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For Freedom!

Freedom Force is a two-game series of single-player Tactical RPGs made by Irrational Games, and an homage to the Silver Age of superhero comics. It harkens back to the good old days when superheroes were all real paragons of heroism, supervillains were all real Card-Carrying Villains, and flying Nazi brains with Eye Beams were real flying Nazi brains with eye beams. And signs showing *BIFF* showed up whenever characters landed a punch.

Freedom Force, as well as its Oddly Named Sequel Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, follows the adventures of the eponymous Freedom Force, a team of superheroes given various powers by Imported Alien Phlebotinum "Energy X" introduced to the planet by Lord Dominion, a Galactic Conqueror who tried to conquer Earth by giving bad people superpowers and letting civilization tear itself apart. By the actions of heroic alien Mentor, one shipment of Energy X was instead scattered randomly over Patriot City, America, where it conveniently empowered people who turned out to be superhero material. Over the two games, the large cast of Freedom Force took on (amongst other things) such diverse enemies as communists, giant ants, dinosaurs, giant robots, self-copying criminal masterminds, alien invasions, satyrs, time travelers, the Third Reich, and a Reality Warper.

Freedom Force has a small but active community of modders based at Freedom Reborn. A good place to start may be the Strangers mod, which is as long as the full game and arguably better. The sequel received a pulp-themed mod named Pulp Adventures. There was also an Image Comics miniseries based on the first game, with scattered references to the second.

Not to be confused with the NES Zapper game of the same name, by Sunsoft. Also not to be confused with the Marvel Comics team by that name, who were really just the paroled Brotherhood of Evil Mutants with the second Spider-Woman (and a couple of aged fourth-stringers) thrown in. Finally, not to be confused with Freedom Fighters (2003).


This game contains examples of:

  • '90s Anti-Hero: Tombstone. One-person Dark Age, no less.
    Tombstone: i too have lost a love in the mists of time. allow your grief to FUEL your rage, and so shall you seek JUSTICE.
    • When Alchemiss sarcastically wonders whether he raised puppies or something during a sabbatical, he claims "animals wither in my presence".
  • Added Alliterative Appeal: Everything, and we mean everything, has an alliterative pun in its description. Cars, warehouses, dumpsters... and characters.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of Silver Age superhero comics. Most of the games' characters can be recognized as a Captain Ersatz of a famous hero or villain.
  • All the Worlds Are a Stage: In the penultimate series of levels, Time Master produces opponents and backdrops from earlier in the game to harass our heroes.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Pinstripe is purple. Man O' War and Sea Urchin are blue.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Energy X. What does it do? Everything, apparently. This might be because Energy X comes from/is a being of godlike power who dwells outside of existence.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can't control more than four heroes in a given mission. That includes characters who are plot-mandated to appear.
  • Ascended Fanboy:
    • Liberty Lad is a teenager fan of the Freedom Force, who followed them during one of their missions and was severely wounded in the fight which ensued. He gained powers after receiving a blood transfusion from Minuteman.
    • The Bard is a real life example: He was the winning entry of a character creation contest.
  • The Atoner: Man-Bot.
  • Badass Normal: The three non-Energy X heroes from the 1930's in vs. the Third Reich; Blackjack, Tricolour and Sky King. They tend to be rather fragile because of this, and all get at least the Heroic ability, essentially granting them extra lives.
  • Batter Up!: Thugs with bats are among the lowest-level enemy mooks.
  • Beautiful All Along: Shadow is a rather uncommon example of this.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: All the villains as well as a healthy spattering of the heroes.
  • Book Burning: There's a level in the second game where the player's team has to prevent historically important books from being burnt.
  • Boss-Only Level: The Final Boss in both games.
  • Boss Rush: At the end of the first game, you end up having to face copies of every antagonist you faced before - including Microwave and Ant-man.
  • Brain in a Jar: The Eyes of the Reich from the sequel, which come in two varieties. The "minor" variety is faster, while the "major" variety is equipped with a sensor array that it can and will use to determine your heroes' weaknesses before blasting them with its beams.
  • The Cape: The entirety of Freedom Force... Except Tombstone. And Man-Bot, who is rather morose. Alchemiss can be abrasive and confrontational too.
  • Captain Ethnic:
    • There are plenty of examples, but El Diablo (the team's Latino pyrokinetic) is one of the earliest and most obvious.
    • There's the very British Blackjack (who even has an attack called Biff for Blighty) and the very French Tricolour in the sequel.
    • Quetzacoatl, who is an expy of a Superfriends Captain Ethnic, El Dorado.
  • Captain Geographic: Minuteman and Nuclear Winter.
  • Captain Patriotic: Minuteman and Liberty Lad, plus Tricolour in the sequel.
  • Car Fu: Get strong enough, and you can heft cars. Get to the maximum level of strength, and you can toss them all the way down the city block. And given that they don't cost Prestige points at the end of a level, one smart strategy is to gather as many damaged(until they stop moving) cars as you can, then find a way to lure the major bosses of the stage into a 3 car pile-up. Which you detonate by throwing a fourth car into them...
  • Catchphrase: Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots. It is a 60's superhero team, after all. "Rings of Rexxor!", "Right Makes Might!", "It's ant-tastic!", "Peaches and Cream!", "Your evil is unwanted here!", "FOR FREEDOM!"
  • Clingy Costume: Man-Bot wears a powered exoskeleton that contains the energies he generates.
  • Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Inverted- apart from the Secret Origin cutscenes, usually only the codenames are used in dialogue and narration. Alchemiss does mention El Diablo's real name, Ricardo, in the tutorial of the second game and he uses it too and she also calls Man-Bot Ted. Man-Bot does call Alchemiss by her real name, Catherine, in the ending of the second game.
  • Conflict Killer: Time Master... twice!
  • Cool Versus Awesome: Time Master vs. Entropy. With the player controlling Time Master!
  • Cutscene Drop: In certain interrogations (e.g. during The Voice of Doom), the party gets teleported to a specific location for the cutscene to play properly. The most notable is all four team members teleporting into the cutscene ambush, and after said ambush, being teleported behind a church nowhere near the ambush (even if you defeat all enemies at the ambush area.)
  • Create Your Own Villain: Nuclear Winter was originally just a communist spy named Sukhov. Minuteman was responsible for the accident that turned him into a supervillain.
  • Crutch Character: In the sequel, Alchemiss. She is powerful, as a starting character.
  • Demoted to Extra: Minuteman is more or less unnecessary after the first couple missions of the second game. Mentor and Alchemiss are the real main characters, along with the WWII-era heroes.
  • Dating Catwoman: Minuteman and Red Oktober get rather friendly in the second game.
  • Death Dealer: Black Jack.
  • Destructive Savior: Freedom Force are indisputably good guys, but they tend to cause a lot of damage to the cities they're defending; aside from the many tactical applications of environmental destruction, they'll likely level many buildings entirely by accident over the course of the game.
    • Can be annoying when the objectives are "Don't let X building be destroyed", meaning you can't use things like Disruption or Ignition.
  • Die, Chair, Die!: Pretty much every item of scenery, from small rocks, to chairs and fences, to cars and boulders, can be thrown for damage. It is possible to completely curbstomp otherwise-difficult bosses by launching cars at them from halfway across a level with your super-strong heroes.
  • Dirty Cop: A few missions feature "Crooked Cops" as enemy mooks.
  • Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: The Domain's alien soldiers are "Thin Skinned". Meaning they are vulnerable to Piercing damage, in other words, they are vulnerable to bullets. This makes a squad of police officers very effective in cutting them through them like butter. And these are the aliens that conquered the entire Multiverse.
  • Elemental Powers:
    • Playing with Fire: El Diablo and Red Sun.
    • Making a Splash: Man O'War. Water powers do physical damage in this game.
    • Blow You Away: Bullet can create whirlwinds. They also do physical damage.
    • Dishing Out Dirt: Used only by the Subterrestrial minions. Also physical damage.
    • Shock and Awe: Mentor's electron beam, Manówar's storm bolt and melee attacks, Sea Urchin's and Bullet's static eletricity and Tombstone's bullets.
      • It is easily overlooked, but Shadow and her minions have electrical powers too.
    • An Ice Person: Nuclear Winter and his minions, of course. And for some reason, Blackbird's basic attack is a penetrating ice beam.
    • Poisonous Person: Sea Urchin's bubbles, The Ant's acid grenades and Quetzalcoatl's melee attacks.
    • Make Me Wanna Shout: Fortissimo. Blackbird and Supercollider too, but only to stun.
    • Green Thumb: Eve and Pan.
    • Pure Energy: Man-Bot and a number supernatural or laser weapon wielding enemies.
    • Atomic Superpower: Microwave. And Nuclear Winter's melee attacks. Mentor can learn a radiation beam power late in the game. Also, expect most kinds of laser weapons to do radiation damage.
    • Functional Magic: Alchemiss, Quetzalcoatl and Red October and her minions. It's used mainly for debuffs, while Quetzalcoatl can also buff and heal allies with it. Offensive magical powers do energy damage.
    • Psychic Powers: Mentor and Blitzkrieg. Only used for status effects though.
    • Casting a Shadow: Shadow and her minions, of course. But it is only a stealth power.
  • Enemy Mine: After you kick him around a little, Lord Dominion opts to teleport Freedom Force to Time Master's domain so they can stop him from destroying all of creation. In vs. the Third Reich, Freedom Force digs up Time Master himself so he can fight Entropy. You also get control of Red Oktober for a level.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Red Oktober in the second game is very much a Russian patriot - but she will not tolerate a nuclear war starting.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Alchemiss/Entropy.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich. Subverted in that only about a third of the game involves the Third Reich, with Nuclear Winter and Entropy getting almost equal billing.
  • Expressive Mask: There's some of this to be seen in Freedom Force vs the Third Reich. It's most visible with Black Jack and Alchemiss. Tombstone even gets Oddly Visible Eyebrows for a scene or two.
  • Expy/Captain Ersatz: Nine-tenths of the cast, although some more than others.
    • Minuteman is clearly a Captain America expy, with Liberty Lad as Bucky.
      • Liberty Lad has She-Hulk's origin story.
    • Mentor has shades of both Professor X and The Martian Manhunter.
    • El Diablo is a Latin (Latino-American with Mexican roots, to be percisely) Human Torch.
    • For another Man-Bot is essentially a combination of Dr. Strange (his original rich playboy lifestyle/humbling origin), Cyclops (his energy powers and inability to control them), and Iron Man (his armor itself)
      • Most of all comic heroes, he resembles DC's Human Bomb.
    • Alchemiss is the Scarlet Witch with the story arc of Jean Grey in the sequel.
    • The Ant is pretty much Spider-Man, for instance, with ant-related powers like burrowing and super-strength and gadgets that shoot acid; plus the ant-motiv and ant-control of Ant-Man thrown in.
    • Bullet is any number of super-speedsters including The Flash and Quicksilver. His origin video even calls him "the fastest man on Earth," which is a lot like Flash's "fastest man alive."
    • Man O'War is Aquaman if he was played by Sean Connery, with the flight and electric powers of the Silver Age Sub-Mariner.
    • Sea Urchin resembles Jubilee, being a wielder of seemingly useless powers and the Bratty Half-Pint Sidekick of a rather gruff and edgy hero.
    • Microwave is based on Vision.
    • Tombstone is a pedestrian Ghost Rider with the background of The Crow: Salvation.
    • Quetzalcoatl is a cross between Thor (human changes to avatar of mythical god to fight crime), Captain Marvel (adult hero with kid alter ego) and the almost forgotten El Dorado, plus Firestorm's shared consciousness, and his origins are similar to Spider-Man's (headstrong young hero learns humility when an elderly relative's killed by a common crook).
    • Iron Ox has Juggernaut parallels.
    • Supercollider is The Thing in Power Armor.
    • Blackbird is Black Canary.
    • Blackjack might be inspired by Spy Smasher or The Comedian.
    • Sky King is, of course, The Rocketeer, if he was played by Jimmy Stewart.
    • Most likely coincidental, Tricolour has a background similar to that of classic Kamen Riders, Z-Cross in particular.
    • Fewer examples are found on the Villains' side.
      • Pan is essentially Loki, with the trickster elements played up considerably.
      • Time Master is Kang the Conquerer with bits of Galactus and Darkseid mixed in, especially the latter's face.
      • Lord Dominion has the same mustache and cape as Emperor Ming the Merciless.
      • Shadow looks like Phantasm and her personality is similar to the X-Men villainess Callisto. She also shares a backstory with minor Batman villain Calendar Girl.
      • Blitzkrieg appears to be inspired by The Leader. Part the Marvel villain, part the other one.
      • Entropy is essentially an even more powerful version of the original Dark Phoenix.
  • Evil Is Deathly Cold: Nuclear Winter, in addition to being An Ice Person, prefers to hang out in really cold places.
  • Evil Knockoff: Deja Vu's ability is making these; of himself, civilians, cops, and even your heroes.
    • Though the cops and civilians have extra tricks like exploding, energy draining, laser pistols, flight, self-healing...
  • Eyepatch of Power: Man O' War.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Alchemiss.
  • Fauns and Satyrs: Pan himself makes an appearance as a boss.
  • Flying Firepower: El Diablo, fire and flight.
  • Fighting a Shadow: Some heroes, like Blackjack, can do this - create a fake duplicate to take the heat for them.
    • Amusingly, the spawned duplicate constantly shouted the catchphrases of the character in a robotic voice.
  • Final Speech: Defied in Freedom Force versus the Third Reich. Red Sun attempts one. Entropy kills him mid-speech.
    Entropy: You get to make a speech when you win, flame-brain, not when you strike out!
  • Flying Carpet: Green Genie has one.
  • Freeze Ray: Nuclear Winter's Frost Warriors carry them.
  • Fun Personified: The Green Genie.
  • Gainax Ending: The second game ends with Alchemiss realizing she can't control Entropy, and willingly banishing herself to Another Dimension, which causes everyone in our timeline to forget she ever existed. We then see the other dimension, where she meets an Anthropomorphic Personification of Energy X. As soon as he reveals who he is, the game just ends.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: There are several bugs that were never patched for the first game, even when it was made available on Steam. Certain computers experience issues with collision detection and saving. Because Technology Marches On, a new issue crops up when the game is played on newer versions of Windows when exiting out of the game: Windows will state that the game "quit unexpectedly" (despite it actually being stopped manually by the user) and "stopped working". Several other issues, such as map boundary issues and graphics glitches, can only be fixed by using the esoteric "Compatibility Mode" option in Windows 7.
  • Game Mod: So, so much. There were quite a few websites devoted to making downloadable game content, including character models for a vast amount of classic superheroes, as well as full mods that added their own storylines and missions. Some of the more famous ones included the DC Comics mod, which told an original Crisis Crossover story set in the DC Universe. There was also The Great Hunt, another Crisis Crossover which included DC and Marvel characters, as well as pulp and obscure ones.
    • Annoyingly, some people can't get the Steam versions to run mods for a reason the fandom has yet to discover.
  • A God Am I: Entropy.
    • Timemaster.
  • Godwin's Law of Time Travel: As the title of the second game reveals, this trope's involved in it.
  • Glass Cannon: Tricolour would be considered one. She hits fairly heavily for a non-superpowered character but doesn't need to take a lot of damage to be taken down.
    • Liberty Lad fits the trope too, once he's leveled up a bit and starts spamming grenades.
    • Minuteman and Black Jack are less extreme versions of this.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: El Diablo.
  • Green Rocks: Energy X. The end of the Third Reich shows that Energy X is somehow an entity outside existence, who originally expected the rules of good people using the powers for good, and evil using their powers for evil.
  • Guns Akimbo: Tombstone.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: The Kill-A-Rillas in the second game.
    • The Man-Bulls in the first game.
  • Handicapped Badass: Law, who can still kick ass just fine, despite being blind.
  • Heel–Face Turn: The Ant who was subject to mind control, Microwave before being reprogrammed, and Entropy before defeating Time Master.
  • Heroic Willpower: All heroes have one Hero Point, which can be spent at any time to trigger a burst of Heroic Willpower that will instantly fully heal the hero, restore all their energy, or allow them to shake off any status effect. Minuteman can get extras, which helps to offset his squishiness.
    • The Grim resolve ability makes characters immune to knock-back through sheer force of will.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Ant has a Shove attack, which can knock an enemy back but does no damage. Increasing the power of a shove just knocks back an enemy farther. What purpose does this serve, you ask? Well, see, on some maps, there are bottomless pits...Like the Boss Rush during the last couple levels. You can also hurt folks by shoving them off or into buildings. Alchemiss had a similar power, which didn't require you to get up close to the enemy.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: Third Reich zig-zags this. On one hand, Nuclear Winter is the Starter Villain once again (having escaped from jail), Time Master serves as a plot device for the former to happen, as well as to corrupt Alchemiss into Entropy. They are forced to Enemy Mine with Time Master who becomes the Final Boss... but this was actually not the antagonist's plan so much as they were given a chance to escape and took it. This is actually somewhat of a common trope with comic book storylines.
  • Hive Mind: Red Sun. Killing one instance causes the other nearby members of Red Sun to become more powerful.
  • Human Popsicle: Nuclear Winter's method of choice for keeping hostages around.
  • Humongous Mecha: Several, but especially including Mr Mechanical's personal mecha. In addition, fan made models include generic mecha, Sentinels, Gundams, and even Transformers.
  • An Ice Suit: Nuclear Winter. Also, the fur trimmed outfits worn by the villain Nuclear Winter and his henchladies.
  • Informed Ability: The Domain, under Lord Dominion, reportedly has access to a vast battlefleet that can and has conquered entire dimensions, leaving Earth as the only free world left in existence. Do they ever demonstrate anything that suggests that scale of military might? Not really, no.
  • Instant Fan Club: Somehow, Nuclear Winter is able to get a small army of Soviets with Ice Rays within a few hours of his transformation from a more-or-less normal guy into a full-blown supervillain. Everyone else has some explanation for where their mooks come from.
    • Well, Sukhov was already a presumably high ranking Russian secret agent so it makes sense for him to have a bunch of flunkies at his command. As for their ice based weaponry, it was probably supplied by Lord Dominion or Timemaster.
  • In the Hood: Shadow in the first game, Red Oktober in the second.
  • Jack of All Stats: Minuteman. His attack is high, but not as high as Supercollider. He's fast, but not as fast as Bullet. He's tougher than many team members but cannot compare to Microwave or Man-bot. He cannot fly, but he can jump over buildings. An overall decent character, but not exceptional in any particular area.
  • Japanese Politeness: Red Sun. But despite his knightly demeanour, he is far from above fighting dirty.
  • Killer Gorilla: The Kill-A-Rillas.
  • Kirby Dots
  • Large Ham: Minuteman, though since the game is based on the Silver Age, there are quite a number of others.
    • The Narrator, dear god the narrator...
    • Mentor really ramps it up in the sequel.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Sea Urchin has rather low stats, weak melee attacks, and can shoot... bubbles. However, those bubbles are homing projectiles that deal acidic damage-over-time, which pretty much every organic enemy in the game is weak to!
  • Left Hanging: The second game ends with Alchemiss/Entropy banishing herself to another dimension, only to meet the Anthropomorphic Personification of Energy X, with the game ending literally right after he identifies himself. This may have been meant as a Sequel Hook, but, due to the game having come out 15 years ago and there being no plans for sequel announced, it will probably remain a mystery.
  • Lighter and Softer: The series as a whole compared to Irrational Games' other titles.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Bullet and Supercollider.
  • Living Dinosaurs: One mission has time-displaced dinosaurs running rampant at the college campus.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Entropy's plan is simple: compel Man-Bot to stay with her forever by holding all of reality hostage. Either she gets her man, or the universe crumbles until Entropy and her man are the only things left. Either way, they'll be together forever.
  • Mad Artist: Mr. Mechanical. Despite the name, he's actually an architect... with a somewhat destructive sense of aesthetics.
  • Made of Iron: Literally. "Metal" is one substance a character can be made of, which renders them near Immune to Bullets and blunt force, but vulnerable to Energy X attacks and electricity. This includes the very human Sky King, due to his metal armour.
  • Minor Injury Overreaction: Shadow seeks vengeance because she was a beautiful supermodel whose face was "disfigured." When her cowl is removed, it's obvious she'll still quite gorgeous, only with a very small scar beneath her eye that could easily be hidden by makeup.
  • Make Me Wanna Shout: Fortissimo, the Italian Opera-Singer themed villain.
  • Malignant Plot Tumor: Entropy in the second game.
  • Meaningless Villain Victory: Time Master's plan is to destroy the multiverse in order to gain immortality. Wouldn't he get bored after a while with nothing but himself in existence?
    • This gets pointed out/lampshaded by Man-Bot. Apparently Timemaster doesn't mind.
  • Me's a Crowd: Deja Vu and Red Sun.
  • Meta Origin: Energy X.
  • Mighty Glacier: Sky King's armour deflects most projectiles, and he's tough to boot. But he doesn't do much damage outside of his special moves and moves real slow, even while flying.
    • Man-Bot is really tough and powerful, but slow too, until he gets the flight power.
  • Most Common Super Power: Check out any female character besides Sea Urchin.
  • My Greatest Failure: The death of Man-Bot's brother, which constantly weighs on his mind. In the end, he redeems himself with his Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Twice.
    • Frank Stiles considers not getting O'Connor caught as his. Still, without it he wouldn't be Minuteman, courageous leader of the Freedom Force.
  • Nature Hero: Eve.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Freedom Force doesn't know it, initially, but part of the purpose of the Domain is to contain Time Master. When Freedom Force opposes Lord Dominion's plans, they advance Time Master's schemes... and Time Master is much, much worse than an alien dictator.
    • In the second game, Freedom Force sets out to defeat Blitzkrieg and restoring the original timeline by having Alchemiss drain power from Time Master, and it works - but also turns Alchemiss into the insanely powerful Entropy, who proceeds to attempt to destroy reality itself.
  • Non-Lethal K.O.: makes some sense when you remember about The Comics Code.
    • Subverted by Tombstone (who's a one man Dark Age) as well as the 40's heroes Sky King, Tricolour and Black Jack. Justified in that they're all alone against the Nazi army.
    • Also subverted by Entropy, to show how evil she is becoming.
  • Not What I Signed Up For: When the proto-Liberty Lad almost dies, Minuteman complains to Mentor word-for-word this trope. Mentor shuts him down by saying nobody "signed up for this", people getting caught in the crossfire is what Freedom Force fights to prevent, and Mentor gave up a life among the stars to protect a backwater planet of warlike apes.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The final villains of both games fit this trope.
    • Red Sun also quallifies. Unless ordered otherwise, cutting up and burning down everything in his way is his default modus operandi. He doesn't even care if he dies in the process, as he apparently has an infinite number of clones.
      • Until Entropy killed the last one.
  • Personality Powers: True to the '60's Cliché Storm, most characters have Energy X abilities that are related to their personality in some way, as even exposited in an early cutscene. Their defining personality traits also tend to become a lot stronger after being infused with Energy X.
    • Minuteman was always a patriot and wished he was still young and strong enough to help his country.
    • Mentor laments his people turning evil and sought to change their way of thinking.
    • El Diablo was always Hot-Blooded.
    • Man O'War used to be a fisherman and always loved the sea.
    • Law and Order fought for justice against all odds well before they became superheroes.
    • Iron Ox; a Boisterous Bruiser Made of Iron. Energy X just took him to the next level.
    • The Bard was always an extreme poetry nut.
    • Perhaps the most extreme example; Green Genie just wanted to live freely and happily. Energy X not only gave her the powers to do so (by altering reality), but it also pretty much inverted her personality in the process.
  • Same goes for a number of villains:
    • Shadow seeks to hide her face from the world - and to make the world's as ugly as hers.
    • Deja Vú suffered from multiple personality disorder.
    • Time Master wished he could stop his own time from running out.
      • Ironically, that would be the only aspect of time he couldn't gain control of.
    • Blitzkrieg, former secret agent and Nazi sympathizer, wanted to have total control over everyone and everything.
    • Fortissimo is obviously a big fan of opera, despite his own abysmal singing skills.
    • Red Sun has a desire to bring glorious death and destruction over his enemies, more than a single man normally could.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: Lord Dominion's master plan is to amuse himself by giving superpowers to the scum of society so he can sit back and watch Earth tear itself to pieces. Mentor interferes, causing Energy X to be spread at random over Patriot City and creating the superheroes.
  • Point Build System: Heroes are assigned a point value based on their stats and abilities. In the first game multiplayer, the party needed to be within the point limit, while the sequel requires all characters to be within 6000 points.
  • Politically Correct History: The games are set in the early to mid 1960s (the first game explicitly taking place in 1962), and Freedom Force has Black (Blackbird, Order), Hispanic (El Diablo), Nahua (Quetzalcoatl) and Arab (Green Genie) members working alongside white ones.
  • Pstandard Psychic Pstance: Mentor.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: The sequel menu's theme is a cover of the German military march "Kaiser Wilhelm Siegesmarsch".
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Timemaster is defeated, but at the cost of stranding Man-Bot in the celestial Clock, forcing him to face the Wraiths of Chaos for all eternity. Poor guy, 'cause when Alchemiss rescues him the entire universe is put in peril and he loses Alchemiss permanently. He just can't catch a break.
  • Quirky Bard: Quite a few characters do not really pay off leveling when compared to others. The Bard is just a literal example.
  • Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Bullet.
  • Real-Time with Pause: The game is paused when hitting spacebar or opening the ability tab, allowing to give orders to the team. Note that options allow to replace the actual pause by a slow-mode.
  • Reality Warper:
    • Entropy.
    • Alchemiss has some of this in the sequel, but nowhere near as powerful.
    • To a lesser extent, Green Genie.
  • Reckless Sidekick: Liberty Lad and Sea Urchin.
  • Red Scare: Nuclear Winter.
    • Red Oktober in the sequel, although she didn't want world destruction as Nuclear Winter wanted.
  • Required Party Member: At characters' selection during the briefing, there's often at least one forced party member, required for plot reason. On the same time, a party member is often locked out of the mission, sometimes for logical reasons (of course you won't be able to hire Minuteman in the mission where he has been captured!), sometimes because he/she'll act as mission control.
    • Inverted with a vengeance in the sequel: Late in the game, people start disappearing because reality is falling apart; including some of the heroes - only, they don't show up in the "unavailable"-section of the party selection screen, they just don't show up in the party selection or the training screen at all anymore. Fitting, seeing how they're not only unavailable, but completely wiped from reality.
  • Reverse the Polarity: Played ridiculously straight in the sequel.
  • Retcon: The ending of the first game shows Time Master exploding and apparently leaving no remains. The second game says Freedom Force brought his body back to Earth and he's been in a coma ever since, but he wakes up and participates in the plot near the end.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: Deja Vu.
    "I've been hit / I don't feel well / I fall down / You go to *groan*"
  • Right Makes Might: Minuteman's Catchphrase.
  • Sealed Evil in a Duel: At the end of the first game, Man-Bot stays behind in the Celestial Clock to allow the rest of Freedom Force to escape back and is trapped there forever. His presence there causes creatures of chaos to attack the clock, and he has to spend the rest of eternity fighting them off.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
    • Enemies may sometimes receive the enraged, hypnotized or possessed condition, which forced them to attack their allies (or random targets.)
    • In the final mission, Microwave can force one set of enemies to fight against each other.
  • Shout-Out: In the sequel, the Nazis sometimes say "Mein Leben!" when they die.
  • The Something Force
  • Spock Speak: Mentor.
  • Steven Ulysses Perhero: "Nathan Graves" is Tombstone, "Hank Waters" is Man'O'War, "Jack Spade" is Blackjack, "Sabrine Tricolette" is Tricolour.
  • Stylish Protection Gear: Nuclear Winter. His lady minions wear fur-trimmed hooded shoulder capes.
  • Stylistic Suck: 40s-era heroes get origin stories with golden age artwork and simpler colouration.
  • Superdickery: Parodied in the sequel's tutorial.
  • Super Hero
  • Superhero Packing Heat: Black Jack, Sky King, and Tombstone.
  • Superhuman Transfusion: Liberty Lad's origin.
  • Superpower Lottery: Using the character editor, it's possible to make a hero with any combination of powers you want. Think about that for a minute... Though, if you make a hero too powerful, their Prestige point cost will probably be too high for you to use them in the game.
  • Telephone Polearm: At a certain strength level, characters could rip poles right out of the ground and swing them.
    • Traffic lights too.
  • That Man Is Dead: And quite literally too. "Where Nathan Graves once stood, only Tombstone remains. Minuteman also plays this straight "Those Reds might have killed Frank Stiles, but they're about to meet...the Minuteman!"
    • Man-Bot downplays this with his past, saying the world will only know him as Man-Bot until he cures himself. As stated above, almost no-one else seems to be looking back or even bothering to refer to each other by their real names, but this may be for the convenience of the audience.
  • Third-Person Person: Deja Vu in the first. Red Sun in the sequel. Considering Red Sun is a Hive Mind, it's appropriate.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich.
    • Though Blitzkreig qualifies more for terrifying.
  • Time Master: The Big Bad bearing that trope's name.
  • Unsound Effect: But of course.
    BOKKO!
  • Victory Is Boring: The entire reason for the plot. Lord Dominion is so bored with ruling the entire universe that, instead of simply steamrolling over the last planet he doesn't rule (Earth, of course), for lulz he dumps a bunch of Green Rocks on it so bad people will develop superpowers and trash the place.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Useless Useful Superpower: Abilities like Tunnel Travel and Teleport Self are really useful to bypass obstacles and get in good positions for boss battles, but little else.
    • Plenty of Active Defences guard against only one or two types of attacks, often ones the characters resist anyway.
  • Villain Song: Nuuu-cle-ar-vin-tar oooo—ooo-ooh-ooo turns your land.. tooo snooow!
  • Weak, but Skilled: Several characters, the sidekicks Liberty Lad and Sea Urchin in particular.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Freedom Force Vs The3rd Reich

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Man-Bot

Unable to control the immense bursts of energy his body now expels the once carefree playboy can only continue to live as Man-Bot!

How well does it match the trope?

5 (5 votes)

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Main / ManInTheMachine

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