dragon Realms to rescue Wanda-in-Cleo's-body, Ralsei, who was in Power's body at the time, told Ichi that Susie would love to wear the replica of Ares's armor Ichi made for Power. Susie confirmed just that when she called them when they arrived at the Peace Keepers Homeworld... but she didn't want to wear the armor with the Twin Ribbon, which was originally Power's, that Ralsei wore with it.
- When Power planned to invite Ralsei to her watch party for Reboot Season 61 along with Ichigo, the latter thought of doing his best Hagrid impression when they met... and he did exactly that during the party itself.
- Campfire Character Exploration: On the way to GC's base for Billy's party, Power and some of 6k1's tributes set up camp in a forest clearing, where they exchanged stories about their adventures. It's also revealed there that 6k1 had a problem with "tribute theft", or when someone else nominates her tributes, causing her to feel hurt, especially if they make the Hall of Fame under their new nominator.
- Cat Up a Tree: When Asgore and Asriel trained the Fire Department, which was composed of Woshuas, they assigned them to rescue a Temmie stuck up a tree in Snowdin for the last part of the training for the day. Toriel suggested that they should practice a rescue mission actually involving fire, but Asgore explained that they were teaching the Woshuas how to reach high places, an essential skill in firefighting.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: As the rescue team tried defeating the Queen Metroid and her swarm during the Wednesday Mission, Greta calls Wednesday that she'd try busting him out of the hive. She only arrived just after the Metroid hatchling sucked out his bracer's energy under the Queen's orders, destroying it and freeing him from Dark Stanford's control.
- Cellphones Are Useless: While they were imprisoned in Scipion's makeshift lair, Kris tried calling Susie after they saw Scipion use an electronic device to check his Cooking "School" in the Arena. Susie wasn't able to answer the call because her phone was knocked into a mud puddle during her fight with Onox in the Gurgling Swamp. Alphys then tried calling Kris to tell them that her team's on the way, only for Kris's phone to die.
- Cerebus Syndrome: While Convergence still has some comedic moments like in the main thread, things took a dark turn when Villain Month happened, where the villains were free to pull off nefarious deeds without the heroes stopping them. As a result, many nominators such as 6k1, Power, Ichi, and Psyche went into hiding while the others were exploring the Voidlands, but even then they were still affected to varying degrees.
- Chained Heat: Group tributes can't separate from each other since the invisible tribute barrier will harmlessly zap them if they try doing so. The maximum distance varies Depending on the Writer, but it's generally big enough to allow some long-range combat with others, but not too big to let them separate within the barrier so easily.
- Children Forced to Kill: Two episodes of "Future of Panem" involve President Snow forcing children to kill people they adored such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Santa Claus. Another had him forcing a child to kill his father because the latter opposed Snow.
- Convection Schmonvection: Zig-zagged. When the Delta Warriors visited Hotland, Alphys applied cooling dirt on them to protect them from the heat, but Frisk, Asriel, and Chara can traverse it just fine without it even if they don't live there. There's also a Lethal Lava Land in the Voidlands, but heat exhaustion was a real hazard because the trope was averted there. Luckily, the first batch of travelers were far from the heat when the lava started melting the rollercoaster they were riding on.
- Cool Starship: Billy's Eagle of the Universe, which is based on a Kendorian scoutship, but heavily modified with features like a simulator, increased speed and agility, as well as having an external appearance as that of an eagle. Timewrecker's Cetus One also qualifies too, and so does Mr. Star's Spacepod.
- Crazy-Prepared: 6k1, Ichigo, and Gamechanger always have plans in case of the worst case scenarios. Timewrecker is also this to terrifying degrees, putting him many steps ahead of the heroes.
- Cult: The Gospel of Alchemy, Science, and Knowledge, or GASK, is an evil cult who was responsible for the games in the first place.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Elliot, at the very least, is said to have been abused
by his father at a young age, to the point where he tried to kill himself over it.
- Deadline News: Not even Leonard Sutton, the host of the Hunger Games since Reboot Season 69, is safe from the tributes. In Season 190, for example, the Qu invaded his hosting box and threw him down from a great height. Thankfully, the Healers revived him so he could host the rest of the season, but since it took them the entire night to revive him, Gamemaker Stella took over as substitute host until then.
- Death Is Cheap: Since tributes can be renominated, they're simply revived before being sent back to the Arena. The nominators also have their own revival methods in case they die, too, but it doesn't mean they won't fear death or recover easily from the trauma even if they know they'll be okay. However, dying permanently is still possible in the setting, like when the deceased chooses to pass on for good, a ruthless villain goes out of their way to make sure their victim stays dead, or the injuries were too severe to be cured quickly and easily, so the fear is not unfounded.
- Destroy the Security Camera: During the Library heist, Greta, who was disguised as Shortstuff by Morholomew, made short work of the security cameras. Ally, who was watching the feed in the basement, immediately took notice as the cameras went down one by one, and quickly went to the first floor to confront her and the rest of the thieves.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: While in Reboot Season 54, Divine Kai had a fatal heart attack in both the main thread and Convergence, she was accidentally killed by Yona when she tried giving her CPR in the latter.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Literally, as there's a magical pair of leather pants that turns villainous tributes good or at least makes them less evil when worn. Oogie Boogie wore a pair in Reboot Season 187 and acted silly for the rest of the season.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Ichigo lives in an underground bunker, which contains laboratories, a computer room, an armory, a teleporter room, a training room, a garage housing an assortment of vehicles, and a rec room, among others. He also has robot servants that help run the place.
- Eldritch Location: The Realm of Unyielding Chaos, or Voidlands for short, is what used to be the universe of the OG Timeline, which was destroyed by Scipion, who turned into an Eldritch Abomination from drinking too much literal Nightmare Fuel, in Season 250. It's a fusion of all the universes that's inhabited by eldritch versions of the tributes of that time, some of them having drastically different powers from their Reboot counterparts. The place is so dangerous that only Eldritch Abominations can survive in it without needing protective equipment.
- Embarrassing Nickname:
- Bill Cipher's often called an "Egyptian Nacho", with Valecor being the first to call him as such. Many others, particularly those who oppose him, caught on and began calling the pyramid demon that as well.
- Power Stroke's called "Pow-Pow" by her aunt Miranda Rights. It's her foalhood nickname, and Power's friend Ichi couldn't help but call her that as well.
- Morgan constantly calls Tabby "Tabbitch", much to her chagrin.
- Alex has also taken a liking to call Lucian "Lulu" and Oscar "Kiki".
- Ending Memorial Service: Billy hosted GC's funeral after the latter died in the Voidlands. It served as the final arc for Convergence.
- Evil Counterpart: The Dark Nominators are this to the regular ones, with some of them working for Timewrecker like Dark Billy.
- Exceptionally Tolerant: While there's still some discrimination in the Multiverse, such as James, Arthur, and Nick keeping their polyamorous relationship a secret for most of ASAS and Roy making misogynistic comments, the nominators are generally tolerant and/or respectful towards minority groups. They use the right pronouns for trans/nonbinary people and are cool with LGBT+ couples, and don't make a big deal about their racial/species differences.
- Exposition Party: While the guests had fun for the most part, GC's party was just an excuse for him and Valecor to warn them of Nightmare Scipion and prepare to fight him.
- Fantastic Slurs: "Digital meat shields" for data clones, as they're treated like the originals because they're designed to perfectly emulate them. Power took offense when Alphys innocently brought up the concern about using them to counter tribute attacks on the nominators, then realized that she was also being unintentionally bigoted towards them when she described them to Ichi. 6k1, however, unironically used the term when expressing her hatred towards data clones, offending Dupe, who regularly summons her clone for her work. Due to a mutual misunderstanding on the topic, he temporarily left to give himself a timeout.
- Fever Dream Episode: When Joaquin caught a cold after the search for CG, he took all of Cleo's cough medicine for him. He then had a dream which was like an acid trip, with his friends randomly morphing and living fruits singing nonsensical Spanish songs. The singing then became an ominous chant of what's to come for the 'Brijes, and Zuma, a natural-born Alebrije who can traverse the dream realm, advised Joaquin to control his True Alebrije form in preparation for the dangers ahead. Joaquin then woke up in the triage wondering if the last part with Zuma was real because to him, it was the most "normal" part of the dream.
- First Pet Story: Mimi's character arc in CVG was this, and 6k1 learned to love her after GC gave her to her as a gift. Despite all the trouble Mimi gave her owner as a mischievous Starble, 6k1 promised to take care of her after learning about her missing parents.
- Fisher Kingdom: Several universes such as Equestria and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon World transform outside visitors into their native species or alter their art styles, or even subject them to their universe laws such as the Looniverse's Toon Physics. This effect can be bypassed using magic or protective devices such as anti-transformation portals while shapeshiftersnote can retain their forms at will.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: A serendipitous case: During Reboot Season 153, shortly before the heist at the Library, Puff the Magic Dragon ran afoul of a copy of Flowey at the mall for villains and was taken out of the season by him, much to Asriel's unease. As the heist ultimately led to Asriel being forcibly turned back into the real Flowey by the Blight Ganons, it makes what was originally just another fatal event in the season come off as rather ominous in hindsight.
- Forgotten First Meeting:
- While Power and Ichi did meet in the 2nd OT Nominator Games (Season 200), their friendship didn't take off until the 1st Reboot Nominator Games (Season 50). Power only realized this after the latter because she was possessed by WarioGuy when she met Ichi in the former.
- Scipion claimed that he only met Lucian at parties, forgetting the first time they met as young Pokémon, when Aaron rescued them from a cave.
- Foul Cafeteria Food: Implied when Susie enjoyed the various Pokémon food prepared by Freddy in Scipion's party, saying it was a lot better than the cafeteria food in her school. Whether this was just her opinion since she's a Big Eater otherwise or if the cafeteria food objectively wasn't delicious was left ambiguous.
- Fourth Date Marriage: Downplayed. After officially dating for three days (or 4 months and 17 days on Earth Prime), Dave and Fira got engaged. Lampshaded by Spike:"That's an awfully short time to make sure your relationship's secure."
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In-universe. Unlike Earth Prime, which is the in-universe depiction of the real world, The 4th World is the metafictional universe where the nominators' respective writers reside. It's separated from the rest of the Multiverse by the Fourth Wall, but it was destroyed at least twice when it was nominated as a tribute in OT Season 96 and Reboot Season 108. As a result, the writers are just as vulnerable as the nominators to rogue tribute attacks like being summoned to the Arena to kill another tribute. They can also be nominated as tributes by being part of massive real-world populations.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- Besides temporary ones that happen in the Arena note , a massive one happened in June's cheer-up party for Stanford when Cleo, who swapped souls with Wanda after the former accidentally unleashed Soulstorm, tried teaching her to use the spell to try swapping them back, only for Wanda to fail and swap almost everyone else around instead. Power and Ralsei were among the ones not affected... until Swapper tried swapping June and Scipion back to their own bodies, only for it to fail due to his powers working differently and swap the former two instead.
- One-sided example: in Reboot Season 194, Rouxls Kaard accidentally projected himself astrally into Swatch's body in his sleep. His voice didn't swap with him but he still kept his Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe accent, but he had to break into his own camp to slap his own body awake to return to it. Swatch woke up confused and was disappointed with the act, even if it was an accident.
- Furry Confusion: Anthropomorphic and non-anthro animals regularly meet up in the Arena and out, leading to some interesting interactions between them.
- While Pokémon are officially classified as sapient creatures by the Gamemakers, Pokémon from the Mystery Dungeon Worlds can talk and live like humans, though wild Pokémon like the ones from the "main series" Pokémon World live there, too.
- Speaking of Pokémon, 6k1's Vaporeon, itself a regular mon, was afraid of Sonic-style Alolan Vulpix because the latter was standing on two legs and could talk.
- Gadgeteer Genius:
- Several nominators such as 6k1, Ichi, and GC are good with tech, and the latter prefers fighting with his inventions over having superpowers.
- Alphys, being the Underground's Royal Scientist, makes all sorts of useful inventions for her friends, like Frisk's prosthetic hand and special equipment for the Royal Guard such as goggles to correct Doggo's reverse object blindness.
- Lucian also has knowledge in gadgets and even built some for his friends.
- Gag Echo: After seeing Power-in-Ralsei's-body lose control of her Stand while trying to use Ralsei's healing magic, Aaron and Ichi petted her to comfort her. She felt flustered by the gesture while Ralsei-in-Power's-body blushed at the scene because it felt surreal for him to watch "himself" in that situation. This was mirrored at the Peace Keepers Homeworld, where Power blushed at watching "herself" being petted by Aaron after Ralsei accidentally teleported himself near him during their training.
- Genre Savvy: Over the course of ASAS, the nominators and a few of their tributes have started becoming aware of how the Arena works, but they're still subjected to its influence with only some degree of resistance depending on their mental resilience.
- Giant Spider: Some of Jace Webking's spiders are described to be far larger than the average spider, such as the spider that carried Tubbo's corpse and Tommy's sausage-turned remains to the Webking House in Reboot Season 148 being described as "motorcycle-sized".
- Glitch Entity:
- G-13 was a virus that threatened to destroy universes by turning them into glitchy messes without leaving a trace. It was one of Timewrecker's experiments that Escaped from the Lab during the Great Destruction, and his group sought to destroy it because it went out of control and some of his members were from universes it destroyed.
- How every failed HGS save was depicted in-universe when nominated for Reboot Season 223; it's depicted as a glitched, Pibby-esque amalgamation of the usual in-universe depiction of EVERYTHING. Its powers grow stronger with every failed save made by the Gamemakers.
- Go Mad from the Revelation:
- In Reboot Season 95, the Music Fanbase underwent this when Immorticia pointed out that they were sent to the Arena by Terminus, driving them to kill her.
- In Reboot Season 123, Yamato Kisaragi outed Ugo as the shapeshifting CosmosAndChaos, causing him to go insane for the rest of the season.
- Gray Rain of Depression: In Reboot Season 52, Mikey tried to summon the Genie for his final wish, but couldn't because the latter had been killed by Shuuya Kano earlier. It rained as soon as he started crying.
- Halloween Episode: After the Sayaka Mission, Hazemaster decided to host a Halloween party at his museum to relax from it. It lasted well past Halloween itself because the guests had a costume/talent contest, with Dave winning it, Fira placing 2nd, and Carlos, Ralsei, and Mr. Godzilla tying for 3rd. Dave and Fira even got engaged to cap it off.
- Heist Episode: In Reboot Season 152, Bonnie and Clyde decided to raid the Library with the help of Wednesday and the 'Brijes after hearing 6k1note tell their cousin PJ that she'd be going to a party. The following season, they tore through the Library's security systems and invaded the basement to steal her Database notes, only to try prying Asriel's ring out of him instead because of its value. They didn't realize that it lets him power-up into his Hyperdeath form, but at the cost of turning him back into Flowey if he loses it. The thieves learned this the hard way when the Blight Ganons broke in and forcibly corrupted him back into his psychotic alter ego. The Blights then ordered them to keep the ring away from him so he can wreak havoc at the party in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon World.
- Heroes Gone Fishing: The nominators often throw parties after a big mission or the Nominator Games to relax from them, but they're not without their own mishaps.
- Heroic BSoD: Fighting in the Games gives many tributes stress to the point that they break down. It also happens to them and several nominators even outside the Arena.
- Power Stroke, being a self-admitted Nervous Wreck, has several moments. In fact, she has broken down so many times she's at greater risk of suffering from Hopeless Magic and losing her colors than Twilight Sparkle is.
- In the interlude between Reboot Seasons 49 and 50, she mentally broke down during President Snow's party when she heard that OG universe still exists as the Voidlands, traumatized by what her (or 6k1's) tributes did in the old timeline and Wario Guy possessing her in the second Nominator Games (OG Season 200). She got better after Dave's group and Ralsei comforted her by reminding her that she wasn't alone. Even Billy's tributes consoled her.
- During the 1st Reboot Nominator Games (Season 50), she was reduced to tears after witnessing her friends Ralsei and Gale die. She eventually got better after the season, even forgiving Ichigo for killing the latter for yanking his hair.
- Upon realizing that Psyche was among the many Australians who had perished in Season 58's Bloodbath, she broke down crying while discussing it with an equally shaken Ichigo, who wasted no time teleporting to Power's home in order to provide her with a shoulder to cry on while Vengeful Bale offered her some consoling words over the radio.
- After witnessing Miko Mitama's horrifically excessive murder of V on the first day of Reboot Season 60, then learning that her art school had been leveled and Pointy had died from her wounds in the aftermath despite the droids' best efforts, Power completely broke down. Thankfully, she got better when Twilight, Starfall and Ichigo paid her a visit in order to personally comfort her.
- Upon seeing Dory, 6k1's own tribute, destroy Tier 0 aka EVERYTHING in Reboot Season 74, she cowered in a Troubled Fetal Position, just like when Valecor first told her about the Voidlands. Ichi instinctively teleported himself to her house to reassure her that the Second Great Destruction didn't happen because of thatnote .
- She broke down sobbing at her and Ichi's watch party for Reboot Season 80 after seeing the two versions of Twilight, the pony she idolizes and thinks the world of, who'd been nominated perish at the hands of Kilik and Anakin Skywalker. She even had to leave the party early because of it.
- Even after she learned to control her emotions, she still broke down upon seeing Ichi being murdered by his adoptive sister Psyche in the 2nd Reboot Nominator Games. Thankfully, her friends and family visited her at the Recovery Room to cheer her up after the season, and she even called Ichi himself to make sure he was okay.
- Even Power's human counterpart 6k1 breaks down on occasion.
- In Reboot Season 54, she was anguished with grief after witnessing the Database, which had a copy of it downloaded into a robot resembling Power, get pulverized by the Messenger. For her, it was like being forced to watch her child die while she was unable to do anything about it. Thankfully, GC made a new bot, which resembled Twilight, to comfort her the next day.
- After the Database Library was set on fire by LOLW in Reboot Season 63, 6k1 fell to her knees and broke down crying, wondering where she went wrong as Manager. Thankfully, her assistants, nominator friends, and tributes gave her words of encouragement, motivating her to spring back into action.
- When Timewrecker leaked her OT memories and time machine to the public, she was driven into catatonia. Thankfully, GC reassured her that that wouldn't be a big deal in the long run, but that didn't stop Timewrecker from messing with her, anyway.
- After witnessing Dory destroy Tier 0 aka EVERYTHING in Reboot Season 74, she froze up and collapsed as memories of the First Great Destruction came back to her. It took her a while to regain consciousness, and Dave comforted her by vowing to never leave her behind.
- She fainted when what she thought was "her" Twilight was "stolen" in Reboot Season 97 when AR Twilight and her friends were forced into the Arena by the Legion of Doom. While "tribute theft" is not a big deal for him unless said "stolen" tribute performs better under their new nominator, Scipion was concerned for her because she overreacted. The other Twilight then gave her "friendship lessons" to help her overcome this.
- Like Power after the 2nd Reboot Nominator Games, she fell into despair when Dave didn't visit her at the Recovery Room after the third one. As always, her friends and family comforted her and helped her learn to accept that she can press on without him, but the Waterblight Ganon told her the harsh truth that Dave can't always be there for her.
- After learning just how traumatic the Great Destruction had been for 6k1 and Power, Ichigo was left feeling racked with sorrow and guilt over his decision to stay holed up in his bunker during that time instead of reaching out to not only them, but anyone else left reeling in the timeline-destroying catastrophe's wake. Fortunately, this prompted Power to visit his base in order to personally console him.
- Like Power, Lucian the Dusk Lycanroc is prone to panic attacks and almost always faints when frightened. He's been trying his best to stay calm, but his worst scare happened when he went on a dangerous mission in Planet SR388 to destroy Wednesday's bracer and free him from Dark Stanford's control. Wednesday also did his best to comfort him during the treacherous journey, but Lucian got severely injured and traumatized by an Omega Metroid, and then blacked out. Aaron was extremely worried about him when he arrived to rescue him, but thankfully, he consoled him when he broke down crying over lying to him about the mission as well as risking Wednesday's life and Colby's sacrifice.
- The quest to SR388 similarly leaves Stanford very shaken up afterward due to him becoming aware of the atrocities committed by Dark Stanford in the worst possible way, along with he and Eye-Sicle nearly being killed and replaced by a malevolent X Parasite. Stanford is so shaken up that even Scipion and Eye-Sicle are both sympathetic to him and insist he take time to mentally recuperate from the experience.
- Power Stroke, being a self-admitted Nervous Wreck, has several moments. In fact, she has broken down so many times she's at greater risk of suffering from Hopeless Magic and losing her colors than Twilight Sparkle is.
- Hive Mind: Group tributes generally are compelled to perform the same action because they're treated as one tribute by the Gamemakers, but there are exceptions depending on the members in question. Because of this, kills are always shared between them, even if not everyone contributed to the murder.
- Horrifying the Horror: In Reboot Season 216, Vaati, in his One-Winged Angel form, had nightmares about being timewrecked. It shows just how horrifying it is to suffer such A Fate Worse Than Death when even a terrifying villain like him fears it.
- Hot Springs Episode: After defeating Vahirom, the Fiery Blue Wings, the Bugtrio, "Team Jokers", Susie, Noelle, and Berdly went to some hot springs near Dragonspiral Tower to relax from the stressful mission, enjoying each other's company before calling it a night.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Zekrom trained Aaron how to fight, he transformed Lucian into a Midnight Lycanroc to teach him how to fight his own friend in dire situations. This happened again when Lucian was possessed by a wild Spiritomb during Aaron and Scipion's duel in the latter's makeshift lair.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: During Haze's Halloween party, 6k1 disguised herself as Power for fun, but decided to impersonate her and lie about liking data clones to Bale because she was tired of hearing him talk about them. While Bale fell for her lies at first, he eventually caught on when she ended up implicating herself.6k1 (as Power): I'm just wondering if you're gonna transfer [Maquette!Dinosaur Ryuzaki's] good Arena memories to the real Ryuzaki after [Reboot Season 130]. So that, y'know... he won't miss out.Bale: Since when were you this intersted [sic] in tribute's memories... "Power"?
- In-Universe Soundtrack: Some of the tributes are fully aware of their Leitmotifs, which are often played in the Arena. They also play remixes in parties, and Chara recalls several alternate Frisks who killed all the monsters just to dance to Sans's boss theme.
- Inevitable Waterfall: James and Henry encountered one right after the Metroid Queen threw their cocoon out of their prison and into the stream down below. It led them back to the surface of Planet SR388.
- Jaw Drop: Whenever Sans or Papyrus witness something shocking, their jawbones literally fall to the floor.
- Kid from the Future: Techra and Titania, AR Meta Knight and Lucina's daughters, time travel from the distant future to join the Games.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: The rescue teams' strategy for raiding Scipion's makeshift lair to rescue Kris and Lucian. Undyne suggested doing so even if she was aware she was contradicting Glimmer's advice to stick together, only for Susie to immediately run off to look for Kris. While Morgan trapped Susie for her trouble, the plan worked in the rescue teams' favor as Aaron, James, and Ralsei split off to find her while the others fought off Ridley's crew and the Dark Star.
- Lie to the Beholder: Before running away to New Durango, Freyja and Nyx gave magic stones to Bonnie, Clyde, and the 'Brijes that cast illusions that hide their true forms. They were still themselves under the disguises, but they have to hold the stones near them to retain them.
- Lighter and Softer: Another Side, Another Story is this to Convergence, and while it still has its dark moments, there are more comedic and lighthearted moments than its predecessor.
- Loose Canon: While Convergence/Another Side, Another Story takes place concurrently with the canon seasons, several liberties are taken with some parts of the canon to make the story work, like Snow's many deaths becoming Snowclones being killed and several tributes not actually dying despite being stated to do so.
- Made of Evil:
- Valecor is an Exterrerian, a being made of literal Nightmare Fuel as a result of an experiment by Scientist Dave. GASK also experimented on these creatures in the OG timeline, but they failed because the beings weren't intelligent enough.
- Nightmare is also the same species as Valecor, and this let the former secretly absorb the latter's essence while he was still active.
- Make Way for the New Villains: ???'s (actually Dark Bale's) Legion, who had been working in the background for their personal goals, killed Markus after the fall of the Legion of Doom and then raided his churches to turn them into their new bases.
- Manipulative Editing: The Gamemakers sometimes edit the footage to make scenes more dramatic or cover up inconsistencies such as tributes not actually dying when they're supposed to. However, they sometimes slip up, so they review the footage after the fact and adjust the kill tally accordingly.
- The Masquerade: Some worlds must be kept secret from others, such as the Dark World to the Light World, so the Gamemakers censor the footage of their inhabitants so they wouldn't be exposed to other worlds in their local broadcasting. It gets broken when Noelle realized that she wasn't dreaming about her last season at the time, Reboot Season 196, because she woke up with her watch stolen by Harry and Marv after she was revived. She lashed out at Susie for lying to her about her not just about her Arena experiences, but also her adventure in Cyber World, but Kris explained that it was for her and Berdly's protection as revealing the Dark World's existence to the Lightners might risk destroying both worlds with the Roaring. However, Noelle didn't forgive Susie immediately for the lie, though she and Berdly would do their best not to spread the secret to the other Lightners.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Fukuro and Imori, two workers at Dobu-2 Corp, may look like a woman and a man, respectively, but they're actually a long-haired man and a short-haired woman.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Besides the sheer number of tributes from various universes that are nominated every season (including the massive group tributes like Tier 0 aka EVERYTHING), there are many characters who are created specifically for the roleplay like the nominators and their assistants. Some of these characters are eventually nominated in the main thread.
- Meaningful Echo: When 6k1 fainted from seeing her own tribute Dory destroy Tier 0 in Reboot Season 74, Dave told the others to continue the mission to storm Zorua's base without him, saying, "let ME keep HER safe." When he collapsed from the wounds caused by Zorua detonating the base, 6k1 returned the favor by telling the others to go home ahead of them, saying almost the exact same line.
- Memory-Wiping Crew:
- Zanreo, 6k1, and Bale all have their tributes' memories of the seasons wiped after they've been revived. The process hasn't been perfected, however, but in 6k1's case, the Necromancy Department was eventually funded sufficiently so they can perfect it.
- Psyche also began wiping her tributes' memories starting in Reboot Season 73, after realizing that letting them retain them has caused them to suffer from the lasting trauma of being in the Games.
- Uxie is described as a "one-mon Obliviator team" by Ralsei. She can erase people's memories by opening her eyes in front of them, and she had been secretly wiping the Lightners' memories of seeing Darkners in the Arena before the events of Chapter 2.
- Mental Health Recovery Arc: In Reboot Seasons 81 and 82, Power learned to control her anxiety attacks by taking lessons with Twilight and Fluttershy. While her assertiveness training with Fluttershy was cancelled due to Discord interrupting her and Starfall's visit at the pegasus' cottage, Power still learned to be more self-confident by just observing them talk Discord down for pranking her.
- Mercy Kill: In Reboot Season 160, Sam Wheat does this upon all of humanity using a giant spoon after seeing them end up becoming eldritch horrors as a result of the Ghostbusters spiking their drinks with literal Nightmare Fuel during the Feast.
- Merged Reality:
- The ultimate goal of the Legion of Doom was to merge all the universes so they could rule them all at once. This resulted in various creatures appearing outside their home universes and freely roaming in the merged ones. Once the Legion was defeated, the effects of the Multiversal Convergence were undone by using their superweapon to fix them.
- The Voidlands has an ever-shifting landscape that rapidly and unpredictably transforms into various universes, given its eldritch nature.
- Me's a Crowd: Several nominators and villains use clones of themselves to make their jobs more efficient.
- Both Dave and Valecor can make clones of themselves so they can be in many places at once. They can also mentally communicate with them. Dave's clones may be augmented by the power of the Sheikah tribe for spying purposes, since the Sheikah are infamous for their ability to blend in the shadows.
- Dave also employs the use of man-made Replicas, which are more independent compared to his shadow clones. The Replica models are human in pretty much every way, since they are based off of Vexen's newest models for the Real Organization XIII.
- Downplayed with Billy, 6k1, and Power, who have only one clone each, but they help streamline their jobs.
- Billy has an exact clone that was made by generating his body accurately in a chamber, before the clone was brought to life and had memories of Billy copied and transferred to it. However, it lacks Billy's combat skills.
- 6k1 uses Dupe to clone herself, but due to his defect, her strength gets evenly divided between her and the clone.
- Power draws weaker clones of herself in different art styles and assigns them to her art school, replacing them when they die. Her first was a minimalist self-portrait named Pointy Stroke, who died from the wounds inflicted by Miko Mitama in Reboot Season 60. She was replaced by Paper Stroke, who was inspired by Twilight's form when she entered one of Moondancer's books to talk her out of her reclusiveness.
- Also downplayed with Elliot, since he and his clone are only different because of some time shenanigans.
- Elliot 1.0 and 2.0 were split around Reboot Season 52, when he was both sent back to his new body in his home multiverse and nominated for that season, as the Battle Royale was imminent then.
- Morgan the Morgrem can summon clones of himself during battles, which explode when they get hit.
- Deconstructed with "Archangel" Markus Hasselhoff. While he usually uses remote bodies to interact with the others, this is entirely a side effect he never wanted in the first place, since he was burnt by the upper class people living in the Capitol using white phosphorus allotropes and he has to live inside a capsule for the rest of his life.
- Mirror Match:
- Undyne, who was transformed into a Swampert when she entered the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon World, had one against the Dark Star when it transformed into Dark Undyne during the rescue mission for Lucian.
- Before it was nominated for Reboot Season 193, 6k1's Vaporeon fought against her Mew, which shapeshifted into it, for her disguise revealer experiment. She had to determine which one of them was Mew before either of them fainted, but misjudged and accidentally zapped the real Vaporeon with her device. However, it was only stunned for a while, and Mew healed it before it went to the Arena.
- Mistaken for Imprisonment: Kenny and Heidi went to the outskirts of New Durango to rescue her twin sister Holly from a horde of bandits, but it turned out she was their leader and the cave where she was seemingly trapped in was their new lair.
- Mistaken Identity:
- Alternate versions of canon characters (or "Prime Universe" selves) are regular tributes, and there are also alts of them who are near-perfect, if not exact copies, all the way down to their backstories. The nominators learned how to tell them apart, but it's still easy to make mistakes.
- While she's aware of them, 6k1 assumes that any tribute who shows up more than once is the same tribute from their first season for easier Database organization and because she believes that their experiences would be invalidated if an alt makes the Hall of Fame, rendering what seems to be many seasons of suffering just to get up there moot. While it is the case for her tributes, this came to a head when she thought the Legion of Doom forcibly nominated "her" Twilight into the Arena for Reboot Season 97 when it was AR Twilight instead, prompting the former to help her deal with her issues with "tribute theft". Twilight even wore a star-shaped clip so 6k1 can better tell her apart from other Twilights.
After accepting that the general public wouldn't care if the winning tributes are clones or alts, 6k1 made an exception for Sayaka Miki when she finally got 2nd Place along with her friends in Reboot Season 190. She had been suffering under an abusive nominator for so many Earth Prime years, 6k1 no longer cared if she was an alt or not in that season, as Mr. Star presumably nominated and/or cloned her instead of Psyche and "her" Sayaka needed to recover. However, her assumption of tributes being the same since their first season still stands for the first reason mentioned. - Power, being 6k1's counterpart, also assumes that her tribute friends are still themselves and not alts whenever someone else nominates them. On the contrary, Ichi assures her that they are alts so she wouldn't be worried, but this gets subverted when she calls them with her crystal ball to confirm with them that they're not.
- Ichi also mistakenly believed that the Chara he nominated back in OT Season 21 wasn't the same Chara who owned the Locket that 6k1 used against Photoshop Flowey in Scipion's Mystery Dungeon World until they confirmed it otherwise themself when 6k1 confronted them in their old village.
- While she's aware of them, 6k1 assumes that any tribute who shows up more than once is the same tribute from their first season for easier Database organization and because she believes that their experiences would be invalidated if an alt makes the Hall of Fame, rendering what seems to be many seasons of suffering just to get up there moot. While it is the case for her tributes, this came to a head when she thought the Legion of Doom forcibly nominated "her" Twilight into the Arena for Reboot Season 97 when it was AR Twilight instead, prompting the former to help her deal with her issues with "tribute theft". Twilight even wore a star-shaped clip so 6k1 can better tell her apart from other Twilights.
- 6k2note mistook Rebbeca, who was transformed into a Mismagius at Whispering Pines, for Persephone, another Mismagius 6k2's familiar with. Tokage pointed out that Persephone is centuries older.
- In the 4th Reboot Nominator Games (Season 200), CAC mistook Scipion, who was in June's body at the timenote , for being gender-swapped because he was out of the loop about the mass body-swapping incident.
- A two-way example occurs at the Rose Quarters, where Doppelganger Arle (who renamed herself "Lily" to differentiate herself from the original Arle) reacts to the presence of the Tempest System's Arle under the pretense that she was the same one that died in the explosion that destroyed the Webking House, and Ringo Andou initially comes to the wrong conclusion, thinking Lily is "Diacute Bayoen Arle", not Doppelganger Arle.
- Alternate versions of canon characters (or "Prime Universe" selves) are regular tributes, and there are also alts of them who are near-perfect, if not exact copies, all the way down to their backstories. The nominators learned how to tell them apart, but it's still easy to make mistakes.
- Mobile Fishbowl: Nemo and Dory each use one that's designed like Minion's.
- Modernized God: Satan wore Emo Teen clothes when Valecor visited him.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
- Galekh Xigisi believed that 6k1 nominated him in Reboot Season 37 under the assumption that all highbloods enjoyed slaughter, which offended him.
- Venus threatened to add an "Asshole Tax" to the Cosmic Crusaders' bill after Charlotte assumed that all Purugly were "greedy, swindling pigs".
- Edgar, despite being a stereotypical greedy Murkrow who likes shiny objects, called out Scipion for assuming that all Murkrow are like this.
- Never Split the Party: The basement team's strategy when they were investigating the Winter's End while the patrol team guarded it during the Sayaka Mission. However, Dave and Fira split from the others once when a voice beckoned them, which led them to being trapped by Dark Dave. Thankfully, he didn't seriously harm them, and he let them regroup with the others after confronting them about their relationship.
- No Endor Holocaust: To an extent whenever a tribute timewrecks another. Some of the ways they kill them cause massive collateral damage, but the other tributes seem to be conveniently out of range as they're not as severely affected as the victim for the rest of the season. However, the timewrecking in Reboot Season 60 was massive enough to destroy all the nominator schools and kill some of the teachers inside, but further measures were taken to prevent the destruction from happening again. Also, the Library didn't suffer any damage from the three timewrecking events in Seasons 60, 81, and 223 despite being inside the Arena.
- Non-Humans Lack Attributes: Lampshaded by Roy Koopa when he switched bodies with Kay the Birdo during June's cheer-up party for Stanford. He mentioned lacking... certain parts, despite neither of them having visible privates to begin with.
- Official Couple: Besides the unusual pairings that hook up in the Arena, the nominators and their tributes have found love outside it in one way or another. Some of the notable pairings are Dave/Fira as per Season 108, James/Arthur as per Season 115 (with Nick being added after Season 141), Tabby/Noire as per Season 125, George/Kayla as per Season 146, Asgore/Toriel as per Season 167, Henry/Tenn as per Season 206, and June/Aaron as per Season 222.
- Oh, My Gods!: With deities being Arena regulars, it's not uncommon for nominators and tributes alike to invoke their names. Ponies go "Oh my Celestia!", even if she retired and passed the crown to Twilight; Pokémon from the Mystery Dungeon Worlds scream the names of Legendaries and Mythicals, not just Arceus; while Ichi once "prayed to every conceivable deity and even a few inconceivable ones" that 6k1 wouldn't come for him when Carnage gave Ally a death threat in Reboot Season 54.
- One Steve Limit: Averted in general. With all the tributes coming from different universes, it's inevitable that many of them would share the same name. Notable aversions include:
- "Dave". There's Dave the Assassin, minor character Scientist Dave, and NPC Crazy Dave.
- "Hal". There's Scientist Hal and HAL 9000note , where the former is named after the latter.
- "Ribeyrolles". One's a Tactical Doll while the other's a sentient bullet that was given life by Star Energy.
- "Ichigo", a name shared between a nominator and a Magical Girl. Power had to call them by their last names during Bale's party.
- "Wanda". One's a magical T-rex, the other's one of Ms. Frizzle's students, while another's a fairy who snapped and went on a murder spree after her husband Cosmo's death in Reboot Season 140. The first one had to go by "Wandabee" since she and Wanda Li both met at Haze's Halloween party, and she also lampshaded how many Wandas there are already.
- Dess the Hisuian Zoroark coincidentally shares the same name as Noelle's unseen sister. Hearing the Zoroark's name ends up upsetting Noelle the first time they meet because an unspecified but implied to be traumatic event happened to her sister when Noelle was a fawn and she never saw her ever since.
- During Ally's vacation to the Great Barrier Reef, Ariel's daughter Melody met up with Ira's daughter, who's also named Melody. The former had to go by her nickname "Mel-Mel" while the latter had to go by her middle name "Kamea" to avoid confusion during the trip. There's also Melody the Music Pet, who was struck with the Background Tribute Curse in Reboot Season 134, which caused anyone who interacted with her to immediately forget about her.
- The aversions were Lampshaded by Power when she and Ralsei prepared to go home after the first Reboot Nominator Games.Power: [to Dave] Just so you know, Ralsei's Dark World's not to be confused with that Dark World or that other Dark World, you know what I mean?Ralsei: There's more than one Dark World?!Power: These Games are broadcasted across the entire multiverse, so that's to be expected!
- Overused Running Gag: In Reboot Season 114, the Gamemakers received many complaints from the viewers and even Mr. Sutton about Russian Reversal events occurring too frequently, so they held a poll on what to do with them. The ones that happen in the Bloodbath along with a few others were purged the following season.
- Parental Abandonment:
- Both Mimi and Arcturus lost their parents at a very young age: the former never saw hers since they hid her egg when the "bad people" invaded her home, while the latter saw his being killed by Blackblood's soldiers before Arcturus was kidnapped by ??? (actually Dark Bale). Thankfully, both of them were Happily Adopted by 6k1 and Billy, respectively.
- Reggie and Lizzie Dawnshire had loving parents, even if the latter supported Snow during his regime. They then neglected their kids when they worked at Neon Quarters before dying in the destruction during the Multiversal War. Thankfully, Dave and Fira rescued Reggie and Lizzie during their mission to save Sayaka Miki and decided to adopt them as their own.
- Person as Verb: Ichi and Power's deep, intimate friendship ended up influencing Oscar and Lucian's that Aaron has affectionately called the latter's friendship "Ichistroking".
- Perspective Flip: The main thread's about the tributes fighting each other to death, while Convergence/ASAS's about the lives of the nominators, or the people sending in the tributes, along with their closest allies.
- Place Beyond Time:
- Being a spatial and temporal amalgamation of every possible universe, time doesn't make sense in the Voidlands. It's possible for it to be morning in one section and night in another, and time travel isn't possible there.
- Tempest Zone doesn't seem to operate on a normal timescale with the rest of the 'verse, and Ylva says that clocks don't work there.
- Planet of Hats: The Bugtrio and the Fiery Blue Wings went to a parallel version of Whispering Pines for their day trip, where everyone is either a clone of Henry or transformed into him. They discover that this world's Henry became a corrupt prince who was manipulated by Phoebe into transforming his subjects into his likeness and forcing them to worship him as payback for kicking him out of the island.
- Portal Book: Played with. Twilight Sparkle uses books from other worlds as the Crystal Mirror's power source so she can go to those worlds through it.
- Portal Network:
- One of the primary ways of travel between universes is through portals, and this is how most tributes enter Panem. Some nominators can summon them on their own, like Dave, Mett, and Elliot. In addition, Billy's servants, George and Kayla, can summon portals, too.
- The Fountain of Darkness in Castle Town serves as a Multiversal portal for Ralsei, which opened itself to the Games after Kris and Susie sealed the Eastern Fountain in Card Kingdom and left. Its magic can also retain visitors' forms whenever they travel to worlds with Fisher Kingdom effects.
- Privacy by Distraction: When 6k1note was having her friendship lessons with Twilight, she heard that "Bright Stardust"note would be visiting her. Not wanting him to intrude on their conversation, 6k1 told Spike to tell him once he arrived that Twilight was busy having a meeting with a census reporter named Bar Graph. She also removed her necklace, but felt that "Bright" would see through her Paper-Thin Disguise anyway since her scar showed through her pelt.
- Protective Charm:
- Because they don't have it naturally, Power and Paper ordered Ripple Effect-Proof Memory charms from Billy to protect their minds from forgetting tributes that are erased from existence.
- After the Delta Warriors' mission in the Cyber World, Ralsei made amulets containing the essence of the Fountain of Darkness to protect the Darkners from turning into stone outside Castle Town since the Arena's protective magic until that point faded away.
- Random Events Plot: Much like how the events of every season are randomized, the various arcs in the thread vary wildly. Between parties, rescue missions, nominators and tributes just hanging out together, and villainous organizations planning Multiversal domination, there's no real Myth Arc other than the misadventures the main characters have besides watching the Hunger Games.
- Reality Changing Miniature: There's a miniature version of the solar system in the Voidlands that affects the real deal when someone interacts with them. When Valecor first visited it, he pretended to eat the mini-earth, causing the real one to go dark during Snow's party. He then shot down the mini-sun in his second visit, blotting out the real earth's sky for six hours before Reboot Season 68.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The reptile-themed Reboot Season 125 featured reptile characters being horrible to each other in all manner of ways including a villain league composed entirely of them, but fourth-place finisher No Feet was an especially notable case as the character, canonically a rare snake aversion to the trope, became such an unfettered Manipulative Bastard that it bordered on Adaptational Villainy. He was ultimately the Big Bad of the season who tricked I.N and Changbin into killing each other.
- Rescue Arc: The nominators often go on rescue missions to save fellow nominators or tributes that were captured or banished into other dimensions or points in time.
- Resurrection/Death Loop: "Timewrecking" involves forcing the victim to drink the Hourai Elixir to grant them immortality and then repeatedly killing and reviving them through a myriad of ways. Such a fate is considered worse than death because it's difficult to escape from like a shipwreck, but Kim Taehyung aka V and Kain were luckily rescued by Yukari and Billy, respectively. Timewrecker and his forces were also subjected to this as punishment for their atrocities during Villain Month but were trapped in the loop for all of eternity.
- Retcon: Originally, Timewrecker analyzed the Arena in Reboot Season 68 and concluded that all the weirdness inside was residue from the Voidlands' creation because the Arena was in the epicenter of the Great Destruction, but this was retconned in ASAS into either a mistake in his calculations or a lie about them because it didn't explain why the Arena behaved that way in the OT. It was revealed towards the end of CVG that the Gamemakers send a signal to the tributes to subconsciously manipulate them into behaving erratically.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Starbles are mischievous furball creatures that can eat almost anything in one gulp and without ill effects, shoot twin lasers from their antennae, and also heal wounds with them. 6k1 and Billy both own them as pets, and they both gave them a lot of trouble until they were equipped with muzzles and Translator Collars.
- Robot Buddy: Zorua, 6k1, and Bale all have robot assistants, N0V-4, the Databot (aka Ally), and Xochi, respectively, that help them with their jobs.
- Rollercoaster Mine: Ralsei, Aaron, and James rode on one on the way to rescue Lucian, which crash-landed into the room where Kris was being held captive by Morgan, knocking out the latter during his fight against Susie.
- Ron the Death Eater:
- In Universe. Jimin literally became one during Reboot Season 60, as a result of being severely traumatized by how his bandmate, V, was killed by Miko Mitama, allowing Voldemort to corrupt him. He even got metahuman powers too.
- Discussed by Power and Ichi when the former shared with him her favorite fanfic, White Box. She didn't like that Princess Celestia was implied to be the bad guy, which was a common trend for fanfic writers back in the day.
- Rule of Drama: Discussed by Power and Alphys when they were researching about data clones for the latter's cloning machine project and their callout for 6k1 about her thoughts on the matter. Alphys thought of modifying the clone so that they're as difficult to retrieve as the original if they died in the V Incident to "preserve its integrity", but Power shut it down, believing that 6k1 must accept that its shock value has to be sacrificed for her tributes' safety. They'd still preserve the other events because they understand that she'd want to keep some aspects of the Games in some way.
- Running Gag:
- 6k1 being exasperated every time absurdly large group tributes are nominated.
- Lee Felix going berserk whenever he sees someone not following his ridiculously high fashion standards. However, he eventually regretted it after the Stays weren't pleased with his actions in Reboot Season 79, remembering what Terminus warned him of when he fought him in a warehouse.
- Aaron the Lucario having to be careful not to impale people with his chest spike when hugging them.
- Science Fantasy: CVG/ASAS's genre could be considered this, as the diversity of the universes the tributes come from allows for a harmonious blend of both magic and technology, though it leans more in favor of the former.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: During 6k1's vacation, Sans and Papyrus were confronted by their old enemy Floweynote along with Bill Cipher in front of their house. They summoned their Gaster Blasters at them for offering them to form an Enemy Mine against one or the other, and also for Bill pulling a cruel prank on them by flooding their house with swamp water. When Flowey transformed into his Photoshop form and Bill set their house on fire, they both made a run for Waterfall. Needless to say, they were boned.
- See Water: During the treasure hunt section of the Las Pegasus funhouse, the room's magic passively granted the non-aquatic participants and those not wearing snorkels like Pinkie Pie underwater vision.
- Share the Male Pain:
- In Reboot Season 95, the entire music fanbase was forced by Terminus's droid to collectively strike Dave Rogers in the groin. The scene was so painful to watch even Power, a unicorn mare, felt it.
- It happened again in Reboot Season 135 when the Multiverse punched Sakura Haruno and Sasuke Uchiha in their groins, causing Dave, Fira, and Hans to scream in unison. Power and Alphys also winced at the sight, but tried not to scream because they were watching in the Database Library.
- It also happened outside the Arena when Freyja, who was disguised as "Laura" in New Durango, kneed Scipion in the groin. All the males in the group who were assigned to retrieve Asriel's ring from the 'Brijes winced at the scene.
- Show Within a Show: President Snow has a "children's" show named "Future of Panem", which is just propaganda about him killing everyone who opposes him.
- Sickening Slaughterhouse: Snow's train passed through one while taking the nominators to the Arena for the 1st Reboot Nominator Games. The passengers, especially Starfall, Power, and Ralsei (who were two ponies and a goat, respectively), were understandably grossed out by the livestock being slaughtered right in front of them.
- Snap Back: After Reboot Season 81, when Bebe dipped herself into Magolor's vat of literal Sweet Dreams Fuel, she transformed into Nagisa. However, she was back to being Bebe in the Sayaka Mission with no explanation on how she transformed back.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In Reboot Season 41, the entire Legion of Doom got electrocuted by the Forcefield because of gravity reversal, but in Convergence, some of the members survived thanks to GASK and Valecor's intervention.
- Kirby almost always escapes certain death in the Arena despite the main thread stating that he died. Subverted in Reboot Season 144, where Kazuichi Souda ate him along with Ribbon in a primal craze, reducing them into souls.
- Errol, the Weasley family owl, was presumed dead by the end of his source material because of his old age, but in ASAS, he was alive and well when 6k1 nominated him and Pigwidgeon for Reboot Season 129. After his revival, Errol also delivered Arthur Weasley's letter to her after Season 133 to request the revival of his son Percynote .
- Spot the Imposter: To test her disguise revealer, 6k1 conducted an experiment to determine which of her tributes and staff members were shapeshifted into others and zap them with it. She used different methods to find the impostor such as looking for distinguishing features, noticing if they break character or are suddenly incompetent with their disguise's powers, and finding inconsistencies in their claims.
- Stargazing Scene: Mr. Star's birthday happened during a meteor shower, and the guests were all invited to watch it. Power took this opportunity to invite Ichi to watch it with her for her early birthday celebration, too.
- Stealth Pun: One of the ways to revive a tribute is by reversing time on their body to restore their original state, which Billy's staff does as standard procedure if the body is irreparably damaged. In other words, time literally heals all wounds.
- Stock Animal Name: The Sharpedo guard at the Blue Orb Shrine is named Jaws. Lampshaded by Lugia:"Not a very original name, I know."
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: During the Underground's 6th Anniversary Festival, the main cast hosted the closing ceremony with a talent show. Because Asriel and Chara were busy exploring the Ruins, the finale's musical number was awkwardly interrupted because Asriel wasn't there to sing the final line.
- Teleportation: Another means of going around various worlds is by teleportation. Some tributes can do this naturally, while others and several nominators use teleporters. Teleport pads are also used to make deliveries.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe. While data clones and their close equivalents had become widely accepted as temporary substitutes until the Simulator is implemented, some fans of the Games were upset about them. They complain that they don't "feel the same" as the originals despite the benefits, and in the case of inorganic replacements such as Android Ichi for the 4th Reboot Nominator Games, they think that their performance would still be affected.
- Thin Dimensional Barrier: The Webking House has a crack-shaped gap in reality
by its terrace wall, where characters from other universes (such as Libre from the Tropers: The Series universe, and Klug and Sig from the Puyo Puyo Fever universe) can end up in the main universe Another Side, Another Story takes place.
- Three Plus Two: The main Delta Warriors are composed of Kris, Susie, and Ralsei, but after they got Noelle and Berdly's help in defeating Evil Phoebe and Vahirom, Noelle and Berdly swore their loyalty to them, and they officially recognized them as honorary members. This team is now called the Expanded Delta Warriors when Noelle and Berdly are included.
- Time Travel Episode: Reboot Season 125 involved Yang Jeongin aka I.N receiving a warning from his future self about the dangers he would face in the season, and also that something bad would happen to his bandmate Changbin. This haunted him for the entire season, and he got bullied by the other tributes despite seeking comfort from Changbin, who then became a petty villain over constantly failing his driving test. Towards the end, No Feet tricked both I.N and Changbin into killing each other in a literal Battle of the Bands, and I.N ran away and covered his eyes from the Spanish Inquisition Arena Event. Upon realizing that he was the last one standing, he requested to travel back to the first day to warn his past self of what he had been through.
- Time Zones Do Not Exist: Averted, since Ally mentioned the Capitol following Mountain Standard Time since it's located in what used to be Wyoming. Additionally, the Arena has its own timezone due to the day-night cycles being controlled artificially. However, this gets zig-zagged when several universes, which run on their own timezones, inexplicably have the same timezone as Panem in certain plots.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: The fact that time works differently across different places, resulting in discrepancies around them, especially in regards to Panem's time compared to that of Earth Prime, tends to be lampshaded, especially when time-shifted tributes are nominated. And that's without mentioning the Time Travel aspects, which can vary from one user to the next.6k1: Hey, Multiversal time is confusing, so don't think too much about it.
- Tournament Arc:
- One of the events during Bale's party was a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tourney, where seven pairs of fighters faced each other in one-on-one matches before fighting in a free-for-all in the championships. Ferb Fletcher was crowned the champion towards the end of the party.
- Scipion also hosted a Pokémon tournament for his party, but it was crashed during the semifinals by Flowey.
- Universal Universe Time: While all the universes follow their respective time systems due to time flowing faster or slower than Earth, the nominators follow Earth Prime time to keep track of events.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The citizens of Panem have gotten so used to seeing tributes of various species fighting in the Arena that most of the time, they don't bat an eye whenever they see them outside it. They still panic whenever supernatural disasters are caused by them, however, like when Giygas emerged in Neon Quarters and caused Mind Rapes that could be felt as far as District 1's neighbors.
- Vacation Episode: In Reboot Season 56, 6k1 decided to take a long-overdue vacation to the Underground with Baymax and Harley Quinn, mainly to visit the former's mother figure Toriel. She also planned to explore the rest of the place, but had to cut it short due to Flowey and Bill Cipher presumably attacking Snowdin Town.
- Vengeful Vending Machine: Exaggerated in Reboot Season 60, where it was one of the many ways Kim Taehyung aka V was killed by Miko Mitama — by being trapped inside a vending machine, or in other words, a V-ending machine. Coincidentally, Lord Voldemort, who would then recruit V's bandmate Jimin as a Death Eater, also got trapped in one shortly before V was timewrecked, but he managed to get out using magic.
- Virtual Training Simulation:
- Both Billy and Bale have simulation rooms in their Mansion and base, respectively, where they can train themselves or their tributes, with Natalie Smirnoff operating Billy's. Bale has another room which simulates Hunger Games events, and the user can choose what kinds to experience.
- Hans also planned to reverse-engineer the Worldwide Network and its Synaptic Net Dive (SND) system for a personal simulator after Shelke Rui visited him in Dave's Home Base. This was eventually implemented in the Warehouse's simulation room, which 6k1 used to test Ally's functions after it was rebuilt from the Blights' destruction of it.
- The Science Center's testing chamber has a transformation gun that not only transforms the target into a different species, it can also transform the entire room into a simulation of any environment.
- Dark 6k1's lab has a simulation room inspired by Light Hope's where she and Dark Power train themselves to get stronger or test their disguises.
- Voices Are Mental: Normally the case for Swapper when he swaps the bodies of his targets, but crossed over with Voices Are Not Mental when he swapped the Bugtrio around. Because she lost her voice in an attack, Tenn regained her deep, feminine voice when she swapped with Henry, but Shelley was rendered mute when she swapped with Tenn.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside:
- When 6k1 spends time in the past to gather information for the Database, what seems to be a few hours time hopping is actually several days in the present. Depending on how long she stays, 6k1 sometimes misses seasons because of this.
- Due to time itself being broken in the Voidlands, both this trope and Year Inside, Hour Outside can happen at the same time. While several weeks have passed in the Reboot Timeline, only 1 hour had passed since Valecor, Kavaxas, and Queen Chrysalis entered the Voidlands to retrieve the souls stolen and/or eaten by Scipion after Reboot Season 50.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After the Database Library was set on fire by LOLW in Reboot Season 63, 6k1 fell to her knees and broke down crying, wondering where she went wrong as Manager. Her assistants gave her a hug, and several of her nominator friends such as Ichi, Dave, Mr. Star, Billy, and even Scipion comforted her, reassuring her that she can bring herself back, and that they're always there to help her out. Even her tributes Twilight Sparkle, Toriel (and 6k1's honorary sibling Frisk), and Ralsei gave her words of encouragement, motivating her to spring back into action.
- You Must Be This Tall to Ride:
- Inverted in the Las Pegasus Arc, where Twilight had to shrink Cleo in order to fit in the ferris wheel. The spell lasted a good while before Cleo started growing back to normal, but Twilight's attempted spell recasting failed from successive use. Luckily everyone inside got out before Cleo destroyed the cab, but she accidentally squished Wanda Banks on the way out.
- Played straight in the Funland Arc, where Peridot sat out of riding the Appalachian with Wes and Millie because she was too short for it, so instead, she had Lapis carry her so she can watch them.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Paylor's Simulator, which she plans to implement at some point in the future and Alphys reverse-engineered for 6k1's Cloning Capsule, is a hyperrealistic VR simulation of the Hunger Games. The tribute can feel what their data clone feels in the Arena live, but they can die from the shock of their clone's death depending on its severity and the user's mental-emotional stability. Due to the sheer trauma one suffers from being timewrecked, the VR user will always die in real life if their data clone dies that way.