Video Game / Commandos

Don't mess with these guys. Oh, and keep yourself away from that girl as well.

"Yes, sir."

"Coming right over, sir."

"Immediately, sir."

Commandos is a Real-Time Strategy Stealth-Based Game franchise set in World War II, by Spanish game developer Pyro Studios. In each game of the series, the player commands an elite squad of Allied soldiers/spies and tries to accomplish various kinds of missions behind enemy lines - ideally without getting caught and/or killed by Axis troops.

The main games in the series:

• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (1998)
• Commandos: Beyond The Call Of Duty (1999) ^note A standalone Expansion Pack for the original.
• Commandos 2: Men of Courage (2001)
  • HD Remaster (2020)
• Commandos 3: Destination Berlin (2003)
  • HD Remaster (2022)
• Commandos: Origins (2024)

Pyro also released a FPS Spin-Off based on the game called Commandos: Strike Force in 2006, but due to its Unexpected Gameplay Change, it's been dismissed by many fans of the series, and eventually even by Pyro themselves.

Speaking of fans, the Game Mod Commandos 2: Destination Paris includes all of the original games' missions playable with the gameplay of Commandos 2: Men of Courage, and spices up difficulty. All tropes specific to this mod should go on its page.

In July 2018, after the closure of Pyro Studios the year earlier after some failed projects, Kalypso Media, publisher of Tropico, acquired the rights to the IP, with plans to develop "completely new games". The first of their new releases is Commandos 2 - HD Remaster, a remaster of Men of Courage released in January 2020 with console ports releasing in September 2020. The remaster of Destination Berlin was released in August 2022. A new game, Commandos Origins is slated for a 2024 release.

Also of interest, is Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, a Spiritual Successor published by Daedalic Entertainment and developed by Mimimi Productions attempting to revive the gameplay style of Commandos, but swapping the World War II setting for the Jidaigeki; the Desperados series, which is basically Commandos but set in the American Old West; War Mongrels, another Spiritual Successor which returns to the World War II setting, albeit with a much darker story; Partisans 1941, another World War II setting game with some addition of base management mechanics, this time having you in control of the Soviet Partisans during the initial months of the Nazi invasion of Russia; and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, a game by Mimimi, the same developer of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III that is set in a fantasy version of the The Golden Age of Piracy.

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The games provide examples of:

Main games

• 100% Completion: Men of Courage features SideQuests. Finding all the hidden books unlocks Bonus Levels. This is represented by ranks and medals.
• Actionized Sequel:
  • Destination Berlin puts much more focus on Big Badass Battle Sequences (especially the Battle of Stalingrad and the Normandy Landings sequence) than its predecessors. It's telling that the new features added involve all the Commandos now being able to use grenades and mounted machine guns, auto-use medical kits and the Green Beret's ability to carry heavy machine guns.
  • To a lesser extent, this trope is in play in Men Of Courage with the Sapper now being able to use bazookas, a couple of missions involving standing your ground against enemy assaults and the ambush ability that carries over into the third game.
• Adaptational Job Change: Downplayed in Commandos 2 HD Remaster with the Sniper and the Driver. While there's no change to their roles in the game itself, both of their ingame models have had stripes added to their sleeves, with them both now being Corporals.
• A.K.A.-47: In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, the main handgun (a Colt M1911A1) of the commandos is named "Smith & Wesson W9" in the manual, and the other firearms are only designated as "rifle", "machine gun", and "sniper rifle". In Destination Berlin too, the firearms are named after totally generic names. Zigzagged in Men of Courage (the firearms have their actual names in the in-game help but generic names during gameplay).
  • The "W9" is the anachronistic (first made in 1988!) Smith and Wesson 4506, though stated in the manual to be a 9mm pistol. The Driver's manual entry states that .45ACP is difficult for him to come by, forcing him to change weapons.
• All Germans Are Nazis:
  • Played totally straight in Destination Berlin, to the extend that briefings and cutscene dialog only refers to the Germans as "Nazis".
  • Averted when you have to rescue members of the German resistance.
  • In Strike Force, it turns out the spy is actually German but he's heavily against Nazis..
• All There in the Manual: The names and short biographies of the commando members.
• America Won World War II: Averted mostly in the original games. The team is a special unit who trained in Great Britain. The Green Beret is Irish, the Sniper and Sapper are both English, the Marine is Australian, Natasha is Soviet and the Spy and Thief are French. Only the Driver is American and he is removed from the third game.
• Anachronism Stew: The German parachutists attacking Stalingrad in Destination Berlin carry what looks like FG 42 paratroop rifles on the outside, and said rifles look like StG 44s in the inventory. Aside from Artistic License – History, neither gun was in use during the battle of Stalingrad (late 1942/January 1943), they were in test phase far from battlefields until late 1943.
• Angry Guard Dog:
  • Mercifully, they appear rarely enough, but when they do, being spotted by one, especially as part of a patrol, spells trouble for the commandos, as they're fast, can take more damage than soldiers, and can whittle down your health fairly quickly.
  • In Men of Courage they can be fed meat that's been laced with sleeping pills with the expected result.
• Animal Disguise: Beyond The Call Of Duty features a mission where the commandos can use the corpse of a dead elephant to hide. From a gameplay mechanic perspective, the elephant is treated as a building.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: All pistols, whether they be chambered in .45ACP, 9mm Parabellum or 8mm Nambu, kill in three shots. The Stg 44 kills in two shots. All rifles, regardless of being chambered in .303 British, .30-06, 7.92mm Mauser or 6.5mm Arisaka, fire Instant Death Bullets. The MP40 will kill in one burst, but that counts as multiple hits, obviously.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: In Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, the enemy isn't only sentinels and patrolling soldiers, but also secretaries, officers and NCO in offices, unarmed technicians painting walls or repairing vehicles, etc. Which is artificial is that, after an alert, if still alive they come back to their normal standing place and resume their activity. Even if they previously found corpses of their slain comrades there. Several times.
• Artificial Stupidity: "Heinz, I'm just gonna leave my post for a moment. I saw a pack of cigarettes laying out in the open, on the ice in the arctic desert. I'll go climb down the whole destroyer and get me some of them before someone else decides to." Many of the scenarios would be unwinnable if players were unable to distract anyone.
  • Seeing dead comrades near the door of a building, and not checking inside that building if commandos are hiding inside unless it happens several times generally. Although to be fair, it would make the game unwinnable in a lot of scenarios.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The Kwai River bridge is made of wood in the game, but actually it was built in steel (lampshaded in Men of Courage manual)
  • The great Buddha statue seen in Burma is actually a Japanese monument (lampshaded in Men of Courage manual)
  • In Haiphong, all the boards of the town are written in Japanese (or at least with a Japanese-looking font). The language used in Vietnam is written with the Latin alphabet.
  • At that time, however, all of French Indochina, including Vietnam, was occupied by Japan, who may have put up their own signs.
  • Despite being officially under Vichy control (Japan did not abolish French autonomy until 1945, whereas the mission takes place in 1944) there is not a trace of French culture, language or architecture in Haiphong.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The German R Boat class naval vessel is a patrol boat with a built-in machine gun turret at the back but in real life, was a minesweeper.
  • The Heinkel He 162 jet plane featured in the mission "Eagle's Nest" in Beyond the Call of Duty is oversized. It is seen embarking four men while in reality it was a single-seated aircraft.
  • The Kwai River bridge has never been destroyed (lampshaded in Men of Courage manual)
  • The Japanese patrol boat in Savo Island that bears a resemblance to the US Navy PBR which was used during the Vietnam War. Since the game is set in World War II, the PBR was neither built by the Americans nor operated by the Japanese.
  • Any Horch vehicles was never used by the Japanese, but by the Germans.
  • The Shinano aircraft carrier has not been sunk by an air raid but by a submarine. Also, it never went to Haiphong, Vietnam.
  • Beyond the Call of Duty has a mission where the Commandos must kidnap the head of security of the Wolf's Lair, in order to facilitate an imminent plot against Hitler. The historical plot against Hitler which happened at the Wolf's Lair was completely planned by the German resistance with no implication of the Western Allies. Furthermore, despite having planned (but never executed) assassination attempts against Hitler, British services eventually decided to not execute such an operation.^note This had two reasons. First for ethical reasons: murdering the opposing leader was considered as fighting too dirty. Second, because they considered Hitler's strategic blunders were favoring the Allies in the long term, then a successful assassination attempt would have result in Hitler being replaced either by a competent strategist or by someone who listened to his military advisors (either way, it would have made the German army more efficient, and the war longer).
  • Western Allied commandos on the Eastern front (in Stalingrad, to be precise), no such thing happened in real life. The In-Universe reason being that they escort a high ranking officer there (who turns out to be The Mole working for the Germans). Why said officer and his Soviet counterparts didn't choose a much safer place than in the middle of one of the fiercest urban battles in history isn't explained either (outside of, of course, Rule of Cool and having an Eastern Front mission).
  • The last mission of the first game is about bombing a castle to prevent stolen documents kept there to reach a laboratory where an atom bomb is being built. The Germans never even started to build an atom bomb and infact, part of their scientific establishment believed the task impossible or way more difficult than it really was.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • The Green Beret's beret is the wrong way around. The teaser trailer for Origins fixes this.
  • Nobody can use grenades, barring the Sapper, which seems to be a massive gap in everyone else's training, though this changes in Destination Berlin.
  • In the original game, nobody can use a rifle, which would be one of the most basic things any soldier, much less a Commando would need to know. Averted from Men Of Courage onwards.
  • In Destination Berlin, several of the commandos are referred to as "sir" by other soldiers despite them all being enlisted men.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: German enemies speak with very mangled German sentences and Japanese ones use an Asian-sounding gibberish.
• Badass Crew: The Commandos themselves.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Any equipment gained during missions is lost between them. This is particularly egregious in Men Of Courage in between missions that occur during the same story arc (such as "Night Of The Wolves", "Das Boot: Silent Killers", and "White Death", which are all part of the same operation.) or in the same locations.
  • Even more Blatant in C3 where missions can take place seconds or minutes apart yet you somehow start the next mission with less resources, sometimes even way less then you probably finished the last level with, inverted with Get to the Engine as the Spy and Thief somehow have Allied Handguns they didn't have two missions ago.
  • Some commandos lose skills between games. For example, the Green Beret's ability to scale walls is transferred to the Thief for Men Of Courage and the Sapper's Bear Trap is given to the Driver, though he regains it when the Driver is Put on a Bus for Destination Berlin.
• Balance Buff: Men Of Courage adds new abilities to the commandos and makes existing ones more effective:
  • The punch, introduced in Beyond The Call Of Duty as a Green Beret exclusive ability, is given to everyone and is now effective regardless of which direction the enemy is struck from, as opposed to only from behind. Its supplementary skill, the handcuffs, is replaced with the ability to hogtie enemies, which can be performed by everyone except the Thief, Natasha, and Wilson.
  • Rifles and submachine guns are now available for everyone, with the rifle benefitting from (on Normal difficulty at least) a greatly increased rate of fire. The cover mode makes setting up ambushes much easier as well.
  • Medkits restore full health instead of a small amount and are much more frequently available.
  • The Sniper in general. In the original game, once his incredibly limited rifle ammo (as in a handful of bullets. He never came with any more than eight and sometimes would only carry as few as three) was used up, all he had was his pistol, maybe a Medkit if the Driver was there, and no other unique abilities. Men Of Courage makes rifle ammo more frequent, though not everywhere. The addition of the other abilities mentioned above make him at least viable to use.
• Beating A Dead Player: Occasionally enemy soldiers will kick your deceased men in Men of Courage.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: The second mission of Men of Courage features one as a tactic to enter the submarine base, described in the briefing: 1) Send the pass to the Spy by using the dog 2) Find an officer uniform 3) Steal a car 4) Enter in the base driving the car and dressed as a German officer.
• Bear Trap: One of the weapons used by the Sapper in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty. They're used by the Driver in Men of Courage.
• BFG: The bazooka, the flamethrower, and the fixed machine guns. In Destination Berlin, the Green Beret can take and fire machine guns as they were individual firearms. One mission in Behind Enemy Lines involves destroying a huge railway gun before it can be sent to the Eastern Front.
• Big Damn Heroes: A number of rescue operations occur within the games, usually that of a captured resistance fighter or a downed Allied pilot (who invariably ends up also being the commandos' way out of the scenario), though sometimes some of your own men need rescuing.
• Big Dam Plot: The third mission of Behind Enemy Lines involves destroying a hydroelectric dam.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Any knife, when thrown by the Diver.
• Blending-In Stealth Gameplay: Present for the Spy once he's managed to steal an enemy uniform and lightly present for non-spy Commandos in C2/C3.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: You need to steal a truck as one of the potential methods to sneak the Commandos into a base in Das Boot, Silent Killers in Commandos 2 but the game calls it a car, which can mean the player thinks they need to use the Car near the Officer, which won't work.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • The commandos' issued pistols come with infinite ammunition. Same goes for the Lee-Enfield in Men Of Courage, which, in order for a commando to use, has to be taken from an allied soldier. German and Japanese weapons taken in Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin avert this unless given to allied soldiers, who will have infinite ammo no matter what weapon they're given.
  • Nobody (commandos, allies or enemies) is never shown reloading, even when a member of the team is firing a limited ammunition weapon.
  • Using the invincibility cheat in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty also grants infinite ammunition to limited ammunition weapons such as the Sniper Rifle, Grease Gun, and hand grenades.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: A gratitous example in Destination Berlin as the Nazis discover the Spy and Thief on a train and hold back instead of charging them, instead of searching the train they give up and leave the two on the train (They aren't captured as both of them are armed with handguns.) and instead place explosives to derail their own train carrying valuable art that is still fully in control of their own forces to deal with two commandos meaning the Green Beret has to stop the train derailment before he can board the train.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • A pack of cigarettes and your fist are enough to solve 90% of all problems.
  • In Behind Enemy Lines, placing your men behind cover and using pistols to draw in the enemy, while slow and arduous, with some judicious Save Scumming, can wipe out wave after wave of patrols. The developers were obviously aware of this, as many of the missions in Beyond The Call Of Duty had failure conditions that were triggered by the alarm.
• The Brute:
  • There's a quite big Japanese mook who keeps an eye on Guiness in the River Kwai mission in Men of Courage.
  • Some German Lieutenants are this as well, and they tend to be jailors/torture specialists.
• Circling Birdies: Around the head of knocked-out enemies, with the "star" variant.
• *Click* Hello:
  • In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty, ordinary soldiers (ie. not patrols or machine gunners) don't always open fire immediately upon spotting a commando, instead holding him up at gunpoint unless provoked by seeing a dead body, hearing a gunshot or the commando does anything other than standing still (and there is even a game setting for whether the commandos should obey or ignore an enemy yelling "Halt!" at them at gunpoint). Although this can be exploited to distract lone guards with one commando as bait while the Green Beret sneaks up from behind for a silent kill, any other soldier who sees the hold-up and isn't prevented by their scripting from ditching their post will immediately run over to join the hold-up. which is both a good thing and a bad thing: while it can potentially allow the Green Beret to knife all of them in the back in one go if no one else is looking their way, some soldiers are scripted to shoot on sight. On rare occasions where the map has a jail, any patrol seeing the hold-up will immediately run over and hauls the commando off to lock him up - but if the map doesn't have a jail, they just open fire on sight, which ticks off everyone else into opening fire as well.
  • Appears as a gameplay mechanic in Beyond The Call Of Duty. If an enemy is knocked out and handcuffed, he can be revived and held at gunpoint using the puppet icon. The soldier is completely under the player's control and can be used to distract other enemies. It does have its limitations, however; namely that if the enemy soldier steps outside the range of the commando's pistol, he will raise the alarm.
• Clown-Car Base: In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, some garrisons housing a few dozens of the dreaded submachine gun-equipped German soldiers are really small. Mercifully, destroying these before setting off the alarm (or, more likely, in the process of it) will prevent reinforcements from exiting these buildings.
• Cold Sniper:
  • Duke is described as this in the manual, and every bit of dialogue he has with his colleagues is unfailingly abrasive.
  • A German one shows up in the Stalingrad scenario of Commandos: Destination Berlin, in a Shout-Out to Enemy at the Gates.
  • Men of Courage has quite a lot of these throughout the game. They can spot your Commandos at any range even when they are crawling and will never lose track of them unless they physically hide behind something.
• Combination Attack: The Driver comes equipped with a tripwire that will knock out enemies who run into it. However, the Sapper is able to rig a set tripwire with a hand grenade, turning it into a more lethal (and much louder) option.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Enemies can shoot at much longer ranges than the commandos can, even when armed with the same type of weapon. It gets particularly egregious in Destination Berlin where pistol armed officers can shoot at further ranges than commandos armed with rifles.
• Contrived Coincidence: In the train mission of Destination Berlin, no matter how many time the team used to kill everyone on the train and stop it, the Green Beret always split the engine and first armored wagon from the train just before they reach a bridge.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: The games allowed several players to play through with a different player taking on each individual commando. Woe betide you if you got stuck playing the Sniper in the early games. One of the most controversial changes to Commandos 2 HD Remaster was the removal of multiplayer.
• Covers Always Lie:
  • Commandos 3 cover features the Green Beret armed with a Thompson submachinegun, which is a weapon that doesn't appear at all in the game.
  • The backcover of Commandos 2 shows pictures of missions in which some important elements were changed before the game was released (day missions shown as night missions, a commando member appears in a mission he/she isn't supposed to be in, according to the released product, a tank appears at Colditz, etc).
• Crew of One: Averted in Men of Courage. The Driver can drive tanks, but the Sapper must be on-board to fire the cannon.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Particularly in the first game, the Commandos had very little abilities beyond their own field of excellence. The Sniper suffered worst from this, having literally no unique abilities outside his rifle. Later installments fixed this somewhat by making most Commandos able to knock out enemies and use weapons beyond their puny pistols as well as adding additional equipment for them to use.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The opening cutscene of the "Saving Private Smith" mission (Men of Courage) ends with three commandos of the team (of four members) captured by the Germans after doing what the player usually does (sneaking and stabbing).
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The hotkeys change from game to game. For example, the original game had G for the pistol and changed it to Q for the Beyond The Call Of Duty standalone expansion, before switching back to G for Men Of Courage, though hotkeys can be customised. Worst of all was the removal of hotkeys altogether for Destination Berlin, which many players found added Fake Difficulty as aside from a few almost all of them were removed and the hotkeys for weapons were changed to just a forwards/backwards switch.
• Death from Above:
  • A few missions of Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty requires to destroy huge German cannons. They are just inert prop which only serve as targets, though.
  • V2 rockets are objectives in a couple of Behind Enemy Lines missions late in the campaign. Like previously, they are inert objects.
  • The bombing of the Shinano in Men of Courage
  • German bombs fall on Stalingrad during the Protect General O'Donnell mission of Destination Berlin, battleships fire on the Normandy beach during the last mission.
• Developer's Foresight: In Destination Berlin, when defending General O'Donnel, if the player allows German soldiers to enter the building he's in they won't harm O'Donnel (who makes no attempt to flee and merely moves a short distance away from the Russian general) but kill the Russian general, since O'Donnel is a spy, it makes sense they wouldn't harm him and that he wouldn't seriously try to escape.
• Difficulty Levels: None in the original game, but Beyond The Call Of Duty added an "Easy" mode that's still Nintendo Hard. Men Of Courage has Normal, Hard, and Very Hard.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Aside from the Spy (and Natasha in Men of courage), the rest of the commandos can do this in later games, only it's not as effective.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Behind Enemy Lines has no rotating camera, Unusable Enemy Equipment, pistols as the only common action for all commandos, no background music during missions, the inability to perform most actions while prone, no hand to hand knockouts, no cigarette packs, and briefings given by Colonel Smith as opposed to in the field by the commandos themselves, meaning the team have little to no characterisation in the game itself. Beyond The Call Of Duty phased in some of these elements, while Men Of Courage added the rest in a massive overhaul.
• Easy Communication: A team of six men reacts immediately to orders even if each of them are in totally different places of the map... A bit downplayed in Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, which features a few mission where some members of the team are stuck in a remote place (sometime in a jail, but not always) and can't be controlled until they are found by the other commandos. Also, the commandos respond to orders from your Non-Entity General, but certain objectives require the commandos to interact with radios in the field to obtain further orders.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Savo bunkers in Men of Courage.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The main characters are members of the British Commandos. There is also one mission (in Men of Courage) which features the famous Gurkhas.
• Elite Mooks:
  • In the first two games, the German machine gunners that pop out of garrisons when the alarm is triggered.
  • Those Gestapo officers that can see immediately through the Spy and Natasha's disguise in Beyond the Call of Duty.
  • In Men of Courage, SS officers can do the same at any range as well as Wehrmacht officers at close range (ditto Japanese army and navy officers).
  • There are grenadiers in Men of Courage that can toss grenades in windows just like the Sapper can, making any cover useless. The presence of grenadiers is one of the factors that can make Bonus Mission 4 such a pain in the ass.
  • The SMG-wielding elite paratroopers are able to unmask the Spy in Destination Berlin while their "soldier" versions, while unable to unmask the spy, carry Assault Rifles, which are capable of shredding Commandos in a few shots and fire rapidly.
• Escaped Animal Rampage: In "The Asphalt Jungle", the second mission in Beyond The Call Of Duty, it's possible to open the ostrich enclosure and set them loose on the unsuspecting Germans. This is a bad idea if you haven't already rescued Major Skopje, as an ostrich rampage will set the alarm off. Inverted with the lions. The best way to get the Green Beret into the zoo undetected is through the lion enclosure, but he has to move quickly lest he be attacked by the lions. Shooting them is a bad idea, as with the ostriches, it'll set off the alarm.
• Escape Sequence: It's not enough to simply complete the mission's objectives. Your commandos need to escape as well, generally using a vehicle. There are a few exceptions, such as "Baptism Of Fire", the first mission in the first game, "Night Of The Wolves", which leads into "Das Boot: Silent Killers", and the last mission of the third game's Normandy campaign, which is a direct assault on Omaha Beach.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even Those Wacky Nazis won't Shoot the Dog, leaving Whiskey free to roam around military bases to distract everyone.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Although they appear in the manuals of each game, the characters' names are mentioned ingame in Destination Berlin. Prior to that, they are only mentioned by job title (Natasha excluded) or nicknames.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Men Of Courage adds enemy snipers, grenadiers, and divers in several missions as counterparts to the Sniper, Sapper, and Diver.
  • The objective of one mission in Behind Enemy Lines is also to take out four enemy sappers before they can destroy a bridge. Ironically, two missions later, the roles end up reversed.
• Excuse Plot: Apart from the overarching plot of World War II altogether, most of the games have very self contained missions with very little plot, singular objectives, and no Big Bad (with the notable exception of General O'Donnell in 3 and even at that, he's only present in one of the game's three mini campaigns). Commandos 2 has three interconnected missions at the beginning of the game and two at the end, leaving the rest of the game as standalone as the original.
• Exploding Barrels: They sometimes have to be used to destroy some objectives, generally if you don't have the Sapper or if you don't have enough explosives. The Green Beret can carry them. Two missions in Beyond The Call Of Duty require using fuel barrels and trailers to enhance the blast power of the Sapper's explosives to destroy objectives.
• Failed a Spot Check: The only way to explain why a German/Japanese soldier would run right to a huge triggered Bear Trap or a thread especially put there to make him trip. It becomes blatant when the reason why they run there is because they saw a pack of cigarettes.
• Fake Difficulty: Behind Enemy Lines/Beyond the Call of duty have it so your men can be very easily outshot by the enemy (unless you're laying down before shooting, but your men stand back up while shooting.), 2 removed this by letting your men fire while prone as well as decreased range all around. (So if your men are laying down, they'll attack the enemy at roughly the same time.), 3 made it so attack range is determined by weapon but even with a rifle, your prone men can be outshot by alerted officers with handguns, (or always with the Thief and his reduced weapon ranges.) which doesn't go well with the generally more combat-oriented levels of Commandos 3.
• Fog of War: Notably averted; the Commandos can see what's happening all over the outdoor map, although this typically shouldn't be possible.
• Forced Tutorial: Only in Men of Courage. Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call of Duty feature tutorial as missions totally separated from the campaign, and Destination Berlin tutorial is an independent campaign.
  • Notably the original console ports of Men of Courage added additional optional tutorials that go over the controls and mechanics more thoroughly.
• Freak Out:
  • Very rarely and mostly in the earlier maps, if you kill 2-3 members of a patrol the remaining one will run awkwardly to the end of the map and never be seen again.
  • Something similar happens in Men of Courage: if a tied up and stripped from his clothes enemy is woken by his comrade, he will run to the edge of the map in his underwear and exit the mission.
• Game-Breaking Bug: It's possible for medkits to vanish completely in Commandos 3 if you pick them while injured/have a single gunshot somehow deplete your entire stock automatically (since they're used automatically when injured) which only serves to make an already difficult game even harder., while said bug isn't fixed in Original Difficulty in the Remaster, it is fixed on Rookie mode.
• Game Mod:
  • Destination Paris adds more difficulty to the missions from Men Of Courage, sometimes to a truly ridiculous degree. It also adds new abilities and hundreds of new missions, including those from all the other games in the series.
  • Strike In Narrow Path is a standalone mod based on Behind Enemy Lines that, as of the time of writing, has nine new missions (out of a proposed twenty) and adds new abilities for the commandos.
• Gameplay Grading: Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond The Call Of Duty, and Men Of Courage have merit points for each mission. The former two award points for completion speed and lack of damage taken, while the latter adds exploration and enemies neutralised (with two further subcategories of neutralizing without shooting and without killing). These merit points can add up to additional ranks. In some versions of Behind Enemy Lines, the final mission is inaccessible if the player hasn't attained at least the rank of Captain over the previous nineteen missions.
• Genre Mashup: The series is somewhere between Real-Time Strategy and Stealth-Based Game. It becomes its own genre (the other most well-known games of this genre being the Desperados series).
• Gratuitous German: Obviously. In Behind Enemy Lines, the enemy soldiers' entire vocabulary consists of "Ein Verletzter!"^note lit. "a casualty", "Wer ist da?!"^note "Who's there?!", "Halt!" and of course "Alarm! ALARM!".
• Gratuitous Japanese: Any writings on walls and boards of a Vietnamese town is written in Japanese. Possibly justified as the Japanese weren't known for respecting the culture of those they conquered; renaming everything would be in keeping with how they behaved elsewhere, notably Korea and Manchuria.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Most of the games have a unique character who even comes with their own portrait and numbered selection hotkey that makes an appearance for a single mission. Captain McRae in Behind Enemy Lines, Dragisa Skopje and Natasha in Beyond The Call Of Duty, and Wilson in Men Of Courage are all fully controllable with the former two being the objectives of rescue missions (McRae is required to fly the escape plane) and the latter coming with unique abilities of their own.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Several features are poorly explained in Commandos 2/3, such as holding Shift to temporarily not shoot with a gun selected, Holding down Control to quickly use your last selected weapon or holding Shift to take only one of an item in a group such as a single medkit or a stack of rifles, tend to only get explained in the manual or the game itself but only once and almost never in both making them easy to miss, you can also right click on Uniforms/stacked Sniper rifles to "Swap" to another in the stack even if it's only cosmetic. (like changing a Regular Soldier disguise to a mechanic disguise in the same stack.)
  • Nowhere in 3 is it stated that your commandos actually have different ranges with guns with the Thief having a drastically shorter range compared to everyone else.
  • Bonus Mission 3 has as one of its objectives a requirement to escape down the road in a vehicle. The notebook states that a truck is required and, indeed, a truck is waiting for the commandos to swipe. Does this actually work? No. What the player actually needs to do is use the amphibious vehicle they used to cross the river. Nowhere in the mission is this explained.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: In one level of Destination Berlin, the Green Beret, the Sniper and the Sapper have been captured and taken to Berlin. The level begins with the Green Beret locked in a cell with a guard, who turns his back on a huge, muscular, unrestrained and incredibly angry Irishman with a penchant for beating the crap out of everyone who pisses him off.
• Heal Thyself: The medkits in every game. One of your commandos (primarily the Driver, but the Sniper of Spy if he's not present) is issued with a medical kit with limited uses in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty. Med kits are more abundant in later games, but they are automatically used in Destination Berlin. Army rations are also available in Men Of Courage.
• Hero Unit: In stark contrast to most real time strategy games, the commandos are unique units with their own special abilities that compliment each other, covering the bases of close combat, sniping, aquatic operations, demolitions, vehicle and heavy weapons, and subterfuge.^note This is a core feature of the "Commandos-like" subgenre of RTS games In fact, non unique units don't feature until Men Of Courage introduced Allied soldiers and Ghurkas, and in both Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin they only appear in a minority of missions.
• Hollywood Density: One of the objectives in "The Guns Of Savo Island" involves stealing a gold statue of a monkey that the Japanese revere as a totem and bringing it on board the seaplane used to escape the island. The Green Beret is the only one strong enough to lift it and, as with barrels, is vulnerable while doing so.
• Honey Trap: Implied reference in the first mission of Men Of Courage. To enter into the office of the base commander, one of the steps requires to make him leave. How? Natasha has to phone him, probably promising... something. However, nothing happens, the goal is just to make him leave his office and Natasha stands him up. Actually ordering Natasha to join him where he is pointlessly waiting isn't advised at all: any officer of the game is able to see through Natasha and the Spy disguise when close enough.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: The lesser healing item of Men Of Courage is a sealed can of food. It heals half of the commando health.
• Hyperspace Arsenal:
  • Averted in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty. The commandos don't have a true inventory, but their actions menu is shaped like a backpack (with a gun, a knife, etc). Although there is a Good Bad Bug allowing the Marine to carry several members of the team in his backpack (by folding his inflatable boat when commandos are still inside)
  • The commandos of Men of Courage and Destination Berlin have a real inventory (of limited size) which can be filled freely. The player can put in the inventory of a commando things like ten identical rifles with a lot of ammunition, ten hand grenades, an inflatable boat, ten Army ration cans, and ten German/Japanese uniforms. Also, with the exception of the Sapper (whose uniform features several pouches), the Sniper, and Natasha (both are shown with the sniper rifle on their back if they have one), and the Diver (shown with a backpack that is presumably supposed to contain his diving equipment and/or his inflatable boat, which disappears the moment he actually dons it), no commando have clothes with apparent pouches or backpack
  • Taken up to 11 with Whiskey the Bull Terrier, who while he DOES have a reduced inventory compared to the human members, can still carry several rocket launchers/rifles, medical supplies and explosives, he can also be carried on a commando's back both as a way to transport him/double as a backpack for the commando.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Downplayed in Men of Courage. The difficulty levels are "Normal", "Difficult", and "Realist".
• Improvised Weapon: Men of Courage and Destination Berlin features Molotov Cocktail. Men of Courage also includes wine bottles (only used this way by Natasha) and a blowtorch which is supposed to be a tool to unlock some special doors, but it can be used as an improvised flamethrower.
• Infinite Supplies:
  • In each game, enemies and allied soldiers don't consume any ammunition when firing.
  • The commandos have an infinite amount of ammunition for their handguns (any games), the Marine harpoon (any games), the Lee-Enfield rifle (specific weapon of the Driver in Beyond the Call of Duty, usable by anyone in Men of Courage and Destination Berlin; its munitions are limited in Destination Berlin), the Spy syringes (present in any game, its munitions are limited in Men of Courage and Destination Berlin), and the vehicles/mounted weapons.
  • Averted with explosives. Often, the Sapper carries only just enough explosive charges, or even too few if fuel barrels are present, to get the job done in the early games. Later titles make explosives easier to come by. Same goes for sniper rifle ammo.
• Instant Death Bullet: The rifle and sniper rifle both kill with one shot. Averted with the pistol, which takes three shots to kill someone (two for the snipers of Destination Berlin), and the assault rifle from Destination Berlin, which takes two.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: In Men of Courage and Destination Berlin.
• Ironic Nickname: Most of the characters have fairly descriptive nicknames: the explosive specialist is Inferno, the uncanny master of disguises is Spooky, the guy who swam across the English channel is Fins... and then, there's Tiny, who is simply huge. Averted in Destination Berlin where his nickname is Butcher^note Interesting case of Woolseyism: in the French and English editions of the games, he is nicknamed "Butcher" in the whole series.
• It's Raining Men:
  • German paratroopers are seen doing this during the second mission of the Destination Berlin second mission of the Stalingrad campaign.
  • The Green Beret can parachute in in one mission in Men Of Courage.
  • One of the Multiplayer-exclusive Allied Units in C3 is a Paratrooper.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The Nazis try this on your men when they've been captured in Men Of Courage. They're not exactly successful.
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: In Men of Courage, the enemies immediately recognize (and attack) the Spy and Natasha when they see them running. Despite this, the enemies are allowed to run themselves without any negative effect.
• Just a Stupid Accent:
  • In the French dubbing of the series, most of the team speak with an Anglo-saxon sounding accent (except the Spy) in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty.
  • The Thief and the Spy have a thick French accent in the English dubbing of the games. It is weird, if you remember that the Spy is supposed to be fluent in English, German, and a few other languages.
  • In the French dubbing of Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, the only members of the team with an accent are Natasha and the Marine. The allied soldiers (except the British sailors and the Gurkhas) don't have an accent in Men of Courage but have an Anglo-saxon one in Destination Berlin.
  • In any dubbing, Natasha always speaks with a thick Russian accent.
  • The Asian NPC (the contacts, the spiritual leader and the Gurkhas) of Men of Courage.
  • The Russian NPC in the Stalingrad campaign of Destination Berlin.
• Just Plane Wrong: The Zero Fighter in the bonus level is actually a single-seat fighter in real-life, but it is impossible to carrying two men at the same time. However, it appears that the developers may planned to revealed to be an Aichi Dive Bomber originally.
• Justified Tutorial: Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty have their tutorials set in the Commandos training center, as missions totally independent from the rest of their campaign.
• Lens Flare: Around the projectors in the night mission opening the Normandy campaign of Destination Berlin.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • Each character has only two appearences in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty (except the uniforms stolen by the Spy): cold/mild weather and hot weather. It means that they look exactly the same in France and in Norway.
  • Also true in Men of Courage. Default appearance of members of the team is the same in the night-infiltration missions, the temperate missions (France, Germany), and the hot missions (Burma, Kwai river). In the opening cutscene of the Burma mission, they even complain about the warm weather of the place. Averted in the North Pole mission, though, when going outside for too long without special winter clothing will eventually kill the commandos.
  • This trope is averted in Destination Paris. The Commandos' appearance has been reskinned, so they wear more adapted clothes during the night-infiltration and in the jungle.
• Locomotive Level / Train Job: A famous level of Destination Berlin.
• Made of Explodium: In Behind the Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty every building and vehicle can be taken out with a single grenade or an oil barrel, and you'll often need to employ this because it's the only way to take out multiple buildings and armored vehicles are Immune to Bullets, and you have no anti-tank weapons (in real life, a hand grenade is about as effective against an armored vehicle as a bullet). Hell, even a few pistol shots can destroy cars and trucks.
• The Mentor: Although Lt. Colonel Dudley Clark is only mentioned ingame in the intro as the founder of the Commandos, Colonel Montague Smith fills The Mentor role more accurately.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • There are penguins in North Pole in the game, but actually they live in South Pole (lampshaded in Men of Courage's manual)
  • There are piranhas in Asian rivers in the game, but actually they only live in South America (lampshaded in Men of Courage's manual)
• Mission-Pack Sequel: Beyond The Call Of Duty is a standalone expansion to Behind Enemy Lines that adds eight new missions and new abilities for the Commandos, including the infamous cigarette packets.
• The Mole: General O'Donell in Destination Berlin. He is an American general who defect to Germany during the just after a meeting with Russian officers during the battle of Stalingrad, while managing to capture the Green Beret, the Sniper, and the Sapper. He plans to reveal classified allied information to Germany but ends assassinated by the commandos, who manage to break out from their jail of Berlin
• Molotov Cocktail: A weapon for the Driver in Men Of Courage. It's Awesome, but Impractical, as a screaming Man on Fire will alert enemies and render any equipment he's carrying useless, it's used by the Sapper in C3.
• Multinational Team: Despite being in the British Army, the commandos consist of an Irishman, an American, an Australian, two Frenchmen, a Russian and only two Englishmen.
• Nerf: Grenades are stupidly overpowered in the original game; They can destroy damn near anything, barring armoured vehicles. In Men Of Courage, while still plenty effective against infantry, especially in groups, they can no longer be used to destroy buildings or trucks, vehicles can technically still be destroyed but it'll take multiple grenades with up to 4 grenades for a Panzer.
  • All your men have drastically reduced ranges with fire-arms in C3 and medkits heal significantly less health, Rookie Mode in the Remaster increases Range for all Grenades and the Regular/Sniper/Assault Rifles and restores Medkits to healing full health like C2.
  • Zigzagged with pistols in Men Of Courage. In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty, the commandos could shoot as quickly as the player could click the left mouse button. Men Of Courage reduced the fire rate, but changed the aiming cursor to make it more intuitive and added an overwatch mode that allows the commandos to automatically fire on enemies that come into their viewcone. The addition of rifles and submachineguns for everybody make pistols a last resort fallback most of the time.
• Never Bareheaded: Most of the characters wear hats (The Green Beret wears a beret, the Diver wears a woolly beanie, the Sapper wears a helmet, the Driver and Thief wear military style caps and the Spy wears either a flatcap when in normal clothes or various reglementary military German headgears when disguised as the enemy). Only the Sniper and Natasha avert this.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodiles appear as hostile animals in a couple of the Asia-set missions of Men of Courage. In Destination Paris, the modders add a few of them in the sewers of the Normandy ruined town.
• Nintendo Hard: Do not be fooled by the myriad of ways the enemy AI is dumb beyond beyond belief. The enemies in this game are stupid, but one they aren't is harmless. Generic enemies die very easily, but so do your commandos. If a commando gets spotted by more a few enemies then unless you are lucky, the commando is going to die. It's made even worse by the fact that all of the games requires all commandos to survive a mission, so you can't afford to lose even one. In order to avoid this you have to go through a lot of trial and error as you memorize the enemy paths.
  • Commandos 3, your medkits can randomly all get used up from a single injury, your men have massively reduced range with handguns/SM Gs and still a significant hit with Rifles/Assault Rifles and you're usually either against the clock or alarms result in a mission failure/having to quickly destroy armoured targets before they escape.
  • The Destination Paris mod takes this up to eleven.
• No Antagonist: Apart from Hitler as the Greater-Scope Villain and General O'Donnell in the Stalingrad campaign in Destination Berlin, the games have no overall Big Bad, with any plot being contained to individual missions or mini campaigns. The nearest you might get is to assassinate a high ranking officer to destabilise an enemy operation.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In Men of Courage last mission (which is set just before the liberation of Paris in August 1944) features an unammed officer (wearing a distinctive high-rank uniform) wandering in a room described by mission objectives to be the Paris German military governor's office. Said objectives actually involve entering his office to disable the control panel of explosives installed on Parisian monuments; said general is totally unrelated to the objectives and can be killed without any penalty^note no more or less than for each other mook or mission failure.
• No Fair Cheating: Using the cheat codes in Men Of Courage results in all your ranks being stripped away.
• No-Gear Level: Saving Private Smith and White Death in Men Of Courage and the last level of the first campaign in Destination Berlin, which happens to be in Berlin.
• No Peripheral Vision: In Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, the Green Beret, the Sniper, and the Thief are totally invisible if they are atop of a pole or go hanging to telegraphic wires (for the Green Beret and the Thief). The latter is even a very useful tactic of infiltration.
• No Swastikas:
  • Averted in the original games of the series. However, Destination Berlin has a few instance where the swastika is weirdly replaced by other Imperial German symbols (in front of the German embassy of London and inside the Reichstag of Berlin).
  • Played straight in the 2020 remaster of Men of Courage which for some reason even censors the Japanese flag.
• Non-Action Guy: Captain McRae and the German resistance members in Behind Enemy Lines, Dragisa Skopje in Beyond The Call Of Duty and Wilson and Whiskey in Men Of Courage. Justified in most cases as, apart from Wilson and Whiskey, the rest are prisoners being rescued.
• Non-Indicative Name: Sort of with Commandos 3: Destination Berlin. There is a mission in Berlin, but it isn't the last of the game and isn't set in May 1945, when the city was in ruins and besieged by the Red Army, with the Third Reich about to be totally defeated. The Berlin mission is the ending of the first campaign and occurs in late 1942 or early 1943, with the Third Reich just entering its "total war" phase, the city still intact and big parades occuring. The last mission of the last campaign is set on a Normandy beach during D-Day, the Remaster seemingly attempts to fix this, with the Central Europe Campaign now being the first campaign in the menu, followed by Normady with the Stalingrad Campaign last.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: In the lowest difficulty setting of Men of Courage, when a commando's health reaches its lowest point, the man is only stunned until he is healed (by another member of the team, or by himself if he is already carrying a medkit or a can of food).
• Non-Linear Sequel: The games aren't set in a short specific span of time, but each of them cover the whole duration of the war, and a purely chronological timeline of the Commandos' missions would require to merge the four games:
  • Behind Enemy Lines starts in 1941 and ends in February 1945.
  • Beyond The Call of Duty starts in 1940 and ends in December 1944.
  • Men of Courage starts in 1941 and ends in August 1944.
  • Destination Berlin starts in 1942 and ends the 6th of June 1944.
  • Taking into account missions from both Behind Enemy Lines and Destination Berlin, the Green Beret makes two contributions to the D-Day landings; Once before the landings, leading the commandos in an operation to take out four cannons to clear a path for the landings on Juno Beach (Behind Enemy Lines) and then leading a platoon of Allied soldiers on Omaha Beach on D-Day itself.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • True with both sides: harpoon, sniper rifle, knife (stabbing and throwing), fire, direct explosions (excluding the Green Beret, which can survive them in the early game), the Spy syringe in the early games, smashing by a vehicle.
  • One-Hit Kill when used by the player but not by the AI: rifle.
• One Man Armies: In the original game the Green Beret is the most capable commando by a great margin, the best — and sometimes only — weapon of choice except for aquatic actions and detonations that don't involve fuel barrels. Subsequent games balance things out giving more polyvalency to the other commandos (for instance expanding the vital ability to knock guards and carry their bodies).
• One Size Fits All: In Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin, every commando can wear any enemy uniform taken on a private. It will fit them perfectly, even if the characters don't have the same weight/height at all.
  • Averted with the Thief. Make him wear anything with sleeves, and you can clearly see how they're too long for him. Still played straight with the Green Beret, though.
• One-Woman Wail: Some themes of Men of Courage OST, especially a few of the underwater areas.
• On-Site Procurement: From Men Of Courage onwards, you can collect weapons from the enemy and from crates. In the original game, the allies do drop gear for you to collect or you have to steal explosives from the enemy.
• Oxygen Meter: In Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin, but isn't very long. When the meter is empty, the commando begins to suffer damages. When the Marine wears his scuba gear, he can stay underwater for an infinite time.
• Pacifist Run: Possible from Beyond The Call Of Duty onwards. In fact, Men Of Courage encourages this by giving more merit points for knocking out and tying up as many enemies as possible. The first (non-tutorial) mission of Men Of Courage is even a forced Pacifist Run, it is a night-infiltration mission, where there isn't a single weapon to find in the map, and the only two commandos available (Natasha and Lupin) doesn't have any capacity which allow them to tie up any enemy (required to steal weapons).
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Starting in Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, all commandos can use enlisted uniforms as a disguise, but only temporarily and they will only be beneath notice in the enemy's long-range vision. The Spy continues to be the only one able to use officer uniforms, and uniquely can wear any uniform as long as he needs to. If he gets a Lieutenant uniform, he can make enlisted enemies look in a direction of your choosing. With a proper Officer uniform, he can even make enlisted enemies walk a short distance. The Spy must however stay away from the short-range view of Officers and definitely not be seen at all by SS Officers as the latter will reveal even the Spy instantly.
  • It probably doesn't help the other Commandos that they wear the disguises badly, keeping on their Allied headwear ontop of their enemy uniforms while the Spy fully wears a German disguise. (In-game his character model outright changes to whoever you took the uniform from.)
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • There are two instances of this, in Men of Courage and Destination Berlin. Both examples are related to specific buildings, serving as targets which are objectives for destruction in their mission, both harbour useful items. Blowing both buildings completely prevent to go inside again.
  • The second mission of Men of Courage as a workshop in which lies a torpedo. Blowing the building without fully searching it won't have any other actual bad consequence than making a part of the bonus-mission unlocking puzzle to become unreachable, thus preventing to access it.
  • The first Normandy mission of Destination Berlin is related to the ammunition warehouse of the German base. Destroying it without stealing all the explosives in the crates will make the mission unwinnable, as the Sapper doesn't begin the mission with enough explosives to destroy all the targets in his backpack.
• Piranha Problem: They can be seen in rivers of a couple of the Asian-set missions of Men of Courage. It is an example of Misplaced Wildlife, as they only live in South America.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: This being a Stealth-Based Game, an unsilenced pistol is a fallback weapon that takes three shots to kill an enemy. However, if you have several commandos grouped together, since the pistol is about the only common action all the commandos have, it is possible to ambush enemies with it if cover is used judiciously. This tactic can even work on patrols if the player is good enough, provided the patrol being ambushed is far enough away not to raise the alarm.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A Fighting Irish Blood Knight with a propensity for Good Old Fisticuffs and knife play who was convicted of striking an officer, an aristocratic Cold Sniper, an alcoholic who swam the English channel on a bet, a Mad Bomber, an American criminal who joined the British army to escape the US authorities, a former member of French embassy personal in Germany and Master of Disguise, a thief and Russian seductress.
• Reading The Enemy's Mail: The plot of the three first missions of Men of Courage revolves around the Enigma machine.
• Red Alert: Getting spotted by an enemy inside a base or near its surroundings can cause an alarm to go off, causing enemies to converge on your position. In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty, this causes patrols to spawn from nearby garrison buildings to hunt your commandos down. An alarm won't necessarily alert the entire map, just whichever garrison is within range of the disturbance and being spotted by patrols well outside a base do not necessarily mean that an alarm will go off. Beyond The Call Of Duty contains certain missions, such as rescuing a prisoner awaiting a firing squad or an SS Colonel that needs to be abducted, where setting off an alarm will cause a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Red Shirt Army: Averted by the Allied soldiers and Ghurkas in Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin. They're pretty useful in a straight fight and in setting up ambushes.
• Remixed Level:
  • In the first game, there is a level that takes place during Operation Market Garden. The first time, the protagonists must prevent the Germans from destroying the bridge. The next time, they must destroy the very same bridge. The historical irony is justified by the fact that Operation Market Garden didn't really go that well for the Allies and they had to destroy captured bridges to prevent the Germans from taking advantage of them.
  • Two bonus missions of Men of Courage are a Remixed Level of the first tutorial mission.
  • Most of the new missions added by the Destination Paris mod are Remixed Level of the main campaign. Most of the remaining are remakes of Destination Berlin and Beyond the Call of Duty.
  • The second to last German mission of Destination Berlin requires to take a town. The last mission is an ambush to a German convoy which crosses this town.
• Save Scumming: You'll need it.
• Scenery Porn: The levels set in Europe have a certain drab, grey appeal, but then you see the sunny shores of Savo Island, with its crystal blue waters and lush tropical jungle, and you wonder why the series had to return to Europe at all...
• Scenery Gorn: The ruined Normandy town of Men of Courage and Stalingrad in Destination Berlin.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty:
  • Some bonus missions of Men of Courage are harder than the main campaign. Some others are a cakewalk (including the last one, which happens after the climatic final official mission in Paris).
  • The Stalingrad campaign of Destination Berlin (the first, excluding the Tutorial) is arguably the hardest of the game with heavy combat, forcing the player to quickly adapt to the heavily nerfed combat abilities of their commandos and the final mission having an instant-fail alarm for almost the entire level ,the player also has to deal with Paratroopers, who wield the deadly Assault Rifle, which aren't encountered at all in the Normandy campaign.
  • Beyond The Call Of Duty, while quite difficult the entire way through the game, has a difficulty level that jumps up and down quite a lot, with the first mission, "Dying Light", being a huge learning curve definitely not suited to a novice player, due to its tight confines, large number of enemies for said confines, and difficulty landing on the island undetected (and, therefore unscathed). Conversely, the penultimate mission, "The Great Escape", is probably the easiest mission in the game despite the fact that your team is minus two members to start with. Hell, even the final mission has a huge difficulty drop mid mission once Natasha is actually contacted.
• Sea Mines: Amphibious missions typically have these.
  • The only way to get rid of them in order to safely cross a sea way with the inflatable boat in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty is to shoot at least two of them with the sniper's rifle.
  • In Men of Courage, the Diver can disarm them underwater. There's also a bonus mission in which he has to pilot a speedboat through a sea that's littered with them.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: The covers for Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty.
• Selective Historical Armoury:
  • In Men of Courage and Destination Berlin, the official weaponry of the commandos is a combination of British (Lee-Enfield rifle, PIAT, Mills bombs) and American (Colt M1911A1, M1903 Springfield) weapons. Allied soldiers of Men of Courage (it is never specified if they are American, British, Australian, or whatever) use the same arsenal.
  • Russian and British/American soldiers in Destination Berlin hold German weapons.
  • More egregious is the complete lack of any SMG apart from the MP40 (and the Grease Gun in the original) - the Commandos were famed for using Thompsons, to the extent it featured on their insignia (and the cover of Destination Berlin).
  • German officers and NCOs are only armed with P08 Luger, despite this weapon being gradually replaced with P38 Walther since the beginning of the war.
  • When the Green Beret storms the beaches of Normandy in the final mission of Destination Berlin, he is carrying a Kar98 in his inventory, as opposed to a Lee-Enfield.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: While the pistol and submachine guns actually have a fairly realistic maximum range, the rifle and sniper rifle's maximum range have been somewhat nerfed for balance reasons. For some reason, regular allied soldiers can shoot further with the rifle than the commandos can.
• Shooting Superman: If you steal a panzer III or IV, all the foot soldiers will still shoot at it even though, as you would expect, the tanks are Immune to Bullets and while the APC's can eventually get taken out, they can take a massive amount of bullets before blowing up.
• Shot at Dawn:
  • The resistance fighters in "Before Dawn" are due to be executed at dawn the following day, hence the mission to rescue them before this can happen.
  • Dragisa Skopje is in front of a firing squad in "The Asphalt Jungle", though they seem to be taking their time with him. Getting spotted and setting off the alarm will result in him being shot immediately. Major Skopje is controllable in this mission performing any action with him. If the player chooses, they can even make him Defiant to the End and throw a stone at his executioners with predictable results.
  • The Thief is before a firing squad in "Castle Colditz" and it's up to his comrades to rescue him. The Destination Paris mod adds a time limit to this mission, after which he'll be shot.
• Shout-Out: Lots, especially to movies, to the point it has its own page.
• Shown Their Work: Many of the entries under Artistic License are lampshaded by the manual noting the inaccuracies in the games.
• Simultaneous Warning and Action: Both played straight and averted in the early games. Upon spotting a Commando, enemies order them to halt, but not all of them open fire immediately unless provoked by nearby gunfire or the sight of a dead body. There is a game setting that lets the Commandoes automatically comply and doing so may buy the player enough time to silently take down the guard with another Commando before the guard opens fire and sets off the alarm, but it won't work with every guard. MG nest gunners always open fire on sight and patrols only hold fire if there's a jail on the map. This is actually justified - the German soldiers had orders to kill any caught commandos immediately, even if they tried to surrender, unless they were judged valuable enough to be interrogated.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • Men Of Courage introduces wine bottles, which can be thrown to distract enemies. Enemy soldiers who are distracted by these bottles will take them back to their post and skull the whole bottle back, making them stagger with drunkenness for a few seconds. Slip a sleeping pill into the bottle, on the other hand, and the enemy takes a nap, leaving him ripe for tying up.
  • Beside using poisoned wine as bait, the game's first mission features another example of the trope. One of the objectives is to steal a key to the submarine base commander's office, which is carried by his aid. The aid stays in the mess hall and dines with several sailors; the intended way to steal the key is to slip sleeping pills in the mess hall's wine stock, knocking out everyone at once without leaving any awaken witness to rise the alarm.
• Sniper Duel: The first mission in Destination Berlin. It is a Shout-Out to Enemy at the Gates.
• Sniping the Cockpit: Men Of Courage changed how damage was dealt to the Commandos while occupying vehicles. In the original game, enemy soldiers would shoot at the vehicle itself until it exploded. In Men Of Courage, any gunfire would hit the commando inside, damaging him instead.
• Snow Means Death: In the "White Death" mission in Men Of Courage, leaving your men outdoors for too long without Arctic clothing will result in death by exposure.
• Sprint Meter: Sort of, in Men of Courage. There isn't actual sprint meter (the team can run for an infinite time), but climbing (ladders, poles, walls) and maintaining a grappling hook trap (for the Diver) consumes an endurance meter.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Commandos 2 and Commandos 3 have 3D indoor areas with a fully rotatable view; the large outdoor maps, however, appear in 2D isometric view (or, more precisely, four isometric views each; the player can switch between the four cardinal directions for different views).
• Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: Since 85% of the first game's missions are demolition operations to destroy enemy assets, the alarm will be sounded eventually. The trick is to have your commandos in the right position (preferably making use of the assigned escape route) to avoid be shot to pieces once the inevitable explosion brings hordes of submachinegun armed patrols on their position. Later games avert this by giving more varied objectives.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: In the first two games, any standing Commando who gets spotted via an enemy's long-range vision can instantly hide simply by going prone, usually causing the enemy in question to go investigate. It will never raise an alarm unless shots are fired or the enemy spots a body on their way to (or back from) the Commando's last known position.
• Stealth Run:
  • Achieving one in a mission grants more merit points at the score screen of the mission in Men of Courage.
  • Enforced in the series: several missions of the games ends with a defeat if the alarm is set on.
• Storming the Beaches: The obligatory Normandy Landing in Destination Berlin's final mission.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Many missions involve demolitions, some of which don't even have the Sapper involved. In fact, only three missions (Two are rescue ops, the other is preventing the Demolition of a bridge which you then have to destroy two missions later) in the original game don't involve destroying something, requiring the player to plan their escape carefully prior to detonating the explosives. In fact, the first non demolition mission doesn't occur until over half way into the game. Later games add more varied objectives, such as rescue operations, kidnappings, and theft of enemy technology.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Several missions involve real (or at least realistic) German high technology, usually to be stolen or destroyed.
  • Behind Enemy Lines ends with a mission which objective is to stop Germans from dramatically advancing their nuclear weapon program in a secret lab in the Carpathian mountains with allied blueprints they stole, in February 1945, whereas in reality the German nuclear weapon program never got any sort of priority funding and was practically dead in the (heavy) water mid-war, thanks to Allied operations in Norway. The game also features two missions that require the destruction of some V2 rockets, including the aforementioned last mission.
  • Beyond the Call of Duty features a mission which requires stealing a Hs 293 bomb's navigation system and one where the player has to destroy some German jet aircrafts.
• Take Your Time: Most of the games, with a few exceptions (mostly in Destination Berlin). The most obvious example is the train mission of Destination Berlin: logically, if you take too much time to stop the train, it would eventually reach its destination, no? No.
• Tank Goodness: German armor appears in several missions. The Driver can take control of unoccupied vehicles and use them to rampage around. One of the bonus missions in Men Of Courage is simply a tank battle, where the Driver and Sapper must make use of a Tiger tank to take on several Panzers III.
• Tap on the Head: The punch (or kick in the Thief's case) knocks out any enemy in one blow. Though when it's first introduced as an ability for the Green Beret in Beyond The Call Of Duty, it will only work from behind on an enemy that hasn't already spotted you.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Driver and the Marine in the original game are, respectively, fairly useless outside of levels with no hijack-able vehicles or water, hence they aren't used in them or they'd just be dead weight (the driver sometimes acts a medic, but your commandos are usually dead if they get spotted so that's not a very useful ability; the Marine can shoot lone enemies with his harpoon, a One-Hit Kill weapon with a very long reloading time and has a knife like the Green Beret, but he doesn't have the extremely useful ability to carry bodies like the Green Beret or the Spy). If those levels have either of them, they're essential, particularly the driver if there's an armored car or panzer for him to steal which allows him to rip through most anything. Later games add more skills and equipment for them, but it's not enough to prevent the Marine being Demoted to Extra for Destination Berlin and the Driver being Put on a Bus altogether.
• Threatening Shark: In the underwater areas of Savo Island in Men of Courage. They are less dangerous than Japanese frogmen.
• Throwing the Distraction: Cigarette packs and wine bottles can be thrown to lure enemies away from their post. The wine bottles can even be spiked with sedatives in order to pacify them. In Beyond The Call Of Duty, the commandos can also throw stones to redirect an enemy's attention. You can even piss them off by throwing stones directly at them, which will cause the enemy being pelted with said stones to investigate the source after being hit three times, a sometimes useful tactic if you're using a commando who can pacify enemies silently.
• Timed Mission: Averted in most of the series... except in a third of the Destination Berlin missions.
• Too Awesome to Use: In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty, limited ammunition firearms need to be used judiciously, as ammo is very scarce even with Allied supply drops. The sniper rifle is particularly prone to this, as the Sniper will never have more than a handful of rounds for it. His tutorial outright tells the player to be thrifty with ammo. Explosives can fall under this as well, as often the Sapper doesn't even carry enough to take out every objective, requiring the remaining objectives to be destroyed with Exploding Barrels. In the missions he gets grenades, said grenades fall into the same pattern as limited ammo guns; Is it worth taking out a single patrol or saving a grenade to take out the barracks first? Averted in later games where ammo and explosives are much more plentiful.
• Too Dumb to Live: The patrols will happily keep following the exact same route, even if one of them dies every time at the exact same spot.
  • In Men of Courage, enemies are extremely careless when they see a corpse - they just blindly rush towards it, being extremely easy to ambush in the process. It is extremely easy to set up Schmuck Baits.
  • Enemies go out of their way to get a pack of cigarettes or wine laying in the open. The most extreme examples of this come from locations like German destroyers in the arctic circle. Some guards will locate a single pack of cigarettes among the blinding white snow, leave their post, sometimes venture through the entire ship, leave the ship and walk into the open land just to get some of those nicotine sticks. Usually they get a boot to the head instead.
  • During one of the African missions in ''Behind Enemy Lines", "Courtesy Call", a trio of Panzers are parked up and ready to go and will actively seek out your men once the alarm is raised. However, there's a conveniently placed fuel truck nearby. Parking the truck in front of the centre tank, thereby blocking it in, will cause the three tanks to recognise it as an Allied asset and open fire on it at point blank range once the alarm is raised, which, upon destruction of the truck, will destroy all three tanks.
• Took a Level in Badass: Natasha has become an accomplished sniper between Beyond the Call of Duty and Men of courage. Applies to the others as well - almost everyone in the team has learned some barehanded combat, driving cars, swimming and using clever distractions, not to mention serious rifle skills.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Most of the games pit the Commandos against Wehrmacht troops in theatres of operations such as Norway, Africa, France, Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany itself. However, Men Of Courage has several missions in the midgame set in the Pacific, where Japanese troops are the enemy.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • A Men of Courage trailer shows the summit of the Eiffel Tower and streets of Paris (parts of the

last level), and an extract of the bombing of the Shinano cutscene.

• There is a Destination Berlin trailer in which the first gameplay sequences shows the Normandy beach, which is the last mission of the game. It also shows the ending of the train mission, when the locomotive falls in gap caused by the destruction of a bridge.

• Traintop Battle: One of the missions of Destination Berlin, featured prominently in previews and trailers.
• True Companions: The Commandos themselves, according to the manual. Each man is stated to be irreplaceable and losing even one fails the mission.
• Tutorial Failure: A downplayed example but the tutorials in Men of Courage are less proper tutorials and more really simple beginner missions that don't actually explain the mechanics in-depth, this is mostly notable because the original console ports (which more significantly altered the game compared to the later remaster console ports) added a ton of new mini-tutorials that further explain the mechanics that previously only mentioned in the manual/had to be found out while playing.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Men of Courage first bonus mission is not a stealth infiltration mission at all, but a timed race with a motorboat inside a circuit delimited by seamines.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • The first "Normandy" mission of Destination Berlin. It requires to destroy a lot of German stuff, but the Sapper doesn't begin with enough explosive for the mission. There is more bombs in an ammunition warehouse, which is one of the objectives to be destroyed. Blowing it will makes it inside unreachable, so blowing it first without emptying it makes the mission unwinnable.
  • "Dying Light" from Beyond The Call Of Duty involves destroying a lighthouse, a barracks, and some AA guns on a small island. This is all well and good, except that the island is surrounded by mines that can only be cleared by shooting at them with the Sniper. Too bad you probably used up your ammo clearing a path just to get onto the island and now can't possibly escape. Oh, and this is the first level.
• Universal Ammunition:
  • The Sniper can load his Springfield rifle (7,62mm in Real Life) with ammunitions looted from German (7,92mm) and Japanese (6,5mm) snipers.
  • In Destination Berlin, Lee-Enfield rifles (.303 British) can be loaded with German ammunitions (7,92mm).
• Universal Driver's License: In Men of Courage, any Commandos can drive ground vehicles (excluding tanks), a motorboat, and a hot air balloon.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Played straight in Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond The Call Of Duty, averted in Men Of Courage onwards (except for the German grenaders, who can be stripped from their uniform and gun but not their grenades) where the commandos can strip disabled/killed enemy soldiers of their weapons, and even steal their uniforms for temporary disguises (or permanent disguises, in the case of the Spy). Note that in latter games, enemies killed with fire can't be stripped from their stuff.
  • Several enemy vehicles such as the German Sd Kfz 231 and the Type 97 tank are occupied by the enemy soldiers. There is no vacant vehicles of those in the other missions.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Bordering on Shout-Out and/or Genius Bonus, several missions recall real commando raids of the Second World War. Of course, others are less specific.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There is a quite long video on YouTube about how to feed Japanese prisoners to the crocodiles. And that's only one of many possibilities.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Men of Courage score system encourages the use of non-lethal force to supress the enemies. Higher ranks can't be reached if the commandos just kill their way through.
• Videogame Flamethrowers Suck: It is an insta-kill weapon, but it has a very short range and consumes its ammunition very quickly. It has also other drawbacks, when considering that Commandos is a stealth-based game: burning enemies will run a bit while screaming before collapsing and dying (which can set on the alarm), the fire destroys the stuff carried by enemies. It also takes up four precious blocks of inventory space, which could be better used by a longarm or some explosives, however the flamethrower itself technically makes no noise and like the Molotov it can be used to silently kill enemies provided they don't see the sapper and they don't run into the view of other enemies.
• Villains Out Shopping: In Men of Courage, there are a few places when the commandos meet German and Japanese soldiers not in duty but in dormitories or in shower rooms. There are also the Haiphong mission, in which the Southern quarter of the town is contains shops and bars full of Japanese soldiers, and the Paris mission, in which we can see a few German soldiers playing soccers not far of the Eiffel Tower.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Lose any of your commandos and it's mission failed. Avoided in the easiest difficulty mode of Men of Courage, where death is replaced by a Non-Lethal K.O..
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Systematically happens to the special one-mission characters.
• A Winner Is You: In Destination Berlin. There is no score screen at all and the campaigns except the last one - Normandy -, which is followed by a montage of the greatest moments of the game ends with an abrupt "[Name of the mission] completed" message in the middle of the screen, followed by a forced return to the main menu.
• With This Herring: The series is very guilty of this, especially in the early episodes. You don't keep your stuff between missions, anyway.
  • Several missions require to destroy targets with explosives... that you have to steal from the German right in the area.
  • There are examples of missions in the initial episode in which the team starts with three sniper rifle bullets (less than a full magazine^note Springfield M1903, which contains five bullets of the weapon in real life) and one grenade.
  • Commandos 2: Men of Courage and Commandos 3: Destination Berlin are a bit more realist in this aspect. The sniper now starts with five bullets in his rifle instead of three. The spy's syringe is initially only loaded with three doses (you need two doses to stun an enemy).
• You Shall Not Pass!: A few missions from Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin involve defending your position from hordes and hordes of incoming enemies.
• Zerg Rush: One of the bonus missions in Men of Courage involves hordes of German soldiers swarming onto your position. For many, it's That One Level.

Commandos: Strike Force

• America Won World War II: Averted again in Strike Force as the team are still British Commandos (with Francis O'Brien being Irish-American, William Hakwins is British and George Brown is German.
• Artificial Brilliance: Friendly Soldiers (even non-designated Medics) will heal an incapciatated Commando if it's safe and while you can't give them orders, un-controlled Commandos, while immobile, will engage any enemies that see them (holding fire to keep stealth/preserve ammo, but once spotted by an enemy will quickly open fire first.) and can even pop up/down from cover to fire back to defend themselves.
• Backstab: Each member of the team has a special One-Hit Kill attack that can be used against unaware enemies. The Green Beret and the Sniper stab the target, the Spy strangles it with a piano string.
• BFG: The Panzerfaust and on Easy/Normal difficulty, the portable MG 42.
• The Cameo: Whiskey appears in the ending.
• Canon Discontinuity: Commandos: Strike Force is dismissed by Pyro.
• The Cavalry: There are two siege defense mission, which both end with the simultaneous arrival of German heavier troops and allied reinforcements.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Averted. The French Resistance is an important ally in the first missions of the campaign.
• Cold Sniper: A German one appears in a sniping-oriented mission set in Stalingrad. He is named Major Konig.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: In the minimap in the bottom of the screen. Allies and non-controlled party members are blue triangle, unaware enemies are green triangles, suspicious enemies are yellow triangles, and alerted hostile enemies are red triangles.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: The trio are still a British Commandos Multinational Team but their nationalities/abilties are different. The Spy this time around is actually German as opposed to French and prefers a Garrote and Gas Grenades over a Syringe, the Sniper is more working class than Duke and is more versatile with Throwing Knives like the Diver, and the Green Beret is an American, though likely of Irish descent given his name. Also, they're all commissioned officers.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The first mission set in Soviet Union begins by the capture of the Green Beret and the Sniper.
• Death from Above: German mortars and artillery in some missions.
• Distracted by the Sexy: There is a mission in which the Spy of the team has to murder a German officer inside a bordello (among other objectives). When entering, the Spy is met by a woman working there who offers him to distract the Gestapo officer who is watching the stairs nearby.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The heroes are three British Commandos.
• Elite Mooks: Those Gestapo officers that can see through the Spy's disguise
• Escort Mission: From time to time, with a subversion. The escortees only walk in a safe area. If not, they stop and hide until the player characters manage to clean the area.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Averted. Although the characters are named Green Beret, Sniper, and Spy in the titles of the their subtitled dialog lines, they are always adressed by name or rank in the actual conversation.
• Everything Fades: Corpses (and the weapon they carried) disappear by themselves after a few minutes. Fortunately, because alarm is raised when an enemy sees a corpse, but the Strike Force is unable to move a dead enemy.
• Exploding Barrels: Appear from time to time.
• Forced Tutorial: The tutorial consists in a few messages and cutscenes in the first missions, which explains how to use the commandos' abilities.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In terms of gameplay and scoring, the Unique Enemy Major Gorlitz isn't considered as an officer (which he is, according to his rank) but as a general.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: There are occasional secondary objectives requiring to look for some documents or items.
• Harder Than Hard: The unlockable Commando difficulty which is unlocked by getting 5 stars in every level, which even goes so far as to strip the Spy of starting with his Silenced Pistol and alters levels occasionally to be harder.
• Heal Thyself: The three player characters can carry up to four medkits. They serve to heal the character who bears one or to help a fallen ally (another commando or a NPC).
• It's Raining Men: The beginning of the campaign involves American paratroopers jumping above French country.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The Germans are seen beating the captured Green Beret and Sniper in the Soviet Union mission.
• MacGuffin: The relic in the first half of the Russian part of the game. The only information given to the player is that the Strike Force must retrieve it from the Germans.
• The Medic:
  • A couple of missions involve an ally medic which can drag to safety an injuried commando or give medkits when asked.
  • Each member of the team can have this role.
  • Regular Allied Soldiers will eventually heal an injured Commando, but they will generally only do after a significant amount of time or if there are no immediate threats.
• The Mole: Commissar Salenkov. The Green Beret suspects that the mole is the Spy.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: If you fail the first Spy level, you get to see the Paratroopers being shot dead in the air, ending with a close up of the Green Beret dead on the ground, several other levels have mini-failure cutscenes. (Such as letting too many of you allies die in the second level.)
• Molotov Cocktail: Returns from C2/3 but only in the final level.
• Multinational Team: The Strike Force is a unit of the British army, but only one of them (the Sniper) is actually British. The Green Beret is American-Irish and the Spy is German and the team is assisted by American soldiers only in the failed French Resistance contact mission at the start of the game, with French/Norwegian Resistance members and the Red Army being your allies in the rest of the game.
• Mythology Gag: Whiskey the dog from Men Of Courage makes a brief cameo in the ending.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: In missions with 2 commandos, an Commando that's health is roughly 90% depleted will go into an injured state clutching their stomach until healed, this can also happend to allied soldiers, who will eventually die if untreated while a Commando will stay alive in this state until healed, either by the player with a medkit or an allied soldier.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Used in a fighting track of the game’s OST
• One-Hit Kill: Backstab, gas grenades, sniper rifle, Molotov cocktails.
• One-Hit Polykill:
  • Allowed by the sniper rifle. It is even adviced in a sniper-oriented mission.
  • grenades and explosives all for this.
• Oxygen Meter: The Stamina bar has this role when a commando is swimming.
• Plot Hole: It's revealed later that the traitor is Brown's friend, Russian General Emil Salenkov, how exactly he got his hands on Brown's operation in Normandy is never explained.
• Reformulated Game: The PS2 version for technical reasons had to remove several weapons from several levels (essentially entirely removing most weapons that appear only once) and levels are often simplified and split into smaller chunks.
• Remixed Level:
  • The first missions in France are about capturing a farm, then holding it. The next mission is set before it with the Spy disabling Anti-air guns so they don't kill the Paratroopers on the way down.
  • The second to last and last missions in Norway are respectively the stealth capture of a town, and then its defence against German reinforcements.
  • The first Russian mission is about entering inside a German base. The third is about leaving this base (the second mission is set inside the undergrounds of the base).
• La Résistance: A couple of missions feature French and Norwegian freedom fighters helped by the Strike Force.
• Scenery Gorn: Stalingrad's ruins.
• Selective Historical Armoury: The only pistol carried by Germans is a P08 Luger, which is iconic but was progressively replaced by the standard P38 since the late Thirties.
• Shout-Out: There is one sniper-themed mission in the ruins of Stalingrad, featuring a unique German Sniper named Major Koenig.
• Snow Means Death: Sort of, it is not actually snow but frozen water. The only commando able to swim for a few time during the Norway missions is the Sniper, the others have their oxygen / stamina meter drained very quickly if they try.
• Sprint Meter: Drained when running, swimming underwater, and jumping.
• Stealth Run:
  • Encouraged throughout the game. Eliminating enemies with the stealth backstab is better for scoring.
  • It is enforced in a few missions: raising the alarm triggers a countdown which ends in the failure of the mission if the alerted enemies are still alive when the countdown reaches 0.
• Unlockable Content: Completing missions unlocks artworks and sketches from the game's development.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Averted. Although it can seem to be played straight if you play the game for the first time: each commando can only pick specific weapons from fallen enemies, and the campaign begins with a Sniper-only mission (this commando can only pick pistols and sniper rifles, two weapons rare in-game).
• Villains Out Shopping: German soldiers and officers visiting a French bordello.
• Weapon Specialization: Each of the three main characters' preferred sidearm reflects their playstyle; The Spy's Walther is silenced, the Sniper's Luger has a reputation for being very accurate, and the Green Beret's 1911 is no nonsense with good stopping power.
• You Shall Not Pass!: The Norway and Russia parts of the campaign both end with the Green Beret and the Sniper helping Russian army /Norwegian partisans to withstand a siege to repel a German invasion.

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