History Fanfic / BeyondTheOuterGateLies

* OutGambitted: In the unpublished fourth chapter, Tsubaki tries to play TheGadfly at Harry's expense by interrupting Sona and Tsubasa's bickering with the promise of Harry's treating them to [[TrademarkFavoriteFood udon]] at a new place he knows. Harry turns the tables on her by revealing that actually knew of one -- he'd kept an eye open for those because of the [[FoodAsBribe bribing potential]] -- and manages to get Tsubaki stuck finishing the Student Council's pending chores for the day.

* ShipperWithAnAgenda: Momo and Ruruko like the idea of Harry and Sona getting together because they're both interested in Saji, who has obvious crush on the StudentCouncilPresident.

* {{Atlantis}}: The ''continent'' of Atlantis existed in prehistoric times in Bizarro World. [[spoiler:It was destroyed in its entirety -- as in the ''whole landmass'' -- during the War of Forgotten.]]

* MythologyGag: When Aneko mentions that Harry playing mysterious about his magic is very intriguing, Harry states that [[Literature/SmallFavor it's like a drug]].
** Harry shows his scarred hand to the Student Council, and mentions it was [[Literature/BloodRites a vampire with a flamethrower]], then stating it's not even the weirdest thing that he has met, remembering the [[Literature/BloodRites coven of porn star sorceresses]], the [[Literature/SummerKnight pixies with switchblades]] and the [[Literature/FoolMoon stripper werewolf]].

* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Harry mentions facing more than a few of them. It got to the point he can tell the quality of a villain's outfit by the quality of its ashes – this ''is'', after all, [[PlayingWithFire Harry]] [[KillItWithFire Dresden]] we're talking about.

* MisplacedRetribution: PlayedForLaughs. Harry blames Issei for putting the idea of harems into Lash's head. He swears his vengeance to him in proper melodramatic fashion.
* MistakenForGay: Having never seen him out of his Scale Mail before, Harry mistook Vali's constant staring at Issei during the Kuoh Conference as the silver haired guy wanting to jump his bones. Harry even stated to wonder how to break it to him just how badly Issei is strictly into girls.

** The Hero Faction is a Type 2 to a T, which became the deal-breaker that made Harry reject their offer to join them. Harry only opposes those who would prey on humans, regardless if they belong to supernatural species or [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters are even fellow magic-wielding humans]]. The Hero Faction would attack any sufficiently strong non-human if that proves humanity's strength to the supernatural world, regardless if said entity is a danger to people or not, and they don't really care about the collateral damage.

* BizarroUniverse: Harry refers to the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' universe as this, and it fits the profile. In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', devils and angels (both regular and Fallen) are pillars of creation, have nigh-infinite power, can only be created by God, and are almost as hard to kill, [[spoiler:and God is alive]]. Magic functions on willpower and emotion, and causes users to become WalkingTechbane. And the wizard never gets the girls. In ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'', most devils aren't that much stronger than humans, they can reproduce normally or turn humans into devils, and can be killed almost as easily, [[spoiler:and GodIsDead]]. And magic is performed with complex math, and has no negative effects on technology (what first tips him off to the fact that he's in a new world is the fact that the hospital machinery he was hooked up too was still functioning, even when his emotions were flaring). He's also getting some female attention...

-->[[HumanoidAbomination And I wasn't a very nice person these days]].

** Literally, the Hero Faction wants to kill Great Red, a dragon with [[{{Kaiju}} teeth bigger than Dresden is tall]], as said wizard puts it, and leaves others alone as long as they don't hang around the Dimensional Void, to prove humanity's strength. And this doesn't even take into account his defense of the world against the Outsiders...

* ChasteHero: Being mentally an adult, it never occurred to Harry that all of his friends in Kuoh Academy are inexperienced about sex. He only realized it when he told them how annoying it was for him to sometimes get home and find his brother with a woman or even in the middle of an orgy. He only meant it as an anecdote, but all he got was a roomful-worth of [[LuminescentBlush red faces]].
* ChekhovsSkill: Harry used his Soulgaze on Raynare to discern whether D×D supernatural entities like her could have Souls like he understood them. The results were an affirmative answer to that question in the Fallens' case and the confirmation that seeing his Soul can be a sanity-breaking sight if the other person isn't made of much sterner stuff. Later on, during the Kuoh Conference, [[spoiler:Harry initiated a Soulgaze with Azazel as part of a BatmanGambit to get the Three Great Powers wary of involving innocent humans in their conflicts, counting on the reputation of the Leader of the Fallen and his knee-jerk reaction to the Soulgaze to make everybody present take the words of the seemingly harmless Magician several PowerLevels below them seriously.]]
* {{Chuunibyou}}: Harry tries to continue his OccultDetective work in Bizarro World, business cards and all, but reverting back to his adolescence makes most people assume he's this trope instead.

** Harry and Serafall hit it off pretty well after their initial MySisterIsOffLimits moment because they're both [[BunnyEarsLawyer eccentric professionals]] trying to do their jobs their way despite traditionalists giving them grief for it.
* CosplayOtakuGirl: Lash. Outfits she has appeared in include a BunnyGirl costume, maid outfits and a gym uniform (complete with bloomers).
* CrazyJealousGuy: Sona's interest in Harry makes Saji despise his guts. He even covers Harry's fees in the missing Excaliburs case just to make sure he will be too busy with work to hang out with the student council. Interestingly, this is also an example of WhyCantIHateYou.

* DeadlyDodging: An accidental, [[IndyPloy Indy-worthy]] example. [[spoiler:Harry escapes from Georg's PocketDimension through an Aparturum portal with Heracles' missiles still in hot pursuit after him, only to find Kuoh Academy under attack by the Old Maou faction. Without thinking it twice, Harry runs to the first enemy he sees and dodges, letting attack meant for himself do the rest.]]
* DefconFive: {{Parodied|Trope}}. Harry measures the likelihood of Sona [[RubberFace pinching his cheeks]] in the "Pinch-Con" scale.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: This {{Crossover}} and its ContinuationFic explore the implications of the Devils' cultural acceptance of [[HaremGenre harems]] a bit more seriously than the [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD original material]] as a result of having a protagonist who isn't a HormoneAddledTeenager LovableSexManiac HaremSeeker. Namely, it takes Harry a while to figure out why it is so -- according to Azazel in the unpublished fourth chapter, a combination of the Devils' AuthorityEqualsAsskicking and TheHedonist mentalities together with their [[ImmortalProcreationClause centuries-long lifespans and extraordinarily low birth rates]] -- and then some more to accept that Sona and Tsubasa are actually okay with the other pursuing him romantically and not at each other's throats for it like his common sense tells him they should be.
* DirtyOldMan: Despite being physically in his teens and having no means to return to his real age other than the natural way, Harry feels this way about his unexpected love interests since he's mentally in his 40's. He's torn between both his attraction to them and that he feels a personal connection to Sona and Tsubasa, and the fact that he is technically old enough to be their father.

* FreudianSlip: Harry refutes Sona's misconception about him being at slacker by saying that she can "bet [her] sweet ass" that will put in all the effort that his magical studies deserve, only realizing post-rant that he "also brought up Sona's ass with the adjective 'sweet' in front of it." [[spoiler:It becomes a BrickJoke by the end of the scene where she asks him to "please refrain from commenting on [her] bottom" to their mutual awkwardness.]]

** Harry, several times. His most trollish moment has to be when he pulled Rias' leg by commenting on the potential cultural consequences of a show like ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'' getting as popular as it did in the Underworld, including the possibility of couples cosplaying as the characters based on Issei and Rias during sex. Azazel immediately sees the potential profit in selling [[SexyWhateverOutfit ero-versions of the outfits]] worn by Oppai Dragon and Switch Princess before an incredibly embarrassed Rias tries to shut down the idea with her PaperFanOfDoom. Then Harry delivered the coup de grace by wondering aloud what Sirzechs would do if he hears about it. Given how much of a sis-con the Maou is, Harry just knew that Rias's brain would picture [[ThisIsWrongOnSoManyLevels her brother trying and perhaps managing to convince his wife to roleplay as a fictional character based on his little sister in bed]], which almost gave the poor girl an aneurysm. Harry was quite pleased with his handiwork until Lash congratulated him for it, [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame which is when he knew he went too far]].

** After Issei finds out about Lash, and how she can manifest herself as a pretty woman, Harry pretends that she's taking her clothes off to get Issei to freak out, and Asia to try to prevent him from gropping the non-corporeal entity. Lash notes that normally she'd be mad at him for lying about what she's doing, [[ActuallyPrettyFunny but approves of the results]].
** Lash's masterful trolling of Harry deserves a mention, especially considering that she only can speak directly to him and yet she still manages to push him into embarrassing situations. A good example of this is when he tricked Harry into saying something aloud that made Tsubaki think the two of them were engaging in "[[{{Meido}} Maid]] {{Naked Apron}} [[CasualKink play]]" (Tsubaki's words). The HowMuchDidYouHear moment and having another two {{fetish}}es attached to his name were bad enough on their own, but Lash's real objective was a doozy of a BatmanGambit that ended up with half of the girls in the student council (plus Akeno) wearing maid uniforms the next time he opened their office's door. Even Harry was impressed.

* GenderBender: Harry gets caught up in the Occult Research Club's shenanigans with the gender bending gun.

** ManIFeelLikeAWoman: [[spoiler:Lash outright suggests Harry, in a [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Spock]] cosplay no less, to "boldly go where no man has gone before" by "absconding to her quarters to masturbate."]]

* GotMeDoingIt: Harry calls the swords forged from the broken pieces of the original Excalibur "Excalibits." The term proves to be catchy enough that it even gets the serious Sona to use it.

* HaremSeeker: By proxy. Lash likes to tease him with the idea of Harry having a harem. [[spoiler:She actually serious about it. The only time he let her talk with Sona, supposedly to give them the chance to have a "woman-to-woman talk" about Lash helping Harry cheat in his tests, [[MagnificentBitch Lash]] told her exactly what Sona and Tsubasa needed to hear to start acting on their feelings for Harry without clueing him in until he asked.]]
* HearingVoices: Issei asks Harry advice about the voice in his head (Ddraig's). Harry gives him the rundown of the do's and don'ts of a hosting a supernatural entity in his own person.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: A comedic version. When Harry meets Sirzechs, he calls upon his rusty manners, but can't help tossing out a [[Music/TheRollingStones "Sympathy For the Devil"]] reference. A moment later, Sirzechs gets the joke and continues it, causing Harry to briefly concede defeat.

* HormoneAddledTeenager: Harry hates the unavoidable fact he's back to be one, especially how [[TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody his teenager hormones affect his thought processes]] and make him feel attracted to girls young enough to be his daughters.

'''Harry:''' You're all crazy. [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere I'm leaving now. My life has too much crazy in it as it is]].

** Harry to Asia. Every time she seems upset Harry gets the urge to take her some place nice and shower her with ponies and kittens.

* InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike: A lot of Harry's initial problems with Sona where from the results of a misunderstanding. A student asks Harry if he's a "yankee". Harry, being from Chicago, says yes. He didn't realize that the student heard of his bad reputation and that "yanki" was Japanese slang for [[JapaneseDelinquents delinquent]]. Sona got wind of it and has been misguidedly trying to reform him.

* LaserBlade: Harry has a {{Nerdgasm}} when he realizes that lightsabers exists as an Exorcist's weapon in Bizarro World. [[KleptomaniacHero He even pockets one]] from a defeated one to tinker with it.

** Harry finds out the hard way that not only is DarkIsNotEvil, the side of the angels are just as flawed as everyone else. [[spoiler:Justified since God Is Dead, leaving his imperfect creations to try to carry on as best they can.]]
** Same goes for the Hero Faction. Their intentions might be noble, giving normal humans a place in a world of magic and monsters, but unfortunately their plans are [[PoorCommunicationKills missing critical bits of information]] that could make them cause more damage than they would solve. Furthermore, Harry has ideological differences with the Hero Faction because they don't really care about the collateral damage as long as they prove Humans' strength to the supernatural world, whereas Harry's priority concern is protecting as many humans as he can from the supernatural.

* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Harry mentions facing more than a few of them. It got to the point he can tell the quality of a villain's outfit by the look of its ashes -- this is, after all, [[PlayingWithFire Harry]] [[KillItWithFire Dresden]].
* MinorLivingAlone: Harry lives and supports himself to get out of the foster care system due to his bad experiences with it in his original world.

* MistakenForGay: Having never seen him out of his Scale Mail before, Harry mistook Vali's constant staring of Issei during the Kuoh Conference as the silver haired guy wanting to jump his bones. Harry even stated to wonder how to break it to him just how badly Issei is strictly into girls.

** The Hero Faction is a type 2 to a T, which became the deal-breaker that made Harry reject their offer to join them. Harry only opposes those who would prey on humans, regardless if they belong supernatural species or [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters even fellow magic-wielding humans]]. The Hero Faction would attack any sufficiently strong non-human if that proves humanity's strength to the supernatural world, regardless if said entity is a danger to people or not, and they don't really care about the collateral damage.
** More specifically, both parties disagree on Kuoh Treaty. Harry wants the peace treaty to go through because it limits the chances of normal people getting caught in the crossfire between the Three Powers, whereas the Hero Faction wants it to fall through because "monsters fighting monsters" aligns with their objectives and its failure benefits their sorta allies in the Chaos Brigade.

The [[RecursiveFanfiction recursive fanfiction]] [[ContinuationFic continuation]] is [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10752206/1/Beyond-the-Outer-Gates-Lies-A-high-school-library here]].

** The language changing spell from ''An Expected Result?'' returns ''A Rearguard Action?'', allowing Texan girl Oakley to read the sign on the side of a Japanese building and know that it is a school.

* ChosenConceptionPartner: Coira Sitri née Allocer is looking one for herself, despite being completely uninterested in a potential male partner, due to political pressure to keep the Pillar family from dying out as such and hopefully pass down her RecessiveSuperGenes to her children. It helps a lot to the situation that she actually wants to be a mother after helping out to raise Serafall and Sona. [[spoiler:Coira is considering Harry of all people for the role because he's likely to pass his magical aptitude to his kids and a human sperm donor should improve the chances of her RecessiveSuperGenes to manifest (as well as giving a metaphorical middle finger to the elitists and racists in Devil society). Less clinically, Coira likes the idea that Sona, Serafall, and her own future children would be half-siblings to each other, which gives him an even bigger pause during the conversation due to Coira's implicit assumption that he's going to marry both Sitri sisters someday.]]

** When Serafall proposed to have Harry cosplay as [[Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire Prince Xizor]] and Tsubasa, Reya and herself shapeshift into Twi'lek in skimpy dancing outfits for the premier of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', the librarian girl complained that wasn't canon-compliant with ''Franchise/StarWars'' anymore rather than remarking on how little she would be wearing.
** When Harry finally dares to mention the [[EldritchAbomination Outsiders]] to his girlfriends, Reya thinks at first he's talking about [[Comicbook/BatmanAndTheOutsiders American comicbooks]]. Harry finds the MoodWhiplash so abrupt and funny that he [[ActuallyPrettyFunny breaks into laugh]].

** Harry and Mihae -- one of Riser's Bishops -- have a moment of CommonalityConnection from the opposite sides of a Rating Game because they both call a plant monster a [[ContinuityNod "chlorofiend"]].

** Mihae from Riser's Peerage uses the word "chlorofiend." It surprised Harry because he thought he was the only one who called plant monsters like that.

* ConvenientComa: PlayedWith. While certainly not ''easy'' as it took the combined efforts of Asia, Issei, Rias, Harry and Lash to pull off, they did manage to wake Misla Bael up from her coma on their first try.
* ConversationalTroping: Often between Harry and Lash, sometimes even referring tropes by name. Also relatively common between Harry, Serafall and Azazel.

--->I partially shielded my dates from the polite observers and well-wishers. Most just wanted to offer congratulations or thanks. But I stood beside them, and glowered down at the handful of men, teen, tween, and adult, who seemed to be less interested in Tsubasa and Serafall's gaming skills, and more interested in how they filled out their somewhat revealing workout outfits. They seemed to get the idea. [[DeathGlare I have a pretty good glower]].

* CutLexLuthorACheck: Harry has a much easier time making money from his abilities in this setting, and makes a tidy profit from selling magically enchanted clothes and jewelry to the supernatural factions, on top of his detective work.
* DamagerHealerTank: Harry [[DiscussedTrope explains this]] to Asia, when she wants to be more than a Healer. He also includes to fourth classification, Controller (or just Troll as he puts it).

* DeathbringerTheAdorable: [[TheDitz Tomoe]] named her {{Familiar}}, a palm-size humming bird with partially metallic feathers, "Massacre."

** Harry tends to get annoyed looks from envious male passersby whenever he's in public and in the company of one of his LoveInterests in a damn-that-plain-looking-foreign-delinquent-got-the-hot-girl-oh-why-not-me kinda way. [[spoiler:The one time he and all four of his girlfriend had an actual date in the ChristmasEpisode, he got so many envious/disproving stares from men and women alike that Reya had trouble believing he could endure them nonchalantly. It's quite sad that said fortitude and tolerance come from decades enduring [[HeroWithBadPublicity mocking and disdain from people who don't know better]].]]
** Harry's a "pretty good glower" to keep guys from hitting on his LoveInterests.

** [[spoiler:Harry's inspired a potential way of removing things like Evil Pieces, Brave Saints cards, and Sacred Gears without harming the host, which could do much for keeping the Zeroes contained.]]

** Harry pranked Kendra for trying to get him in trouble with his girlfriends by dyeing her hair and skin bright pink. He wasn't overly concerned about the consequences because his "Brilloius" spell was perfect to get her back to normal if waiting for the dye to wear off wasn't an option. What he didn't take into consideration -- that is, until Rias ''gleefully'' pointed it out -- is that the spell needs Harry to "vigorously scrub the area to be cleaned with [his] hand." Given that ''all'' of Kendra's body was affected, you may see why this was poor planning from his part. Akeno quips that perhaps that was ''exactly'' he was aiming for.

* DoomMagnet: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Azazel rather rightfully calls Issei and Harry "the two biggest trouble magnets [he's] seen in a thousand years" and starts to make plans for ''when'' -- as opposed to "if" -- major problems will hit their school trip to Kyoto just because the two of them are in attendance. The Fallen Angel is, of course, proved right.

** Harry seems ready to scold Sona for using her water dragon to intimidate Riser (after Ise gave him a severe case of dracophobia). Instead he tells her she could make the dragon much more scary, and proceeds to illustrate.

** For a less serious example, ''everybody'' in Kuoh Academy are scared of having math with Takamachi-sensei. Her finals and make-up classes the previous year are so infamously hard that the now third-year students have given her the epithet [[MythologyGag "White Devil"]] despite being an otherwise very amiable teacher. [[spoiler:It's bad enough that Sona agreed to reschedule supernatural business with Harry so he could help Nanoha with a missing property case. They knew that a sad and frustrated teacher is a sure recipe for even harder quizzes and assignments.]]

** Serafall has a "beer buying" appearance she shifts into when she needs to be treated like an adult in the human world. [[spoiler:She also has a yet-unseen "adult mode" that it's actually her real form. She keeps it hidden with {{Glamour}} because it's SoBeautifulItsACurse.]]

* EarthShatteringKaboom: Very narrowly avoided in Bizarro World's prehistory [[spoiler:during the War of Forgotten]], limited to "merely" the destruction of the {{Atlant|is}}ean ''continent'' instead. Going by the resulting reduction of Earth's gravity by a half percent, that means around 3.001 × 10 ^ 22 kg of planetary mass just ''gone''. Just to give you an idea of the sheer scale of the damage, that's the ''[[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure 40.84% of mass of the Moon]]''.

** Sona's father isn't overly fond of Harry, so he tried to use the above agreement with Sona to try to break them up by setting them up for an unexpected chess match. Not only Duncan's ploy was ''painfully'' obvious -- so much that his wife apologized in his place and reassured them that he's not actually bad at playing others when his daughters' love lives aren't involved -- but also Harry and Sona trivially turned it on its head by LoopholeAbuse. After all, no part of her agreement with her parents said a thing about her ''having to'' play to win, so when the EngagementChallenge came about, she simply set her pieces to be taken by Harry's until her king was captured in a trivial checkmate.

** Georg from the Hero Faction, whom Harry un-affectionately refers to as his stalker/fanboy, is a maybe. His IgnoredEnamoredUnderling [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Goth Hermione]] certainly thinks so from the way Georg frequently praises Harry's magical achievements. That's the reason why she goes the extra mile to try to MurderTheHypotenuse when she and Harry met in Kyoto.

** {{Discussed}}. Gasper asked the Beelzebub about the possibility of a Devil having a "diginal {{familiar}}." When Harry heard about it, he immediately wondered if the little {{Hikikomori}} just inspired Ajuka to create [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} Skynet]].
** Downplayed. [[spoiler:Fate ends up getting herself in a bit of trouble, and makes Nanoha panic, when she borrows Raising Heart to get the card patched for Brave Duel's UpdatedRerelease as a surprise -- only for Raising Heart to rebel and refuse to take the patch unless she gets a Belkan Cartridge upgrade as part of the deal. This causes a thirty minute process to take over a day.]]

** An off-screen example. [[spoiler:Serafall was practicing how to craft disposable yet functional magical guns out of her Devil power so she could let Harry borrow them whenever they work together. That is, until certain Sacred Gear researcher accidentally provided Harry with a MorphWeapon that can transform into any production firearm he could want, plus functionally unlimited ammo, suddenly making Serafall's secret efforts irrelevant. In a partial {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, her self-training did come in handy to gear up Oakley in a hurry during the Kyoto arc.]]

* AlliterativeTitle: The ShowWithinAShow character based on Harry that appears in both ''Oppai Dragon'' and ''Miracle Level-tan'' is often called "Wandering Wizard" or "Mercenary Magician."

** [[spoiler:Harry found a couple others, but he never contacted them. There's also Yoshimo Shiro, as mentioned below]].

* ChosenConceptionPartner: Coira Sitri née Allocer is looking one for herself, despite being completely uninterested in a potential male partner, due to political pressure to keep the Pillar family from dying out as such and hopefully pass down her RecessiveSuperGenes to her children. It helps a lot to the situation that she actually wants to be a mother after helping out to raise Serafall and Sona. [[spoiler:Coira is considering Harry of all people for the role because he's likely to pass his magical aptitude to his kids and a human sperm donor should improve the chances of her RecessiveSuperGenes to manifest. Less clinically, Coira likes the idea that Sona, Serafall, and her own future children would be half-siblings to each other, which gives him an even bigger pause during the conversation due to Coira's implicit assumption that he's going to marry both Sitri sisters someday.]]

* {{Omniglot}}: Devil have Language, like in D×D canon. Lash tops it by giving Harry the ability to not only speak any language, but also read and write them.

** Harry has Lash making him change languages mid-conversation just to see how long it takes for his {{Omniglot}} Devil friends to catch up.

** His reading sessions with Reya helped Harry to figure out the exact limitations of Language. While it allows a Devil to [[{{Omniglot}} converse in any language]], it does nothing for writing, even for phonetic languages. It handles slang fine enough, but poorly for made-up words like "mithril." BluntMetaphorsTrauma is in full effect, and cultural references are completely LostInTranslation. Language also does the pragmatic thing with names and avoids {{Dub Name Change}}s by leaving them as they sound, but that obfuscates what they were supposed to mean or allude -- for example, for Reya [[Literature/{{Dragonlance}} "Burrfoot"]] was just a proper noun, she didn't realize it was supposed to be a PunnyName and a "combination of 'burr' and 'foot', meaning a prickly annoyance" until Harry broke it down for her.

** [[spoiler:Reya's Artificial Sacred Gear [[DoppelgangerAttack creates a clone of herself]] that the Rating Game system incidentally recognizes as her due to its AstralProjection properties. This quirk allows her to Side-Promote anywhere on the field as long as her-clone-as-her should be able to based on its position and other conditions.]]

** Agares Knight Reiko uses a handheld game console to control her {{Golem}}s. Despite being Sona's opponent at the time, Harry praises her approach as a "brilliant" solution to the ever-present problem of improving the magical constructs poor decision-making skills by using modern ArtificialIntelligence like the one already found in RealTimeStrategy or {{Fighting Game}}s characters for the job. This not only allows her to program the {{Golem}}s to perform ''much'' more complex tasks than what's possible with FormulaicMagic or even the use of spirits or elementals, but also allows the caster to micromanage their actions as they were {{Player Character}}s in a game if necessary.

* FirstNameBasis: {{Invoked|Trope}}. Sona enforces FirstNameBasis among her Peerage during Rating Games.

* OutGambitted: In the unpublished fourth chapter, Tsubaki tries to play TheGadfly at Harry's expense by interrupting Sona and Tsubasa's bickering with the promise of Harry's treating them to [[TrademarkFavoriteFood udon]] at a new place he knows. Harry turns the tables on her by revealing that actually new of one -- he'd kept an eye open for those because of the [[FoodAsBribe bribing potential]] -- and manages to get Tsubaki stuck finishing the Student Council's pending chores for the day.

* RubberFace: Sona's go-to admonishment when Harry's smartassery or self-endangerment gets too far. He's completely caught off guard by it the first few times because he didn't know how to respond to roughhousing like from a girl. He soon settles on messing up with her hairdo as a proportional response. [[spoiler:Their childish antics almost leads to their FirstKiss, but Saji's voice snapped them out of it.]]

* BunnyEarsLawyer: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Harry noticed that one of the Knights of the Peerage Sona's would face first in the rescheduled Young Devils Rating Game tournament was completely ignoring the press conference and instead focused her attention on her handheld game console without her King calling her out on it. This makes him label her as highly dangerous because only people that gets results tend to get away with that kind of open dismissal of social norms. [[spoiler: She later is revealed to have a Sacred Gear that allows her create and control golems [[ImprovisedGolems more easily than normal]]]].

** Sona's Peerage wears new, matching uniforms for her match with Seekvaria; form fitting long-sleeved navy blue shirts, black canvas cargo pants, and heavy work boots. Sona, Reya, and Tsubasa also sport new jackets; black leather dusters like Harry and Tsubaki.

* FreudianSlip: Harry has plenty of practice minding his trains of thought -- a necessity because of the Winter Mantle and Lash -- but sometimes his mouth is just a bit faster. For example, when he declined Reya's request to let her tag along in his first OccultDetective job for the police, he argued that it wouldn't look too professional of him to "bring a girlfriend to a crime scene" and he wanted to make a good first impression. It's only when he noticed Reya's JawDrop that he realized he just talked about her as his girlfriend, albeit indirectly.

* ImprovisedGolems: [[spoiler: A Knight Sona's team faces in the tournament has a Sacred Gear with the ability to allow her to create and control golems relatively easily]].

* InVinoVeritas: A drunk Sona admitted to her ACupAngst in the HalloweenEpisode. An equally drunk Harry reassured her that size doesn't matter to him because [[ChivalrousPervert "it's all about the shape and feel"]] in his opinion.

* LoopholeAbuse: Sona's EngagementChallenge states that only someone who has bested her at chess may marry her. Of course, it doesn't preclude her from losing on purpose.

* MugglesDoItBetter: One of Harry's tenets, despite being a Wizard/Magician. Besides firearms, he's all too willing to resort to technology to solve magical problems now that he's not a WalkingTechbane, like letting computer-controlled milling machines do the etching of magical symbols for him, and Lash is learning SQL in hopes of developing a magic database (not to be confused with a MagicalDatabase) where magic circles and its components can be found by a criteria. The same applies as a detective by using internet as another investigative tools.

* ATasteOfPower: A curious non-videogame, InUniverse example. Sona got to have Harry as her Bishop for exactly one Rating Game, and sure enough, he ended up becoming a big part of the reason her Peerage triumphed over Riser's.

* BunnyEarsLawyer: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Harry noticed that one of the Knights of the Peerage Sona's would face first in the rescheduled Young Devils Rating Game tournament was completely ignoring the press conference and instead focused her attention on her handheld game console without her King calling her out on it. This makes him label her as highly dangerous because only people that gets results tend to get away with that kind of open dismissal of social norms.

** During his stay in the Underworld, Harry found out that while there's no Burger King, [=McDonald=]'s nor Wendy's in the Devils' territories, they do have Carl's Jr. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Make of that what you will]].

** Most of the core members of the Hero Faction actually liked being portrayed as ThePsychoRangers in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''. It helped a lot that Cao Cao, Siegfried and Heracles were ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' fans and the former two's fictional counterparts were respectively played by their favorite Power Rangers actors. The three even got into a debate about whether Creator/JasonDavidFrank should have played character based on Siegfried instead because "Blue is the only main color he hasn't been before" and that felt like a missed chance.

* AerithAndBob: An unusually literal example; One of the bodyguards of the Senju clan is actually named Bob. And she's a woman (well, female Tengu). She explains it's because her parents are fans of Music/BobDylan.

** Downplayed. [[spoiler:Fate ends up getting herself in a bit of trouble, and makes Nanoha panic, when she borrows Raising Heart to get the card patched for Brave Duel's UpdatedRerelease as a surprise -- only for Raising Heart to rebel and refuse to take the patch unless she gets a Belkan Cartridge upgrade. This causes a thirty minute process to take over a day.]]

** An off-screen example. [[spoiler:Serafall was practicing how to craft disposable yet functional magical guns out of her Devil power so she could let Harry borrow them whenever they work together. That is, until certain Sacred Gear researcher accidentally provided Harry with a MorphWeapon that can transform into any production firearm he could want, plus functionally unlimited ammo, suddenly making Serafall's unnoticed efforts irrelevant. In a partial {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, her self-training did come in handy to gear up Oakley in a hurry during the Kyoto arc.]]

* ArchEnemy: {{Discussed|Trope}}. The little nine-tailed {{Kitsune}} Kunou [[FromTheMouthsOfBabes innocently asked]] if the Hero Faction were the 'Wandering Wizard's arch-enemies" from the way he talked about them. Harry was about to deny it when he realized that the shoe kinda fit them, given how often they cross paths and butt heads. A nearby Azazel considered it a good plotline for Harry's ShowWithinAShow counterpart.

* AskAStupidQuestion: Harry groaned to himself when he feel he was duty-bound to ask Issei "what's so special about Rias's breasts?" Harry interrupted him before he could break into "another worshipful lecture on the perfection of Buchou's Bosoms" and clarified that he meant that question as a magic specialist acting as a combat coach to Rias' Peerage. As in, why does something like that help him when it's TimeToUnlockMoreTruePotential, and whether he ever tried it with another of his girlfriends for comparison purposes.

* BaitAndSwitch. ''the Soul of a Mahou Shoujo?'' begins with unnamed but recognizable Harry and Sona in a WallPinOfLove as he leans in to kiss her. Then the ''real'' Harry appears and blasts the Stray Devil away from his would-be victim.

* BatmanGambit: Harry asked Tsubasa to help him move to his new place in front of the rest of the Student Council, citing her augmented physical strength as a Rook to make things a lot easier. He knew she would immediately agree, if only because she surely would want to see both his old apartment and new house. Just like he knew Sona and Reya would volunteer to help too for the same reason, plus their understandable reluctance to leave ''[[TheTease Tsubasa]]'' alone with Harry for a day.

** Hurting Harry is this to all of his LoveInterests, as the bad guys learned the hard way in ''Eyes on the Prize?''. With Tsubasa took "berserk" part ''quite'' literally.

** On a more humorous note, while the Sitri sisters merely latched to Harry's arms and Tsubasa jumped to his back under the effects of an accidental aphrodisiac in the HalloweenEpisode, Reya went straight to his bedroom and waited for him in his bed. Thankfully for his LetsWaitAWhile policy, the booze put her to sleep by the time he got there.

* TheBigDamnKiss: Harry has kissed all 4(?) of his girls, but his kisses with Serafall and Sona fall best into this trope. Serafall's kiss left Winter Harry weak in the knee, and assisted her LogicBomb to save him. And Sona's kiss came last, and was the most romantic/heartfelt. And led to more; very nearly much more.

* BoomerangBigot: Mulan purportedly hates Japan for their actions against China in WWII, but is apparently an [[{{Otaku}} anime fan]], to the point that she's completely fluent in the language. [[spoiler:It is implied by Oakley that Mulan's prejudice is probably due to Cao Cao's brainwashing.]]

* BreakTheHaughty: A {{Downplayed|Trope}}, well-meaning example. Harry noticed that Akeno was getting bored with the training regime that he and Rossweisse came up for "the magic types" among Rias and Sona's Peerages because it was simply too easy for her. Seeing the potential complacency/frustration/hubris problem there, Harry performed an incredibly more complex variation of the exercise as a way to tell Akeno and everybody present that, a) nope, she's got a ''long'' way to go as a magic user, and b) if she had a problem with the training, she should've just told them about it because he certainly can provided her with a challenge proportional to her current skill.

** A meta example. Chapter 20's Author's Notes mention that [[spoiler:the name "Sophia" will be used a temporary name for Harry and Lash's daughter until the time Creator/JimButcher will provide a CanonName for the newborn Spirit of Intellect]]. Jump to chapter 74 where [[spoiler:her CanonName -- Bonea -- is mentioned in a mostly unrelated context and Harry only remark about it is [[TakeThat "poor]] [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude kid"]].]]

* BusmansHoliday: Harry and his girlfriends had to solve with some supernatural problems even during their Christmas Eve date. Fortunately, it wasn't too much of a hassle to deal with and things went pretty much as planned for once.

* CampStraight: Despite his {{Fanboy}}ism of Harry, Georg says he's straight when asked that girls like Mulan, and to a lesser extent Jeanne, are his type.

* ChivalrousPervert: While it obviously applies to Issei, the trope itself is played with by the story itself. Since the setting is that of a light novel/Ecchi anime, it keeps setting up situations where this would normally come into play, but since Harry ISN'T a character from that type of media, his reactions are different. While certainly chivalrous almost to a fault, Harry didn't originally have any sort of interest in a harem, and is utterly dumbfounded by the way fate seems to draw him towards one.

** Also actively {{Defied|Trope}} by the guy himself. Once he finally decided to give their blossoming multi-partner relationship a fair chance, Harry made sure of giving each of his girlfriends equal attention, not playing favorites, not showing interest when other women (mostly Jeanne) try to seduce him, and generally just not being stupid enough to give his girls a reason to be jealous in the first place.

** When Serafall proposed to have Harry cosplay as [[Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire Prince Xizor]] and Tsubasa, Reya and herself shapeshift into Twi'lek in skimpy dancing outfits for the premier of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', the librarian girl complained that wasn't canon-compliant with ''Franchise/StarWars'' anymore.

** Serafall reveals to Harry that she takes pole-dancing lessons, but is not as good as Rias or Akeno. This is a reference to the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' anime's first ending sequence.

** Harry turned [[MorphWeapon Second Amendment]] into a [[CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns FN P90]] and a [[HandCannon Desert Eagle]] during Kyoto arc. These were Murphy and Thomas' [[WeaponOfChoice firearms of choice]] in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''.

* CripplingOverspecialization: The Anti-Monsters Leonardo sets upon the group in the Kyoto Arc are these. They're effective against Devils, and resistant to normal magic (particularly [[PlayingWithFire Fire]] and [[KillItWithIce Ice]]) to account for Dresden, but they're not very effective on Issei due to his Dragon traits, vulnerable to lightning and water spells from a certain Valkyrie, and weak against normal bullets, rendering them less effective against the mixed group than they would be against a Devil-only party. When Leonardo makes adjustments for these weaknesses, he ends up giving them new ones, implying that he can only give them so many powers and resistances at once.

* DamagerHealerTank: Harry explains this to Asia, when she wants to be more than a Healer. He also includes to fourth classification, Controller (or just Troll as he puts it).

* DumbMuscle: Hercules/Herakles of the Hero Brigade is muscle and little else. Even worse, he's not even the real reincarnation of Herakles'', he's just some jerk with SuperStrength! (Dresden has mentioned that the original, who actually IS Creator/KevinSorbo, is a god now and not at all amused at the pretender using his name). It turns out that he's that Hercules's SemiDivine descendent, a few generations removed. The original still doesn't like him, for obvious reasons besides his stupidity, and keeps him away from him and his family. This works against him when Tsubasa blasts him with a "Fuego". The blast is weak, but since Herc doesn't pay attention in school, and thinks explosives and flames mixing makes explosions all the time...

* FakingTheDead: In this universe, Harry Houdini made some enemies out of some Magicians who were doing the spiritualist equivalent of MagiciansAreWizards trope and faked his death to escape them.

* GenreSavvy: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Harry suggests that if they were in a detective novel, the most likely explanation for Misla Bael's medical condition would be a failed murder attempt by poisoning orchestrated by Sairaorg's little half-brother in a plot to get rid of him and his mother for the inheritance, all while making it look like Lord Bael is the one responsible so Sairaorg would come after their father after Misla's death. Then Harry dismisses his own guesswork by pointing out that real life is rarely that straightforward.

* HandsOnApproach: Sona and Harry manage to do this without any physical instruction involved. None of them was particularly knowledgable about D×D crafting methods for Imbued Items, so they needed to read their only copy of the subject's primer first. Problem was that the Student Council office comes with big fancy chairs with armrests that made reading from it at the same time by sitting side by side too uncomfortable until Harry flippantly suggested Sona to sit on his lap -- which she unexpectedly did, but not without locking the door first with magic.

** After months trying to get his hands on firearms -- a tall order in a country with anti-gun laws as strict as Japan, on top of Sona forbidding her Peerage from bargaining any with him -- in chapter 35 Harry gets Azazel's prototype Artificial Sacred Gear that can [[MorphWeapon turn from a metal bracelet into any production firearm that the user can accurately picture in their mind]]. What makes this an irony is that [[MeaningfulName 2nd Amendment]] is a super-ClingyMacGuffin that Harry can't get rid of even by cutting off his arm and asking Asia to reattach it.

** PlayedForDrama for a bit with Sona, who was the only one of Harry's LoveInterests he ''didn't'' kiss during the above incident despite being present at the time. Following the logic that the Winter Mantle ramps up Harry's libido and possessiveness while shutting down his inhibitions and consideration for the long-term consequences, Sona arrived to the EntertaininglyWrong conclusion that deep down he simply isn't physically attracted to her. When they talked it out, Harry confessed that the only reasons he didn't assault her like he did to the others was because she was just a few steps too far for him to walk to her on a broken leg and that Serafall managed to LogicBomb him out of the Mantle's influence before he could try to regardless.

* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Pretty much ''every'' weapons user in the story has shown some degree of admiration and awe for [[spoiler:Shiro Yoshimo, Tomoe's grandfather from her mother's side]], who's FamedInStory as the greatest swordmaster alive, and likely one of the best to ever live.
* LackOfEmpathy: [[spoiler:As Harry points out, Argus has been stealing eyes and killing people for centuries with his Beholders despite it being obvious that the eyes keep wearing out. He even says that if Argus had told his Beholders to only take one eye and leave the victims alive, he might have tried to help the god.]]

* LesserOfTwoEvils: PlayedForLaughs. This is how Sona was strong-armed by Harry and the others to join them at the premier midnight showing of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', cosplay and all. They left her with three less-than-appealing options: 1) Forbid Tsubasa and Reya from attending by Commanding them as their King, which would be morally wrong and leaves Serafall alone with Harry. 2) Don't join them, in which case Harry would let ''Serafall'' pick up the costumes with everything that implies. Or c) Sona joins them, getting a say on the outfits and the chance to monitor everyone's behavior.

* LogicBomb: Serafall throws one at Harry to break him free from the Winter Mantle.

* LoveObstructingParents: Duncan Sitri does ''not'' approve Harry as a significant other for neither Serafall nor Sona, much less the two of them at once. His EstablishingCharacterMoment involves offering him HUGE amounts of power -- let it be magical, political, or enough cold hard cash to last him three ''generations'' -- just to make him break up with his daughters and disappear from their lives forever.

* TheMaidenNameDebate: Duncan and Coira Allocer -- the last two survivors of one of the 72 Pillars -- took the Sitri name after marriage. [[spoiler:To Sona and Serafall's mother, Anna Sitri.]]

** Mister, full stop. He just appears one day. From everything Harry and Lash can tell, he is a normal, non-magical cat, but is also completely identical to the Mister from Harry's universe, even though the Sight. Is he the original Mister, which should be impossible, especially since he shows no signs of such a transit? Or Mister's Bizzaro World doppelganger who somehow found his way to Harry or was directed to him? Or something powerful enough to imitate Mister and fool both Harry and Lash?
** And then there is ''A Walk on the Wild Side''. Was Mister just leading his new servant to his favorite places and the heroics were an accident? Or was it all according to plan? He also seems to manage to avoid getting hit with Forbidden Balor View's TimeStandsStill power, but it's unclear whether or not it's because he's equal or greater than Gasper's power, allowing him to NoSell it, or if it just missed him.

** Serafall wears one of these when the girls are staying at Harry's house during the "Beholder" storyline, and she uses the shower in Harry's room with the excuse that she prefers the western style bath he has in there, though it's clear to Harry, her AND the reader that she's really just doing it for flirtation.

* MoneyDearBoy: An InUniverse example. Besides his slim chances of winning the lawsuit to make them stop, Harry allows the use of his likeness in the ShowWithinAShow ''Oppai Dragon'' and ''Miracle Levi-tan'' because he gets paid a tidy sum in royalties per appearance.

** There's a sudden moment of levity when Harry, Asia, and Issei were about to try to help Sairaorg's mother with her illness and a "small troop of heavy hitters" consisting in the scientifically/medically-minded Ajuka, Athena, Asclepius, Azazel, Raphael, Sekhmet, and Thoth opened the door hoping to witness the procedure firsthand. The room got so crowded that the doctor has to ask them to move to the observation room next door.
** During the procedure, Issei broke into a heartwarming speech about how Rias was the right person to try to converse with her comatose aunt and encourage to fight her disease from the inside. Then he just ''had'' to talk about breasts. Harry barely resisted the urge to groan.

** {{Invoked|Trope}}. Harry ''strongly'' encourages everybody to refer to the events of the omake with Azazel's [[GenderBender gender-bending]] [[AppliedPhlebotinum gun]] as "The Incident" without any further detail.

** The real thing makes it's debut in ''A Violent Introduction?'' during the fight against the Hero Faction in Kyoto. Issei uses it on a group of female fighters, which makes most of them run away. Unlike canon Jeanne also gets hit, as does OC Oakley. Both of them try to keep fighting, but ultimately cannot (Oakley because one of her fleeing comrades accidentally knock her out with her own rifle, and Jeanne because she got embarrassed when she saw that [[FoeYay Harry]] was watching her fight in the nude).

** Reya became certain that there was something in Harry's mind when he, as [[GameMaster DM]] for the Student Council's TabletopRPG night, didn't mess with Saji despite the latter setting himself up for a perfect [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_and_the_Dread_Gazebo "Gazebo"]] follow-up.

** Mr. Yura isn't crazy about his daughter going on a date with Harry (Harry being a self-proclaimed wizard doesn't help since Mr. Yura isn't aware of his daughter being part of the supernatural), and Tsubasa mentions he put her in an all-girls school for this exact reason and wasn't happy at all when Kuoh Academy suddenly became co-ed.

* PlayingWithFire: Tsubasa manages to use something similar to Fuego when fighting Herc.

* PoorCommunicationKills: A {{Downplayed|Trope}} yet recurrent problem for Harry. His experiences in his original world taught him to keep cards to close to his chest and only reveal dangerous information in a need-to-know basis. However, having to keep this ProperlyParanoid approach for so long makes him apply it to areas of his life that don't require it. For example, Harry didn't tell Reya right away that [[spoiler:Jeanne]] crashed on their date without her noticing and even [[SexForServices offered to settle her debt to him with sex]]. The unnecessary secrecy made Reya briefly worried that her boyfriend could have accepted the offer despite knowing him better than that.

** There's really no way to miss how [[spoiler:the "Sitri Oil", a [[TheNudifier clothing dissolver that doesn't harm people]] and a powerful {{Aphrodisiac}} by contact all in one substance,]] can be used for perverted purposes. Harry even suggested to sell it bundled with [[spoiler:bedsheets immune to its effects]] as "marital aid."

* QuestionableConsent: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Harry didn't mince words and referred to the {{Forceful Kiss}}es he gave to Reya and Tsubasa under the influence of the [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Winter Mantle]] as assault. Lash pointed out that neither of the girls are likely to see it like that, which he argued only makes it worse.

** Harry has one representing his romantic situation styled after a "rose ceremony" from ''Series/TheBachelor'' but with Chris Hardwick in a tuxedo t-shirt as the host. Then Issei takes over and explains the audience about the new "Harem Rush" rules involving Harry "taking [his LoveInterests] two at a time on group dates to determine [their] compatibility as threesomes." When Harry wakes up, he decides to talk to Lash about her TV privileges.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Oakley dies in a HeroicSacrifice after her MookFaceTurn. She gets better.

* TheResenter: Saji to Harry for getting together with his crush. Sona gave him the chance to come to terms on his own, but once his hostility to Harry started to interfere with battle, she stepped in to make him stop and unambiguously told him that she wasn't interested in him that way, and wouldn't be even if things with Harry somehow don't work out. Since then Harry remains Saji's least favorite person but he did knock it off, becoming instead sullen or irascible around him in a AgeAppropriateAngst kinda way.

* RetiredMonster: For all her dislike for her progenitor, and her current TheMatchmaker[=/=]CosplayOtakuGirl antics, there's a reason why Harry still considers Lash a lot more dangerous than the Winter Mantle. A good example of this is the time she suggested a [[MoreThanMindControl rather disturbing]] SexFaceTurn scenario on [[spoiler:Jeanne]] by basically turning her into a {{Functional|Addict}} {{Sex Addict|ion}} with a SingleTargetSexuality on him.

* ReverseMole: InUniverse. Harry suggested making Kiba's fictional counterpart in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'' into this because he doesn't like to be portrayed as the villain. Azazel considered it a good plot twist and a good InUniverse explanation for the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil by making it so "Darkness Knight Fang" was purposely throwing increasingly stronger henchmen at Oppai Dragon as a way to train him.

* SayingTooMuch: Momo when angrily asking why she, Ruruko, and Tomoe don't have fictional counterparts just like Sona, Reya, Tsubasa, and most of Rias' Peerage. It's only after she saw the twinkle in Azazel's eyes that [[OhCrap she realized just how badly she screwed herself and Ruruko over]] -- [[TheDitz Tomoe]] was at least able to happily roll with it when he cast the three girls as "the Hellines" to Koneko's "Hellcat-chan" character.

* SeriousBusiness: {{Shipping}} in the ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' fandom. It took the InUniverse fans maybe hours to produce dozens of {{lemon}}s featuring the eponymous heroine and the Wandering Wizard, and an equal number of {{Death Fic}}s by the anti-shippers, after the news of Harry and Serafall being together got to the forums.

* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: ''Leviathan'', even by the standards of Devils, is completely shameless and combines this trope with her obsession with MagicalGirl fiction and her CosplayOtakuGirl hobbies. One notable incident is when she magically transforms out of her uniform... except HER transformation does not have any censorship sparkles, giving every member of Sona and Rias peerages a FullFrontalAssault (as well as Harry). Ironically, despite her unrestrained nature, she's never actually been involved with anyone before Harry, her political role having made that impossible.

* SleepLearning: A variation. Lash watches anime at night while Harry, or rather his consciousness, get his rest.

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: When Harry suggests making Kiba's fictional equivalent "Darkness Knight Fang" a ReverseMole, Azazel likes the idea in part because it allows him to make this a JustifiedTrope by saying that he was throwing increasingly strong baddies at the hero on purpose to train him up.

* StraightGay: [[spoiler:Oakley]]. Harry only noticed because he saw her looking at Tomoe's butt.

* SuperIdentikit: {{Justified|Trope}}. Harry was able to provide his allies with perfectly accurate portraits of the core members of Hero Faction after they kidnapped him during the Kuoh Conference in the original fic, but that's only thanks to Lash's PhotographicMemory and her ability to borrow Harry's hands with his permission to draw the sketches.

** [[spoiler:Harry's spirit daughter]] didn't have a CanonName in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' when she was mentioned in the fic, so the author came up with "Sophie" for her, which was a somewhat popular FanNickname at the time. Much later Creator/JimButcher provided a less flattering name for her in a Website/{{Reddit}} AMA that the author didn't seem to like. So, when the CanonName was mentioned in passing in a mostly unrelated context, Harry couldn't help but remark [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude "poor girl"]].

* TakingTheHeat: [[spoiler:[[Manga/ShinozakisanKiWoOtaShikaNi Akina Shinozaki]] took the full blame for the [[WillingChanneler ghost-]][[PowersViaPossession assisted]] serial robberies in the Phantom Thief case. Harry realized that her friends were most likely in it too because Akina didn't have the abilities to contact or bind the ghost on her own and her lack of recent psychic scarring proved that at least the previous week's robbery wasn't her doing. Harry told the police detective in charge about it, but they had to let it go because they lacked non-magical evidence to prove it.]]

** Since Issei's more focused on his harem, and not leching after random girls at the school, he's not counted among the Trio anymore, leaving it a Perverted Duo (though Katase suggests adding Aika in with them to keep the name, to which all three protest in stereo).

* TrademarkFavoriteFood: While Harry is far from a picky eater, he has a notable preference for burgers, especially Burger King.

* VirginityMakesYouStupid: Riser references this trope when Harry and Sona walk into his trap. Harry quickly points out that they were ready for the trap; but he is also not a virgin (ironically making him the only confirmed non-virgin on the hero side. Riser and his peerage are most certainly ''not'' virgins, but vastly underestimate both Sona and her peerage, and Harry).

* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Bob the (female) Tengu resents her parents for naming her after Bob Dylan. Takako also dislikes being reminded that her name basically means "Hawk girl".

* FridgeLogic: Gets brought up a few times, usually by Harry.

* CoordinatedClothes: Downplayed. While each of Harry's girlfriends dressed up in their own particular styles for their Christmas Eve's dinner date, they all wore glasses and a necklace with a "hexagonal aquamarine on a silver chain" to unify their outfits (a matching tie in Tsubasa's case) as seen in the fanart above. The latter may have been a bad call on their part, one that unwittingly contributed to all the intense if silent scorn Harry got from other people that night, if they were mistaken for [[UsefulNotes/{{BDSM}} day]] [[BondageIsBad collars]].

[[caption-width-right:350:Merry Christmas, Harry Dresden!]]

* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: {{Invoked|Trope}}. Sona's mother does her very best to embarrass her in front of her boyfriend during their New Year's Eve dinner.
-->'''Sona:''' Mother, I know what you are doing. Please stop.

** [[spoiler:''The War of Forgotten?'' bolts the two canons together and welds up the seams. The reason Ophis originally left the Dimensional Void? She was either infected by Nemesis, or influented by a carrier. The ancient gods started to create the Magogs to stop the Outsider invasion that follows. And Trihexa used to be known as He Who Walks Below.]]
** [[spoiler: It's implied that the illness that sent Sairog's mother into a coma was created by the Outsiders or someone working with them]].

* EarlyBirdCameo: Oakley shows up briefly in the Alice White arc, before becoming more important in the adaptation of Volume 9 (the Kyoto School Trip).

** The Beholders don't have names, they have designations consisting of a Greek letter and a number. Harry nicknames one (BB, short for "Boss Beholder") who is FinalBoss for the Beholder Arc. Serafall nicknames another one (Rini), who is the only Beholder sent to Japan who survive. [[spoiler:Rini also gets recruited by Serafall to be her Knight.]]

* PointOfNoReturn: A non-videogame example. [[spoiler:Lash warns Harry that letting Tsubasa deliver the killing blow to BB is one in their relationship, observing that there's little to no chance the Rook will ''ever'' get over him if he fulfills his promise to her.]]

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: After being told Kendra is probably mostly or completely naked while laundering the only clothes she has with her, Harry narrates "I am not to blame for any dreams I might or might not have had that night."

!!''Beyond the Outer Gate Lies... a High School Library?'' provides examples of:

* EngagementChallenge: Sona has hers from canon about [[BestHerToBedHer only marrying a man who can beat her in chess]] that she used to get out of an unwanted ArrangedMarriage in the past. This conspicuously was not once mentioned around Harry until a reporter did during the Sitri/Agares pre-Rating Game press conference in ''A Star's Life''. The implication is that she wanted to quietly dismiss the requirement when Harry entered the picture, and that her friends caught on that and kept it to themselves.

* MugglesDoItBetter: One of Harry's tenets, despite being a Wizard/Magician. Besides firearms, he's all too willing to resort to technology to solve magical problems now that he's not a WalkingTechbane, like letting computer-controlled milling machines do the etching of magical symbols for him. The same applies as a detective by using internet as another investigative tools.