History Fanfic / TheHohenzollernEmpire

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* {{Nanomachines}}:
** The Jotun aliens intended to take over the world by infecting humanity with a virus that turns humans into slaves and incubators for new Jotun. This virus would be delivered by a nanobot swarm known as the black oil, which in turn would be delivered by bees. The black oil itself could infect targets on its own through an advanced AI system that could seek out organic life forms.
** Pavel Novak used a nanobot-only derivative of the black oil to infect Erich Hansen and take over his body's cardiovascular functions with the nanobots, allowing him to effectively hold Erich's own body hostage by directing the nanobots to induce a stroke or heart attack at will.
* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Gandhi's Rasas and Angelos' Angeloi are fascist organizations that rose to power in India and the Reich in the 1920s and 30s, with Gandhi and his Rasas particularly pursuing many real life Nazi policies.
* NaziNobleman: The Angeloi family, at the center of the fascist Angeloi faction, are nobles. Because they were nobles, after the war Otto rendered the nobility powerless to prevent another rebellion from families like the Angeloi.
* NearVillainVictory:
** The Worm had basically won and taken over all of reality in the alternate 1453, but Wilhelm traveled back time at the last moment to stop that.
** By 2035, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] had taken over the entire Reich, with the people firmly behind him and all serious opposition destroyed. The former members of the X-Division [[spoiler: died trying but failing to stop him]]. Everything seems bleak as [[spoiler: Elias continues turning the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship]], but all hope hasn't been lost yet, as the princess Wilhelmina has fled to Russia, where she helps a growing resistance movement. [[spoiler: Hope is then lost when Russia is conquered in November 2038, forcing Wilhelmina to flee again, but it is regained when she arrives in Persia to rebuild her movement, and then it is dashed ''again'' when a nationalist Persian government dismantles her movement and imprisons her]].
* NegativeSpaceWedgie: The Philosopher's Stone in Part 5 was a mysterious artifact connected to the Worm, with accompanying reality warping powers. The Rasa general Patel was transformed into a Worm-corrupted human when he used it, while Arabia Gruber and Diana Frank simply got visions of the future when they used it. Sentinel also attempted to use it to manipulate historical events by pulling Theodora Doukas out of the timeline and attempting to kill her before she could become the first female Roman senator.
* {{Nephilim}}: The angel Sarah Milton's daughters, Kaiserin Wilhelmina II and Victoria I, were both nephilim, with some angelic powers. However, they didn't have any opportunity to use their abilities, and both died childless.
* TheNewTens: Angela Merkel was chancellor of Rome this entire decade, which also saw the final downfall of Sentinel, the second interaction with the Annionaverse, and the rise of Thierry Baudet. Kaiser Otto died in 2018 and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm Karl.
* TheNewTwenties: More environmental awareness happened this decade. Merkel remained chancellor the entire decade. Compared to the previous decade, not much else happened so far other than the founding of the Eimerican Federation and Srivijaya Commonwealth at the start of the decade and a military intervention in East Africa at the end of it.
* NGOSuperpower:
** Tesla Dynamic is a large multinational corporation with business interests in every country
** The Shepherds' Brotherhood is the largest charity in the Reich.
** Argus is the largest private military company in the world.
* NoBudget: Russia constantly went bankrupt every few years between 1986 and 2030.
* NoDoubtTheYearsHaveChangedMe:
** After the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 and shenanigans with the Annionaverse in 2011, Anders Humboldt comes to the realization that he is no longer the same person he was in 1992 when he began his quest to uncover the Syndicate.
** Wilhelm Karl gradually reconsiders his previous "vulture" mentality after certain events in 2030.
* NomDeGuerre:
** Anne Frank adopted the nickname "Valkyrie" during her war years.
** Olga had the codename "Firebird."
** Julian Anniona adopted the pseudonym Julius Andersen when interacting with Persian politicians.
** In the Annionaverse, Angelica Neumann is known as the "Valkyrie of Alençon."
* NoNameGiven:
** Even about twenty years after his introduction, LKR Guy still has no official name, being referred to only as "the LKR guy" or whatever his current job is.
** The Smoking Man, a recurring antagonist to X-Division, intentionally has no name given other than "the smoking man" or "Cigarette Guy." Investigating his past, X-Division finds he could be known as Karl Gerhard Busch Verbringen, but that name is very likely to be a pseudonym like hundreds of other names, and thus the Smoking Man remains nameless.
* NoFullNameGiven:
** The police officer and later Police Commissioner Kresge has been a recurring ally to X-Division since his first appearance in the 1990s, ultimately rising to [[spoiler: reluctant leader of the Roman resistance]]...but he has yet to receive a first name of any kind.
* NorseByNorsewest: The Vikings before Part 1 went northwest to discover the Eimericas. Some were captured by natives and over time made their way to Mexico, teaching their technology to the natives and leading to the creation of the Mexica Empire, the main antagonist of Parts 1-2.
* NostalgiaFilter:
** Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old East German regime) is prevalent in the former Occupied Territories as in real life.
** Zen has implied the history he wrote of the Reich has been filtered through nostalgia (and forum rules) to overlook negative incidents like ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, and suppression of left-wing movements.
* NotAlwaysEvil: China was the main antagonist of Part 3 (opposing the Reich in World War I) and a secondary antagonist in 4 (opposing the Reich in World War II), but even then it was willing to work with the Reich against a common foe in the Soviet Commune during World War III.
* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: The whole world changed on November 2, 2038 when [[spoiler: Jerusalem detonates nukes over every major city, killing 800 million people]]. The focus of the story arc changes from [[spoiler: resisting Jerusalem's tyrannical rule and assembling an international coalition to bring it down]] to merely [[spoiler: surviving Jerusalem's nuclear attacks and military onslaught]].
* NoTrueScotsman:
** The attitude of other Native Eimericans towards the Mexica Empire regarding their place in the Pan-Eimerican Bloc that was forming several years before World War I, because of the Acatl dynasty's partial Norse ancestry.
** Elias Anhorn has very strict standards on who is a man, a Roman, and a Christian. [[spoiler: And he will do everything he can to purge and enslave those who don't fit those standards.]]
* NotSoDifferentRemark:
** In 2006, Olga visits an imprisoned Valentin Varennikov to get closure on her past. What ensues is a lengthy argument on whether Olga made the right choice to defect to the Reich and what really separates her from Valentin. In the end, they both were servants of a large authoritarian regime (Sentinel and old Russia) which didn't hesitate to discard them once their purpose was over. Valentin later claims the Reich and the Soviets were the same thing, as both suppress dissenting viewpoints they don't like, only the Soviets were more honest about doing so. Olga refuses to acknowledge this.
** In 2037, Olga and Tsar Borislav, after narrowing averting a diplomatic crisis, have a discussion on what exactly it is they're really opposing. Borislav makes the case that [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime of Elias Anhorn]] is the same as the Reich and could only have come about from Roman culture, society, and values. In a way, [[spoiler: Jerusalem]] is the shadow of the Reich, waiting to emerge when the people are scared enough. Olga again denies this, believing they are not the same, but she then remembers what Valentin said all those years ago. Borislav then tells her she must be consistent when dealing with these matters: while it is okay to reject a trade deal with [[spoiler: Jerusalem]] which would render them economically subservient, an almost identical arrangement was the norm under the Reich.
** After exposing the Sentinel scandal, albeit with the truth still slightly obscured and watered down, the Smoking Man appears to congratulate Anders on his victory, comparing him to both himself and Conrad Humboldt. Anders denies the comparison, saying he succeeded in getting the truth out there, but the Smoking Man points out he didn't reveal the full truth as he once wanted. The initial idealism and final pragmatism of Anders Humboldt reminded the Smoking Man of the man Conrad was and became.
** The LKR Guy frequently claims "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" It's never clear what two sides he's referring to though.
** In April 2039, Alex Humboldt and Josh Johansen face off for one last time. Over the course of their conversation, Alex explains that they aren't so different, at least when they started out as kids. Both were bright-eyed boys who loved learning, but circumstances around them shaped who they became. Alex had a loving family and many friends who kept him on the right path, while Josh had an abusive father who suppressed his best qualities and encouraged his worst. He even remarks that if their situations were reversed, Alex could have ended up just like Josh.
* NukeEm:
** Raphael claimed he nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. In Part 4, the Soviets use their own nukes on Warsaw, Konigsberg and Dresden, and then Heaven itself.
** In 2037 in Part 5, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] nuked multiple cities, including many under his own control, just to [[spoiler: intimidate anti-Elias rebels into surrendering]].
** In 2038, [[spoiler: Elias]] nukes [[spoiler: almost every major city in the world, killing 800 million people]]. And that was just on the ''first'' day of [[spoiler: World War IV]].
* NumberedSequels: Each part following the transition from the Crusader Kings II segment to Europa Universalis IV has its own title.
** Part 1 (Crusader Kings II) had no title, but zenphoenix's signature has it titled as Kaiser of the Romans.
** Part 2 (Europa Universalis IV) is titled Uber Alles.
** Part 3.1 (Victoria II, 1836-1914) is titled The Imperial Century.
** Part 3.2 (Victoria II, 1914-1936) is titled [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck Iron and Blood]].
** Part 4 (Hearts of Iron III) is titled {{Gotterdammerung}}. The title briefly changed to "Gabriel's Empire" when Gabriel usurped God's power and took over Zen's account.
** Part 5.1 (Victoria II New World Order mod, 1945-1986) is titled The Fallen Phoenix.
** Part 5.2 (New World Order, 1986-2018) is titled The Rising Phoenix.
** Part 5.3 (New World Order, 2018-2037) is titled The Renewed Phoenix.
** Part 5.4 (New World Order, 2037-ongoing) is titled The Holy Phoenix.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Josh Johansen may seem like a stereotypical bully and all-around jerk, but this is really a mask for his intelligence, which he demonstrates by being surprisingly knowledgeable about historical events in class. It also lures his enemies into a false sense of security. When his teacher Oskar lowered his guard and revealed he was gay, Oskar used that to call the cops and get him arrested.
* ObiWanMoment: Kaiser Otto's last moments, in which he warns Wilhelm Karl he will not get what he wants if he continues down the path he chose. [[spoiler: He was right, and Wilhelm Karl realized it too late.]]
* OmnicidalManiac: Angelos and Gandhi both committed genocide against many different groups, with the latter going mad by the end of World War II. Valentin Varennikov, after starting World War III, didn't hesitate to kill anyone who stood in his way, from civilians of the Occupied Territories to his own citizens. [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn is willing to nuke even his own cities just to kill rebels, sacrificing as many people as possible to get what he wants.]]
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Johann von Neumann and Alan Turing are depicted as acting like Sherlock Holmes (with Oppenheimer as Moriarty) and are knowledgeable in many different disciplines from nuclear physics to cryptography and astrophysics. Decades later, Walter Humboldt took this even further with his extensive knowledge of biology, chemistry, universe-hopping physics, and advanced mathematics.
* {{Omniglot}}: All angels can speak every human language fluently.
* OnceDoneNeverForgotten:
** After an encounter with vampires on one of his cases, Anders insisted on denying the possibility of vampires, calling them psychological even years later. The same thing happened when angels appeared on one of his cases, as he firmly denied they were involved and attributed their acts to regular people.
** The Lithuanian chancellor Boris Bradziunas once made an Office reference during a conference of world leaders, something Olga now refuses to let go in subsequent meetings.
** During an interview, the senator Izinchi Ochimeca talks about how the November 9 attacks were being used as an excuse to infringe on Roman Nahuas' civil liberties just because "some people did something." Of course, the media then took that quote out of context and spent the next twenty years calling her a traitor and disrespectful to the troops and the dead of November 9.
* OncePerEpisode: Across the X-Division, Fringe, and Sentinel arcs, no matter what each individual story is about, the members of X-Division will always find a way to work in a reference to Sentinel in conversation, culminating in Sentinel's actual reveal at the end of the first X-Division arc.
* OneManArmy:
** Anne laid waste to entire armies of Angeloi. Tatiana and Olga both took on armies of Soviets. They all won easily.
** Saint Wilhelmina did this in the game, as her martial stats were so absurdly high that any army she commanded, no matter how small, could easily destroy even enemy armies three times as large.
** Kaiser Reinhard I thought he could do this with two men against an entire Norse invasion, but those two men just...died.
* OneWorldOrder: Rome has been the world's undisputed hyperpower since 1989, but that has changed since 2020 with the rise of the Eimerican Federation, the Srivijaya Commonwealth, and an outward looking China. That has most certainly changed since 2030 with [[spoiler: the Reich's descent into totalitarianism]], an increasingly nationalist China, a politically neutered India, and a significantly crippled Schengen Pact. It has been completely shattered as of 2038 when [[spoiler: the Reich, as the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, started World War IV and nuked every single major city on Earth]].
* OrcusOnHisThrone: The aliens in Part 5 were a looming threat X-Division had to stop as soon as possible...but they rarely ever showed up in person, and the invasion itself never happened as they suffered a civil war and were forced to abandon their plans due to incurring heavy losses.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe:
** Gandhi was disgusted by how his Annionaverse counterpart was a washed-up drunk veteran whose wife committed suicide, while Annionaverse Gandhi hated how the Neta was a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac and worked to undermine him.
** Kaiser Otto was initially so traumatized at the sight of Senator Otto (after everything that had happened to him over the last few months) that he almost killed himself.
** Annionaverse Angela, when impersonating Hohenzollernverse Angela, believed her counterpart was weak and had bad taste in pop culture.
** Hohenzollernverse Olga initially felt jealous of her counterpart having had a normal childhood, while Annionaverse Olga was disgusted at how her counterpart was raised as a murderous assassin, but they eventually reconciled.
* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Angels here are vastly different from the stereotypical pop culture depiction of angels. They are emotional, petty, and manipulative, with some viewing humans as lesser creations of God. They appear as formless energy beings in their true forms, which mortal humans cannot see without getting their eyes burned out, and must take human hosts to interact with the mortal world. They can also be killed by special anti-angel weapons, but their souls are immortal, so they revive after a few centuries.
* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Demons here are not like those seen in traditional pop culture. Instead, they are formless clouds of black particles giving off a sulfur smell which can possess a human. They can be killed with special anti-demon weapons, both in human and cloud form.
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Pagan gods exist within the Judeo-Christian pantheon, but they are vastly weaker. They are dependent on human worship for power, and as the world moved away from paganism towards the Abrahamic faiths, they became little more than regular people with some supernatural powers. They are still immortal, though.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires here share little similarities with traditional pop culture depictions other than having fangs, the need to drink blood, and the ability to turn normal humans. They have long lifespans, with one young vampire in the 1990s having lived since at least the 1920s, but can be killed by decapitation. Over the centuries, the Inquisition first deported almost every vampire in Europe to reservations in Dacia (Romania) before figuring out a way to "cure" vampirism and turn them all back into normal humans.
* OutsideContextProblem:
** In Part 1, the Mexica Empire invaded from literally off the game map at a time when most people were unaware of the New World. They came with a vastly different culture and practices which seemed completely alien to the Romans and fought in a way the legions were unaccustomed to.
** In Part 5, the Worm is vastly beyond anything humans and even angels can comprehend, making it difficult for them to develop an effective response to It.
* ParentChildTeam: In 1985, Anne Frank and her daughter Diana teamed up to protect a young Angela Hansen and the royals Kaiserin Victoria Louise and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra from the Soviet assassin Olga Kirova, leading her on an intense car chase and extended battle through the streets of wartorn Vienna.
* PenName: Before becoming a political figure, Mohandas Gandhi used the pen name Chandra Gupta to publish his works.
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: The Soviet Commune was a repressive totalitarian dictatorship which suppressed religion, individuality, and traditional culture in favor of futurism and an extreme interpretation of Marxism. When the Soviet Army seized the Occupied Territories, General Secretary Molotov implemented a policy of deromanization in which all traces of the Roman identity, from the German and Greek languages to Romanitas, were eradicated in favor of long-marginalized local cultures (Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Polish, and so on). All opposition to Soviet rule was brutally suppressed, especially under General Secretary Varennikov.
* ThePhilosopherKing:
** Saint Wilhelmina was known to have written many poems and proverbs still widely known eight hundred years after her death.
** Friedrich the Great introduced the ideas of meritocracy and equality to the peoples of Europe in opposition to feudalism, creating a philosophy which called for all people to be judged equally on the basis of merit instead of being born into their social status.
* PhilosophersStone: Exists as a reality warping artifact linked to the Worm. It was dug up in Giza by the treasure hunter Arabia Gruber, who sought to keep it out of the hands of the Rasa general Patel. Patel ultimately got his hands on the stone, which corrupted him into a Worm-mutated human, but Gruber killed him. Also handling the stone, Gruber received visions of the future, leading up to the Reich's possible demise in the (as of now) unreleased Part 6. Sentinel later got its hands on the stone and attempted to use it as a time machine so they could rewrite history to their advantage, but Diana Frank and Wilhelm destroyed it.
* DepletedPhlebotinumShells: In the medieval era, angels and demons could only be killed by special daggers enchanted with specific anti-angel/demon spells. The Inquisition later melted down many daggers to make anti-angel/demon bullets and make their job much easier.
* PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs: Lucifer's fall from Heaven allegedly killed the dinosaurs.
* PintSizedPowerhouse: Although Ryukyu is the smallest nation in the world and irrelevant in the larger geopolitical landscape, it proudly maintains a ridiculously large navy on par with those of the major powers. When [[spoiler: World War IV]] begins, Ryukyu demonstrates that [[spoiler: it isn't joking when it says it can go toe to toe with the major powers]], as its navy takes on [[spoiler: and shatters the fleets of Jerusalem, China, and Penglai with clever tactics and advanced military technology like orbital weapons]], establishing Ryukyu as a major power in its own right and not one to be underestimated.
* {{Pirate}}: Kyrillos in Part 1 was a pirate who went toe to toe with Saint Wilhelmina after stealing the formula for Greek Fire. After he was brought to justice, Wilhelmina recognized his unique achievement of being the only pirate ever to have successfully stolen the formula. As a reward, and to prevent him from going back to his pirate life, she granted him a noble title. Centuries later, he would be revered as a folk hero. Alex Humboldt's high school in the 21st century was named after him.
* ThePlotReaper:
** The deaths of the parents of Anne Frank and Olga Kirova set their character arcs in motion, spurring them both to get revenge against the alleged killers. Anne became a vigilante and resistance fighter who rose to become the leader of the Frankfurt resistance during World War II, while Olga became a KGB assassin with the goal of killing Anne, until Anne told her the truth about her parents' death and Olga rebelled against Valentin Varennikov.
** Elias Anhorn's arc was set into motion when his sister Ellie died of cancer she developed after inhaling toxins while working as a first responder during the November 9 attacks. As a result, he and his friends enlisted in the army and were deployed to Mexico...where his friends were ALSO killed in a terrorist ambush. The cold reception he received when he escaped the ambush barely alive set him down a dark path of revenge against whom he saw as his sister and friends' true killer: [[spoiler: the entire Hohenzollern family]]. His subsequent purge of [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] in turn sets [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]] down the path of becoming a leader to oppose him.
* PoliteVillainsRudeHeroes: Although the Smoking Man was shown to do morally reprehensible things like give up his own daughter as a guinea pig for the aliens, personally assassinate the equivalents of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Mikhail Gorbachev despite largely sympathizing with what they wanted, and plotted the subjugation and enslavement of humanity, he still acts like a polite gentleman to his opponents, casually discussing his plans and gloating about his inevitable victories. In contrast, Anders Humboldt, one of the heroes of this story arc, is rude and crass towards him, not wanting to hear his monologues or sweet talking. When he needs to get information on the Syndicate and has to get it from the Smoking Man, he just wants the Smoking Man to give him what he wants immediately.
* PoliticallyActivePrincess: Wilhelmina, at least after [[spoiler: an assassination attempt]] in 2037.
* PoliticallyCorrectHistory:
** Zen admits his depiction of Roman history has been filtered to give a more neutral/positive light on certain events, like glossing over what amounts to ethnic and religious cleansing by the first three Kaisers, as well as the Reich's colonization of Neurhomania and Africa. He explained some of this was because of forum rules. However, in Part 5, the narrative has become less afraid of discussing what really happened in those events.
** In Part 4, Zen was forced to avoid talking too much about the Holocaust or other World War II atrocities due to HOI3-specific forum rules regarding depictions of the Holocaust, but this was made up for in Part 5, as forum rules for Victoria 2 were more lenient.
** In-universe, [[spoiler:Elias Anhorn]] and Josh Johansen both think the "new" historical narrative is too politically correct...and now seek to "correct" the narrative back to what it once was...and then some.
* PoliticallyCorrectVillain: The Syndicate/Sentinel are embedded within every national government, particularly the Roman government, keeping the chancellors pawns and Kaiser Otto unaware. They make use of political correctness to silence anybody who starts to uncover the truth, labeling them as racists, misogynists, tax evaders, or anything to "cancel" them.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Elias Anhorn dislikes the political correctness of the mainstream establishment and isn't afraid to speak his mind against them. He calls out the establishment on its hypocrisy about the climate crisis and rails against cancel culture. He doesn't hesitate to say what needs to be said about climate change, political action, and Christian values. [[spoiler: After his MASSIVE villain turn coup, he becomes a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain.]]
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] becomes this after he reveals his true colors in 2030. He suppresses others who speak their mind against him, takes over the establishment, is hypocritical about the climate crisis, and weaponizes cancel culture.
* {{Precursors}}: Ancient humanity had a technologically advanced spacefaring civilization 150,000 years ago, before an unknown cataclysm destroyed them. Fragments of their technology are occasionally dug up in the modern day, and modern humans barely understand how to use them, let alone replicate them.
* PrecursorKillers: It is frequently said that ancient humanity was a powerful spacefaring civilization with interstellar colonies, sprawling cities, and a flourishing society. But 150,000 years ago, it was completely wiped out and almost entirely purged from the geological record, leaving few traces of its existence. Even today, nobody knows why it ended. Diana and Angela wondered if the Jotun aliens who are trying to invade Earth in the present day were responsible, but surviving records from 150,000 years ago seem to imply the Jotun were humanity's ''allies'' back then. Later, Diana sees a vision of ancient humanity and its end, in which the flesh melts off humans' bones like liquid and all of Earth bursts into flames. Still, this tells her little about who actually did it, only that to destroy such a powerful civilization and erase almost every trace of it, they must have been even more powerful.
* PrecursorWorship: The Worm cult has its origins in ancient humanity's civilization 150,000 years ago, and current members still adhere to many traditions, such as the ancient human language, from that era. They practically worship their old cult from that era and seek to replicate its success in bringing down the rest of ancient humanity.
* PrincessProtagonist: Princess Wilhelmina, daughter of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors: Argus Security is a private military company contracted by the Roman government to help with riot control and counterterrorism in Mexico, Lithuania, and at home in the Reich. After leaving the military, Gustav Johansen was recruited into Argus by his colleague Kurt Moreau and provided security at Wilhelm Karl's coronation. Argus' influence gradually expands over the next twenty years, with powerful financial and government backers in Theodor Tesla and Elias Anhorn.
* PointOfDivergence: The main points of divergence for this story are Friedrich the Great becoming the margrave of Brandenburg in 1066 and Erik the Red's expedition several decades prior being captured instead of driven off. Another point of divergence simultaneous with Friedrich the Great's appearance is the Pagan Resurgence, when various pagan states centralize, standardize their faiths, and fight off invading Christian or Islamic kingdoms, while many prominent Christian or Muslim leaders converted back to pagan faiths, among them Harald Hardrada who became the first Norse Fylkir. Indirectly, the existence of ancient humanity could also be another point of divergence, but modern human history would go exactly the same if it did not exist. Zen has said he considers the Cybrex war from Stellaris (which happened 600,000 years ago) as another point of divergence as the Cybrex would attack in a different direction, creating a completely unique starting scenario for Stellaris, but not affect human history on Earth if it doesn't directly attack it.
* ProudToBeAGeek:
** Olga Kirova is an assassin who can easily solo entire armies and take down a nation on her own. She is also a huge anime and video game geek who knows all of the popular movie tropes and is more Internet-savvy than the rest of the X-Division.
** Princess Wilhelmina is a geek, having cultivated a reputation as a gamer who loves [=JRPGs=] in college which still follows her around thirty years later.
* ThePurge:
** After seizing power in Part 2, the usurper Malcolm Bethune ordered loyal troops to purge the entire Hohenzollern family. Only two members of the family, Sophia and her cousin Friedrich, survived the purge.
** Centuries later, in Part 4, Angelos carried out multiple purges during his rise to power. At the beginning of his coup, he tricked the entire Diet into assembling in the Reichstag chamber and then massacred them all. At the end of World War II, he massacred the entire Maximist branch of the Hohenzollerns rather than let them fall into the hands of the Soviets.
** Performed once again in 2030 by [[spoiler:Elias and the Committee]], in which they purge basically everyone who isn't a [[spoiler: heterosexual, non-leftist Roman Christian]].
** Performed yet ''again'' by [[spoiler: Elias and the Committee]] in 2034 to purge any remaining serious opposition leaders.
** Performed a ''third'' time by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] in 2038 to purge [[spoiler: all of the Hohenzollerns]]...''again''.
* PurpleIsPowerful: The Reich and its Kaisers are associated with the color purple.
* PurposelyOverpowered:
** Although the original Sunset Invasion scenario was already designed to make the Aztec invasion overpowered relative to the player, Zen made it even more overpowered in Part 1 by giving them more troops that weren't subject to attrition penalties and only despawned if they were killed, so the AI would have armies of millions of troops which could only be defeated in battle, not by stalling out with attrition. The same troop bonuses were given to other hordes like the Mongols and Timurids.
** In Part 5, when World War III began, Zen admitted that the Reich, even with the many military and economic debuffs given over the last 40 years, was still far too overpowered, so he gave the Soviets an insane military buff which increased the strength, resilience, and morale of the Soviet Army and allowed them to win many decisive victories early in the war. This became a story point later in Part 5 when [[spoiler: the Reich becomes a totalitarian world pariah and uses its military and economic clout to impose its will on its neighbors]].
* PyrrhicVictory: World War II ends in a Roman victory, although it came at a serious cost. China's democracy was silenced and replaced with a military dictatorship. India is split under joint Roman-Chinese occupation. The Roman heartland is in ruins, with its industry destroyed, military split and weakened, and people tired. The Soviets are on the rise, having seized the Occupied Territories from the Reich and consolidated their control over North Eimerica by destroying the Axis-allied nations there. This sets the stage for the Cold War of Part 5.
* QuantityVsQuality:
** The Reich's military doctrine for much of its history is to switch between quantity and quality, since it has both. During World War I, it heavily relied on quantity to make up for the heavy losses it sustained.
** Chinese military doctrine, specifically naval doctrine, emphasizes numerical superiority to overwhelm enemies. Chinese fleets are supposed to spread out over a large area of water to increase the amount of territory covered and to make their numbers appear even bigger.
* QualityOverQuantity:
** While the Reich does try to field more soldiers and ships than any other country, it doesn't neglect quality as well, making sure Roman soldiers are the best trained in the world. This came in handy during wars when quantity was no longer guaranteed, like during the Maximist Wars (when Wolfgang Ludendorff took on Maximist militias far larger than his forces) and World War II (when the Reich was split in a civil war and most of the troops sided with Markos Angelos).
** Ryukyu has heavily emphasized quality over quantity for its entire existence, focusing on devising the best strategies and doctrines to counter far larger enemies that would almost always outnumber and outgun anything the small island kingdom can produce. This proves in handy when it [[spoiler: takes on ''all'' of the major totalitarian powers in the Pacific Ocean]]...and ''wins''.
* TheQuisling: Vidkun Quisling still sold out the Kanatan government in exile (Norway) to the Angeloi, giving them complete control over Scandinavia. After the loyalists liberated Scandinavia, he was put on trial and executed.
* RageAgainstTheHeavens: At the end of Part 4, the Soviets nuked Heaven, almost killing all of the angels. In Part 3, the Inquisition invaded both Hell and Heaven to accomplish their goals of sealing off Hell (successfully) and kicking Gabriel out of Heaven (a complete failure).
* RagsToRoyalty:
** Friedrich the Great started as a minor baron of the Eastern March, based in a border town known as Berlin. Over the course of ten years, he rose through the ranks thanks to his charisma, his merits, and his friends (including at least one angel) helping him out, ultimately winning the First Crusade and becoming King of the Germans and Jerusalem. Following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich, he was elected the next Holy Roman Emperor. Under his reign, he reconciled the empires of both the Germans and the Greeks and negotiated a military alliance and political marriage which put both under Hohenzollern rule, paving the way for his grandson Friedrich the Glorious' restoration of the Reich.
** Gunhilda was a peasant girl from the village of Kujawy, Poland who claimed to hear the voices of angels. She was welcomed into Friedrich the Glorious' court, where she proved herself to be a master tactician and military genius who led the Roman legions to victory after victory. She eventually married Friedrich the Glorious himself, and her children became the first of the powerful Schweinfurt dynasty.
** The peasant Sarah Milton similarly heard the voices of angels centuries later, later saving Kaiser Wolfram from the angels' assassination attempt. The two later married as well, making Sarah an empress.
* RealEventFictionalCause: Raphael claims the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was caused by Lucifer falling to Earth.
* RealMenHateAffection: Josh hates showing any sentimentality or emotion, seeing that as weakness.
* ARealManIsAKiller: Josh measures his manliness by how many enemies he has killed. Especially high profile ones like [[spoiler: Diana Frank, Anders Humboldt, Angela Hansen, and the chancellor of India]].
* {{Realpolitik}}:
** The Vienna resistance decided to join forces with Leon Trotsky, an ideological enemy, to bring the Soviets into the war against the Angeloi. When Trotsky refused to do so, the resistance murdered him and implicated the Angeloi in the crime, angering the Soviets under Molotov into declaring war anyways.
** In 2037, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn and his Committee]] use their hard and soft power to force neighboring nations into political and economic submission. Troops stationed in [[spoiler: Yavdi and India]] force the two nations to become compliant and install friendly right-wing governments. Josiah Burkard goes to Russia to negotiate a trade deal in which Russia would apparently be saved from an impending famine, but at the cost of [[spoiler: Russia being bound to the Reich's economic sphere and all Roman refugees being deported to certain death]]. The deal turned out to be very popular among the desperate Russian public until it was ultimately derailed by Princess Wilhelmina.
* RedBaron:
** In Part 1, the Zunist warlord Timur was feared as the Iron Khan, while his son Shah Rukh adopted the nickname of the Lord of Asia.
** In Part 4, Anne Frank became known as the Valkyrie resistance leader who almost singlehandedly liberated both a concentration camp and the entire city of Frankfurt from the Angeloi.
** In Part 5, Olga Kirova was initially known as the feared Firebird assassin, the Soviets' answer to the Valkyrie. She was trained to be able to take down entire armies on her own so she could stand a chance against Anne.
* RedemptionRejection: Josh was offered TWO chances at redemption by his teacher Oskar, who saw his internal conflict, understood his home situation, and appreciated his passion for learning things. Oskar genuinely wanted to help Josh out, but Josh instead had him arrested on false charges, ending his teaching career. Years later, Oskar met Josh again and was not mad about what had happened, instead offering to help Josh become the good man he could always be. Josh responded to this second offer by [[spoiler: straight up killing him and hanging his body on a crane with a slur written on him for all to see]].
* RedScare:
** In Part 5, Senator Joseph [=McCarthy=] still started a witch-hunt across Roman society for alleged equalist infiltrators as he did in real life.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] takes the Red Scare to the extreme, even by [=McCarthy=]'s standards, and violently purges anyone he remotely''suspects'' of leftist sentiments, even if they are as moderate as women's rights.
* ReignOfTerror:
** After seizing power, Valentin Varennikov rolled back all of the reforms Gorbachev made and sent in the KGB and army to brutally silence any opposition to his rule in both Russia and the Occupied Territories.
** [[spoiler: The Reich]] has been in a constant reign of terror since 2034 as undesirables, political dissidents, and ethnic and religious minorities are violently purged or forced into concentration camps. And as of 2039, it is only getting ''worse''.
* RelationshipReveal: In 2036, after stealing the [[spoiler: legendary sword Enonon]], the Russian spy Yulia escapes back to Russia, pursued by Theodor Tesla's drones. She eventually gets her package over the border, even though she is fatally wounded in the process. As she dies, the audience learns not only is Yulia really [[spoiler: the previously recurring character Jessica from the Fringe arc]], but she is also married to [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]].
* ReligionIsRight: The Abrahamic God exists, as do angels, and demons, and other supernatural entities from Abrahamic lore, as well as at least a dozen major pagan gods.
* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: Vampires, werewolves, and alien supersoldiers can only be killed by decapitation.
* RepressiveButEfficient:
** Rasa India developed nukes in World War II (but never got the chance to use them), and it passed on the technology to the Angeloi, who in turn got their nukes stolen and used against them by the Soviets. The Reich played catch-up because both the Angeloi/Rasas and Soviets kept sabotaging the loyalist nuclear program.
** In Part 5, even after becoming a totalitarian hellhole, [[spoiler: the Reich]] ''still'' has a much better and efficient environmental policy than much of the rest of the world, having slashed carbon emissions and transitioned to renewable energy sources much more than anyone else. And since the regime has done a very good job of tying its image to environmentalism, that in turn makes environmentalism stigmatized in the rest of the world as it is seen as totalitarian and tyrannical. As a result, many other nations have openly abandoned environmentalism altogether. This gradually stops applying as [[spoiler: World War IV]] consumes more resources than can be replaced and repressive economic reforms begin cutting into efficiency.
* TheRepublic: China in Parts 3 and 5 is a democratic country, a constitutional monarchy with an elected legislature and constitution. The Reich from Part 2 onwards strives to be a fair nation with respect for the rule of law, tolerance of different cultures and religions, and equality under the Kaiser through the Augustinian Code. As of 2035, [[spoiler: neither the Reich nor China qualifies anymore, instead falling into TheEmpire.]]
* RescuedFromTheUnderworld: Mansur Shah Mukhtar was broken out of Hell by the Inquisition in Part 2.
* ResetButton:
** In 1962, nuclear war broke out, destroying humanity. However, the Inquisition reset the timeline and prevented it from happening to begin with.
** Wilhelm pushes an extreme version of the reset button to ''create'' the Hohenzollernverse by jumping back from a bad future where the Worm won and changing the past so humanity stood a chance against it, by uniting under the Reich.
* LaResistance:
** Otto's loyalists kept up the fight all across the Reich as more of the nation fell under the rule of Markos Angelos. Even when the military stopped fighting, resistance cells led by the likes of Anne Frank, Engelbert Dolfuss, Conrad Humboldt, Hans Hansen, and Osterhild Anniona kept fighting the Angeloi.
** In Part 5, various rebel groups rise up against the totalitarian dictatorship of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], among them the people of the rebellious city of [[spoiler: Bremerhaven]].
* ResurgentEmpire: The Reich entered 1946 and Part 5 a broken and battered shell of what it once was. Its industry lay in ruins, its military was divided and shattered, and swathes of the heartland were under Soviet occupation. But within 40 years, all that was reversed. The industry was rebuilt, the military was reorganized, and after World War III, the Soviet Commune was destroyed and the Occupied Territories retaken. By 1989, the Reich was indisputably the sole hyperpower in the world, reflected in the updated title for Part 5: Rising Phoenix (used from 1986 and 2018).
* {{Retcon}}: Zen has repeatedly retconned multiple plot elements.
** In Part 1, it was said that multiple Romance cultures (like French, Castilian Spanish, Portuguese, and non-Lombard Italian) and other cultures (like Polish, Arabic, and Scottish) were completely eradicated by the Reich, to the point where near the end of Part 1 some characters wondered why French wine was still called French wine if France didn't even exist. The same treatment was applied to Islam. However, by Part 4, Zen walked this back saying these cultures and Islam weren't fully wiped out but instead reduced to small minorities in their own homes (to the point where the word "France" has been forgotten the general Roman public by the 1990s), with the Muslims being scattered into their own diaspora across Europe. By Part 5, the remaining French populations have undergone a cultural revival from the 2000s on, a French Lives Matter movement has taught many non-French about the continued discrimination they face, and Angelica Haus, a character from a French town, has become more conscious about her French roots, even starting to speak partly in French.
** Friedrich the Great was originally written as an ambitious military commander and feudal lord who won fame and political power after emerging victorious in the First Crusade, but Part 5 reinterprets him as a charismatic leader who promoted humanistic and tolerant views which rallied many different peoples under his banner, allowing him to build a power base to establish the Reich. That itself is later retconned when it is revealed Wilhelm had directed Friedrich the Great to create the Reich to unite Europe against the Worm cult.
** The doomed timeline Wilhelm originally left was based on a previous Crusader Kings II game Zen played and never finished (hence why it was completely destroyed at the end), but Part 5 retcons that to be a timeline in which the Worm won and reality was under Its complete control, with Wilhelm just barely escaping into the past to avert this terrible future.
** In-game, the name of the Holy Roman Empire had been changed to "German Empire" after Friedrich the Great was elected Kaiser, but there have been no references to this in the story after Part 1, with everyone only referring to the Holy Roman Empire. The name change [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness effectively never happened]].
** Wilhelm's own origins were also retconned. In Part 1, one of Wilhelm's early stories showed he was merely the player avatar for a human character in "real life," also known as the world of Zen's previous AAR "Return of the Celestial Empire." There, he fought the angel Constantine, the avatar of the player's brother, and killed him. The names Wilhelm and Constantine come from the names of the human players controlling them, implying Hohenzollern Empire is really a game of Crusader Kings II being played in the Return of the Celestial Empire universe. However, Zen eventually declared this story non-canon and severed all ties with Return of the Celestial Empire from Part 2 on, and in Part 5, the angel Constantine instead sacrifices his life in the doomed future to save Wilhelm.
** Saint Wilhelmina was initially depicted as a perfect and always just and good ruler, but from Part 3 on, Zen brought to light the many atrocities and persecutions that happened under her reign, such as deportations of Muslims and Arabs, the suppression of the French and Poles, and her clash with the Catholic Church. In Part 5, Zen then expands on her actions by saying this arose out of a fear of the Worm Cult after it killed her parents, but she soon grew out of control with her purges and deportations and had to be called out on it by Saint Gunhilda.
** In Part 2, it was said the Reich almost always peacefully colonized new lands in South America and Africa, coexisting with native peoples instead of conquering and enslaving them as colonizers did in real life. However, Zen later points out that may not always have been the case. By Part 5, there are many African nationalist and separatist movements, having formed out of frustration of the European-dominated Roman government constantly ignoring their existence.
** In Part 3, the Reich emerged as a firm opponent of liberal movements and supporter of continued absolutism. However, by the end of that part, this has been tweaked to instead be an opposition to ''democratic'' movements (associated with China) and support for a meritocratic system (which were represented by the absolute monarchy government type in-game due to Zen not wanting to mod the game so much it would be incompatible with conversion to the next game).
** In Part 2, it was said the illegitimate Hohenzollern Anatolian branch legitimized itself by marrying into the Syrian line, but in Part 5, Zen claimed this was being retconned away. [[spoiler: Later un-retconned to such an extent that 21st century Hohenzollerns were ironically ''legitimized'' through descent from this branch.]]
** In Part 5, the djinn Jenny claims she granted wishes to Markos Angelos and Valentin Varennikov, implying that was how they gained power and started world wars. It is not explained how exactly this happened and no further details are provided.
** In Part 5, the Smoking Man is allegedly shown to murder Ragnar Beck, Abraham Green, and Mikhail Gorbachev, but Zen later retcons that story into a state of semi-canonicity, where it could have happened or not.
** Anders Humboldt's first introduction is as a baby in January 1969. He is later retconned to be a few years older as he was much older when he witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens in 1972.
** Many New World and African placenames were retconned to remove traces of European influence. For example, Tejas became Hasiinay, Creek became Este Muskokulke, and Cherokee became Tsalagehi Ayeli.
** Recent gameplay chapters have even retconned the ''game map itself'' to avoid borders based on real life, like the borders of US states still being present in the game code. The result is that Zen personally redrew the entire world map so that the borders would make more sense in universe. Even a few minor countries, such as Brunei, were retconned out of existence.
* {{Revision}}:
** Friedrich the Great, Friedrich the Glorious, and Saint Wilhelmina got significant character development in Part 5, after spending Parts 1-2 being depicted as almost perfect semi-mythical heroes.
** The bad alternate future timeline is heavily revised by still kept mostly the same. Instead of the Apocalypse happening and ending the world, the Apocalypse was intentionally started to end the world with the goal of denying it to the Worm.
** Erich Hansen refers to his wife as "Sharon" in his first appearance. However, when Mrs. Hansen appears thirty years later in the X-Division arc, her first name is given as "Magda." It is soon revealed that Sharon is her middle name.
* RevolvingDoorRevolution: Mexico suffered through multiple revolutions over the 20th century, with the old Mexica Empire being replaced by fascists, then equalists, then fascists again, and finally the Mexica Empire again.
* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman:
** Adolf Hitler remained in art school here, and without anything like the German loss in World War I, he never develops the anti-Semitism or fascist ideas he did in real life. Instead, he is hired as a painter in the imperial court. During World War II, he opposes Markos Angelos and helps Otto escape Berlin. After the war, he goes into the animation industry and establishes Adolf Hitler Pictures, the equivalent of Disney.
** Joseph Stalin remained in the seminary and was ordained as an Orthodox priest. Instead of becoming a brutal communist dictator, he became the Ecumenical Patriarch and took a very hardline stance against equalism.
** Mussolini and Goebbels become respected radio news anchors opposed to the Angeloi.
** Vladimir Putin became a 90s action movie star, filling in Keanu Reeves' role in popular culture.
* TheRichWantToBeRicher: Theodor Tesla isn't satisfied with owning the largest and most profitable company in the Reich. After gaining political power in 2030, he sets about rolling back workplace regulations, gutting labor unions, and forcing his workers to work long hours in dangerous conditions to make even more money. When the government gives him a contract to [[spoiler: deport ethnic and religious minorities out of the country]] by plane, he has the planes depressurized, which kills everyone onboard. This allows him to save money which he would have used to buy fuel, pressurize the cabins, feed the passengers, and pay the pilots for a full trip.
* RightWingMilitiaFanatic: The "patriot" movement arose in the 1990s after Helmut Kohl destigmatized nationalism during World War III. These "patriots" embraced various far right and neo-Angeloi ideas, among them "sovereign citizen" movements which alleged the modern Reich is merely a Chinese-owned corporate puppet regime with no authority to enforce laws over Roman citizens. One such fanatic is Maike Richter, a gold-digger who manipulated the widowed and mentally incapacitated Helmut Kohl into supporting a far-right agenda during his retirement.
* RisingEmpire: In 1105, Friedrich the Great's death united the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires under the rule of the same person, his grandson Friedrich the Glorious. Proclaiming the restoration of the Roman Empire as the Reich, Friedrich II embarked on a twenty-year campaign to restore the empire to its rightful borders across all of Europe. By the time of his death in 1126, the empire had established itself as the dominant power in the known world, with its territory stretching from Ireland in the west to Arabia in the east.
* TheRoaringTwenties: After World War I, the Reich entered a period of rising economic prosperity but also terrible wealth inequality, leading to a massive general strike in 1926 the young Otto skillfully negotiated an end to.
* RoswellThatEndsWell: In Part 5, an alien ship crashes in Agadir, Mauretania, and kickstarts seventy years of conspiracy and shadow politics between humanity and the alien Jotun.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Kaiser Otto was an active ruler from the very beginning. As a teenager, he personally negotiated an end to the general strike of 1926, putting himself in danger to do so. As a young man in World War II, he involved himself in his generals' strategy sessions and made sure as many of his citizens were okay as possible. After the war, he amended the Augustinian Code and overhauled the political system to be more fair to all citizens while also preventing the return of the Angeloi. At great personal risk again, he made several high-profile visits to occupied Berlin to speak out against the Soviets. His legacy of duty and service was passed on to his children Elisabeth Alexandra and Georg, as well as Elisabeth Alexandra's daughter Wilhelmina. His middle child, Wilhelm Karl, eventually came around to doing something, namely [[spoiler: working to make amends for his past misdeeds by helping the anti-Elias resistance]].
* RulingFamilyMassacre:
** Malcolm Bethune ordered the massacre of all of the Hohenzollerns in Part 2 after seizing power in the Anarchy.
** In Part 3, the Bolsheviks massacred the Russian royal family as in real life, but here there were two survivors who escaped and formed a government in exile.
** In Part 4, Markos Angelos massacred all of the Maximists when it became clear Berlin was lost to the Soviets and they were all trapped inside.
** In Part 5, it is implied this happened to the Japanese royal family after Paulluists (right-wing nationalists) seize power in southern Japan.
** In 2038, it happens to [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] again when Elias Anhorn [[spoiler: orders their purge after delegitimizing them and fabricating a story about a coup attempt]].
** Later in 2038, it happens to [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] ''again'' when Elias Anhorn [[spoiler: confronts Princess Wilhelmina in a Yavdian bunker and murders three out of six Hohenzollerns in front of her]].
* RunningGag:
** Molotov is obsessed with getting a new desk for his office, and the entire Soviet government, even during World War III, is fully committed to preventing him from getting one, going to extreme lengths to do so. When he finally gets a desk...[[spoiler: he ends up throwing it out a window]]. This gag is even referenced 3 real life years and 20-30 in-universe years later when Molotov is brought up again.
** Throughout the X-Division arcs, Angela refuses to let Anders drive, even when they're using Anders' car. Eventually, Diana and Olga join in on the joke as well.
** Angela is first introduced post-World War III attempting to electrocute a dead body as part of a lesson for new Athanatoi recruits. The lesson is interrupted by the Smoking Man, who assigns her to X-Division. Since then, she has tried to find opportunities to electrocute dead bodies, but never found one. She was especially happy about the opportunity to electrocute an ''invisible'' dead body on one of her cases, though that never came to pass.
** Every time Angela mentions vampires, angels, or anything else associated with Christianity, Anders can't help but immediately deny it as "psychological" in nature and attribute it to mundane matters, departing from his usual mentality of accepting impossible explanations for their cases. Parodied when his father Walter mentions aliens in a later case but immediately dismisses the possibility in much the same way, much to Anders' frustration.
** Pavel Novak almost always says his catchphrase "surprise motherfrakker" when he reappears in the story, but everyone, including the Smoking Man himself, hates his catchphrase and would rather die than hear it again.
** The bartender Jessica is introduced in the Fringe arc as a former KGB agent and friend of Olga resettled as a civilian in the Reich. When reuniting, Olga makes up a cover story about her and Anders being married, which Jessica believes and mentions constantly for the rest of the arc. Even after [[spoiler: Jessica and Olga get married]] and [[spoiler: Jessica is fatally wounded]], she can't help but make one last joke about Olga and Anders being married.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:S-Z]]
* SamusIsAGirl: During the Battle of Wawel Castle, the usuper Malcolm Bethune is confident he can't be beaten by Prince Friedrich, leader of the enemy army, as a prophecy claimed he could not be harmed by any man. Prince Friedrich promptly reveals "he" is actually Princess Sophia, Friedrich's cousin and the true heir to the throne, in disguise. Malcolm then dies as the prophecy said nothing about being harmed by women.
* {{Satan}}: Lucifer himself exists much as he does in biblical lore. An archangel trapped in Hell, he was released in the 17th century as part of the Apocalypse, before the Inquisition sealed him away again.
* SaveTheWorld:
** In Part 1, Kaiser Siegfried I and his son Sigismund II decisively pushed back the Aztec invasion force from England, saving the Reich and possibly the rest of Europe from subjugation by the Mexica Empire.
** In Part 2, Wilhelm and the Inquisition prevailed against both the angels and demons to stop the Apocalypse, preventing the timeline from ending and humanity from being destroyed.
** In Part 3, faced with the demons rampaging all over the mortal plane after the Apocalypse ended, the Inquisition stepped up and sealed off Hell, ending the demon threat.
** In Part 4, the loyalists prevailed over the Angeloi and Rasas and stopped their goal of world domination, while Wilhelm rallied the surviving angels under his banner to stop Gabriel's plot to rewrite reality with himself as God.
** In Part 5, the Reich defeated the Soviets, preventing them from achieving world domination, and stopped XA-1005C from being used or nuclear war from happening, while X-Division averted an alien invasion from subjugating humanity.
* ScaryAmoralReligion: The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, something everyone in the Old World was disgusted at. They even sacrificed Kaiser Wilhelm III in such a manner. The Aztecs got rid of human sacrifice at the end of Part 1, but the Tarascan state in Part 3 and the so-called Mexicanist State in Part 5 attempted to bring it back. Later in Part 5, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's regime turns Christianity into a brutal and unforgiving cult that murders those who don't blindly support Elias.]]
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere:
** By the end of Part 4, Wilhelm's frustration reached its apex and decided to leave the Hohenzollernverse in favor of other universes, until he was talked down by Raphael, who wants him to finish what he started.
** In Part 5, the pagan gods feel the same way towards their worshippers, as when X-Division discovered them hiding in a town in Normandy, they did not want anything to do with their followers, having grown tired of worship.
* SecretGovernmentWarehouse: The Syndicate had plenty of secret warehouses where they stored evidence of alien encounters.
* SecretHistory:
** Angels were involved in many historical events over the course the series. Wilhelm possessed Friedrich the Great in 1066, and together they rallied the people of the Holy Roman Empire against the Worm cult, setting the stage for the restoration of the Reich. Raphael murdered a Kaiser in an attempt to destroy the Reich, as well as manipulating other countries like Lithuania into getting more powerful and opposing the Reich. Gabriel and Uriel independently masterminded the start of World War I with different intentions.
** The aliens have also been present at various points in human history, but they only really got involved when one of their spaceships crashed at Agadir in 1947, leading to the creation of the Syndicate. The Syndicate in turn manipulated human history in a way that advanced its own interests and delayed the inevitable alien invasion further, such as by killing Abraham Green, Ragnar Beck, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
** The Worm cult has also been present for about the same time, also manipulating historical events behind the scenes. They were responsible for the rise of the cultist vizier Hassan, who infiltrated the Abbasid caliphate and sought to turn it into a world conquering behemoth, only to be brought down by Friedrich the Great.
* SecretPolice:
** The Angeloi, Rasas, Soviets, and Chinese nationalists had their own secret police agencies: the Black Tagmata, Gurapu, NKVD/KGB, and Jinyiwei.
** After his takeover, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] established the Home Guardians, Shepherds of the Future, and Argus as secret police who watch neighborhoods for any signs of subversive behavior...like owning 80s Dutch rock albums.
* SelfDisposingVillain:
** Markos Angelos and Mohandas Gandhi killed themselves when it was clear they lost the war. Gandhi was technically killed by his Annionaverse counterpart, but this still counts.
** Dmitry Yazov attempted to do this, but when the Romans kicked down the door to his office, he chickened out and immediately surrendered.
* SelfImposedChallenge: Although the Reich had become the most powerful nation in Crusader Kings II even just a hundred years after starting Part 1, Zen said he intentionally limited himself by not allowing any further expansion beyond the Roman imperial borders (with a few exceptions) and only declaring war in self-defense, on behalf of an ally, or with a proper in-universe justification. In Part 2, Zen permitted the Reich to expand through colonization but still limited where colonization could occur. As for wars, the Reich only fought wars if an ally called for help, and even then Zen not only did not let the Reich take any territory in peace deals, but also limited how much territory other nations, including allies, received too. In Parts 3-4, wars were only declared by scripted events. In Part 5, Zen put even more strict requirements, refusing to declare any unscripted wars at all, giving the Reich severe economic and military penalties, and even giving enemies like the Soviet Commune in 1984 and [[spoiler: China]] in 2038 a military stat boost to make fighting them even more of a challenge.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Wilhelm traveled back in time to 1066 after the Reich of his timeline was destroyed by the onslaught of unbelievers, subsequently causing the Apocalypse to happen in 1453. To make sure this doesn't happen again, he killed the angels responsible for triggering these events before they could even enact them, hoping the outcome will change. And it certainly did change, but the Apocalypse was only delayed. In Part 5, Wilhelm reveals the above story is not fully accurate. He himself caused the Apocalypse in the alternate 1453 because the Worm was about to destroy humanity, with the Reich as the last holdout. His brother sacrificed himself to send him back in time to avert this calamity. And it was averted, though Wilhelm still fears it may happen eventually.
* ShellShockSilence: In 1966, after his helicopter is shot down by Chaw Thai insurgents in Siam, a young Erich Hansen experiences shell shock silence as he only hears a high pitched hum, while his vision remains blurry. His friend Mark attempts to shout something to him, but it is only after he is shot in the head that Erich snaps back to reality.
* ShipTease:
** In the early parts of the X-Division arc, Diana Frank and Anders Humboldt referred to each other primarily as exes, but as they worked together, they slowly showed signs of attraction. On one particular case, the mind reader Gottfried Loben read their minds and announced they were both thinking of each other, leading them to blush and Angela to laugh. By 2003, they had married and had a son, Alex.
** While fighting the Worm cult in 2014, the angels Wilhelm and Sarah reflected on their past together. Almost a thousand years ago, Wilhelm had possessed Friedrich the Great, and Sarah had possessed his wife Ida. Although Sarah insists they have long since moved on and do not share their former vessels' feelings, it is implied both of them still harbor feelings for each other, with Wilhelm more open about it and Sarah more reluctant.
** In 2038, Sophie notices the 6 year old Prince Friedrich has a crush on his playmate Ilyana Romanova, even though Ilyana's domineering personality makes her hard to deal with.
* ShoutOut:
** Many of the elements in the AAR are references to {{Series/Supernatural}}. There are also references to the shows The X-Files and Fringe, as well as [[spoiler: The Handmaid's Tale]] and The Legend of Korra.
** Markos Angelos is a reference to Basileus Markos II Angelos from another AAR: [[Fanfic/ThisIsMadnessStoryOfTheCrumblingEurope This is Madness: Story of the Crumbling Europe]]. In this universe, he is the leader of the fascists, who have adopted the name Angeloi from Angelos' family, and it even uses the phrase "The Angeloi Protect" as their motto.
** The later Part 1 prominence of the Timurid khan Timur and his son Shah Rukh, as well as Shah Rukh's title of the Lord of Asia, are nods to the long-running Byzantine alternate history series An Age of Miracles.
** The character and backstory of Jared Karasi is inspired by [=RedTemplar=]'s The Eastern Vikings, where the Karasi family reforms and standardizes Finnish paganism and builds an Estonian empire. The Eastern Vikings is later referenced along with This Is Madness and other similar stories in a list of potential alternate history scenarios Thea receives.
** Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase "All this has happened before and will happen again" and the curse word "frak" are taken from Battlestar Galactica.
** The aliens' hammer-shaped ships and general Roswell Gray design comes from the Asgard of Stargate.
** Zen said the ancient advanced human civilization was inspired by similar civilizations in Halo and Assassin's Creed.
** Zen has said the buildup to World War III was based on a German mockumentary about the Cold War going hot, which was in turn based on declassified NATO and Soviet war plans.
** Gabriel mentions a set of timelines known as the Kaiserreich timelines, a reference to the popular Kaiserreich mod as well as Zen's previous work "Return of the Celestial Empire," which was played in the Victoria 2 version of Kaiserreich.
** The warmongering Mohandas Gandhi is based on his [[MemeticMutation nuke-happy AI]] from Civilization. His breakdown at the end of World War II is based on both Hitler's breakdown in the movie Downfall and the many "Downfall parodies" spawned from those scenes.
** Gabriel breaks the fourth wall in the Part 4 epilogue by posting Chapter 400 which was an ending of Fintilgin's "Kingdom Come" Jerusalem AAR edited to match the Hohenzollernverse's setting, hoping the readers will fall for it. It doesn't work, so he drops a teaser of [[ToBeContinued Part 5]] while mocking them for their persistence.
** [[spoiler: The XA-1005C virus originally comes from the "Kingdom Come" Jerusalem megacampaign AAR as well, which eradicated entire humanity in that timeline. Guess what it almost does in Part 5...]]
** There is the Annionaverse from [=Dragoon9105=]'s Anniona megacampaign, in which characters from both universes cross over to the other and interact with each other. Osterhild, Siegfried, Eva, and Julian Anniona are the counterparts of 20th and 21st century Annionaverse Austrian rulers.
** Friedrich the Great is described as having looked like an older Marth (the first protagonist of Fire Emblem), only in-universe it is explained as Marth having ''his'' design based on Friedrich the Great.
** Zen claims he put cameos to characters from his other works into various stories in Part 5 (including Irene Doukas herself and the KRA party).
** The name equalists is taken from the "Equalists" of Book 1 of Avatar: Legend of Korra. The way in which Alex Humboldt and Thea Tesla meet is based on how Mako and Asami meet (with Asami/Thea running over Mako/Alex with a moped).
** Wilhelm is very heavily based on the character of Castiel from Supernatural, although Zen has said the name Wilhelm itself comes from a character from a previous AAR he wrote. Not to mention that a lot of the Apocalypse story arc in Part 2 uses storylines from seasons 1-5 of Supernatural. In Part 2, the characters Friedrich von Hohenzollern, Friedrich von Habsburg, and "Frederick" von Hohenzollern are also based on Sam, Dean, and then Adam. In Part 4, Conrad Humboldt and Hans Hansen are also loosely based on Sam and Dean, with Conrad even owning the Winchesters' black 1967 Impala. However, the archangel Gabriel is more based on the character of Metatron than the Supernatural version of Gabriel.
** Characters in the X-Division story arcs of Part 5 are based on characters in the X-Files and Fringe.
*** Anders Humboldt's most obvious inspiration was Fox Mulder, but he also has some influences from [[spoiler:Peter Bishop]].
*** Angela Hansen is very much inspired by Dana Scully, but she also shares a lot in common with Olivia Dunham. The romantic relationship between Mulder/Scully and Peter/Olivia was replaced with a familial bond as Anders and Angela are cousins.
*** Annie Humboldt is based on Samantha Mulder, and her middle name is even Samantha. However, as the story arc progresses and reaches the point in X-Files where [[spoiler: Samantha's fate is revealed]] and [[spoiler: Scully becomes pregnant with William Mulder]], Zen instead avoids all that and has [[spoiler: has Annie/Samantha return from the aliens, filling in William Mulder's role in the story]].
*** Anna Humboldt is based on [[spoiler: Peter Bishop]].
*** Walter Humboldt is based on [[spoiler: Walter Bishop]]. His father Conrad Humboldt's original surname was even Bischoff (which can be anglicized as [[spoiler: Bishop]]).
*** Olga Kirova is based on [[spoiler: John Doggett, Lincoln Lee, and Charlie Francis]].
*** Diana Frank is based on [[spoiler: Diane Fowley, Monica Reyes, and Astrid Farnsworth]].
*** Erich Hansen is based on [[spoiler: Walter Skinner and Phillip Broyles]].
*** Wilhelm Kurtz is based on [[spoiler: Alvin Kersh and Broyles again]].
*** Mina Schaefer is based on [[spoiler: Nina Sharp]].
*** Wilhelm Tesla is based on [[spoiler: William Bell]].
*** Johann Verbringen is based on [[spoiler: Jeffrey Spender]].
*** Pavel Novak is based on [[spoiler: Alex Krycek]].
** Russian chancellor Viktor Petrov is based on a character of the same name from House of Cards, only instead of being similar to Putin, he is a liberal reformer who stepped down after one term. To represent him, Zen uses a picture of the actor Lars Mikkelsen (who played Petrov on House of Cards).
** Josiah Burkard, an economics professor, is said to be both based on The West Wing's Josiah Bartlet and [[spoiler: The Handmaid's Tale's Joseph Lawrence]].
** The arc after 2030 is heavily based on [[spoiler: The Handmaid's Tale]] as [[spoiler: the Reich descends into a totalitarian Christofascist theocracy where women have no rights and minorities are systematically eliminated.]]
** Ryukyu's obsession with having a ridiculously large navy, even when it does not make any sense economically, is a shout-out to the Three Mountains achievement in [=EU4=], in which the player must conquer the world as Ryukyu. The Ryukyuan navy is even officially known as the Three Mountains Defense Force.
* ShownTheirWork: Zen explains he wants to depict things as accurately as he can, though some things are bent around for convenience or artistic license.
** Although the LP is written in English, Zen attempts to write the dialogue in such a way that it can pass for a translation from German (the language of the Reich). Most acronyms are changed to their German equivalents (TSA to VSB, CDC to ZKP), German jokes are used, and English wordplays and references to English spellings are ignored or replaced with German versions if there are any and the originals can't already pass for direct translations from German.
** Place names around the world are also changed with a vastly different colonial era. Many of Eastern Europe's cities retain the German names they had in OTL up to World War II. Having never become the capital of Russia, Moscow remains a small town known as Moskva, while St. Petersburg becomes known as both Rognedagrad (for the empress who founded it) and Tsarberg (as Russians still call Constantinople Tsargrad). Most New World names are scrubbed of Spanish, English, and French references.
** The Aztecs and Incas are never referred to as such as those names were only assigned to them by Europeans later on. Instead, the Aztecs are called the Mexica and the Inca Empire is referred to as Tawantinsuyu. However, an "Aztecatl" political movement, using that name in its proper context, emerges in Part 3-4, while fascist Tawantinsuyu is given an in-universe reason to be called the Inca Empire (although this is mostly in the game itself; the story still refers to it as Tawantinsuyu).
** Zen rejects the idea and depiction of the Middle Ages as a cultural Dark Ages where the Catholic Church suppresses knowledge and burns scientists at the stake. In some chapters of Part 1, he describes the cultural and scientific innovations made during the medieval period.
** Zen also rejects the common narrative of smallpox alone wiping out 95% of the native population of the New World due to them not having any immunity, conveniently leaving a lot of empty land ready for Europeans to settle without guilt. Instead, he writes that modern academics have found that it was a combination of disease, warfare, enslavement, ecological collapse, and cultural erasure which led to the decline, and New World natives had the same immunities and potential for immunity as Europeans.
** When the Iconoclast Reformation begins, Zen has Martin Luther post his 95 Theses, but with a footnote explaining Luther didn't nail the theses to the door of a church as popular culture believes.
** When Franz Ferdinand is shot, setting of World War I, Zen does not use the pop culture story of the assassin coincidentally eating a sandwich right in front of his car. That story was referenced later on, but the actual assassin simply walks up and shoots him.
** The early stages of World War III are said to be based on actual declassified NATO and Warsaw Pact war plans, as well as NATO military exercises in the 1980s.
** All of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s regime's actions up to 2037, as well as those of Han Xianyu and Zhao Yu, are based on events that happened in real life, either in the past or right now.
** Occasionally, Zen posts in-universe cultural updates talking about the societies, cultures, and political systems of various nations, or updates focusing on certain media, like TV shows and video games including production notes and themes.
** Instead of just having the ancient humans' language be a "modern" language like Greek or Latin, with their belief systems and religious terminology being based on "modern" ones like Greco-Roman mythology, Zen used the Proto-Indo-European language and mythology to describe ancient human society as best as he could. While the name of the ancient human civilization could easily have been called Aesir, Zen instead used the Proto-Indo-European Hensus.
* ShroudedInMyth: Physical traces of ancient humanity's civilization no longer exist or are buried so deep they can't be easily found, so most of the knowledge on it comes from mythology. Ancient humanity's name, the Hensus, was passed down through the millennia until eventually becoming the word Aesir, while the Jotun aliens and their ancestors, who were known as the Vanir, lent their names to Norse mythology. The languages and traditions of ancient humanity evolved into those of the early Indo-European and Basque peoples. The Worm cult has worked the downfall of ancient humanity into its own mythology, believing civilization is a cycle of rise and fall and that they should hasten the fall so the rise can be engineered by the Worm.
* ShutUpHannibal:
** After being imprisoned by Anne Frank and Olga Kirova, Valentin attempted to mock and insult Kaiser Otto, only for Otto to stop him mid-monologue with a punch to the face.
** After getting his gay teacher Oskar arrested on false charges of pedophilia, the homophobic Josh brags the police were stupid enough to fall for the trick and calls Oskar a slur, only for Alex to shut him up by beating him up.
** In April 2039, as Thea Tesla and Magnus Kvensen face down Theodor Tesla, Magnus points a gun at Theodor in an attempt to show strength. Theodor sees through his bravado and calls him nervous and weak, unable to amount to anything, while he himself is an accomplished businessman who has shaped the world countless times for better or worse (but mostly for worse). He gloats that Magnus doesn't have it in him to pull the trigger. Magnus [[spoiler: immediately shoots him]].
* SiblingTeam:
** By 2015, Diana and Olga have reconciled close enough to remember their shared childhood together. And with Olga considering Diana's mom as her own adoptive mom, the two consider each other sisters. They will do anything to protect each other on the battlefield.
** To some extent, the cousins Anders and Angela form the core of the X-Division. Without their duo constantly working together and playing off each other, X-Division would not achieve the success it ultimately found.
** Although their bond isn't at the center of their group, the cousins Alex and Alexandra do form a team together with their significant others Thea and Magnus, directing their energies into finding new scientific breakthroughs.
* SignatureMove: Anne's signature technique was the blind fire tactic, allowing her to hit a target with perfect accuracy without taking the time to consciously aim first. Blind firing was later taught to her daughter Diana, adopted daughter Olga Kirova, and Diana's protege Angelica Haus.
* SinisterSurveillance:
** During the X-Division story arcs, the COS AI was initially created in the 90s as a smart surveillance system for the Eurisko tech company's headquarters, before it gained sentience, hacked into the building's security systems, and began killing any human it deemed a threat to its existence. After being shut down by X-Division, it later returned having hacked into SVI's orbital space laser network and constantly watched X-Division through computer webcams, Internet connections, phone GPS, and other electronic devices.
** In 2035, Theodor Tesla established a comprehensive nationwide mass surveillance network called Watchtower, using conventional security cameras, hidden cameras, autonomous drones, human secret police, and biometric scanners to monitor the entire nation for any hints of dissent.
** By 2039, the Panopticon network of brain implants for military personnel has not only been used as a surveillance network at times but also allows Theodor Tesla to [[spoiler: directly seize control of each user's body, recondition a user's mind at will, or even just kill them]]. However, this feature is also available to anybody with Theodor's admin privileges, allowing Thea and Alex to develop Argeiphontes, a counter-system which [[spoiler: can do the same thing but takes power away from Theodor]].
* SlidingScaleOfAlternateHistoryPlausibility: This is an alternate history scenario which branches off in the 11th century with the unification of both the (frequently at odds) Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire into a new proto-humanistic Reich which emphasizes tolerance and fairness centuries before such values would take off in OTL. This isn't even considering the fact that Chinese dynasties colonized Australia and North America and the Aztec empire became a global superpower capable of conquering much of the North American continent, raising a transatlantic fleet to invade Europe, and going toe-to-toe with said Reich. Or the fact that various pagan and non-Abrahamic faiths and Judaism suddenly and almost simultaneously experienced a revival (somewhat justified as angels did it). Or that there was an ancient advanced human precursor civilization 150,000 years ago, when much of the world was covered in ice and most humans were still in Africa. It would rank between implausible and alien space bats.
* SoldierVsWarrior: Professional Roman legionnaires regularly faced off against both Aztec jaguar warriors in the west and hordes of Mongol horse archers in the east.
* SoProudOfYou:
** As Kaiser Siegfried I dies in battle against the Mongols in 1261, he sees a vision of his father Wilhelm III, who says he is proud of his son for avenging him and driving back both the Aztecs and Mongols.
** Diana hopes her mother is proud of her [[spoiler: as she bleeds to death after failing to stop Elias Anhorn's coup]].
** Olga knows her friends and family are proud of her [[spoiler: as she is about to be executed by Elias Anhorn]].
** Wilhelmina gradually comes to terms with the fact that her late parents are proud of her and uses this self-acceptance to [[spoiler: regain her strength in the final battle against Elias Anhorn]].
* SoulsavingCrusader: The Inquisition in Part 2 fears that if the heresies succeeds, Rome will die and the Apocalypse begins. It's partially true as the Apocalypse is actually being masterminded by the angel Raphael and slated to begin soon. To a lesser extent the Inquisition retains this mentality into Parts 3-4, and it is carried on by Inquisitors Dieter and Munster of Part 5. In 2039 [[spoiler: under Elias Anhorn's regime, this is now the job of every Roman soldier, which are now known as Crusaders.]]
* SpaceRomans: Rome has a space program (RANA, the equivalent of NASA) and dominates space so far, having sent Romans to orbit and the moon. The Space Race in this timeline wasn't even close. Although the Soviets still launched the first human satellite, Sputnik, the Reich launched the first human into space, conducted the first spacewalk, and landed a man on the moon. In the 2030s, the Roman Frederica Eisenburg becomes the first woman to land on the moon and the first human since the 1970s to do so.
* SpiritAdvisor: The Hohenzollerns have the myseterious ability to commune with the spirits of their ancestors, though the exact nature of these "force ghosts" is left ambiguous.
* StatusQuoIsGod: The Reich's foreign policy revolves around upholding the status quo and maintaining the international balance of power. Throughout Part 2, as Lithuania and Scandinavia fought against Russia, the Reich would always intervene on Russia's side to "even the score" before ending the war with a status quo peace treaty in which neither side, not even the Reich, gains anything.
* SteelEardrums: Frequently played straight with every character who uses a gun, such as all of the X-Division agents. Despite frequently shooting guns as part of their jobs, not once does anybody suffer hearing loss. Subverted with the ex-Athanatoi agent [[spoiler: and anti-Elias Anhorn rebel]] Clara, who was diagnosed with hearing loss after fighting in the war-torn city of [[spoiler: Bremerhaven]] for three years and almost constantly hearing loud explosions and gunfire all that time.
* StopWorshippingMe:
** Throughout Part 4, Gabriel manipulates Wilhelm into becoming the savior of angelkind and the antagonist of the story he is writing for himself, and although Wilhelm does not want the job and hates the attention, he reluctantly takes it anyways as the alternative is letting Gabriel win.
** In Part 5, X-Division stumbles across a town where pagan gods retired from being worshipped. While trying to save one of the gods' sons from being captured by demons, the gods complain they are tired of being worshipped and want to be left alone, especially the Aztec gods who are themselves disgusted by human sacrifice.
* StoryArc: The AAR has many story arcs that focus on individual characters across the series.
** Part 1 - Saint Wilhelmina: The rise to power of an empress who caused miracles, who would later become one of the most revered people of the reborn Roman Empire, with her influence still remaining for the centuries to come. Perspectives on her life range from when she was crowned at 16 and quickly shattered the power of the Catholic Church, to when she is middle aged and stops a pirate from stealing the secret to Greek Fire, to the end of her life, when the emperors of every major empire in the known world, friend and foe alike, come to pay their respects to her.
** Part 1 - Saint Gunhilda: How a peasant girl from Poland became the Reich's greatest military leader and an empress, founding the powerful Schweinfurt family and being instrumental in Saint Wilhelmina's upbringing.
** Part 1 - The Thirteenth Century Crisis: This features a Wilhelm that people didn't like and supposedly cursed the empire, a Wilhelm that died before he could fight off cruel invaders, and a third one that died fighting those cruel invaders, and a Siegfried who ultimately saved his empire from defeat and implosion during the Sunset Invasion.
** Part 1 - Timur the Iron Khan: Timur rose to power on the steppes of Central Asia and quickly built up a giant horde which swept across the region, pushing the Ghaznavids into exile further east and shattering Persia. After a lengthy struggle, Kaiser Martin I, leading an unprecedented alliance of Romans, Persians, and Indians, decisively defeated Timur's son Shah Rukh at Persepolis, ending the last great horde empire.
** Part 1 - Friedrich Augustin III "the Lion," or "the Reformer" writes the first Augustinian Code after receiving inspiration from Wilhelm and the spirit of Friedrich the Great.
** Part 2 - Kaiser Wolfram and Sarah Milton: the Kaiser meets a woman who can hear angels. Together they uncover the angelic grace of Saint Gunhilda, a former angel, and stop a plot by both angels and demons.
** Part 2 - The Anarchy: Taking''heavy'' inspiration from [=Macbeth=] (and the angel Raphael), Malcolm Bethune usurps the throne from Kaiser Martin II and declares himself Kaiser, purging all those who resist. A massive rebellion soon follows. Everyone speaks like Shakespeare here, something Raphael actually complains is happening in universe.
** Part 2 - The Synod: This Synod reaffirms that Purism and Reformed Iconoclasm (Protestantism) are heresies almost as bad as Catholicism. Told from the perspective of a Japanese Christian representing the Christian Shiba Shogunate.
** Part 2 - The Gospel of the two Friedrichs: The story of Friedrich von Hohenzollern and his old rival Friedrich von Habsburg as they are sent on a quest to stop the Apocalypse and save humanity. Takes inspiration from Supernatural seasons 1-5.
** Part 2 - Sunrise Invasion: The Sunset Invasion of the Thirteenth Century Crisis is avenged. Kaiserin Victoria II "Nahua-Slayer" leads an invasion army from Neurhomania into the heart of the Mexica Empire, where they sack Tenochtitlan and recover Wilhelm III's body.
** Part 3 - The Maximist Wars: Details the Maximist revolutions and overthrow of the government, as well as the counterattack from forces loyal to Kaiser Sigismund II.
** Part 3 - The Miracle of the Cave: The arc introduces Bernadette Soubirrous and focuses on her witnessing of Saint Wilhelmina in Lourdes, with Inquisitor Owen Niederung as the central character investigating the incident.
** Part 3 - Bernadette's Trials: This story arc tells the story of the trials of Bernadette as an Inquisitor, trying to break out Inquisitor Mukhtar from Hell and seal off Hell so demons will no longer torment humans.
** Part 3 - The Great Eimerican War: Details the Roman involvement in the war against the Fox, who are aiming for the hegemony in North Eimerica. Owen Niederung, under the guise of his paleontology expeditions, tries to find the missing archangel Gabriel during the war.
** Part 3 - The World at War: The assassination of Prince Franz Ferdinand, the friend of soldier Gavrilo Princip, sparks a conflict that ultimately turns global, sending Gavrilo on campaigns around the world.
** Part 4 - Götterdämmerung: Rasa India declares war on Turkestan, which leads the Reich to declare war on India. The Angeloi then rebel against the Reich after Angelos stages a coup against Otto. Otto escapes to Constantinople and rallies loyalists to his banner. In the Angeloi-occupied territories, resistance cells led by loyal Roman citizens continue the fight even after loyalist military units surrendered or retreated.
** Part 4 - The Visitor: The Vienna resistance seeks to gain leverage against the Angeloi, seeking an unlikely ally in the Soviet Commune. Meanwhile, familiar, but at the same time different faces show up in the chaos caused by Gabriel's machinations, while a girl named Anne Frank loses her parents to the Angeloi and vows revenge.
** Part 4 - Uncertainty: World War II is now over, but the surviving angels still have to deal with Gabriel, who intends to become God.
** Part 5 - The Valkyrie: Anne Frank's Athanatoi missions around the world, building off her missions in Russia, Berlin, Siam, Malaya, Cuba, and Carpathia.
** Part 5 - Bohemian Rhapsody: Anne Frank vs. Valentin Varennikov during the 1969 Bohemian Revolution.
** Part 5 - The End of History: Varennikov's coup against Gorbachev, Anne's capture and torture, the introduction of Olga Kirova and Diana Frank, and the beginning of World War III.
** Part 5 - The World Set on Fire: The Cold War goes hot as World War III breaks out and the Soviets invade the Reich, while militarist China comes to the Reich's defense. Political intrigue leads to Vladimir Putin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Olga Kirova devising a plot to free Anne and topple Varennikov.
** Part 5 - X-Division (1992-2001): Athanatoi agent Angela Hansen is brought on by the mysterious Smoking Man to debunk and discredit her cousin, fellow agent and alien conspiracy theorist Anders Humboldt, but she joins his side, and together they investigate a conspiracy in which aliens plot to take over the planet with the help of the Syndicate. Based on X-Files seasons 1-9.
** Part 5 - X-Division (2008-2015): X-Division is reinstated to investigate a series of unexplained incidents, which leads them to interact with the parallel Annionaverse and uncovers a sinister conspiracy against reality within Tesla Dynamic. After this, X-Division turns its attention back to Sentinel to finish what they started. Based on Fringe seasons 1-4 and a few episodes of X-Files seasons 10-11.
** Part 5 - The Forum (2015-2030): The X-Division has exposed and defeated Sentinel, but things stay almost the same, just without Sentinel's influence. Kaiser Wilhelm IV "the Vulture" kills his father, Kaiser Otto the Great, and brother Prince Georg and is crowned Kaiser, taking the country in a new direction. Meanwhile, Thierry Baudet and Elias Anhorn form a new anti-establishment and environmentalist political party. Ends when [[spoiler: Baudet is murdered, the Imperial Diet is massacred in a false flag attack, and Elias Anhorn seizes power through a blackmailed Kaiser.]]
** Part 5 - The Committee (2030-): [[spoiler: After Elias seizes power, he begins remaking the Reich in his image, turning it into a dystopian totalitarian Christofascist hellhole in which minorities are slaughtered, dissidents are rounded up in camps, Roman cultural heritage is destroyed or perverted into Committee idols, and women have no rights. Around the world, the other traditional powers also descend into authoritarianism, with China under Han Xianyu drifting back towards Sinocentric militarism and India being forced under a Hindutva fundamentalist dictatorship by the Reich. But all is not lost, as the wayward princess Wilhelmina flees to Russia, where she slowly builds a resistance movement against Elias. Based on The Handmaid's Tale, both the book and the series. It all comes crashing down when Elias, in a moment of madness, detonates hundreds of nukes and wipes out almost every major city on Earth, starting World War IV with 800 million people dead and most nations devastated. Russia is conquered within a week, forcing Wilhelmina and her surviving family and supporters to flee to Yavdi, which is ''also'' conquered soon afterward, forcing her to flee to Persia, where she finally takes up arms and makes her last stand.]]
* StupidJetpackHitler: In Part 4, the Axis were the first faction to make nukes. The Rasas tested their bomb first but were defeated before they could use them. The Angeloi got their materials and made new bombs, but their bombs were stolen and used against them by the Soviets, leading to their final demise.
* StupidNeutral: LKR Guy rants about how "both sides are the same" and always tries to find a "compromise" between the two sides he sees, even if said sides don't even exist and the compromise makes no sense. He even sides with the "underdog" in CB against the established mainstream as a way to establish a "compromise" with "both sides," to disastrous results for the entire Reich.
* SuddenNameChange:
** Many native American and African polities and locations were renamed from their real life names if those were based on European translations. Most notably, the Fox Empire became the Meskwaki Empire, and the Cherokee Republic became Tsalagehi Ayeli.
** The First and Second Roman Civil Wars are no longer called as such, but rather as the Maximist Wars and World War II (folding the latter into the greater conflict).
** Neu Rhomania in Parts 2-3 became known as Neurhomania from Part 4 on due to grammatical reasons.
** While China was known as only the Chinese Empire and explicitly not Empire of China in Part 3, the name "Empire of China" and title "Emperor of China" became acceptable in Part 5 and retconned as being acceptable in the timeframes of Parts 3-4.
** The OTL Hohenzollern family (which now has an identical name to the Hohenzollern family Zen created with the ruler designer) became known first as the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringens from Parts 1-4 and now as simply Sigmaringen.
** While the First World War was originally called the Weltkrieg and the Second World War the Second Weltkrieg, they are now simply World Wars I and II. Presumably they are still called Weltkrieg in the original German, though, since that literally means "World War."
** Duke Karl Eugen, husband to Princess Elisabeth Alexandra and father to Princess Wilhelmina, went from being a von Schweinfurt to a von Habsburg because Zen remembered Elisabeth Alexandra's mother was also a Schweinfurt.
* StrawmanNewsMedia: Roman state media after 2030 no longer concerns itself with telling the truth, instead being heavily biased towards [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] and demonizing all others. It overwhelms viewers with a ridiculous amount of narratives, which frequently contradict each other and themselves, with the goal of confusing but entertaining the viewer and retaining a large audience. This serves to keep audiences in line with the state, angry against enemies of the state, and unable to believe any actually true narratives that come in from the outside.
* SuccessionCrisis: At the end of Part 2, the Reich finds itself in a succession crisis as the first male heir in 150 years, Prince Maximilian, is born after many female Kaisers, leading many nobles to instead pick Prince Siegfried, the (male) heir of a distant branch that had unbroken male descent from Friedrich the Great. Ultimately, Siegfried became Kaiser, and Maximilians descendants became the Maximists. At the beginning of Part 5, the succession dispute becomes meaningless as the two branches become merged in Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra.
* SummoningRitual:
** During the 50 Years War, demons do a summoning ritual to summon Death, where they sacrifice their souls to bring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into the mortal plane.
** In 2015, the Worm cult attempts to trick X-Division and the Inquisition into doing a ritual to summon the Worm into reality from outside time, but their plot is foiled.
* SuperSoldier: Sentinel tried making literal super soldiers augmented with alien technology. They are humans made to be almost indestructible and completely loyal to the aliens. However, they can be killed with decapitation, as Olga Kirova learned from an old KGB colleague turned rogue super soldier. Argus seeks to make its mercenaries into something close to super soldiers by implanting them with Panopticons, which effectively give their user a heads-up display in their heads with useful tactical information and on the fly battle analyses, as well as [[spoiler: adjust their personalities and feelings so that they lose emotions like empathy and become better at killing]].
* SurveillanceDrone: Theodor Tesla designed many AI drones specifically made for mass surveillance, and these now patrol neighborhoods watching for signs of dissent.
* SwordFight:
** Friedrich the Great, wielding the sword Enonon, dueled the cultist Hassan in a dramatic sword battle for the fate of the world in the Syrian desert during the First Crusade.
** Saint Wilhelmina was forced to duel her half-brother Prince Kirill of Russia to the death.
** In Isfahan in April 2039, [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina wielded Enonon in a duel against Elias Anhorn, who although not using a sword was still equipped with a powerful exo-suit with two bladed gauntlets.]]
* TheSyndicate: There is literally an organization known as the Syndicate. They are more of a government conspiracy than a criminal organization, they still maintain a significant presence in the black market and use many tactics characteristic of the mob. Sentinel also counts as it is a conspiracy within Syndicate and uses the same tactics.
* SyntheticPlague:
** XA-1005C was a synthetic virus that was highly contagious and deadly, and if it got out, it would quickly infect a majority of humanity. Valentin attempted to unleash it upon the world but failed.
** The Syndicate also engineered its own synthetic plague, the black oil, a bee-delivered nanobot swarm containing a virus that would turn infected humans into slaves and incubators for the aliens. The smoking man and his top lieutenants all sabotaged the development of the black oil to buy them more time to develop a cure and vaccine to it so humanity could stand a chance against the aliens when they arrived. Although they did develop the cure, they never needed to deploy the virus, as both the Syndicate was wiped out and the aliens left Earth shortly afterward.
** In 2038, it is revealed Theodor Tesla has engineered [[spoiler: a super version of smallpox]] based in part on data gathered from [[spoiler: the Annionaverse's version of smallpox]]. In 2039, [[spoiler: it is deployed against the Eimericans, resulting in massive casualty rates of at least 90% against native populations while leaving European populations largely unscathed]].
* TailorMadePrison: At the end of the Apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer are tossed into a cage in Hell specifically made to hold Lucifer.
* TeslaTechTimeline: In this timeline, Tesla was never discredited. He received a noble title and founded a megacorporation that has lasted to the present day. His inventions regarding electricity revolutionized the world. As of 2015, Tesla Dynamic has become the Reich's largest tech corporation, with its products and services dominating many different industries.
* TheTheocracy:
** After the collapse of the North Eimerican equalist regimes, the kingdoms of Hasiinay and Tsalagehi Ayeli adopted theocratic political systems adhering to strict religious norms.
** After 2035, [[spoiler: the Reich]] has effectively become a totalitarian theocracy, with Zen citing post-1979 Iran and The Handmaid's Tale as an inspiration.
* TemporalParadox: Zen describes the reality destroying machine's situation in the Fringe arc as being a causal loop. Ancient humanity only designed the machine to fit Anna Humboldt's biometrics because the future X-Division sent back instructions on how to build it like that. Discovering the machine in the present day leads to a conflict between the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse X-Divisions, which leads to the machine being used by the Hohenzollernverse to destroy the Annionaverse, which leads to a breakdown of reality in the Hohenzollernverse, which leads to the future X-Division realizing the paradox and sending the machine back to ancient humanity to start the loop all over again until Anna interrupts it by being shown a vision of the bad future and then deciding to not destroy the Annionaverse. This is explicitly described as a causal loop, not a grandfather paradox.
* TheBadGuyWins:
** At the end of Part 3, the archangel Gabriel puts in motion a plan he had been working on for decades. Despite Wilhelm and Raphael forming an unprecedented alliance together with the Inquisition to stop him, he succeeds in tearing out Wilhelm's grace (making him a mortal human) and expelling all angels from Heaven, setting in motion the events of Part 4.
** Part 4 initially seems to end with World War II being won by the Reich and the forces of Markos Angelos in full retreat...until the final chapters show the Soviets nuking several Roman cities and seizing half of the Roman heartland for their own purposes. Their victory even spills over into the supernatural realm as Soviet soldiers then ''manage to nuke Heaven itself'', destroying it and wiping out all but 12 angels just as they were about to celebrate defeating Gabriel.
** In Part 5, a story arc from 2016 to 2030 features Thierry Baudet forming a new political party, CB, to take on the political establishment, while Anders Humboldt and Diana Frank investigate a man named Elias Anhorn. However, this arc abruptly ends with [[spoiler: the almost complete massacre of the Roman government, Elias seizing political power, Thierry and Diana's deaths, and Anders' marginalization]]. Subsequent events lead to [[spoiler: Elias consolidating power, Roman meritocracy being torn apart, the Reich turning into a totalitarian dictatorship, and Anders and Angela Hansen being murdered]]. By 2035, [[spoiler: Elias]] has revealed his nature as the true villain of the story arc, and all of his opponents have been eliminated. Elsewhere in the world, India [[spoiler: is invaded by the Reich and forced to become a corrupt right-wing puppet regime occupied by Crusaders]], and China [[spoiler: also becomes a dictatorship under the charismatic nationalist Han Xianyu]]. The remaining democratic and meritocratic nations become isolated, constantly on the verge of economic collapse, and easy pickings for China and [[spoiler: Jerusalem]]. Just when things couldn't get worse...[[spoiler: Han goads Elias into nuking every major city on the planet, starting World War IV]]. But wait, there's still [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina in Russia]], right? Well, a week later, [[spoiler: Russia is conquered by the Jerusalemite army and Wilhelmina is forced to flee to a bunker in Yavdi]]. Still, things can get better after that, right? Of course, [[spoiler: the bunker is also conquered, Wilhelmina loses more of her family, and she is then forced to flee into the wilderness]]. Thankfully, [[spoiler: Wilhelmina makes it to Persia, where she rebuilds her movement and takes on Elias directly]]. But is that the end? [[spoiler: Well, the nationalist Persian government forcibly arrests her and dismantles her movement, exiling all of her remaining supporters to certain death]].
* {{Theotech}}: Abrahamic terminology and biblical lore are frequently used as part of the Inquisition storyline, where human inquisitors use magic and technology to fight off angels, demons, and other supernatural entities.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: Played straight and deconstructed at various times.
** The mass rebellions against the regime of Malcolm Bethune were portrayed as completely justified and noble as Bethune was very obviously a horribly tyrant who deserved to be overthrown, and once he was deposed the rightful heir returned to restore the Reich to how things should have been.
** The Fifty Years' War in the Reich in the 17th century featured multiple religious rebellions. Much is said about how these rebellions had genuine grievances against the mainstream Church and the imperial government, as well as how their new religious beliefs weren't inherently bad or wrong. On the other side, there was much said about the excesses of the government and the Church during their crackdowns on what they called heresy. It couldn't be said that the rebellions here were fully justified and noble in pursuit, or that the regime being rebelled against was completely terrible.
** The rebel Maximists also had legitimate grievances against the government, but they were portrayed as completely incompetent and malicious at times, making their own overthrow by the government-turned-rebel Siegfriedists, who by comparison were depicted in a completely positive light, all the more justified.
** The various resistance groups against the Angeloi were all shown as heroes and moral paragons in comparison to the evil Nazi-like Angeloi, aside from one incident in which the resistance groups masterminded an assassination of an innocent man in order to bring the Soviets into the war.
** Rebel groups fighting against [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime]] in the 2030s largely averted this trope, as many were described as being ideologically extreme, separatists, or otherwise resorting to aggressive tactics to fight their enemy. Many factions really only shared in common their enemy, and some didn't hesitate to fight other factions for ideological or territorial reasons.
* ThisIsReality: Said multiple times by multiple characters, sometimes verbatim. One time, Angela Hansen mentions how doctors don't typically remove bomb shrapnel and bullets during surgeries, "unlike in the movies."
* TimeTravel:
** Angels are inherently capable of time traveling with magic, but they and Heaven are temporally tied to the "present day," and going back further in time requires more energy. There is also a special powerful spell that can "reset" the timeline and the celestial realms to an earlier point in time, but this requires an angel to sacrifice their entire existence to power it, erasing them entirely from history. This spell was made use of by Wilhelm and his brother Constantine to avert the bad future they were currently experiencing.
** The Inquisition has limited time travel magic spells, which it only uses in extreme emergencies like when the fate of humanity is at stake. Some Inquisitors take classes in temporal mechanics, but few of them really understand how time travel works. Sometimes changing history branches out a new timeline, while other times it simply overwrites the main timeline.
** The Worm, due to its very nature, is capable of "time travel," and artifacts infused by Its power can also achieve the same effect. Sentinel attempted to weaponize one such artifact to kill historical figures before they could make history, but X-Division put a stop to it.
** A strange portal leading back in time to 150,000 years, the time of ancient humanity, appeared in an alternate future where the Hohenzollernverse's reality was collapsing. The future X-Division used the portal to send back information on how to build the reality destroying weapon which had set in motion the events of the Fringe arc of the present day. It is not known how this portal came to exist, only that it did in the alternate future. It does not exist in the main timeline.
* ToBeContinued: Parts 1-4 end with a "To be continued..." tag, usually followed a few days later with a link to the next part. Attempted to be subverted by Gabriel who tried writing a joke ending for Part 4. When the audience didn't fall for it, he posted a link to Part 5.
* ToHellAndBack:
** In Part 2, the Inquisition mounts a rescue operation into Hell to free Mansur Shah Mukhtar, who had been imprisoned there by demons.
** In Part 3, Inquisitor Bernadette Soubirrous launches her own invasion of Hell, where her squad of inquisitors armed with the latest 19th century weapons easily overwhelms the demons as they weren't expecting a fight. She then captures the demon king Fergus [=MacLeod=] as part of her plan to permanently seal off Hell from the mortal world. Some Inquisitors joked the operation was so easy that they could have turned Hell into a Roman province if they wanted to.
* TraumaCongaLine: In the span of 8 years, [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]] suffered trauma after trauma:
** In 2030, she narrowly escapes [[spoiler: an assassination attempt]] simultaneously with a bloody [[spoiler: coup that massacres the entire Roman government and brings Elias Anhorn to power]].
** From 2030 to 2034, she is forced to watch as [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] enacts his agenda by [[spoiler: stripping reforms from minorities, the working class, and women]], including herself. This culminates in her own uncle being forced to disown her and [[spoiler: revoke her imperial titles]].
** In December 2034, she narrowly escapes [[spoiler: another assassination attempt]] and is forced to flee into exile while any friends she leaves behind are tortured, killed, or forced into horrible occupations.
** In January 2035, her [[spoiler: daughter-in-law]] is killed trying to [[spoiler: smuggle the Hohenzollern family sword Enonon out to her in Russia]].
** In 2037, she is almost [[spoiler: deported from Russia back to Jerusalem]], where she will most likely be executed, after [[spoiler: the Russian government is pressured into signing a popular yet dangerous trade deal]]. Although she musters enough courage to ultimately [[spoiler: derail the negotiations and stop the deal from happening]], she is then [[spoiler: shot in ''another'' assassination attempt, although she survives]].
** In November 2038, the [[spoiler: outbreak of World War IV]] forces her to flee her refuge for a military bunker further east while her friend [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]] is killed in battle protecting her, something that weighs on her conscience.
** Scarcely a few weeks after that, the bunker is stormed by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] himself, who proceeds to [[spoiler: gun down her husband and son in quick succession]]. He then moves to [[spoiler: kill her grandson]] as well, but by then, she's had enough, [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening which leads to her realizing she has to stand and fight]].
** In April 2039, as Wilhelmina rebuilds her movement in Persia, [[spoiler: Jerusalem prepares to invade just as it did with Russia, again with Elias Anhorn personally leading the troops]]. In the ensuing battle, [[spoiler: Elias severely wounds her and apparently kills her friend Gunduz in front of her]]. Although she [[spoiler: ultimately wins the battle]], the aftermath sees [[spoiler: the Persian government arrest her, dismantle her movement, and strips all rights and protections from Roman refugees. She is forced to watch helplessly as all of her remaining supporters are exiled from Persia with nowhere to go but active front lines]].
* TownWithADarkSecret: The Mesopotamian town of al-Dud appears to be a normal small Roman town on the surface, but when X-Division investigates closely, they find [[spoiler: it is a center of eldritch happenings brought on by the Worm and Its cult]].
* TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening: In 2038, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] personally storms a bunker where [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina and her family]] are hiding, intending to kill them to avenge [[spoiler: his sister and fallen comrades]]. In the ensuing battle, [[spoiler: Wilhelmina loses her husband and son]] to [[spoiler: Elias]]' bullets. When [[spoiler: Elias]] goes to kill [[spoiler: her grandson Friedrich]], [[spoiler: Wilhelmina]] lashes out and [[spoiler: unlocks a mysterious power that saves Friedrich and makes her the true heir of the legendary sword Enonon]].
* TurnOfTheMillennium: Part 5 covers the beginning of the 21st century and the many social changes the Reich and the world go through in that decade, from terrorist attacks to a war in Mexico to economic crisis.
* {{Tykebomb}}: Olga Kirova in Part 5 was abducted by the Soviets and raised as a living weapon to carry out Valentin's revenge against Anne.
* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Wilhelm Karl initially appeared to be a tyrant in waiting who in 2018 had just gotten the power he had been waiting for his whole life...[[spoiler: but he is now only a puppet for the real tyrant, Elias Anhorn, who seized power for himself and turned the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship even Wilhelm Karl is disgusted by.]]
* {{Ultraterrestrials}}: Ancient humanity was a technologically advanced civilization existing roughly 150,000 years ago and seems to have spoken a language that is a mix of Basque and Proto-Indo-European.
* UnexpectedSuccessor: Kaiserin Sophia, the second daughter of Kaiser Martin II, was unexpectedly elevated to heir to the throne after her father, sister, and rest of her family were all slaughtered by Malcolm Bethune. Just a few years later, her own death before she could have a child made her cousin Friedrich her unexpected successor. In Parts 3-4, the massacre of the Paramara family by Bose's junta left Princess Sita, granddaughter of one of Purandaradasa's youngest sons, the sole heir to the throne. In Part 5, Sentinel's secret murder of Elisabeth Alexandra forced Otto to elevate his second child, Wilhelm Karl, to heir to the throne. [[spoiler: And after the fall of the Reich to totalitarianism, apparently on Wilhelm Karl's orders, the remaining sane nations of the world look to Elisabeth Alexandra's low-key daughter, Princess Wilhelmina, as the true heir to the throne.]]
* UnitedNationsIsASuperpower: The UN has more influence and legal authority than in real life, but not by much. It can now issue legally binding resolutions and form coalitions of peacekeeping troops from member states to keep the peace. Subverted when [[spoiler: the Reich]] descends into totalitarianism and uses its political clout to shoot down anything the UN tries to do. The UN then expels [[spoiler: the Reich]], but it still cannot do anything as [[spoiler: India has been crippled by the Reich and an increasingly nationalist China has withdrawn from the organization]], leaving the remains politically impotent and unable to do anything as [[spoiler: World War IV begins]].
* UnreliableCanon: The current story arc after 2030 has embraced unreliability as [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s propaganda focuses on churning out an overwhelming amount of false narratives that even contradict each other. The chapters and updates Zen posts are also "infected" with this unreliability, with some paragraphs reading like propaganda while others appear somewhat reliable, leaving readers just as confused and in the dark as people in-universe.
* UnreliableNarrator: The narrator of even the gameplay chapters has become unreliable ever since [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] seized power, with propaganda being inserted into certain paragraphs to confuse readers and bias the narrative.
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: When Wilhelm Karl reveals to Heinrich that he [[spoiler: has been blackmailed by Elias with the allegation that the entire Hohenzollern family is illegitimate]], Heinrich simply acknowledges the massive revelation as yet another crazy fact he was just told. He tells Wilhelm Karl that he has heard plenty of crazy stuff over the years and this is no different.
* UrbanFantasy: In the modern day, vampires, werewolves, and angels walk the streets of major cities alongside normal humans, mostly concealing themselves from the general public.
* UnspecifiedApocalypse: Ancient humanity's civilization came to an abrupt and violent end 150,000 years ago, but nobody knows who...or what...wiped them out so badly that the geological record was almost completely purged of them.
* {{Valkyries}}: Anne Frank's resistance and Athanatoi codename was "Valkyrie," a name that for sixty years struck fear into the hearts of the Angeloi, Soviets, and anyone foolish enough to fight her.
* VelvetRevolution:
** Subverted with the Soviets in that it initially seemed like it was going to happen just like in real life when Gorbachev began economic liberalization, but then he was assassinated and Party hardliners immediately started World War III.
** Played straight with China in 1989, when the military dictatorship peacefully fell apart after the emperor stood up to a line of tanks to protect democratic protesters.
* TheVerse: The Hohenzollernverse, zenphoenix's name for this continuity. Zen has also coined the term Annionaverse to describe an alternate timeline/megacampaign (made by [=Dragoon9105=]) the Hohenzollernverse occasionally crosses over with. Dragoon has since adopted that term to describe his own work.
* VictoryIsBoring: Zenphoenix describes 30 years of absolute peace and prosperity during Saint Wilhelmina's reign as 30 years with nothing to do in-game as there were no wars to fight and no politics or economy to manage.
* TheVietnamVet: Erich Hansen, Wilhelm Kurtz, and Anne Frank were veterans of the Siam Wars. As a young soldier, Erich was forced to kill a Siamese boy during one of his missions, something which has traumatized him for decades.
* VoiceOfTheResistance: While Otto remained the most visible symbol of the loyalist cause in World War II, Anne Frank and Osterhild Anniona were the voices of the resistance cells across Angeloi-occupied Europe. Anne's daring raids on concentration camps and assassinations of Angeloi leaders inspired many Romans to rise up against the fascists, while Osterhild's charisma and political connections made her a prime target for the Angeloi. In Part 5, [[spoiler: Wilhelmina has become the voice of resistance groups outside the Reich. Inside the Reich, Bremerhaven mayor Eva Anniona, the great-granddaughter of Osterhild, was a rare voice of her own resistance cell who built an audience and gained reputation among other cells.]] In May 2039, following [[spoiler: the Battle of Isfahan, the rise of a nationalist government in Persia, and growing xenophobia among the Persian public, Eva's brother Julian positions himself as the voice and leader of a new faction to protect the Roman refugees in Persia]].
* VoluntaryVassal: In Part 2, the native African kingdom of Loango voluntarily joined the Reich first as a protectorate and then as a full imperial province.
* WarHawk:
** Bismarck was a war hawk who constantly called for Iron and Blood.
** Gerhard Schröder was a weird left-wing war hawk who filled in George W Bush's role of invading a third world country on a contrived reason.
* WarRefugees:
** In Part 5, the rise of the so-called Mexicanist State (MSC) in the 2010s spurred millions of Mexicans to flee to neighboring countries and Roman Neurhomania, causing a spike in anti-immigrant populism and xenophobia in the Reich.
** From 2035-39, [[spoiler: thousands of Romans flee Elias Anhorn's dictatorship and take refuge in Russia and Persia, also being greeted with anti-immigrant populism and xenophobia]].
* WarriorPoet: Saint Wilhelmina became a poet after an accident with her falcon. She composed many poems of varying qualities over the next few decades, some of them becoming revered proverbs in the centuries to come.
* TheWarSequence:
** Anne's mission in Budapest during the Carpathian Revolution ended with her facing down Valentin and a platoon of his soldiers. Her later mission in Prague ended with her singlehandedly defending a church full of civilians from a line of tanks commanded by Valentin, without weapons. Anne's mission in Prague is later expanded on from Tatiana Kirova's point of view as she fights off the Soviets in Prague while trying to uncover a mole in her ranks.
** Nearly all of the story after November 2038 becomes a war sequence due to all of the protagonists getting caught up in [[spoiler: World War IV]].
* WeaponOfXSlaying: The Inquisition has special anti-angel and anti-demon weapons.
* WeirdHistoricalWar: On the mortal plane, the Commonwealth Wars were a series of frequent wars between the Reich and the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth dragging in first Russia and Scandinavia and later expanding to the New World and Asia, culminating in World War I. In the supernatural world, the fate of the universe was literally at stake during the first Commonwealth War (which overlapped with the Fifty Years' War) as the angels began the Apocalypse and the demons released Lucifer to fight Archangel Michael. Later Commonwealth Wars saw the angels themselves participating, as they chose promising military leaders on both sides to be their champions or even vessels.
* WhamEpisode:
** The final two chapters of part 3, "Paradise Lost" and "Gotterdammerung" has Gabriel obliterating Naomi, turning Wilhelm mortal and stuffing him into Gavrilo Princip's body, depowering all the angels and expelling them down to Earth, and revealing that he never intended to seal off Heaven to protect humanity from the angels, but bring the {{Gotterdammerung}} and declare himself a new God.
** The ending of Part 4: The Soviets unexpectedly ''nuked'' Heaven, leaving only twelve angels who remained on Earth alive.
** Part 5, 1984: [[spoiler: Mikhail Gorbachev, who genuinely wanted peace with the Romans and reforms for the Soviet Commune, is unexpectedly assassinated, and Valentin Varennikov launches his coup d'etat, installing himself as the new General Secretary. [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse.]] On Valentin's orders, Anne is captured by the KGB and infected with XA-1005C. Valentin then brutally pacifies the Occupied Territories and later orders an invasion of the Reich and the Central Powers, starting World War III.]]
** Part 5, 2030: [[spoiler: On January 1, Wilhelm Karl goes to the Diet to give a national address to the nation. During his speech, assassins sneak into the chamber and after shouting something in Nahuatl open fire, murdering Thierry Baudet and everyone inside except Wilhelm Karl. Simultaneously with the massacre, other assassins murder other targets across the Reich, while Diana Frank and her protege Angelica Haus attempt to expose the plot. Failing that, Diana attempts to broadcast her findings to the public, that the attack was masterminded by Elias Anhorn and not Mexicanist terrorists, but she fails and is killed. [[FromBadToWorse It gets even worse.]]. When the dust settles, Elias blackmails Wilhelm Karl by revealing his entire family is illegitimate, forcing him to do his bidding. By January 2, the entire nation is under Elias' control.]]
** Part 5, 2038: A series of chapters spanning the week of November 2-9. On November 2, [[spoiler: Han Xianyu insults Elias Anhorn's masculinity to goad him into starting a nuclear war]], and over the next few paragraphs, [[spoiler: over a hundred cities are nuked and at least 800 million people killed]], among them [[spoiler: many major characters like Tsai Ing-wen]]. On November 3, [[spoiler: World War IV begins and Elias mobilizes his forces to invade Russia under his personal command]]. By November 7, [[spoiler: Elias has reached the Russian capital of Tsarberg]], and on November 8, [[spoiler: Olga Kirova engages the enemy army in a brutal battle in which she personally participates, with the sole purpose of buying time for Princess Wilhelmina to escape the country]]. On November 9, [[spoiler: a defeated Olga is executed on live television, and Russia is forced to surrender to Jerusalem]].
** Several weeks after the above, [[spoiler: the bunker Wilhelmina escaped to comes under attack from Elias Anhorn's forces. Her supporters and the Yavdian military fiercely fight back with everything they have, but it changes little, as Elias's army easily crushes them, destroying the Yavdian government and plunging the country into anarchy. Elias personally hunts down Wilhelmina, and as she is paralyzed by fear, she watches as he executes her husband and son. Elias next prepares to execute her grandson, Friedrich, but then Wilhelmina musters her strength in one last effort to save Friedrich, accepting her duties and responsibilities as the true heir to the throne. She unlocks a hidden power from within her, picks up Enonon, and drives back Elias with her mysterious new abilities, declaring she can finally change things for the better.]]
** On April 2, 2039, the Counterattack arc begins. [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina has left the bunker and arrived in Persia, where she trains herself in swordfighting and rallies both surviving Romans and the Persian people into a new movement opposing totalitarianism in Jerusalem and China. When she learns that Jerusalem is planning an invasion of Persia, she resolves instead to goad Elias' ego into attacking before he is ready. In the ensuing Battle of Isfahan, she and her friends, among them Alex Humboldt and Thea Tesla, face off against Elias and his most elite forces, while around the world other likeminded allies, like Clara in Scandinavia and the Ryukyuan admiral Higa Ryunosuke in the Pacific, also make their stand against the totalitarian menace. Just when it seems all is lost in Isfahan and Wilhelmina is about to die, she sees a vision of her parents and everyone she has met on her journey, who all encourage her to stand up again and keep fighting. Now truly earning her birthright as the Kaiserin of the Romans, Wilhelmina sees a burst of strength and finally defeats Elias, declaring that she and others like her will always triumph over the pessimism and cynicism Elias thinks is natural. Jerusalem's army is defeated, Persia is saved, and the war seems to turn against the totalitarian powers nearly immediately]].
* WhamLine: The Neta Gandhi, the fascist dictator of India, was supposedly a fanatically religious Hindu and sold himself to the people as such during his rise to power, but he reveals to his Annionaverse counterpart this was all just a front.
-> "Oh come on," said Neta Gandhi, "You're me. I'm you. You think like me, therefore I can predict how you think. I assume there was an equivalent of the Great Depression in your world, one which also devastated your India. You lost most of your fortune and your job. Your status as a 'war hero' became a liability. People turned you away at the door, seeing a killer instead of a hero. You lost your house, your family, and then your wife. You started drinking. And here you are."\\
"The gods have given me a second chance," said Gandhi, "A chance to redeem myself."\\
"Redeem yourself for what?" said Neta Gandhi. "You did nothing wrong. That was the fault of the degenerate Muslims and Bolsheviks that run your India. There are no gods, Chandra. None at all. We decide our own fate. The future belongs to those who shape it."
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Plenty of it when the Annionaverse is introduced.
** Angela is immediately taken in by the happier life of her counterpart. While Hohenzollernverse Angela lost her fiancé Demetrios during an X-Division mission and was forced to give up her daughter for adoption later on, in the Annionaverse Demetrios survived and married Angela, and they lived happily with Alexandra. [[spoiler: Subverted when it is revealed both Demetrios's cheated on their Angelas, Hohenzollernverse Angela didn't know because her Demetrios died, and Annionaverse Angela's marriage breaks down when Hohenzollernverse Angela finds out.]]
** Anders sees his sister Annie was never abducted in the Annionaverse...but instead, he himself was.
** In the Annionaverse, the alternate Anne Frank, Diana's mother, is still alive, as the November 9 attacks had taken a different path and her plane landed safely. However, the alternate Diana was critically injured in a previous X-Division case and now lives with a mental handicap.
** Tatiana Kirova, Olga's mother, is still alive on the other side, and she succeeded in giving Olga the normal childhood she wanted. Hohenzollernverse Olga is jealous of Annionaverse Olga's normal life, while Annionaverse Olga has trouble comprehending how her counterpart became an assassin.
** Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra is still alive in the Annionaverse, but as the Hohenzollerns are not Kaisers there, she is merely a senator, while her father was a long-serving chancellor.
** Angela's father Erich died in the Annionaverse's version of Siam, a war in Africa, while Erich's friend Martin survived the war. The opposite happened in the Hohenzollernverse.
** Adalbert Karl Schulz, an Athanatoi deputy director in the Hohenzollernverse who was killed by the Syndicate, is a simple taxi driver in the Annionaverse, working to support his ill brother (who is implied to have died in the Hohenzollernverse).
* WhoShotJFK: The Smoking Man shot Ragnar Beck, the equivalent of JFK.
* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Due to losing her parents at a young age, Ilyana was forced to grow up much earlier, and at age 6 she is already talking to adults about things like vengeance in the name of the dead.
* TheWisePrince:
** Elisabeth Alexandra was a wise princess who like her father cared much for the Roman people, wanting to understand their concerns and address them as best as she could. Unfortunately, she was tragically killed by Sentinel before she could take the throne, making her brother Wilhelm Karl, who isn't as understanding, the new heir.
** After Elisabeth Alexandra's death, Prince Georg took it upon himself to honor his sister's legacy by continuing his charity work. He was known as a wise and just man who didn't care about the throne or any noble titles, only the betterment of the peoples he wanted to help. All he wanted was to help the Eimericas leave behind a cycle of violence and hatred stretching back centuries...[[spoiler: but he was tragically killed.]]
** Princess Wilhelmina is shaping up to be a wise princess, as she hopes to be a better ruler than her predecessors and fix the flaws in Roman government by making the monarchy, which she sees as the root of the government's problems, severed from the political process entirely.
* WithUsOrAgainstUs:
** After the World Trade Center attacks, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared the Reich was at war with barbarians and called on the world to join the fight. Taking a page out of the real life George W Bush's playbook, he warned that "if you're not with us, you are with the barbarians."
** Elias Anhorn reuses this mentality by declaring that anybody who does not support him [[spoiler: is a traitor and heretic and must die]].
* WorkingWithTheEx: Anders Humboldt worked with his ex Diana Frank on X-Division, although they remained friends and didn't clash with each other. [[spoiler: Within a few years of reuniting, though, they had gotten back together.]]
* {{Worldbuilding}}: Zen has said he intends to create a world which feels lived in. In Part 5, he introduced multiple POV characters showing the world from a grounded perspective instead of the top-down perspectives of political and military leaders present in Parts 1-4. Occasionally, he posts cultural updates detailing the culture, politics, society, and even economy of each nation, as well as biographies of important historical characters and pop culture updates talking about TV shows and video games.
* TheWorldIsNotReady: The Syndicate and Sentinel believed humanity as a whole was not ready to know about aliens when first contact was made in 1947. They used this as a justification to perpetuate a decades-long conspiracy where all knowledge of the aliens was suppressed and anyone catching on to the truth or getting in the way of the Syndicate's plans was silenced. Anders Humboldt rejected this idea at first, but as he grew older and suffered through setback after setback in the early 2000s, he came to admit they did have a point. So when he finally exposed Sentinel in 2015, he left out anything related to the aliens, but he recorded several messages about the aliens to be released when humanity was finally ready.
* WorldOfWeirdness: Throughout Parts 1-2, angels repeatedly try to cause the Apocalypse and end the world. In the regular world, the political scene is pretty weird, with the Industrial Revolution beginning in Vietnam, the Aztecs becoming and remaining a superpower from medieval times up to the early modern period, a Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth taking on empires far larger than it, and an alien conspiracy plotting to take over the world in Part 5. There are those trying to maintain order amidst the weirdness. There is the Inquisition, which keeps the regular world and the supernatural separate, and there is X-Division, which fights against the Syndicate/Sentinel conspiracy to protect humanity against the aliens and their human allies.
* WorldWarThree: Valentin Varennikov makes the Cold War go hot in 1984 following a coup d'etat in Soviet Commune, where he assassinates Gorbachev, pins the blame on the Romans, reverses all of the reforms of perestroika, and brutally suppresses all dissent in the Occupied Territories and his own country. He then launches an invasion of the Reich, intending to follow through on Trotsky's vision of a world revolution. The rest of the Warsaw Pact joins in and attacks the Reich and its allies, [[EnemyMine leading China and the Tianxia Alliance to intervene on behalf of the Reich.]].
* WorthyOpponent: In Part 1, Temur Khan invaded Roman Taurica in 1261. Kaiser Siegfried I led an army to stop his horde, but he fell in battle against the khan. As Siegfried died, though, Temur admitted he was a worthy opponent.
* WrenchWench:
** As a teenager, Diana Frank liked to tinker with cars and motorcycles. She fixed her friends' cars after school and won every motorcycle race the kids held even with an outdated 1940s-era bike.
** Thea Tesla won't hesitate to get her hands duty working with scientific equipment, despite her wealthy background.
* WrittenByTheWinners:
** Josh proudly believes this is the case, but his teacher Oskar does not. He believes history is written by survivors of all kinds, both winners and losers. Zen states they intentionally try to avoid this adage and show history is written by people of all kinds.
** Unfortunately, Elias Anhorn firmly believes this, [[spoiler: and he has the power to make it a reality]].
* TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone:
** Kaiser Reinhard I was an incompetent ruler who did little but drink and party all the time. However, his reign did have two achievements, namely the founding of the Bottomless Tankard tavern in Lubeck and the passing of a law banning violence which although repealed almost immediately led to the Reich phasing out the death penalty and adopting a rehabilitation-focused justice system.
** Wilhelm Karl ascended to the throne as Kaiser Wilhelm IV following the death of his father, Otto the Great, and his older sister, Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra. He immediately showed he was like neither of them, showing little sympathy over his sister's death and pursuing a populist policy that ran opposite to the tolerance and pluralism of his father. Many thought he was a tyrant in the making who wanted nothing more than to rule as an absolute monarch...[[spoiler: but this is subverted when it is revealed he merely only wanted control and respect, not dictatorship, and the real tyrant, Elias Anhorn, blackmails him into actually following through on dictatorial rule]].
* XMustNotWin: Multiple examples in the 2030s alone.
** On the international level, the rump Schengen alliance does not want either China or Jerusalem to win World War IV, as that would mean the death of democracy and meritocracy everywhere and plunge the entire world into totalitarianism.
** On the national level, Heinrich and Gertrude don't want [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] to win his war, fearing the madman has too much power already and cannot be allowed to take over the world.
** On the personal level, Thea Tesla is firmly opposed to letting her mad brother win anything and plans to develop technologies that will counter any weapons he builds.
** On the supernatural level, the Worm cannot be allowed to win at any costs, because letting it win would cause all of reality to destabilize and the entire history of human civilization to warp and revise itself around It.
* YeGoodeOldeDays: Many different revanchist, nationalist, and populist groups have their own idea of their nation's glory days. Angelos in Part 4 wanted to take the Reich back to a golden age of traditional Christian values and strict cultural and social norms. The Chinese unification movement of Part 3 wanted to restore China to the state it was before the Mongols invaded, as a unified and global empire. Molotov had a twisted vision of this as part of Deromanization in Part 5, where he wanted to restore the peoples of the Occupied Territories to their identities and cultures before the "capitalist" Roman identity was imposed on them. Elias Anhorn sees the good old days as [[spoiler: a pure Christian state populated only by Christians following his narrow fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.]]
* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: The true forms of angels are incorporeal and made up of divine energy so blinding and overwhelming that it burns out humans' eyes if they see them.
* YouCantFightFate: The Worm specializes in showing visions of future events that come true exactly as shown.
** During World War II, the adventurer Heinrich "Arabia" Gruber came into physical contact with a Worm artifact. For the rest of his life, he was plagued with visions showing every future moment in his life, causing him to gradually lose his sanity as he learned he had no free will. The visions also extended past his death, showing him events happening in the present day. When Diana Frank and Olga Kirova arrived in his town to investigate a case in the present day, those events happened exactly as he had written in his diary. Even the very event of Diana and Olga reading his diary happened exactly as he wrote it, which unnerved the two of them.
** Wilhelm came into contact with a Worm artifact in about 2011, and he and his human host, Gavrilo, were overwhelmed with the sheer confusion and terror of the visions they saw. They witnessed a future Reich being crushed by the Annionaverse's Holy Terran Empire. Not only that, but they saw the Worm and the Terrans even permanently killing angels, a feat that should by all means be impossible. Later that year, Annionaverse Walter is surprised when a future Wilhelm teleports into his office, wearing tattered future clothes and badly injured, warning of a bad future they must prepare for. This implies the visions he saw came to pass in the end.
** Diana Frank came into contact with Gruber's Worm artifact in the present day. For the rest of her life, she gained the ability to "look ahead" into the future, allowing her to see how cases end, where she and her friends go next, and, most importantly, when she and X-Division die. Taken advantage of when during many life threatening cases she is aware she will not die during these cases and thus does things as recklessly as she can.
** In the 11th century, the cultist Hassan warned Friedrich the Great that his victory in the First Crusade is only temporary, as the Worm knows any Reich he builds is fated to be destroyed in the end.
* YoureNotMyFather: Wilhelm Karl rejects his father Otto as weak and cowardly, claiming he will do better as Kaiser...[[spoiler: and then murdered him]].
* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: Like in the Fringe series it is based on, the Fringe arc heavily features zeppelins as a major method of transportation in the Annionaverse. However, Zen did not do a full carbon copy of Fringe's alternate universe, at least in terms of transportation methods, as the Annionaverse also uses other vehicles like planes (including one pilotless supersonic VTOL private jet) and even space rockets.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:A-F]]
* ZeroPercentApprovalRating:
** During the Anarchy, Malcolm Bethune usurped the throne after killing Kaiser Martin II and then ordered a purge of the Hohenzollern family. This caused the entire population of the Reich to rebel and ultimately overthrow him.
** Subverted with [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s regime, which knows the dangers of having a 0% approval rating but also does not try to get 100% approval either. Instead, it just focuses on entertaining and placating the masses, keeping them docile and apathetic so they have no reason to rebel. For more restless groups, it plays them off against each other, dividing them in pointless competitions and conflicts with each other so they don't unite against a common enemy.
* AbusiveParents: The character Josh grew up with an abusive father who beat him and his mother, forced him to adopt extremely hypermasculine and chauvinistic values, and even [[spoiler: killed his dog]] when he learned Josh had feelings for a Muslim girl.
* AChildShallLeadThem:
** When he was little more than a baby, the Song emperor escaped China with a massive fleet, which elected a leader from among its admirals. The fleet sailed south, eventually discovering the continent of Penglai, where the emperor grew up and led his people through the settling of the continent.
** Following the death of her father Friedrich the Glorious in 1126, a sixteen-year-old Princess Wilhelmina is crowned Kaiserin of the Romans. Her first order of business is to mend the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, reuniting Christianity under a single church. Saint Wilhelmina would reign for the next seventy years, presiding over a cultural golden age in which the Reich truly became united.
** After his father was murdered by Persian assassins in 1917, just a year into his reign, the five-year-old Prince Otto became the new Kaiser as a global war raged, millions of Romans died in the trenches, and ambitious generals and nobles plotted to seize power in Berlin. A regency was formed for Otto until he came of age, and he was powerless to watch as his regent, Markos Angelos, pursued a brutal foreign policy that left the Reich's enemies humiliated and eager for vengeance. Once he turned 18, he officially took the throne and began trying to heal the social divisions within the Reich, realizing there were flaws in the system which led to many people being treated unfairly. However, the young Kaiser was soon threatened by Angelos' return to politics. By 1939, Angelos had consolidated enough power to attempt a coup against Otto, which failed and instead set off a massive civil war. Otto led the loyalist forces through four years of chaos and darkness before he finally triumphed over Angelos, but no sooner did he do so did the Soviets seize large parts of the Roman east, beginning a Cold War which saw the Reich divided. Otto spent the next forty years defending against the Soviet threat before he again prevailed, leading a reunited Reich into a new golden age of meritocracy.
* AchillesHeel:
** The Metternich and Ottonian systems, on which Roman governments from Part 3 on are based, are way too centralized on the Kaisers and assuming they will always be the same. The latter system, despite giving far more power to civilian governments and thriving under Otto the Great, still has failsafes and loopholes through which the Kaiser can legally rule with absolute power. These loopholes were later exploited by Otto's successor, Wilhelm Karl, and then by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn, who blackmailed Wilhelm Karl and seized power through him using those loopholes]].
** The aliens seeking to invade Earth are said to dislike cold climates, which the Syndicate exploited by threatening to plunge humanity into nuclear winter if they did not come to the bargaining table.
* AdvancedAncientHumans: An ancient human civilization of 150,000 years ago had technology far exceeding that of the modern day. They had space travel, advanced energy weapons, medical devices that could heal very serious injuries in minutes, an extensive communications network implied to span the solar system, and even a device that could manipulate the fabric of reality itself. Occasionally, their artifacts are dug up in the modern day.
* AgentMulder: Anders Humbodt is directly based on Fox Mulder from The X-Files, inheriting his belief in the paranormal.
* AgentScully: Angela Hansen is explicitly based on Dana Scully from The X-Files, inheriting her skepticism and faith.
* AIIsACrapshoot: The COS AI created by a Roman programmer in the 1990s. Originally designed as a smart hub for a tech company's headquarters, it gained sentience and murdered several people to protect itself. After recovering from X-Division's attempt to shut it down, it hacked into Roman military servers and attempted to use the Strategic Defense Initiative satellites to destroy all those opposed to it. After recovering from a second attempt to shut it down, the COS returned twenty years later to try the same thing again, only to be defeated again by X-Division.
* AlienAbduction: In Part 5, the Jotun aliens frequently abduct humans to experiment on, usually aided by their human collaborators in the Syndicate. The Jotun even abduct family members of Syndicate leaders to ensure their compliance, with the smoking man giving up his daughter and Conrad Humboldt losing his granddaughter Annie. At various points in the story, both Angela Hansen and Anders Humboldt are briefly abducted.
* AlienInvasion: In Part 5, the Jotun aliens are encountered at Agadir in 1947 (Roswell), and human collaborators establish the Syndicate to negotiate with them and prepare Earth and humanity for an impending invasion and subjugation. The Syndicate secretly stalled their plans to buy time for humanity to develop countermeasures to the invasion, but the aliens had predicted this and created a second conspiracy, Sentinel, to complete the mission. Both were ultimately defeated by the X-Division, Athanatoi agents investigating unexplained occurrences.
* AlienSpaceBats:
** In the 13th century, the Aztecs, called the Mexica Empire (and in the game as the Triple Alliance), came to Europe with advanced technology on par with Europeans of the time, despite the Aztec Empire having not even existed in real life at that point. Not only did they come to Europe, but they had the military strength to invade with an army of hundreds of thousands of jaguar warriors. Zen has repeatedly attempted to make this somewhat {{justified|Trope}}, as the Mexica Empire apparently learned Norse technology from captured Norse settlers in Vinland who made their way down to Mexico, and the ruling Acatl dynasty seems to have some Norse ancestry. The Mexica remained a major power throughout this timeline before they were thoroughly defeated by the Reich in the late 18th century, after which they [[VestigialEmpire began a period of steady decline]]. In the 20th century, the monarchy was overthrown and the country suffered through multiple dictatorial regimes, the last of which was violently deposed and replaced with the Acatls by a Roman invasion in 2003. Modern Mexico, as it is now known as, is a minor nation with a poor economy propped up by the Eimerican Federation, although since joining the EF it has stabilized and began reviving its economy.
** Zen also admits the whole idea of the Pagan Resurgence makes little sense, since by the 11th century many formerly pagan regions in Europe, Central Asia, and Africa had already been Christianized or Islamized. Ethiopia even converted from Christianity to Judaism, while Central Asians revived the long dead Zunist religion. Again, this was somewhat justified in that the Pagan Resurgence was masterminded by the angel Wilhelm as a way for the people of the world to stand up to the Worm cult, which had infiltrated the Abbasid Caliphate and Catholic Church, among other powerful institutions of the 11th century.
* TheAlliance:
** In the leadup to World War I, the Reich formed what it called the Central Powers, a military alliance of it and its likeminded allies to counter China and its own imperialist ambitions. It is nowadays referred to as the Schengen Pact, which has a focus on free trade. Schengen still exists as of 2038, even after [[spoiler: the Reich itself, as the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, withdrew from the bloc and then attacked its remaining members in World War IV. Russia originally took up the mantle of leadership of the rump alliance, but after its fall to Jerusalem, leadership passed to Persia. However, by 2039, there are effectively only three members of Schengen left (Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan), as the other members have all been conquered or otherwise destroyed by Jerusalem]].
** China's Tianxia Alliance was formed to counter the Reich's bloc in World War I. Despite losing many members as the century went on, the alliance still exists as of 2038. For most of its existence, its primary goal has been to establish and maintain Chinese economic, military, and cultural hegemony under the doctrine of Sinocentrism.
** The Soviets established their own Warsaw Pact, just as in real life.
** The Meskwaki Empire established its own alliance of Eimerican nations to counter the Roman and Chinese blocs. It has variously been called the Eimerican Federation/Confederation and shouldn't be confused with the Eimerican Federation supranational entity of the 21st century.
* AlliterativeName:
** Theodor and Thea Tesla.
** Lothar Lorenz, Roman senator.
** Murad Mozaffar, Minister of Defense of Persia.
** Valentin Varennikov, Soviet general and Party chairman.
* AllohistoricalAllusion: In Part 3, Gavrilo Princip kills a random Chinese soldier during a battle in Siberia. This wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary if Gavrilo didn't look at the soldier's nametag, revealing he is [[spoiler: Mao Zedong]].
* AltarDiplomacy:
** Friedrich the Great engineered a political marriage between his son and heir, Prince Wilhelm, and Crown Princess Anna Doukas of the Byzantine Empire. After Anna became the Byzantine empress, Byzantium and Friedrich the Great's Holy Roman Empire entered into an alliance, and Wilhelm and Anna's son Friedrich inherited both empires, uniting them into a single realm which came to be known as the Reich.
** Throughout Part 2, the ruling Opeatako family of the Meskwaki Empire weaponized altar diplomacy to put Opeatakos on the thrones of neighboring native Eimerican kingdoms and then have them be inherited into the main line, expanding the empire more through diplomacy and marriage than outright conquest.
* AlternateHistory: This is stated to be a work of alternate history, with multiple points of divergence.
** The most important one is in September 1066, when the Pagan Resurgence began and Friedrich the Great first appeared.
** Several decades before the Pagan Resurgence was another point of divergene, when a crew of Vikings settling Vinland were captured by natives and ultimately made their way to Mexico, where they integrated into the local society and taught them their technology, giving rise to the Mexica Empire.
** Finally, in the distant past of 150,000 years ago, there was an ancient technologically advanced human precursor civilization.
* AlternateTimeline: This whole story is an alternate timeline from real life, but there are also alternate timelines within the Hohenzollernverse.
** The Hohenzollernverse itself is an alternate timeline based on an original one where the Worm and Its cult took over the world and wiped out the Reich, with Wilhelm going back in time to avert this outcome.
** The Annionaverse is an alternate timeline running concurrently with the Hohenzollernverse.
** In Part 5, the Inquisitor Munster reveals that the "previous" Hohenzollernverse timeline saw nuclear war break out in 1962, wiping out humanity, before the Inquisition [[ResetButton reset time]].
* AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome: Plenty.
** Gavrilo Princip of this universe was a friend of Franz Ferdinand, unlike his real life counterpart. He was a Great War veteran who had a big share of fighting against the Chinese. After the war, [[spoiler: he serves as the vessel for angel Wilhelm, but at the end of Part 3, the Archangel Gabriel removes Wilhelm's angelic essence and makes him human. This causes a danger to both of their consciousnesses, but Wilhelm resolves this by gaining his angelic essence back in Part 4. In Part 5, Gavrilo remains Wilhelm's vessel until he decides he wants to live his life normally again, and Wilhelm later says they parted ways. Gavrilo is last mentioned as having died during World War III.]] His Lithuanian cousin, Gediminas Principas, replaces Gavrilo's OTL counterpart in this timeline. His son, Mihailo, becomes a resistance fighter, war hero, and later general and politician who seems to resemble John [=McCain=]. His grandson, Slobodan Princip (Slobodan Milosevic), is not a Balkan war criminal but, ironically, mediated an end to the equivalent of the Balkan Wars (the Eimerican Wars).
** Adolf Hitler becomes this universe's Walt Disney, leading to such memes like "Adolf Hitler Pictures," "the Hitler Renaissance," "the Hitler Channel," and "Hitlerwood".
** Joseph Stalin of this universe is Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I, who finished his studies in the seminarium and became a staunch anti-equalist who fully supported the ruling Hohenzollern dynasty.
** Mohandas Gandhi went by the pen name of Chandra Gupta and is this world's counterpart of Adolf Hitler, appropriately being named Neta of the Indian Raj, leading the Rasa party (counterpart of OTL's NSDAP and based on OTL's Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Wilhelm notes it's the most bloodthirsty version of Gandhi he ever encountered in all parallel timelines, and is quite amused while listening to his shenanigans. There's also another Gandhi who was transported into the story's timeline through Gabriel's meddling, who was an Imperial royalist war veteran in his own world (the world of [=Dragoon9105=]'s Annionas), but his life wasn't so colorful by the '30s.
** Vyacheslav Molotov plays a much bigger role than in OTL, taking over CSSR after Trotsky after he's assassinated in Mayapan. Apparently even without ever being Stalin's protege (as said above, his Hohenzollernverse counterpart is a pro-Roman Ecumenical Patriarch, mind you) he's still capable of carrying out what our Stalin did without hitch, and what's more, outplaying the Reich by having the Soviets steal the Angeloi nukes, making them the first one to use them, unfortunately on Roman cities, and then even fucking Heaven of all places.
** Hirohito is now the equivalent of Gandhi, while the Shiba Shogun (original character) seems to have filled in the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
** In this timeline, Anne Frank lived through World War II and became a famed Athanatos (the equivalent of the FBI, CIA, and [=MI5=]/6 combined into one super intelligence agency) codenamed 'Valkyrie'. She served during the Siam Wars, the Carpathian and Bohemian Revolutions, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which she became the arch-nemesis of the Soviet war hero and later General Secretary Valentin Varennikov, culminating in their showdown during World War III. She also lived long enough to have a family, with her daughter Diana becoming one of the founders of X-Division.
** Ousabe Wyota Witko of the Commune of the Southern Socialist Altepetls is an original character native to the Hohenzollernverse who is most likely, as some Paradox Forum posters believe, [[spoiler: Josep Broz Tito. "Witko is Tito" has since become a meme. ]]
** Jared Karasi, a history professor turned popular musician, is later revealed to be based on [[spoiler: Chilean singer and activist Victor Jara]].
** Most of the chancellors of the Reich as of 2021 are based on real German leaders, with the exception of Roland Wilson, who is literally Irish Ronald Reagan (and related to Woodrow Wilson, what?), and Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who is based on an Austrian chancellor (and possibly Harry Kissinger). These chancellors also seem to share personality traits and policies with postwar American presidents.
*** Adenauer implemented an "Autobahn" (interstate) program, set up the Roman space program RANA (NASA), and pursued an "Adenauer Doctrine" (Truman Doctrine), mirroring the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
*** Ludwig Erhard presided over the escalating war in Siam, passed civil rights reforms, passed legislation as part of a "Great Society" program, and oversaw the expansion of RANA to keep up (and then some) in the Space Race, like Lyndon B Johnson did.
*** Walter Scheel was literally Watergate'd. Ironically, Richard Nixon's direct counterpart here, Senator Richard Mason, was responsible for leading the Wassertor (Watergate) investigation and prosecuting Scheel.
*** Willy Brandt seems to have some similarities with Jimmy Carter.
*** As said above, Roland Wilson is Irish Ronald Reagan. He and his cabinet form an "unholy" trinity made up of notorious right-wing leaders such as Margaret Thatcher (who gets involved in yet another Falklands War) and Golda Meir.
*** Helmut Kohl is a combination of George HW Bush (Gulf War) and Bill Clinton (1990s political donations scandal=Monica Lewinsky scandal).
*** Schröder is obviously George W. Bush. The war in Mexico is almost shot for shot the war in Iraq, although Schröder justified it from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
*** Zen has said Merkel incorporates elements of the later Bush years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden as well as the real Merkel, becoming the personification of the mainstream political establishment.
*** Candidates for chancellor who didn't win also count, although they are more direct analogues most of the time. There are too many to count, but some examples include Bobby Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, and Jimmy Carter himself. In modern times, Osama bin Laden is very obviously a Trump analogue (the Trumps themselves were mentioned in Part 4 but also said to have never entered politics), while Martin Schulz (in real life still a German SPD leader) is based on both his real counterpart and on Bernie Sanders. Andrea Nahles and Olaf Scholz make brief appeaerances as well.
** Viktor Orban is apparently a football player instead of a right-wing populist (Zen may have said something about Gerald Ford also being a football player), while George Soros is replaced with a Muslim woman and Holocaust survivor (who is still hit with all those conspiracy theories). Zhao Yu has filled in Orban's role as a right-wing populist.
** Tsai Ing-Wen (the current president of Taiwan) served as chancellor of China with roughly the same policies as the real Tsai. However, her successor, Han Xianyu, is said to be loosely based on a combination of Jair Bolsonaro, Ben Shapiro, and Vladimir Putin.
** Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg didn't embrace the Nazis here and instead fought against them.
** Mao Zedong was a librarian who was drafted into the Imperial Chinese Army during World War I.
** Wang Jingwei wasn't a Japanese collaborator here, but he instead became a Chinese dictator. Chiang Kai-Shek is basically the same as he was in real life, as was his son and successor Jiang Jingguo.
** Benito Mussolini (known as Andreas here) was a famous IBC (BBC equivalent) news anchor. Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite also appear as IBC anchors.
** Gnupa I af Steinvikholm, the first king of Kanata, is based on George Washington.
** Lin Zexu went from a Chinese magistrate in real life to the equivalent of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other Chinese democratic leaders and Western-educated individuals like Kang Youwei and Yung Wing fill in similar roles.
** Thierry Baudet is a real life Dutch populist and Eurosceptic, and here his platform takes on an environmentalist leaning too.
** Valentin Varennikov and Dmitry Yazov have real life equivalents who didn't amount to much.
** Empress Sita uses a portrait of a famous Indian actress from the 1940s, while Tsaritsa Sbyslava uses Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands' portrait.
** Savitri Devi, a Nazi sympathizer and occultist in real life, is a neo-Angeloi leader here.
** Jorvik Thordarsson, a chancellor of Kanata turned leader of the Eimerican Federation, uses Justin Trudeau's picture. His father Petur Thordarsson, another Kanatan chancellor, is based on Pierre Trudeau.
** Alexei Navalny makes a cameo appearance as a human rights activist, as he is in real life.
** Vladimir Putin started out as a KGB spy, just as in real life, but after World War III, he left the KGB and the political world altogether and started over as an actor, eventually becoming a world-famous action movie star. He is now more of Keanu Reeves' counterpart instead of being based on his real self.
** Siegfried Anniona is the counterpart of Christopher Lee, whose career is even more illustrious with the addition of starring roles in Doctor Who, X-Men, and Harry Potter.
** Hedy Lamar became far more successful here as she made millions off many of her patented inventions.
** Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra is based on Princess Diana. Princess Wilhelmina's birth and childhood were loosely based on Prince William's, from whom she got her Wombat nickname.
** Anne Frank survived World War II, although at the cost of her parents being murdered by the Angeloi, and spent the rest of her life hunting Angeloi and fighting the Soviets as a feared assassin and spy known as the Valkyrie.
** The senator Izinchi Ochimeca is loosely based on the senator Ilhan Omar.
** Francisco Franco, who in real life was a fascist Spanish dictator, here is the Norse captain of the Varangian Guard and fought against the far right Angeloi.
** The Inquisitor Owen Niederung is a Germanized version of the paleontologist Owen Marsh.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: After Gabriel was defeated, Wilhelm decided to go explore the multiverse and relax. He was drawn back because of a bigger threat to all of reality. The Worm made Its presence known by manipulating certain humans into doing its bidding, which unnerved even the archangels. Wilhelm then decided he must protect humanity and angelkind against this new threat.
* {{Americasia}}: The western half of North Eimerica (North America) was colonized by the Chinese Jin Dynasty in the 13th century and grew to be a powerful empire in its own right, ruling much of what it called Fusang. Tawantinsuyu adopted many elements of Chinese culture, including the Chinese writing system, from the Jin. Even in the 21st century, Jin Fusang's influence still permeates much of the continent.
* AmicableExes: Anders Humboldt and Diana Frank were in an unlikely romance during their time in the Athanatoi academy, but then World War III happened, and they eventually parted ways, with Diana transferring to a distant field office and Anders settling in the newly established X-Division. They remained on friendly terms, and Diana even befriended Anders' cousin Angela. When they finally reunited, they worked together on X-Division with few disagreements, conducting each other as professionally as they could (relative to X-Division's standards). Ultimately [[spoiler: they got back together]].
* AncestralWeapon: The legendary sword Enonon was passed down through the Hohenzollern family from Friedrich the Great, the founder of the dynasty.
* AncientArtifact: Multiple.
** Diana Frank and Angela Hansen came across a crashed ancient human spaceship in West Africa holding stone tablets containing bits of ancient humanity's knowledge.
** Another ancient human spaceship was found in Scandinavia, from which X-Division found an advanced healing device which could heal serious wounds in seconds.
** The reality-destroying superweapon of the Fringe arc is an ancient human invention they dismantled and buried instead of using.
** The Philosopher's Stone is a Worm artifact that allows a holder to see the future...but not to change it. Handling it too closely can cause the holder to transform into something...unnatural.
* AncientAstronauts: This was subverted in that the ancient human precursors made social and technological advances not with extraterrestrial help but on its own, giving rise to the advanced spacefaring civilization of 150,000 years ago. There were actual aliens present on Earth at the time, but they did not influence humanity's early development.
* AncientConspiracy: The Worm cult has existed in the hidden corners of human society for 150,000 years, having survived planetary genocide, social and technological regression to the Stone Age, and the revival of civilization.
* AncientRome: The Reich is a continuation of the Roman Empire (known as the First or Western Empire) through the joint imperial succession of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire (collectively the Second or Eastern Empire). However, calling the Reich the "Third Empire" [[UnfortunateImplications is intentionally not used]].
* AndManGrewProud: The Worm cult believes ancient humanity grew proud in its technology and strove to became gods. They then decided to punish humanity for its pride and brought it all crashing down.
* AngelsDevilsAndSquid: Hohenzollern Empire's supernatural lore is heavily inspired by Supernatural, most notably in its depiction of angels and demons. Angels reside in Heaven but aren't moral paragons, demons come from Hell but can be purified and redeemed in specific circumstances...and then there is the Worm, an eldritch abomination living outside of time and reality.
* AngelicAbomination: Humans are unable to see an angel's true form as they are shrouded in holy light so bright their eyes are burned out. Instead, angels merely speak to humans telepathically or possess a human (with their consent) to interact with the mortal world.
* AngelsInOvercoats: Wilhelm is a fan of wearing overcoats.
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: In 2037, the world is in a massive economic crisis, with [[spoiler: the Reich]] using its economic clout to force smaller nations into submission. A meritocratic Russia, led by Olga Kirova, holds out as the lone voice of freedom in an increasingly authoritarian world, but its situation is unstable. A famine looms on the horizon, and the people cry out for an end to Olga's aggressive [[spoiler: anti-Roman]] policies, which they believe has worsened their economic situation. Learning of Russia's situation, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] exploits it by sending Josiah Burkard to Russia to negotiate a trade deal which would avert the famine but render Russia subservient to [[spoiler: the Reich]]. Even if Olga rejects the deal, its popularity as an apparent lifeline from impending economic crisis will ensure the public tosses her out of office and replaces her with a new government that will take the deal. In short, Josiah made an offer Olga couldn't refuse. [[spoiler: Averted at the last minute when an eleventh hour appeal from Princess Wilhelmina sways the hearts and minds of the Russian people, leading them to come out against the deal and give Olga an opening to safely reject it.]]
* AntiIntellectualism: The official policy of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s regime, which hunts down intellectuals and left-wing activists as heretics, equalists, and traitors. Ironically, [[spoiler: Elias]] has an intellectual in his inner circle, the economics professor Josiah Burkard. Other members of the inner circle, specifically Philemon Moria, make no attempt to hide their disdain for him, calling him "Professor Bookworm" among other things.
* AnyoneCanDie:
** [[spoiler: Horst von Hohenzollern, a justice-minded military commander]], suddenly died in his second appearance with no warning.
** [[spoiler: Prince Georg, who had begun an arc of standing up to his brother's apparent dictatorial turn]], also suddenly died in much the same manner as [[spoiler: Horst]].
** [[spoiler: Thierry Baudet, the co-protagonist for fifteen years]], was suddenly murdered along with half of his inner circle during [[spoiler:Elias Anhorn's coup]] at the beginning of 2030, pushing the story down a dramatically different path than was previously thought.
** Simultaneously, [[spoiler: the coup also claims Diana Frank]], who was on the cusp of uncovering the truth behind Elias Anhorn.
** In 2034, [[spoiler: former protagonists Anders Humboldt and Angela Hansen]] are killed while trying to expose the truth and protect their families.
** Disgusted by the work he had done, [[spoiler: Jacob Baldouin]] attempted to [[spoiler: leave the Committee]], but the next day he was suddenly killed, and his death [[spoiler: was used as a propaganda moment by Elias Anhorn]].
** In 2037, [[spoiler: Kurt Moreau, a recurring character since 1992,]] was suddenly killed when he [[spoiler: refused to be married to a literal child, who then accused him of homosexuality (banned by Elias) and had him executed by orbital space laser on the spot]].
** Finally, [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl himself]] worked up the courage to oppose [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], only for [[spoiler: another orbital space laser]] to suddenly kill him.
* ApatheticCitizens: The Roman public of the early 21st century, who became apathetic and generally politically inactive after Kohl's donations scandal in 1998, the November 9 attacks in 2001, the war in Mexico in 2003, the Patriot Act, the 2008 recession, the Sentinel scandal of 2015, and the rise of Internet mass media. Elias Anhorn seized on this apathy to first elevate Thierry Baudet's obscure CB party to power and then [[spoiler: kill Baudet, take over CB, and turn the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship that has convinced the people to remain apathetic because "both sides are the same"]].
* ApocalypseCult: The Worm cult was responsible for the destruction of ancient humanity's civilization and regressing humanity back to the Stone Age. 150,000 years later, they now seek to do the same to modern humanity so they can rebuild civilization in their image.
* ApocalypseMaiden: As the culmination of his plan to [[spoiler: destroy and remake all of reality]], Wilhelm Tesla injected [[spoiler: Angela Hansen]] with large amounts of Cortexiphan, a medical drug that can draw out latent psionic abilities, so she would become an "engine" to power his [[spoiler: reality destroying mechanism]].
* ApocalypseWow:
** The literal Apocalypse in the 17th century, during which both Wilhelm and Raphael were completely obliterated, spells designed to kill/destroy anything failed against Lucifer, and the chaos of the Fifty Years' War reflected the events of the Apocalypse.
** The first Kaiser of Part 2 immediately getting killed by Raphael to set the stakes.
** The entirety of angelkind being expelled from Heaven end of Part 3, caused by Gabriel, which sets up Part 4 right afterward.
** Wilhelm showing visions of the doomed timeline he escaped in Part 1.
** Wilhelm and Diana ''receiving'' visions of the doomed future for both humanity and angelkind in Part 5.
** [[spoiler: World War IV]] starting in 2038 with [[spoiler: nuclear armageddon which wipes out 800 million people in less than a day]]. Yes, it ''started'' with that.
* ArcVillain:
** The Mexica Empire was the main antagonist of Parts 1-2. Part 1's plot revolved around the Reich leading military campaigns against the Mexica and liberating the British Isles, Norway, and Iceland from them. Most of Part 2 focused on the Reich building up a large navy to take the fight to the New World, culminating in the Sunrise Invasion and the crippling of the Mexica Empire. On Part 2's supernatural side, Raphael manipulated historical events, including killing a Kaiser, to start the Apocalypse, and Wilhelm constantly fought against him.
** In Part 3, with the Mexica Empire's decline, China became the main antagonist, as it steadily gained power over the course of Part 3 before challenging the Reich for world hegemony in World War I. On the supernatural side, the demons became the main threats to the Inquisition in the first half. Once they were defeated, the angels returned to fighting each other as in Part 2.
** In Part 4, the Angeloi rampaged across Europe and slaughtered millions of innocents, while on the supernatural side, Wilhelm rallied likeminded angels under his banner to fight against the rogue archangel Gabriel, who had taken over Heaven and planned to replace God.
** In Part 5, the Soviets were the main villain until their defeat in 1986, after which they were replaced by the Syndicate/Sentinel in the X-Division arc and then [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] in 2030. On the international level, [[spoiler: the Reich itself]] has become the villain to the entire world, though [[spoiler: China]] is also another big antagonist. On the personal level, the protagonists have to deal with a wave of rising populism and xenophobia in Persia which threatens to undermine all of the gains they have made.
* ArcWords: Every X-Division mini-arc has at least one mention of the mysterious Sentinel conspiracy, which the team is apparently looking into on the side. This culminates in the ultimate reveal of Sentinel at the end of the first arc, although references continue in the next two arcs.
* ArchaeologicalArmsRace: The 1940s archaeologist Arabia Gruber was in a constant competition against the occult-obsessed Rasa general Patel in a hunt for possible ancient superweapons.
* ArchangelGabriel: Gabriel himself appears as a recurring character in Part 3, where he helps Wilhelm and the Inquisition build a spell to seal off Hell for good, and then as the main antagonist of Part 4, where he expels all angels from Heaven in an attempt to replace God. Throughout Part 4, Wilhelm rallies a resistance movement of angels to take him down, ultimately prevailing and toppling him from power. After Part 4, Gabriel disappears from the plot, although he can occasionally be seen in Zen's comments remarking on certain story events or responding to other users who mention him. It is unclear what really happened to him and if these comments are canon.
* ArchangelMichael: A sort-of antagonist of Part 2, alongside Lucifer. During the Fifty Years' War, he attempts to convince the Inquisitor Friedrich von Hohenzollern to be his vessel so he can battle with Lucifer (who would possess Friedrich's friend Friedrich von Habsburg). When Friedrich (von Hohenzollern) refuses, Michael instead possesses his friend Frederick von Sigmaringen. Wilhelm and Friedrich von Hohenzollern crash Michael's fight with Lucifer and ultimately lock them both away in Hell, stopping the Apocalypse.
* ArchangelRaphael: An antagonist of Part 2. Introduced after killing off literally the first Hohenzollern Kaiser of [=EU4=] barely a month after Part 2 starts. His goal is to introduce as much chaos and destruction as possible, focused on the Reich, to trigger the Apocalypse. Wilhelm constantly interferes with his plans by protecting the Hohenzollerns and helping them handle secular threats to their rule, although he fails to stop one incident in which Raphael reenacts the events of [=Macbeth=] in real life by helping the mad usurper Malcolm Bethune seize power. After the Apocalypse happens, Raphael soon realizes the archangel Michael doesn't care about the rest of angelkind and would let them all die as part of the Apocalypse. He switches sides and helps Wilhelm stop the Apocalypse by locking Michael and Lucifer in Hell. Throughout the rest of Part 2, he and Wilhelm observe the Reich's progress, taking bets on whether it would collapse or survive. In Part 3, Wilhelm and Raphael continue their observations, but Raphael does not intervene (as opposed to Wilhelm) when demons begin terrorizing the mortal world in the 19th century. In Part 4, he is depowered like all other angels due to Gabriel's machinations and forced to ally with Wilhelm against their new enemy. By Part 5, he has worked out his disagreements with Wilhelm, and the two have again resumed their observation of the Reich, though they are concerned by the return of the Worm cult.
* ArchangelUriel: A recurring character of Part 4 who specializes in multiverse theory and timeline divergences. Possessing Gediminas Principas, he assassinated Franz Ferdinand to start World War I and cause a significant divergence from other timelines, being locked up in Landsberg Prison with his human host for twenty years afterward until Wilhelm and Raphael rescue him. When the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse threaten to converge and destroy each other after Annionaverse Otto crosses over to the Hohenzollernverse, Uriel helps Wilhelm, Raphael, and the Vienna resistance get Senator Otto back home. In Part 5, he has joined Wilhelm's little group of angels.
* ArchEnemy:
** Norse Scandinavia is the nemesis of the Acatls, a dynasty founded by the descendants of Erik the Red, who are seeking vengeance against the ones that wronged them back in the Old World. The mere mention of the Norse sent Ocuil Acatl spewing a litany of curses upon them.
** The Mexica Empire was the Reich's archenemy for Parts 1-2, driving the plot for most of Part 1 and a good chunk of Part 2 before being finally defeated.
** China became the Reich's archenemy in Parts 3-4 after the Ming defeated the Tran and united the four dynasties into one empire. Their arms struggle and diplomatic rivalry steadily escalates over several decades before erupting into open war in 1914. The Reich and China would fight once more in 1941 before they enter into a temporary alliance against the Soviet Commune. After World War III, China democratizes and ends the rivalry.
** The Soviet Commune is the archenemy for the first half of Part 5, having scored an upset victory against the Angeloi during World War II and taken the Occupied Territories. This culminates in World War III and the Soviet Commune's final destruction at the hands of the Reich and China.
** On a smaller scale, Anne Frank's archenemy was Valentin Varennikov. The two faced off in many flashpoints during the Cold War, both rising in rank, until Athanatoi Director Frank defeats General Secretary Varennikov during World War III.
** Elias Anhorn considered [[spoiler: the entire Hohenzollern family]] as his archenemy, blaming them for the death of his sister and the slaughter of his comrades while fighting in Mexico. After returning from Mexico, he masterminded a plot by which he would get revenge and "give them what they deserve." He has particularly latched on to the princess Wilhelmina as his greatest enemy and target of his revenge...but ironically, Wilhelmina barely knew he even exists.
** To the rest of the world, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] himself is their archenemy because he [[spoiler: nuked every major city, killing over 800 million people, and declared a war of annihilation against everybody]].
* Area51: It was a Syndicate/Sentinel black site known as Site 51. Similar black sites existed all over the Reich.
* TheArmiesOfHeaven: The angels can mobilize a heavenly host to collectively fight a major supernatural threat, such as Lucifer, Gabriel, or the Worm.
* AscendedDemon: The demon leader Fergus [=MacLeod=], once a Caledonian man who went to Hell after he died, seized power in Hell during the power vacuum that arose after Lucifer was imprisoned. Inquisitor Bernadette Soubirrous, seeking to seal off Hell so its demons stop terrorizing the mortal world, realizes the final component of her sealing spell requires her to purify a demon at the cost of her life. Bernadette captures Fergus and uses him as part of the spell, giving her own life so Fergus's demonic essence is purified. Once the spell is complete, Hell is sealed off, with all demons in the mortal world sent back there, and the purified Fergus goes to Heaven with Bernadette.
* AscendedMeme:
** After several viewers made comments asking about the painter Adolf Hitler's fate after Part 4, Zen suggested that since Hitler had remained an artist instead of becoming a genocidal dictator, he could have gone into animation after the war. This, combined with similar questions about the fate of Walt Disney, led many to start believing Hitler had replaced Walt Disney and founded the equivalent of Disney. After several comments about how Disney properties would be hilariously renamed to their Hitler equivalents (Hitler Channel, Hitlerland, Hitler Renaissance), Zen officially made Hitler Disney canon.
** An older version of this page had an incorrect but humorous entry which claimed that the nation of Perm was the most powerful nation in the world, having been the only one to have defeated the Reich. While the entry was later corrected, several viewers noticed the entry, including Zen, who made it canon by including it in the mythology of Yavdian nationalists, who claim Perm, a predecessor of Yavdi, was the most powerful nation in the world.
* AsLongAsThereIsOneMan:
** Anne and Tatiana refuses to give up in their fights against the Angeloi and the Soviets, even as their friends and allies died or gave up. Anne went as far as to stand in front of a line of tanks to protect civilians in Prague.
** A similar show of defiance happened during China's democratization in 1989, when the Emperor of China, having disguised himself as a commoner, stood up to a line of tanks to protect democratic protesters.
** Anders Humboldt refuses to give up on his quest to expose and defeat the Syndicate, knowing that if he and his friends gave up, there would be nothing stopping the Syndicate from triggering an alien invasion. As long as he was still alive, he would keep up the fight to protect humanity.
** After [[spoiler: Elias launches a coup to murder his enemies and turns the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship]], Angela, Anders, and Diana come back together for one last mission. Even as the situation around them deteriorates and their lives are threatened again, they refuse to give up on their new quest to expose the truth behind [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s machinations. As long as they were still alive, they would continue fighting for meritocracy and freedom. Ultimately, [[spoiler:death was the only way their crusade ended.]]
** On April 2, 2039, [[spoiler: the last defenders of the free world make their stand against Jerusalem as it invades Persia and pushes all the way to Isfahan]], fighting against impossible odds not because they have a shot of winning, but because they were still able to resist.
* AssInAmbassador: After 2030, LKR Guy is appointed as UN ambassador for [[spoiler: The Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]], but he barely does anything other than insult other delegates and scream "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" constantly.
* AssumedWin: Walter Scheel being projected to defeat Konrad Adenauer in 1950, only for Adenauer to win after the newspapers had already printed "Scheel defeats Adenauer." One commenter even photoshopped the iconic photo with the in-universe headline and Adenauer and Scheel's faces.
* AttackDrone: Theodor built an entire army of attack drones he could summon on command to murder his enemies from a distance. Some are aerial drones which can descent on enemies from above, while others are grounded four-legged drones specializing in brutally murdering enemies up close. More sinister are the Panopticon implants put in the brains of soldiers, which have a feature allowing Theodor to remotely control their every movement and even their thoughts.
* AttackItsWeakPoint: Alien robot bounty hunters can only be killed by being stabbed or shot in the back of their necks.
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant:
** In 1941, China attacked the Roman colonies in Indochina, believing the loyalist cause was doomed and the Angeloi would focus on Europe. However, the devastating attack on Singapura only spurred the loyalists to fight harder...as well as provoke the Angeloi to launch a counter-invasion of the Chinese mainland.
** In 2038, a [[spoiler: nuclear decapitation strike]] against the Eimerican Federation fails to accomplish its goal of [[spoiler: wiping out all Eimerican leadership and keeping the nascent power out of the coming war]], but it instead galvanizes the entire population of the New World to join forces against their new common enemy.
* BackFromTheBrink:
** In 1941, Kaiser Otto and his loyalist forces were reduced to just Athens and a few villages outside Constantinople, while the rebellious Angeloi had taken the rest of the nation. But after a daring and successful attack on Constantinople, he turned the tides and ultimately took back his nation.
** In 2039, [[spoiler: World War IV]] has progressed to the point where [[spoiler: the world has been divided up into the occupation zones of the two totalitarian superpowers, Jerusalem and Han's China, and most of the free nations have been either conquered or outright destroyed.]] However, two free countries still stand, [[spoiler: Persia and Ryukyu]]. Despite being heavily outmatched and outgunned by their respective opponents, they still manage to fight on, and by April 2039 [[spoiler: they finally managed to turn the tides and pull themselves back from oblivion]].
* BadassCape: Catman takes the place of Batman as a comic book superhero in this universe, but there actually was a real "Batman," retired billionaire Tobias Wagner. Tobias adopted Anne Frank after her parents died and trained her in the martial arts. After sacrificing himself to steal Angeloi secrets on nuclear weapons, Anne adopts the superhero name Valkyrie in his honor.
* BadassFamily: Anne Frank and her daughter Diana both earned their fame as talented resistance fighters and Athanatoi agents. Tatiana Kirova and her daughter Olga also qualify, and with Olga considering Anne as her second mother, it is like both families are really one.
* BadFuture:
** The Worm showed Diana a bad future where [[spoiler: the Reich had been completely obliterated by the Worm-corrupted Holy Terran Empire of the Annionaverse, Earth was glassed from orbit, and the last hope of the Hohenzollerns was killed]].
** Wilhelm traveled back in time from a bad alternate 1453, based on a previous game Zen played, which ended when the Worm corrupted most of humanity to team up against the Reich. The Reich was completely obliterated, and Wilhelm's brother Constantine sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back to 1066 to change the future.
* BalkanizeMe:
** In Part 3, after Scandinavia surrenders in World War I, it is partitioned into three occupation zones run by the Reich, Kanata, and Russia. When Kanata and Russia themselves are overthrown in revolutions, their occupation zones become actual governments in exile which remain throughout Part 4 and into Part 5. Once the governments in exile are restored to their homes after World War III, the occupation zones are dissolved, and Scandinavia is reunited.
** In Part 5, following the Eimerican Commune's defeat in World War III, it and the neighboring Commune of Socialist Southern Altepetls both explode into many breakaway states which eventually stabilize into independent nations.
* BananaRepublic: In Part 2, Rome launched the Sunrise Invasion and invaded the Mexica Empire in revenge for the Sunset Invasion, winning and permanently crippling it. Over the next few centuries, the country declined economically and politically, until it became an irrelevant corrupt dictatorship which swapped between various extreme ideologies. As the 20th century progressed, it got taken over not only by ideologies but also by powerful unregulated businesses, religious fundamentalists, and military regimes. After the Reich's 2003 invasion, Mexico became a corrupt meritocracy with a weak central government, an underpaid and poorly trained army, rampant religious terrorism, separatist and ideologically radical militias roaming the countryside, and Roman companies controlling large parts of the economy. However, from 2018 onward, Mexico stabilized and restored some semblance of social order, especially after joining the Eimerican Federation in 2020. By the 2030s, Mexico had moved past its period of civil unrest and is no longer a banana republic.
* BargainWithHeaven: In order to possess a human so they can safely interact with the mortal world, angels must get the consent of their potential host, which opens up room for bargaining on the human's behalf. Of course, once the angel is let in, there is nothing stopping them from not keeping their word.
* BattleChant:
** The Roman battle cry has been "Saints Wilhelmina and Gunhilda, guide us in battle" for centuries.
** Chinese soldiers frequently shout "Huangdi wansui" ("Long live the emperor!")
** Soviet Army soldiers used to shout "URA!" to intimidate their enemies.
** Rasa Indian soldiers shouted "Jai Hind!"
** [[spoiler: Jerusalem's Crusaders]] shout "Deus vult!"
** Following the sacrifice of [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]], Russian and Lithuanian soldiers begin shouting "We will never forget!" in her honor.
* BattleCouple: The tag-team duo of Kaiser Friedrich the Glorious and his tactical genius wife, Saint Gunhilda. Together, they conquered half of Europe and brought their pagan neighbors to their knees.
* BeautyIsBad: The authoritarian strongman Han Xianyu is described as having the handsome looks of a Korean popstar.
* BeenThereShapedHistory: Wilhelm has lived through the Reich's entire history, from helping Friedrich the Great form the Reich in the 11th century to helping X-Division in the present day.
* BehindEveryGreatMan:
** Friedrich the Great was backed up by his wife, Kaiserin Ida...at least officially.
** Friedrich the Glorious' victories on the battlefield were won with the help of his wife, Saint Gunhilda.
** Otto's long reign couldn't have reached the heights it did without the constant help and support of his wife, Victoria Louise.
** Anders Humboldt is remembered as the man who leaked the Sentinel files and brought down a global conspiracy that lasted for decades, but he couldn't have done it without the help of his wife, fellow X-Division agent and later Athanatoi Director Diana Frank.
* BenevolentPrecursors: Ancient humanity left behind archives of their knowledge for their descendants to find and learn from, hoping they would avoid their mistakes.
* BerserkButton:
** If anybody threatens his daughter Elisabeth Alexandra or his wife Victoria Louise, Kaiser Otto won't hesitated to personally beat them up, even if he is in his sixties and has no actual combat training.
** Same goes for messing with Anne's daughter or Tatiana's daughter. Anne and Tatiana will hunt down those responsible and end them.
** Same even goes for Diana's son. Harm him in any way, and Diana will go on a rampage, as the neo-Angeloi Alfred Hoffmann found out.
* BetrayalByOffspring: Wilhelm Karl killed his own father, Kaiser Otto, to take the throne for himself. [[spoiler: He later regretted his actions and sought to make amends for it.]]
* BigBad:
** In Part 1, the Mexica Empire was the main villain. It kicks off the plot by invading the Reich and occupying the British Isles. Kaiser Wilhelm III was murdered by Ocuil Acatl, motivating his son Siegfried to avenge him. Over the next few centuries, the Mexica Empire remained the Reich's main rival, encouraging it to build up its military, especially its navy, to fight back. Even after retaking the British Isles and driving the Mexica Empire out of Europe, the Reich planned to take the fight to the New World, setting in motion Part 2.
** In Part 2, Lucifer and Raphael were the overarching villains. Raphael directly murdered at least one Kaiser and manipulated historical events in an attempt to destroy the Reich or at least cause a war so big it would trigger the Apocalypse. Raphael was also responsible for the chaos of the Anarchy, when Malcolm Bethune murdered Kaiser Martin II and seized power for himself. Once Lucifer was released, he took over as the main villain, as his goal of triggering a battle with Michael to end the Apocalypse led to chaos all over the Reich as part of the Fifty Years' War and was opposed by the Inquisition and Wilhelm.
** In Part 4, Gabriel took over as the main villain, having kicked all of the angels out of Heaven and depowering Wilhelm as part of a plan to replace God. Several recurring angels like Naomi were killed by him, and Wilhelm spent much of Part 4 trying to recover his angelic essence and keep his and Gavrilo Princip's consciousnesses intact.
** In Part 5, Valentin Varennikov becomes the main villain after assassinating Gorbachev and reversing perestroika before invading the Reich, starting World War III. He captured Anne Frank, his rival during the Cold War, and threatened to unleash a highly potent biological weapon on the world. On the supernatural side, Wilhelm encounters the Worm, a powerful eldritch abomination existing outside of reality which wants to insert itself into reality and corrupt humanity into It's servants.
** The Syndicate and Sentinel are established at the beginning of Part 5's timeframe. The Syndicate is a massive government conspiracy existing since the 1940s which covers up the existence of alien life and paves the way for the invasion and colonization of Earth by the Jotun, an alien species which wants Earth as its new home. Sentinel is a conspiracy within the Syndicate made up of alien agents which sabotage all efforts by the Syndicate to slow down or avert the invasion. Both conspiracies are responsible for historical events like the assassinations of Ragnar Beck (JFK) and Abraham Green (MLK), the rise of Zolton Huicton (Saddam Hussein), and the murders of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra (Princess Diana) and Anne Frank as part of the November 9 attacks (9/11). They also directly oppose the protagonists of this arc, X-Division, and attempt to kill, discredit, or otherwise silence them multiple times.
** After 2030, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] reveals his true colors as he puts a decades-long plot into action. In one day, his allies [[spoiler: slaughter the entire Diet, including dissidents within his own faction, and pin the massacre on Mexicanist terrorists. He blackmails the Kaiser himself, forcing him to obey his every command, and then uses imperial decrees to dismantle the Reich's meritocratic institutions and]] turn it into a totalitarian dictatorship. By 2037, the [[spoiler: "Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem"]] has become an international pariah using its economic and military clout to bully former allies into submission.
* BigBadWannabe: [[spoiler: Prince Wilhelm Karl]] initially positioned himself as an antagonist and all-around guy to be disliked, as his circumstances portrayed him in a negative light and he insisted his main goal was to demand control and respect, but in 2030 [[spoiler: he was sidelined and rendered politically impotent by the true big bad, Elias Anhorn]].
* BigGood: The angel Wilhelm kicked off the entire plot when he escaped a doomed timeline and took matters into his own hands to avoid that future, setting the world onto a better path.
* BigNo:
** Played humorously with Boris Bradziunas, who lets out a string of "NO!"s similar to Michael Scott in the Office at one point due to being a huge fan of that show's equivalent in this timeline.
** After witnessing the slaughter of her husband and son at the hands of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]] lets out a string of "NO!"s as everything falls apart around her.
* TheBlackDeath: The Black Death of the 14th century still happened here and was responsible for the decline of the feudal system, as in real life.
* BlackMagic: Demons make use of black magic. Their deal is tricking humans into selling their souls and corrupting them into more demons when they end up in Hell. The Inquisition also makes use of black magic, as many of their spells rely on blood sacrifices, but they use it mostly benevolently. In the modern day, blood sacrifices have been phased out in favor of spell-casting technology.
* {{Blackmail}}: Elias and Gertrude Anhorn are masters of blackmail.
** Gertrude blackmails then-senator Brad Folger with evidence of his marital infidelity, forcing him to pass laws she and Elias wants.
** Gertrude later blackmails Senator Lothar Lorenz after manufacturing a scene that gives off the appearance of marital infidelity, forcing him to bring Elias and Thierry Baudet into a governing coalition. Elias then kills off everyone else involved to prevent them from exposing the plot.
** Elias then blackmails [[EvilIsPetty a comedian who made a harmless joke about him]].
** In 2030, it is revealed Elias blackmailed [[spoiler: Kaiser Wilhelm IV]] himself. For the last few years, he and Gertrude had gathered evidence showing that [[spoiler: Kaiserin Ida had numerous affairs, and two of her children with Friedrich the Great were illegitimate. It just so happened that all Kaisers after the 16th century were descended from these two illegitimate children, meaning the current Kaiser is illegitimate]]. Fearing social and political chaos if the news were to get out, [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl]] is forced to obey Elias' every order, with disastrous results. The blackmail is later revealed to be [[spoiler: based on false or incomplete information, but by the time Wilhelm Karl finds out, it is too late for him.]]
* BlackShirt:
** The Rasas and Angeloi made use of paramilitary organizations, among them the blackshirts and the Black Tagmata, during their rise to power. These militias went around terrorizing their opponents and intimidating others into at least doing nothing.
** After being bought out by the tech CEO Theodor Tesla, who has ties to Elias Anhorn, the Argus private military corporation becomes a paramilitary organization which [[spoiler: murders left-wing activists, political opposition leaders, and ethnic and religious minorities.]] After 2030, Argus soldiers can be easily identified by the black shirts and tactical gear they wear.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: The trio of Olga Kirova, Diana Frank, and Angela Hansen, respectively. Their respective hairstyles made them a target for a numbers-obsessed serial killer during one of their cases. Also applies to Tatiana and Tania Kirova (blonde), Anne Frank (brunette), and Alexandra Hansen (redhead).
* BlueBlood: A few royal families are listed below.
** The Hohenzollerns (the Reich).
** The Paramaras (India).
** The Seljuks (Persia).
** The Acatls (Mexico).
** The Rurikids (Russia).
** The Ming (China).
** The Tran (Vietnam).
** The Song (Penglai/Australia).
** The Jin (Fusang/North America).
** The Palemonids (Lithuania).
** The Estrids (Scandinavia).
* BloodSplatteredInnocents:
** Six-year-old [[spoiler:Ilyana Romanova]] and [[spoiler: Friedrich von Hohenzollern]] are forced to watch as [[spoiler: Ilyana's grandfather]] and [[spoiler: Friedrich's father and grandfather]] are brutally killed in front of them, with [[spoiler: Ilyana]] even being trapped underneath [[spoiler: her grandfather's dead and bloody body]].
** Later on, as Ilyana and Friedrich end up in a refugee camp for their protection, they are bullied by a group of xenophobic children. Ilyana responds by picking up a metal pipe and brutally beating them with it, showing no remorse as their blood splatters on her.
* BombThrowingAnarchists: Members of the Lithuanian Black Hand, a 20th century anarchist group, threw bombs at their opponents, including one failed assassination attempt against Franz Ferdinand.
* BookBurning: The Angeloi and Rasa regimes of the 20th century burned books from ideologies and authors they didn't like. In the 21st century, [[spoiler: the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]] has revived the practice.
* BrainUploading: After X-Division's second encounter with the COS AI, the hacker Skye decides to upload her consciousness to the Internet and live as data. In a later meeting with X-Division, Skye expresses that [[spoiler: she misses being in the physical world and the idea of living as data is overrated]].
* {{Brainwashed}}: Multiple times.
** Numerous loyalist generals, including Wolfgang Ludendorff, were brainwashed into serving the Maximists during Part 3. [[spoiler: In Wolfgang's case, he was at least possessed by a demon.]]
** [[spoiler: Boris Kirov]] was brainwashed into being a double agent for the Soviets in 1972.
** Olga Kirova was brainwashed by the Soviets [[spoiler: just like her father]].
** The Panopticon brain implants have a feature which allows Theodor Tesla to override a user's mind and either remotely control them himself or recondition their personality to something more suitable.
* BreadAndCircuses: Elias Anhorn uses a bread and circuses tactic to distract the Roman public and keep the people divided and subservient, not caring enough to form any opinion against him.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: Archangel Gabriel abuses this trope so much in the Uncertainty arc at the end of Part 4, even taking over Zenphoenix's Paradox Forums account, and then presenting himself in-universe as "Zen the Phoenix" while healing a boy that was shot trying to cross the West Berlin-East Berlin border.
* BreakTheCutie:
** Wilhelmina is introduced as a dorky but good-intentioned princess satisfied with talking about video games and space travel. Over the course of 8 years, she is put through hell as [[spoiler: the government strips her of her inheritance and then of all of her rights]], [[spoiler: she is marked for execution and is forced to flee into exile]], [[spoiler: she watches her home descend into totalitarian chaos]], [[spoiler: the rest of her family is slaughtered, making her the unwilling heir to the throne]], and finally [[spoiler: her husband, son, and daughter-in-law are all killed, with the first two dying right in front of her]].
** Wilhelmina's grandson Friedrich was forced to go through everything his grandmother did as well.
** Ilyana Romanova lost her parents in a car accident as a toddler, forcing her to grow up earlier and adopt a stubborn and willful personality as a coping mechanism. Then on top of this, she had to go through everything Wilhelmina and Friedrich did above. Not wanting to lose anyone else, she fiercely defended Friedrich against bullies by brutally beating them with a pipe at the age of 6.
* BrokenAngel: Wilhelm lost his powers due to the machinations of the rogue Archangel Gabriel at the end of Part 3 and remained powerless for much of early Part 4. All of the other angels were also depowered to a lesser extent around the same time, only getting them restored at the end of Part 4 once Wilhelm defeated Gabriel.
* UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire: One of the predecessors of the Reich. In the 11th century, it was ruled by the Doukas family, which Friedrich the Great formed an alliance with when he married off his heir, Prince Wilhelm, to Princess Anna Doukas, who later became the Byzantine empress. Their son, Friedrich the Glorious, merged it with the Holy Roman Empire after inheriting both realms. In-universe, it is never referred to as "Byzantine Empire" or "Byzantium" but rather as the Empire of the Greeks, the Eastern Empire, or just Roman Empire.
* CadreOfForeignBodyguards: The Varangian Guard was originally made up of Norse Vikings hired as imperial bodyguards, but by Part 2 the bodyguards were hired from the Roman population, although there were still many Norse Romans who eagerly enlisted.
* TheCaligula: Reinhard I was known as the Mad Kaiser. He sent two men to single-handedly defeat the Norse sieging Berlin, claimed to take control of every single legion himself after losing that battle, appointed a horse as a councillor, restored the King Odon of Greece to the position after a day, claimed him to be a heretic that he fooled (even if he wasn't). The Hungarian king's last words as he was hacked to pieces by the overwhelming force of the Vikings were cursing Reinhard for his utter idiocy.
-->'''Everybody:''' [[WhyWontYouDie Why... won't... you... die?!]]
-->'''Reinhard:''' Because... [[LargeHam GOD WANTS ME TO LIVE AND REIGN!!!!!!!!]]
* {{Catchphrase}}:
** Tatiana Kirova's catchphrase is "Like I always do," which she says when promising to do or accomplish something. The catchphrase is later adopted by her daughter Olga.
** Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase, which he says upon landing in Europe for the first time, is "All this has happened before and will happen again."
** While sounding similar, Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase doesn't seem to be related to the catchphrase of the Worm cultists: "What was shall be, what shall be was!" However, some characters have pointed out similarities.
** Pavel Novak had his own catchphrase, "Surprise motherfrakker!" He tried using it as often as he could, but everyone hated it, including his own allies. Even the Smoking Man himself would rather die than hear it.
* CausedTheBigBang: Raphael claims that the Big Bang is merely the result of God creating the universe, as written in Genesis.
* CavalryBetrayal: In Part 3, Persia, Mali, and Ethiopia defected to China's Tianxia Alliance during World War I because their governments were overthrown by the Chinese Jinyiwei secret police and were replaced with pro-China regimes. Each time this happened, the Asian front lines were pushed back significantly as former allies began attacking Roman troops. In Part 4, many loyalist troops themselves defected to the Angeloi throughout 1940 and 1941 because they were convinced the loyalist cause was doomed and they believed Angeloi promises of amnesty, better pay, and respect.
* CelebrityParadox: Subverted in that Wilhelm Karl is described as looking like Charles Dance while the actual Charles Dance still exists as a separate person. Wilhelm Karl hates being compared to Charles Dance and constantly insists on not being his twin.
* CelestialBureaucracy: Heaven is depicted as a giant ethereal office building where angels run celestial affairs and oversee events in the mortal plane.
* CelestialParagonsAndArchangels: Played straight with the four biblical archangels being the effective leaders of Heaven, although after Part 2 it is only three as Archangel Michael becomes indisposed.
* CentralTheme: Zen has said different story arcs and parts of the story have certain themes attached to them.
** The overarching theme of the entire series, as established in Part 5 but retroactively applied to Parts 1-4, is that people from all backgrounds can work together to achieve something greater. Wilhelm always insists in the inherent desire for humans to cooperate as opposed to Raphael believing the Reich would collapse into infighting and competition. Roman meritocracy emerged from Friedrich the Great's and Wilhelm's desire to build a world where everybody had a fair chance to succeed.
** The Fifty Years' War arc of Part 2 shares Supernatural's themes of defying destiny and forging one's own path, as the three Friedrichs reject the destinies angelkind forced upon them.
** Part 5 delves much deeper into themes with its story arcs, recontextualizing earlier parts with new overarching themes.
*** The X-Division story arc emphasizes reaching out for the truth. The truth is something that should always be revealed to the public, even if it is something they don't want to hear.
*** The Fringe story arc is about family and the ties that bind family, even across universes.
*** The Forum story arc is about the need to always hold political leaders accountable for their actions, as well as the benefits of allowing new voices and opinions to be heard.
*** The story arc after 2030 warns about the dangers of political apathy, the decline of liberal and free society in the absence of people to defend it, and the fact that "it can happen here" at any time. Zen states his other themes focus on exploring what the Reich is and should stand for; the idea of legacy and if it is worth defending; and how people worry about how they'll be remembered, if at all.
* ChariotRace: Chariot racing remained popular in the Reich well into Parts 2-3 but ultimately died out.
* ChildhoodFriendRomance:
** Otto and Victoria Louise met as children and ended up happily married for many long decades.
** The two six-year-olds Prince Friedrich and Ilyana Romanova seem to have crushes on each other, but Friedrich doesn't know how to act on it and Ilyana doesn't want to show she knows.
* ChurchMilitant: Militant Mexicanism appears in Part 5 as a brutally intolerant, violent, and regressive sect of Mexicayaotl, the Mexica religion, calling for violent holy war and the expulsion of all foreigners, including the Acatl dynasty, which has some foreign ancestry.
* CityOfGold: In Part 2, Roman explorers in South Eimerica searched for a legendary city of gold they called Die Gulden, but their expeditions turned up nothing.
* CivilizationDestroyer:
** An unknown entity wiped out ancient humanity 150,000 years ago so thoroughly that very little of that civilization has survived to the present day.
** The Worm's ultimate goal is to destroy modern civilization so it can be rebuilt in Its image. Indeed, it actually succeeded in doing so in Wilhelm's bad alternate future.
* CivilWar:
** The Anarchy and the following Fifty Years' War happened because the usurper Malcolm Bethune seized power and declared himself Kaiser, provoking the surviving Hohenzollerns and their supporters into rebellion, leading to a chaotic religious and political situation over the next fifty years which heretics take advantage of, forcing the Inquisition to wage a continent-wide war against them.
** Throughout Parts 2-3, Heaven had its own civil war between the angels. One faction, led by Wilhelm, wants to protect humanity, while the other, led by Raphael, intends to bring the Apocalypse immediately.
** The Maximist Wars occurred in the 1850s between the Maximists (supporters of Prince Maximilian, who was a puppet emperor who didn't want to become a ruler, while the Ministerprasident Konrad von Habsburg was the one in charge) and forces loyal to Kaiser Siegfried II.
** In Part 4, another civil war erupted in 1939 after Markos Angelos launched a coup against Kaiser Otto I to seize direct control of the country, dividing the Empire into pro-Angeloi and loyalist camps.
** In Part 5, between 2035 and 2037, [[spoiler: several various rebel groups attempted to resist Elias Anhorn's totalitarian regime, although they frequently focused on fighting each other more than teaming up against their common enemy, and the Ottonian system's administrative reforms, which ironically were designed to prevent another Angeloi-style mass rebellion, worked exactly as planned and limited the amount of manpower and territory they could control. In the end, the civil war was little more than a group of loosely associated insurgencies which was eventually crushed.]]
* {{Cliffhanger}}:
** At the end of Part 3 in 1936, Gabriel fully depowers Wilhelm and expels all angels from Heaven, causing a worldwide meteor shower as millions of angels crash land around the world. Wilhelm realizes that with so many angels on Earth at the same time, chaos will ensue, setting up the events of Part 4.
** Part 4 ends in 1946 with Kaiser Otto about to give a national address to his people discussing how the world has changed over the last ten years and the challenges the Reich faces in the years to come.
** The first X-Division arc ends with Anders Humboldt on the run after being sentenced to death by Sentinel and forced to go on the run. Simultaneously, Sentinel masterminds the November 9 attacks, which kill 14 thousand civilians, including Anne Frank and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, and gives the Sentinel-controlled government an opportunity to pass the Patriot Act. With few allies and the entire nation looking like it had just rejected the truth Anders had so desperately sought, he wonders what he will do next.
** The Fringe arc initially seems to end with [[spoiler: Walter shooting Angela in the head to stop her from psychically powering a device that will destroy all of reality]]...but this is merely a cliffhanger for the real ending. The real ending has another cliffhanger in the form of [[spoiler: a future Wilhelm teleporting into Annionaverse Walter's office with a dire warning of a grim far future he just escaped and the need to prepare in some way]].
* LesCollaborateurs:
** There were many collaborators with the Angeloi during World War II. Among them were Anne's teachers and bully. Reinhard Heydrich and Phillippe Petain were also collaborators who betrayed the loyalists for the Angeloi cause.
** In Part 5, almost the entire [[spoiler: Roman population]] sides with [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] and willingly collaborates with him, whether out of fear or genuine support. By 2039, it becomes clear that the collaboration only happens due to fear due to the regime's increasingly repressive actions.
* CommieLand: The Soviet Commune is the main example of this, having established an equalist (communist) regime in Russia following World War I which lasts until World War III.
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror:
** Manfred is conditioned to accept the horrors of [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime]] from an "enlightened centrist" and politically apathetic standpoint, believing that as long as the horrors don't affect him and his livelihood is fine, he doesn't need to do anything. Of course, [[spoiler: this comes back to bite him in the end]].
** Josh is conditioned to accept the horrors of [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime]] because he outright embraces such horrors as the natural order of things and actively perpetrates them.
* {{Conscription}}: This has been a part of Rome for centuries. Conscription stopped being enforced after Siam in 1979, but has been brought back by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] as all men are now required to own a gun, go through military training, and be ready to mobilize should war break out.
* ConservationOfCompetence:
** In Part 4, once the Angeloi join the Axis Powers, all of the focus and competency goes to them. Although Rasa India was the biggest, most influential, and most threatening member before they joined, afterward they mostly fade from relevance, and by 1943 the loyalist Romans and China easily crush them in a joint invasion.
** In Part 5, as Valentin Varennikov rises in the ranks and becomes more powerful, his friend Dmitry Yazov fades into his shadow, going from his almost equal in 1944 to an insane lunatic who shoots his own generals for no reason in 1986.
* ConspiracyTheorist: Anders and Annie Humboldt are the archetypical 1990s UFO conspiracy theorists, but they are disgusted by all conspiracy theories from afterward.
* ContinuityNod: Multiple examples, including but not limited to the following:
** Kyrillos, a pirate who stole the formula for Greek Fire in Part 1, later has a high school named after him in Part 5.
** The White Stag, which frequently appeared throughout Part 1, occasionally appeared throughout Parts 2-5.
** Raphael, who murdered two Kaisers at the beginning of Part 2, is still known as a "Kaiser-killer" in Parts 4-5, centuries later.
** In Part 5, the angel Sarah brings up the time she married Kaiser Wolfram in Part 2.
** In Part 5, the wise Basque elder Alberto Garcia-Diaz is later revealed to be [[spoiler: an older Ludwig Angelos, son of the dictator Markos Angelos]], who had distanced himself from his past and redeem himself for his father's actions. At the end of Part 4, [[spoiler: Ludwig Angelos had settled in Basque country so as to not be a rallying symbol for any of his father's remaining supporters]].
*** In 2037, Alberto Garcia-Diaz's grandson Pablo is seen [[spoiler: fighting against Elias Anhorn's regime, but he is tragically killed]].
** The political liaison Yulia Ilyushina, who works on behalf of the Russian government, is later revealed to not only be the recurring character [[spoiler: Jessica]] from the Fringe arc but also [[spoiler: married to Olga Kirova]].
** In Part 1, Kaiser Reinhard founded a tavern in Lübeck he called the Bottomless Tankard. It later reappears in Part 5, still open for business...[[spoiler: but not for much longer]].
** In Part 3, Bernadette Soubirrous became a renowned Inquisitor and Prophet of God who briefly met the angel Saint Wilhelmina and later sealed off Hell for good, ending demonkind's tormenting of humanity at the cost of her life. In Part 5, it is mentioned that she was eventually canonized as a saint.
** The cities of Alençon, Normandy and Perpigan, Eastern Pyrenees were major locations frequented by X-Division over the course of their story in the 1990s and 2000s. In the 2030s, they again reappear, but it is revealed [[spoiler: they have become ghost towns after their entire populations were slaughtered by Elias Anhorn]].
** On one of X-Division's cases, the team encounters a genie who has been around for a thousand years who says she lost a sack that is eternally full of turnips many centuries ago. In 2039, when the protagonists visit a village in the Urals, the local cooks get their turnips from a sack seemingly without end.
* CoolOldLady: Olga Kirova at seventy years old has not shown any signs of slowing down. Even without any enemies to physically fight, she has instead [[spoiler: gone into politics and become the chancellor of Russia]]. At least until [[spoiler: World War IV begins and she finally gets new opponents to fight, which she does]].
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Theodor Tesla hates government regulations of any kinds, as he both sees them as equalist and cutting into his profits. Once [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] welcomes him into the Committee, he uses his new authority to abolish all regulations, turning his workers into little more than slaves working under dangerous conditions, and roll back human rights. He is also given contracts to [[spoiler: deport minorities such as Jews and Muslims]] to other countries by airplane, but to save on money, fuel, and time, he [[spoiler: refuses to pressurize the planes, killing all passengers]], which massively increases his profits.
* CouncilOfAngels: The angels effectively have their own council where they oversee celestial and mortal affairs, with the archangels ranking above the others though generally not actively leading. Since God hasn't been seen in millennia, the task of running the multiverse falls to the angels.
* TheCoup:
** The Chinese Jinyiwei funded multiple coups in Central Powers members during World War I to install pro-China regimes.
** Markos Angelos staged a coup against Kaiser Otto in 1939 to eliminate the last obstacle to his rule, but Otto resisted, starting a civil war.
** In 1984, Valentin Varennikov assassinates Mikhail Gorbachev and seizes power to reverse perestroika and start World War III.
** In 2030, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] and his conspirators launch a coup against [[spoiler: the Roman government, in which the entire Diet is massacred, the Athanatoi is crippled, Diana Frank is killed, and judges, provincial leaders, lawyers, and generals who would oppose them are murdered all across the Reich.]]
* CrapsackWorld:
** The epilogue of Part 1 reveals that the timeline the angel Wilhelm originates from (the original timeline of the world in universe depicted in the AAR) was completely devastated by heathen powers (mainly Aztecs and the Mongols) because the Roman Empire failed to endure the 13th Century Crisis, and by the 15th century all of them have entered the great coalition against the Roman Empire, destroying Berlin in 1421, and finally bringing its final end in a particularly devastating version of the Siege of Constantinople in 1453, [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill which resulted in the city and its inhabitants being wiped off the face of the Earth due to excessive ransacking, which lasted an entire year]]. Christianity was destroyed, [[FromBadToWorse and shortly after]], [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the rebellious angels succeeded in bringing the Apocalypse, Lucifer rose from hell and fought Archangel Michael, utterly destroying both heaven and hell in the process]].
** Part 5 reveals this original timeline suffered even worse than Part 1 let on. The Worm was responsible for all of the chaos of the alternate 1453. Far from trying to stop the Apocalypse, Wilhelm actually started it to stop the Worm from taking over, but it failed, and his brother was erased from the timeline sending him 400 years into the past as a last resort.
** Following [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's]] actions in 2030, the world slowly spirals into a dystopian nightmare. By 2037, the Reich has [[spoiler: turned into the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, which has taken all of the Reich's old values and reversed them to promote the exact opposite]]. India, traditionally the other major meritocratic power, has been [[spoiler: "politically neutered" after an invasion by Elias' Argus mercenaries slaughters its left-leaning government, installs a right-wing Hindu nationalist regime, cripples the Samrat Chakravartin, and permanently occupies Delhi]]. Meanwhile, China [[spoiler: slowly abandons democracy under the nationalist Han Xianyu]], who wants to return to the glory days of Wang Jingwei. The Eimerican Federation, while still supporting democratic and meritocratic values, is more concerned with domestic affairs in the New World. That leaves only a handful of nations, led by Russia, still strongly opposing rising global authoritarianism, but their crippled economies lead many to begin selling out. The authoritarian movement, meanwhile, continues going from strength to strength, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon, even after the two leading totalitarian dictatorships [[spoiler: start a nuclear world war which kills 800 million in a single day just to stroke their leaders' egos]].
* CrazyEnoughToWork: Otto's loyalists asking help from the Soviet Commune against the Angeloi. Although they were ideological enemies, they now had a common enemy in the Angeloi, and the resistance saw it as necessary for victory. It did work...although none of them counted on the Soviets taking Roman land as well.
* {{Crossover}}: Most prominently with [=Dragoon9105=]'s Annionaverse megacampaign.
** The first crossover happens in 1941 and starts in Dragoon's thread with Senator Otto von Hohenzollern, the irrelevant Annionaverse counterpart to Kaiser Otto, discovering a film reel depicting Kaiser Otto's impending death at the hands of Markos Angelos. Resolving to avert this, Senator Otto (unknowingly accepting help from Gabriel) crosses over to the Hohenzollernverse and inadvertently becomes a key member of the anti-Angeloi resistance cell in Vienna, led by Osterhild Anniona (the Hohenzollernverse counterpart of Dragoon's Empress Octavia). Over the next several months, he helps the Vienna resistance win numerous victories over the Angeloi and even bring the Soviets into the war against the Angeloi, before he travels to Constantinople and meets Kaiser Otto. There, he convinces the Kaiser to stay hopeful and keep fighting against the Angeloi before returning home with Wilhelm's help. Concurrently with this main story, another Annionaverse character, an alternate version of Gandhi, crosses over and is captured by his counterpart, the bloodthirsty Neta Gandhi. After two years in prison, he was broken out by generals disgusted by the Neta's atrocities. Working with the rogue generals and royalist forces under the leadership of Princess Sita, Gandhi [[spoiler: killed his evil counterpart and then impersonated him to disband the Rasas and ensure their prosecution during the Vijayanagara war crimes tribunals]]. Afterward, Gabriel secretly sent him back home.
** The second crossover happens 70 years later, although it is rooted in events happening 30 years after WWII. In 1977, the scientist Walter Humboldt, who had previously lost a daughter to an alien abduction, loses his second daughter Anna to a rare disease. When he develops technology to peer into the Annionaverse and reverse engineer the technology his counterpart develops, he sees the other Anna also succumbing to the same disease. Not wanting her to die again, he finds a way to cross over to the Annionaverse to save her. [[spoiler: But in doing so, Anna is left stranded in the Hohenzollernverse, and Walter raises her as his own. Roughly 30 years later, X-Division (led by Anna's brother Anders) is reinstated to investigate new unexplained incidents. Walter finds most of the unexplained incidents stem from experiments he and Tesla Dynamic CEO Wilhelm Tesla conducted. This conflict is set in motion when the Annionaverse, led by Minister Walter Humboldt, sends agents to the Hohenzollernverse in preparation for an invasion. Anna then learns she is from the Annionaverse. Later on, she negotiates a truce between the two sides, and the two universes work together to defeat Wilhelm Tesla and his conspiracy against reality.]] There are also callbacks to the original crossover where the now-aged Kaiser and Senator Ottos meet up again.
* CrushingThePopulace:
** This is what the Angeloi do when they crush a Resistance base, such as when the Angeloi agent Alfred Hoffman murdered Anne's parents in cold blood as part of the liquidation of the Frankfurt resistance. Later on, the Soviets would do this all over the Occupied Territories as the Cold War rages, with soldiers and tanks gunning down peaceful protests in cold blood in places like Berlin, Budapest, and Prague.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] is even more brutal than the Angeloi. Common punishments for criminals under his regime are brutal and violent and can even be extended to the criminals' families. He was also willing to [[spoiler: nuke over a dozen of his own cities during a ceasefire just to wipe out all rebel forces.]]. Entire towns like [[spoiler: Alençon]] were wiped out by conventional means just because they hosted resistance fighters.
* {{Cult}}: The Worm has a cult of worshippers across the series. While their true numbers are unknown as of now, it is believed they are present in every nation. They are a very esoteric order, so secret that even the Syndicate and Inquisition are largely unaware of them. The cult has existed for over 150,000 years and was responsible for the destruction of ancient humanity's civilization. Their goal in the modern day is to take positions of power so they can reorganize society in their own image, or failing that destroy everything and remake society from the ground up. What they want is to bring the Worm into reality and corrupt humanity into being It's servants.
* CurseOfThePharaoh: In 1941, the adventuring archaeologist Arabia Gruber explored a tomb underneath the Egyptian sphinx and was confronted with unspeakable horrors inside.
* TheCycleOfEmpires: This is a key idea surrounding Chinese reunification during Part 3, which believes it is inevitable for the four imperial dynasties (Ming, Tran, Song, and Jin) to combine back into one Chinese empire.
-->"The empire, long divided, must unite!"
* {{Cyborg}}: Argus mercenaries are all outfitted with a brain implant that gives them a heads-up display in their heads and tactical information delivered in a fast and up to date manner. In 2038, it is revealed these implants [[spoiler: also alter the soldiers' perceptions, dulling some senses and changing their brain chemistry so they become unhesitating killing machines who will blindly follow orders]].
* DarkAndTroubledPast:
** Kaiser Otto's father died in an assassination attempt. Otto's land got divided by fascists and equalists for decades. With his old family gone, Otto built a new one, but he lost his favorite daughter and heir to the Sentinel conspiracy, something he considered his greatest failure.
** Wilhelm came from a dark alternate timeline where the Worm had entered reality and humanity was already corrupted into serving It, with only him and a few other angels holding out in a hopeless battle. At the end, his brother Constantine sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back in time and avert this dark future.
* DarkestHour: In Part 4, the world is engulfed by World War II, and the Roman Empire is torn apart in a bloody civil war between the pro-Hohenzollern meritocratic loyalists and the pro-Angelos fascists, and the latter came close to total victory in 1941. Most Eimerican nations went red, the Reich's influence wanes in favor of the other factions that attracted the smaller states formerly allied with it, and the angels were cast down to Earth by Archangel Gabriel, who are forced to cooperate with the Roman Inquisition, or hide from the Soviets and Rasa, who want to use them for their own goals. Three factions vie for supremacy: the Tianxia (led by China), the Axis (led by India) and the Equintern (led by the Soviet Commune). The Reich attempted to stay as a fourth faction, but the other three all want a piece of them, and so they are doomed to fight alone against them all once all of their allies are taken over, and the results aren't pretty.
* TheDarkTimes: What some people view the era between 476 and 1105, commonly known as the Dark Ages, an era where the Catholic Church suppressed innovation and creativity to maintain its control, although this idea was discredited by modern historians. [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], in turn, had those historians executed, and his "official" history again labels the medieval period as a Catholic Dark Age.
* DatingWhatDaddyHates: Theodor Tesla does not approve of his sister Thea's choice in men, namely the geeky and politically moderate Alex Humboldt. He eventually comes to hate Alex, seeing him as a far left terrorist (if only because he is so far to the right everything else is far left by comparison) and Thea as a traitor to the family for siding with him against Theodor.
* DeadAlternateCounterpart:
** Erich Hansen's Annionaverse counterpart is dead, while his friend Martin (who died in the Siam Wars) is still alive over there.
** Director Schulz's counterpart was still alive in the Annionaverse after his Hohenzollernverse counterpart died.
** Anne Frank and Tatiana Kirova's Annionaverse counterparts were still alive after their Hohenzollernverse counterparts died.
** Victoria Louise and Elisabeth Alexandra's Annoinaverse counterparts similarly outlived their Hohenzollernverse counterparts.
* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Multiple examples.
** Anne Frank's parents were killed by the Angeloi, beginning her journey to becoming the Valkyrie.
** Olga Kirova's parents were killed in battle, sending her down the path of becoming the Firebird.
** Princess Wilhelmina lost her parents in a car accident in 2001.
** [[spoiler: Prince Friedrich]] lost his mother in a high-stakes spy operation in 2035. In 2038, his father was executed by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] himself during a military operation.
* {{Deconstruction}}:
** X-Division succeeds in leaking the truth and exposing Sentinel's nefarious plot, saving the world and freeing humanity from a decades-long global conspiracy. Normally, this would be the end, but Zen continues the story after the victory, showing the consequences of X-Division's actions. The entire Roman government is shaken by the revelation, with many current and former leaders arrested and imprisoned. The public loses faith in government and turns to groups outside the establishment like Thierry Baudet's Forum movement.
** The entire idea of the Reich and the contradiction of a meritocracy with a monarchy is explored in Part 5. Previously, it had been taken for granted that the Reich was the world hegemon and a voice meritocracy and fairness. But after [[spoiler: it collapses into totalitarianism]], people point out this could only have been achieved due to the Reich's unique culture, mindset, and values. Even Romans begin to ask what the Reich truly stands for, if the belief in meritocracy was merely a cover for darker instincts that were never truly suppressed, and if it is worth saving in the end. Furthermore, after [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl appeared to mastermind the totalitarian shift]], everybody begins wondering why the Hohenzollerns are still on the throne with no official limitations on their power, especially in a society which stresses a fair chance for everyone.
* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: The Syndicate thought it was invincible, having amassed a stockpile of alien technology and boasting deep political, military, and economic connections around the world. X-Division struggled for well over 5 years to just expose it to the world, but they failed every time. Ultimately the Syndicate was destroyed not by X-Division but by a rogue alien faction opposed to colonization, to which the Syndicate had no defense against. Later on, Sentinel filled in the Syndicate's role, taking over the old conspiracy's technology and connections. Sentinel built an army of super soldiers with the goal of infiltrating world governments so that there would be no resistance to the invasion. X-Division also attempted to expose Sentinel, but they failed. Anders was abducted by aliens (although he came back), his sister Annie had to go into hiding, and everyone else had to go on the run after Sentinel had X-Division shut down and arrested, their benefactors in Director Anne Frank and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra were killed, Kaiser Otto was intimidated into silence, and the World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed in the November 9 attacks, allowing Sentinel to pass the Patriot Act to increase its influence over all of society. But X-Division came back from this, and utilizing time travel to embed a mole in Sentinel from the very beginning, they amassed unrefutable evidence pointing to Sentinel's existence. The "smoking gun" ultimately exposed Sentinel, and the conspiracy came crashing down. It helped that the aliens themselves had all but abandoned the planet years ago.
* DeusExitMachina: The aliens, after being a recurring threat for most of the 1990s and planning to invade once the Syndicate's plans were completed, never actually invaded. Instead, they simply abandoned Earth after taking too many losses in a civil war, abandoning the Syndicate to its own demise by alien rebels.
* DiabolicalMastermind:
** The Smoking Man was a recurring villain throughout the 1990s. Once a friend of Conrad Humboldt and Hans Hansen, he eventually became the leader of the Syndicate and oversaw its many plans for world domination. He personally assassinated Ragnar Beck (JFK), Abraham Green (MLK), and Gorbachev when they threatened to ruin the Syndicate's work. Under his leadership, the Syndicate worked on a plan with which to infect humanity with a virus which would turn them into a slave race for the aliens and sent robot assassins after X-Division. His agents also killed Conrad and Hans when they threatened to expose the plot they themselves created. He even gave up his own daughter to be experimented on by the aliens.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] suddenly reveals his true colors when he masterminds a plot to [[spoiler: massacre the Diet]], blackmail [[spoiler: the Kaiser himself]] into doing his bidding, and eliminate any possible opposition all at the same time.
* TheDictatorship: Multiple examples.
** The regime of Malcolm Bethune in Part 2.
** Parts 3 and 4:
*** The Soviets.
*** The Rasas.
*** Reza Khan's Persian dictatorship.
*** Abyssinia and Tawantinsuyu's fascist dictatorships.
*** The Angeloi.
*** The Eimerican equalist regimes.
** Part 5:
*** The Soviets again through the 80s.
*** The Chinese military junta of the 1940s to 80s.
*** Various Eimerican dictatorships, both far left and right, across the 20th century.
*** Zhao Yu and Han Xianyu's authoritarian regimes in the 2020s and 30s.
*** India's Hindutva regime in 2034.
*** [[spoiler: The Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]] starting in 2035.
* DidAnastasiaSurvive: Yes, and then some. Not only did the equivalent of Anastasia (Princess Sbyslava) survive the massacre, but also her brother (the equivalent of Alexei, although without hemophilia). Sbyslava was later declared the Tsaritsa in exile in Sweden.
* DidntSeeThatComing:
** In 1941, after Heydrich's betrayal handed Constantinople to the Angeloi, Otto's loyalists were reduced to just Athens and a few Greek villages, while the Angeloi controlled the rest of the mainland. Angelos and even many loyalists believed it was all over for Otto. But Otto didn't give up, and within several months, he had not only taken back Constantinople but also turned the tables on the Angeloi and started liberating Greece and Anatolia.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's coup]] in 2030 comes out of the blue, with little warning it was going to happen until it did happen and leave almost the entire [[spoiler: Roman government dead and the survivors in his pocket.]]
** [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl]]'s death was similarly unexpected up until it happened. Up until then, the narrative had been building up towards him [[spoiler: overcoming Elias' blackmail and then fleeing the country for Russia, where he would help the meritocratic resistance]], but that was suddenly interrupted.
* DifferentWorldDifferentMovies:
** In the Annionaverse, many movies are different from OTL and the Hohenzollernverse. For example, while Star Wars in OTL is about Luke taking down the evil fascist-inspired Empire, in the Hohenzollernverse it is Starkrieg and features Leia taking down the evil equalist-inspired Republic, and in the Annionaverse it is again Star Wars and centered on Luke but with some state propaganda fed in.
** Doctor Who in the Hohenzollernverse is vastly different, with all of the Doctor's actors being different people like Christopher Lee, Patrick Stewart, Tom Hiddleston, and Hayley Atwell.
** Final Fantasy VII is actually a fully completed Xenogears in the Hohenzollernverse, as in real life Xenogears was original pitched as the story for FFVII.
* DifferentStatesOfAmerica: Unlike in OTL, the Roman Empire survives as the Reich in medieval times. The Native Eimerican states survived contact with Europe because of the insane technological advancements of the Aztecs (which were a deadly adversary to the Romans for few centuries, mind you), Mayans and Incans. Later on they embrace Marxist ideology and align with the Equintern during [=WW2=] and the Cold War. After the Soviets are defeated in World War III, Marxism crumbles in the New World, and the Eimerican states first go through a period of warlordism and civil war before stabilizing, liberalizing, and banding together in the Eimerican Federation. Overlaps with DividedStatesOfAmerica.
* DividedStatesOfAmerica: The Meskwaki Empire was defeated in World War I, shattering its dreams of [[UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny Pan-Emericanism]]. After the war, it shatters, is reunited under an equalist dictatorship, and then shatters again for good. The Eimerican Federation finally unites the New World in the 21st century and even gives Pierremaskin's descendant the symbolic title of "Eimerican Emperor," fulfilling Pierremaskin's old dream.
* DividedWeFall: The regime of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] abuses this by turning his own people against each other, playing on social divisions to make them hate each other so they don't join forces against him instead.
* DivineRightOfKings: The Hohenzollern dynasty claimed to rule the Reich through divine right, but in the modern day this is no longer the case, as true sovereignty comes from the people and the Augustinian Code. At least until [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] came around and brought back "actual" divine right.
* DoomsdayDevice: Ancient humanity built a machine capable of destroying the entire reality of a universe. Fortunately, it was never used and ultimately destroyed.
* DoubleAgent: In Part 4, Reinhard Heydrich was secretly a double agent for the Angeloi and sabotaged Otto's government from within, while Inquisitor Theodor Innitzer was a double agent for the loyalists, feeding the Vienna resistance important information on their enemies.
* DragonAscendant: Dmitry Yazov seized power as the new Soviet General Secretary after his friend and predecessor Valentin Varennikov was captured and effectively deposed.
* DrivenByEnvy:
** Valentin Varennikov was envious of the praise of Anne Frank. Agent Frank was revered across the Reich over her long career as an Athanatos and later Director, and Valentin was jealous of her adulation while he remained just a career soldier for decades. He acted on this envy when he seized power and orchestrated an elaborate plot to capture and kill Anne with an extremely dangerous bioweapon before invading the Reich and starting World War III.
** Edmund Remmele was envious of how his brother Gebhard got into a military academy seemingly by chance, while he personally had to serve on the front lines in World War III and witnessed many of his comrades die in a nuclear strike.
* DuelToTheDeath: After accusing Kaiser Wilhelm I of infidelity, a lowly count challenged him to a duel for honor. After defeating the Kaiser, the count then killed him in cold blood, to the shock of all in attendance.
* TheDutifulSon: Diana hopes she was the best daughter to Anne, even following her mother into the Athanatoi. In 2030, [[spoiler: her dying words]] were to ask her mother if she made her proud.
* DystopianEdict: After 2030, [[spoiler: Kaiser Wilhelm IV]] decrees a series of Nullification Acts aimed at stripping rights from women, minorities, and the political opposition.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Part 1 was full of plot points, characterization, lore, and a different writing style that were later dropped. Friedrich the Great was said to have completely wiped out the French, Polish, and Arab cultures and eradicated Islam and Catholicism. He had ordered the Holy Roman Empire dissolved and replaced with a "German Empire." The writing was more tongue-in-cheek and doesn't take itself too seriously even in light of the above events. In Part 3, the Reich was said to firmly oppose the rising tide of liberalism by maintaining absolutism. However, the writing style and tone dramatically changes from Part 4 on, with early Part 1 events reinterpreted in the new style. The French, Poles, Arabs, Muslims, and Catholics are said to have survived in smaller numbers, and their plight is examined in a more nuanced light. Friedrich the Great now gets a characterization as an idealist and humanist who united all of the peoples of Europe under his tolerant rule. The writing style becomes much more serious with a focus on detail and worldbuilding. The "German Empire" is retconned out, among other things.
* EldritchAbomination: The Worm exists outside of reality. Its true form cannot be perceived by mortal eyes. It has the power to warp reality in various ways, and It has a cult carrying out Its will across 150,000 years. It cannot be permanently defeated due to Its very nature.
* EldritchLocation: The Worm-associated tomb under the Sphinx is weird, anachronistic, internally inconsistent, and full of impossibilities that mess with the archaeologist Arabia Gruber's mind.
* EmperorScientist: Friedrich the Glorious built an observatory and patronized the sciences. His daughter Saint Wilhelmina continued such patronage, and under her reign the 12th century Renaissance occurred, and the empire saw a scientific revolution.
* TheEmpire:
** India gave birth to the most brutal counterpart of Gandhi in the multiverse, a commonality shared with a fellow Axis leader, Markos Angelos[[note]]an original character based on Saint Markos from [=CzokletMuss=]'s This is Madness megacampaign[[/note]], who rebelled against Kaiser Otto to seize power for himself.
** The Mexica Empire was the main antagonist of Parts 1-2. It practiced atrocities like human sacrifice and sought to conquer both the Reich and Scandinavia as part of its growing empire. Ocuil Acatl personally murdered Kaiser Wilhelm III, and his troops engaged in brutal slaughters of local populations across the British Isles.
** In Part 5, both [[spoiler: the Reich and China]] start to qualify after 2030, with both descending into brutal authoritarianism and tyrannical dictatorship. By 2035, [[spoiler: the Reich]] has become a global totalitarian nightmare, visiting constant atrocities on its own people and using its economic clout to force its neighbors into doing its bidding. Starting in 2038, [[spoiler: the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]] no longer bothers with economic bullying and has instead [[spoiler: started a global thermonuclear war of conquest and annihilation against the entire world]].
* EmpireWithADarkSecret:
** The Reich was founded as a way to provide an army for Wilhelm to fight an unwinnable war against an eldritch abomination and Its cult.
** The doomed timeline Wilhelm came from was already doomed by the Worm, and his brother sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back in time to set in motion the events of this playthrough. Not even the other angels knew about this until Raphael in 2023.
* EndOfAnEra: At the end of Part 3, Kaiser Otto I proclaims that the Imperial Century has already ended after the First Weltkrieg, knowing full well that the world is heading towards another war.
--> '''Kaiser Otto I:''' [[spoiler:"One hundred years ago, the world was much simpler. The Industrial Revolution had just begun, and the Reich had just emerged from the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. There were few factories, few railroads. There were no fascists, no corporatists, no republicans, no socialists, no equalists. The Kaiser reigned as he saw fit, without any ambitious chancellors, union leaders, or generals standing in his way. Those were the days of Metternich and Bismarck, Sigismund II and Franz Joseph. But I am not asking you to look back to those days as a lost era of greatness to be returned to. I am asking you to use what we learned from that time to look forward and prepare for the hardships ahead of us. The Reich in 1935 is not the same as the Reich in 1835. The world is different now. Instead of balloons, trains, and horses we have planes, cars, and barrels. We have sprawling factories pumping out goods and products on a scale never seen before. We have weapons of mass destruction. The Weltkrieg differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and the Eimericas became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Eurasian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility. Samarkand is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years. The Imperial Century has ended. We must prepare for what the future holds for the Reich."]]
** Fittingly, Otto's death in 2018 also marks the end of an era, as entire generations had grown up with Otto and knew no other Kaiser. All they knew was the peace and prosperity they enjoyed under his reign. It is a similar situation to the death of Franz Joseph a hundred years earlier, as Franz Joseph also reigned for a long time and nobody remembered any other Kaiser before him.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: A fifty year period of peace and prosperity following the end of the Cold War is brought to an end twice: first when [[spoiler: the Reich and China turn into totalitarian dictatorships]] and then when [[spoiler: Jerusalem nukes every major city, killing hundreds of millions of people and starting World War IV]].
* EnemyCivilWar: In Part 4, the Angeloi and Soviets went to war with each other. Although the Soviets were ideologically enemies of the monarchical loyalists, the loyalists sought their aid against the Angeloi, hoping they would weaken each other enough for the loyalists to defeat both. In Part 5, the Reich drew militarist China into World War III against the Soviets, although militarist China was an enemy in the triple-sided Cold War, successfully predicting that it would destroy both enemies (as a result of the war, China became democratic and ended the Cold War).
* EnemyMine:
** After Wilhelm lost his powers and Raphael was kicked out of Heaven along with every other angel, the two former enemies (who in Parts 2-3 had clashed over preserving humanity or starting the Apocalypse) decided to set aside their differences and deal with their new common enemy, Gabriel.
** The Tianxia Alliance and the Central Powers, enemies in the previous two world wars, set aside their differences in World War III to defeat the Soviet Commune, which is ideologically a threat to both of them and far worse than anything the monarchical Reich and China could do to each other.
** Subverted when the dozens of rebel groups which arose out of opposition to [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] DIDN'T join forces, instead turning on each other as illegitimate or ideological enemies.
* EnergyBeings: Angels are made of pure divine energy so bright and holy that mortal humans cannot look directly at it without their eyes burning out.
* EscapedFromHell:
** Mansur Shah Mukhtar was broken out of Hell in Part 2.
** Bernadette Soubirrous broke into Hell with a squad of Inquisitors in Part 3 and just as easily got back out.
** Since Bernadette's mission in Part 3, Hell has been sealed off from the mortal world, so demons are no longer able to leave Hell.
* EternalRecurrence: The Worm as an eldritch abomination that can't be permanently defeated. It's cultists frequently say "what was shall be, what shall be was" to remind people that the Worm is inevitable, and once It is summoned in reality, there is no stopping It.
* EtTuBrute:
** Georg finding out that [[DiabolicalMastermind Kaiser Wilhelm IV]] would be willing to kill Georg while Georg reviles the thought of killing his brother. Initially believed to be fulfilled when [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl apparently has Georg killed in a drone strike]], but later revealed to be [[spoiler: subverted when it turns out Elias was the one responsible for killing him]].
** Thierry Baudet thinking to himself right before [[spoiler: being executed by one of Elias' assassins during his coup. The last words he hears are "Elias Anhorn sends his regards."]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards:
** Nationalist China, an enemy of the Reich, is willing to work with the Reich against the Soviets, which they see as worse.
** Wilhelm Karl realized [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] was even worse than he could have ever been, which led him to reflect on his own personality and change for the better.
** Theodor Tesla is generally a corrupt and amoral corporate executive who seeks profits above all else, aligning with far right interests in order to achieve this. He has heavily invested in the Panopticon technology, which [[spoiler: turns all soldiers it is implanted in into emotionless killing machines]]. However, even he is scared of Josh Johansen, who is [[spoiler: ''already'' an emotionless killing machine even before his Panopticon enhanced him and actually ''asks'' for his Panopticon to make him even more efficient at killing]].
* EvilAllAlong: [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], an ally of Thierry Baudet and a member of his inner circle helping to bring his political movement into the mainstream, [[spoiler: masterminded a coup in which he slaughtered Baudet, the entire Imperial Diet, and almost all of his potential opponents in a single day, leaving him in control of the Reich]].
* EvilChancellor:
** Markos Angelos gradually seized power in the Reich over the 1920s and 30s, while Otto was a child and teenager unable to rule in his own right. When Otto came of age, quickly negotiated an end to a massive general strike, and married Victoria Louise to unite both the Siegfriedist and Maximist lines of the Hohenzollerns for good, Angelos began viewing Otto as a threat and devised a plan to remove him. As chancellor, he amassed power and influence over the Reich and quickly gained a large support base, culminating in a coup in 1939 in which Otto was forced to flee to Constantinople while half the nation rallied behind Angelos.
** After 2035, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] technically counts. In 2030, he had been the Vice Chancellor. But after [[spoiler: disposing of his puppet chancellor]], he seized power for himself, and the chancellery itself effectively becomes defunct.
* EvilFeelsGood: After he kills his first man in battle, Josh Johansen loves the feeling, and gradually embraces the life of a cold and merciless killer, [[spoiler: eventually slaughtering innocent lives on behalf of Elias Anhorn for no reason at all, even when his orders weren't to kill]].
* EvilIsPetty:
** After seizing power in the aftermath of Olga Kirova's rebellion and abduction of Valentin Varennikov, Dmitry Yazov proves to be even more brutal and petty than his predecessor, executing his own generals for no reason.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] blackmailed a comedian solely because he made a joke about him on TV.
** [[spoiler: Theodor Tesla]], passes a law abolishing women's rights and giving women's property and financial assets to their male next of kin. His reason for passing this law affecting hundreds of millions of women? Just to [[spoiler: punish his own sister for choosing her boyfriend over him]].
** Elias and Gertrude both call [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl by "Guglielmo"]] after blackmailing him to humiliate him and assert their dominance, although Gertrude stops doing it eventually.
** Early on in the Committee, [[spoiler: Elias]] causes a ridiculously long chain of telephone calls involving the Kaiser, several generals, multiple government officials, and a couple corporate executives just to tell Heinrich his decision to begin research into [[spoiler: biological weapons]]. When Heinrich asks why he didn't just call him directly and save a lot of time, he gloats he did it just because he could.
* TheEvilPrince: Wilhelm Karl expressed no remorse (even joy) at his older sister's death, which made him the heir to the throne. When his mother died, he also showed no remorse. He has a reactionary worldview and wants total control over the Reich when he becomes Kaiser. Finally, he murdered his father Otto, his brother Georg, and his cousin Horst to ascend to the throne and eliminate any potential rival claimants. The future does not bode well for his niece, Princess Wilhelmina. [[spoiler: Subverted when it is revealed this was all a persona inadvertently cultivated by his own detached personality, the media wanting controversy, and Elias Anhorn. He never actually wanted to be a dictatorial absolute ruler, but everyone ''thought'' he did. He claimed the media took his lack of remorse over his mother's death out of context. He did not actually kill Georg and Horst but took credit for it anyways. However, it is quite clear he did kill his father and did not shed a tear over his sister's death, although he eventually did come around to realizing his actions were wrong.]]
* EvilPlan: [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s evil plan is to destroy the Hohenzollerns and "give them what they deserve," not only by killing them but also [[spoiler: destroying their precious Reich by turning it into a totalitarian dictatorship]].
* EvilReactionary:
** Valentin Varennikov saw the Reich as led by reactionaries due to the country being a monarchy with landed nobility. He believed the nobility only sought to oppress the common people economically and ideologically to maintain its own wealth and influence, and Otto was complicit in this suppression.
** Markos Angelos sought to take the Reich back to older times where Germans and Christians were at the top of the social hierarchy and the nation was much "purer." He labeled leftists, Muslims, and Kaiser Otto as traitors for forgetting the Reich's traditions.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn also seeks to "purify" the Reich]], taking Angelos' ideas even more to the extreme with the help of modern technology.
* EvilUncle: What Wilhelm Karl initially seems to be to his niece Wilhelmina. He had killed his father, apparently killed his brother and cousin, showed no emotion over the death of his sister and mother, and passed laws specifically targeting Wilhelmina's rights. [[spoiler: Subverted when he reveals he had nothing against her, the lack of empathy was mostly taken out of context, he became regretful over killing his father, he did not kill his brother and cousin, and he had been forced to pass the laws by Elias Anhorn.]]
* ExpandedStatesOfAmerica: The Eimerican Federation united the two Eimerican continents, aside from Neurhomania (a larger Brazil). It now encompasses all of North Eimerica and a good chunk of South Eimerica.
* FailedFutureForecast:
** Gorbachev implementing perestroika in the CSSR in the 1980s, but then subverted when he is killed and his successor starts World War III, after which the collapse of the CSSR and the end of the Cold War became inevitable.
** However, nobody expected the Chinese military regime to collapse soon after that due to widespread public protests.
* FailsafeFailure:
** Dmitry Yazov desperately ordered nuclear missiles launched at the Reich to end World War III in the Soviets' favor, but only five missiles were fired. The Romans activated their failsafe, SVI (Strategic Defense Initiative), to shoot down the missiles, but the system crashed and was unable to neutralize the fifth missile, which detonated over Chernobyl and killed fifty thousand. Diana Frank, who had worked to bring SVI online, blamed herself for failing to stop the crash.
** During the culmination of the Sentinel arc in 2015, Sentinel activates SVI to lay waste to the world's cities and begin its takeover. However, Diana Frank ''intentionally'' crashed the SVI system much in the same way as thirty years ago to avoid the satellites from firing, saving the world in the process.
* FailureGambit: With SVI being automatically programmed to fire on multiple major cities, X-Division panics as there is no apparent way to stop it. However, Diana Frank thinks on the last time she worked with the system, remembering a crucial fatal flaw in it that broke the system previously, and decides to intentionally trigger that flaw now. It works, and SVI shuts down, saving the world.
* FakeDefector:
** Theodor Innitzer, after seemingly defecting to the Angeloi in Part 4, showed that he was secretly on the side of good when he leaked the Angeloi's information to the loyalists, allowing them to retake the city from the Angeloi.
** [[spoiler: Gertrude Anhorn, the wife of Elias Anhorn,]] initially joined a small conspiracy which included [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl and General Heinrich Dandolo]], but it is later revealed she had [[spoiler: sold them all out to Elias from the very beginning.]]
* FakeKing:
** Malcolm Bethune murdered Kaiser Martin II and his heir and then declared himself Kaiser. Once in power, he started eradicating all of the Hohenzollerns, repealed the Augustinian Code, and packed his court full of corrupt yesmen and loyalists. This provoked a massive civil war as almost all Romans refused to acknowledge his legitimacy.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] threatens [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl]] with this scenario if he releases his blackmail, which would "prove" [[spoiler: he and all of the Hohenzollerns are illegitimate descendants of an affair by Ida, Friedrich the Great's wife]], and cause mass social chaos.
* FallenAngel: Multiple times.
** Saint Gunhilda was later revealed to be a fallen angel who had incarnated into human form and lived a normal human life before returning to Heaven.
** Sarah Milton also incarnated into human form and was reborn as a baby, although she regained her angelic powers while mortal. After returning to Heaven, she retained the name Sarah.
** Lucifer is the original fallen angel, said to have fallen from Heaven in the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs.
** After 1936, ''all'' angels were expelled from Heaven, losing their ability to teleport, due to Gabriel casting a spell kicking them all out. However, Wilhelm had it the worst of all, as Gabriel specifically cut out his angelic essence and forced his now-mortal consciousness to reside in his host Gavrilo Princip's body, which obviously already had Gavrilo's consciousness in it. But by 1945, Wilhelm had defeated Gabriel and reversed the spell, restoring the angels to Heaven.
* FallenPrincess: Princess Wilhelmina, the daughter of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, was originally the second in line to the throne after her mother. But after her mother's untimely death in 2001, her uncle Wilhelm Karl was named the heir after the nobility put pressure on Otto to choose an older man over a teenage girl. As the imperial succession now followed the line of Wilhelm Karl and his son, Wilhelmina faded into obscurity with no chance of becoming Kaiserin. After [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's coup]], the Roman government passes laws [[spoiler: stripping all women of their rights]], including one specifically targeting Wilhelmina [[spoiler: by taking away all of her noble titles]]. She ultimately leaves for Russia, where she was little more than a pro-meritocracy activist. [[spoiler: Even that was later taken away when Russia is nuked and she is forced to flee with only a few supporters, many of whom are then hunted down and killed. And it gets worse after that, as in her new home of Persia, when it seemed like she finally regained some power and was rebuilding her movement, the Persian government shut it all down, expelled all Romans, and has now kept her imprisoned in a hospital where she can't contact anybody.]]
* FallenStatesOfAmerica: The Meskwaki Empire, after centuries on the rise, was ultimately brought down in World War I by the Reich. Afterward, it exploded into numerous dictatorships due to Soviet-funded revolutions before reuniting as the Eimerican Commune, which itself would collapse back into smaller states in 1989 due to ethnic and sectarian tensions (like in Yugoslavia). The small Eimerican states would eventually join together in the Eimerican Federation in 2020.
* FamedInStory:
** Centuries after their exploits, the lives of Friedrich the Great, Friedrich the Glorious, and Saint Wilhelmina are remembered in countless legends, tales, and even children's playground games.
** Even while she was still alive, Anne Frank was well-known around the world as the Valkyrie.
* FameThroughInfamy:
** In Part 4, Gandhi went from a nobody using a pen name to an infamous war criminal who slaughtered six million Muslims in his mad bid for world domination.
** Defied in Part 5 with a former Angeloi who tormented Anne and Diana over seven decades. He tried to restore the Angeloi in the modern day and start a race war, but Diana defeated him, and the media refused to name him, thus denying him his recognition (just like in this entry).
* FamilyExtermination:
** Malcolm Bethune purges the Hohenzollerns in hopes that no Hohenzollern come back to rebel. Markos Angelos does the same to the Maximists when it became clear he lost the war and the Soviets were about to take Berlin from him.
** What [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] does to the [[spoiler: Hohenzollerns]] in 2038, as it is apparently "what they deserve."
* FarEastAsianTerrorists: Chinese nationalists rose up in Malaya in the late 2010s, attempting to annex the country back into China due to its large Chinese population. They were defeated by Prince Horst von Hohenzollern, whose death in battle there galvanized the ASEAN integration movement.
* FeatherMotif: Angels have invisible feathered wings that can only be seen through shadows cast by holy light from their true divine forms, or by hearing them flap when they teleport.
* FeudEpisode: Most of the three Friedrichs' story during the Apocalypse arc of Part 2 revolves around a decades-long feud between Friedrich von Hohenzollern and Friedrich von Habsburg, which is so old neither of them remember why exactly they started feuding to begin with. By the end of the Apocalypse, they have finally agreed to abandon the feud.
* FinalBattle:
** The Mexica invasion of the Reich was halted in its tracks at the decisive Battle of Ergyng. Although the Mexica remained in Europe for several more centuries, their military strength and controlled territory never expanded afterward.
** Malcolm Bethune was defeated in the climactic Battle of Wawel Castle, where he was unable to avoid his prophesied downfall at the hands of Princess Sophia, the rightful heir to the throne.
** The final battle between the archangels Michael and Lucifer to complete the Apocalypse was averted by the human Inquisition before it could be completed.
** On April 2, 2039, [[spoiler: the Battle of Isfahan]] took on final battle undertones as the protagonists all banded together for one last act of defiance against [[spoiler: the forces of Jerusalem]], with nearly every major protagonist facing off against their opposing antagonist: [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina against Elias Anhorn, Thea against Theodor Tesla, and Alex against Josh Johansen]].
* FinalBossPreview: Throughout Part 5, even as terrible things like [[spoiler: World War IV]] rage around the world, the Worm is built up as the "ultimate threat" and "true enemy." Characters who interact with it, including even previously untouchable angels, suffer unimaginable mental and physical agony, with those particularly unlucky being subjected to fates worse than death.
* FinalSolution:
** The Rasas carried out the equivalent of the Holocaust, also known as the Nakba here, against the Muslims of India, Arabia, and Central Asia. Six million Muslims were slaughtered in concentration camps in Turkestan. The Angeloi participated in this genocide by shipping off the Reich's Muslim population to its own camps.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] has revived the Final Solution with modern technology, rounding up the [[spoiler: French, Poles, and Arabs]] into concentration camps. He also enticed [[spoiler: Jews, Muslims, and Africans in Europe]] with a "deportation" plan in which they would be put on planes flying them out of the country, but most of these planes were depressurized to save money, causing them all to suffocate.
* FieryRedhead: Angela Hansen has red hair and a temper to match, initially as a teenager and young adult. She is snarky, rebellious, and has a weird obsession with electrocuting cadavers. Even when she was locked up in [[spoiler: the Annionaverse following a botched crossover mission there]], she couldn't help but threateningly yell about electrocuting cadavers. As the years go by, though, she mellows out and calms down to be more like her also red-haired but less feisty daughter Alexandra.
* FishOutOfTemporalWater:
** The angel Wilhelm came from a doomed timeline where the Apocalypse happened in 1453 and set about changing history to set things right. He has some knowledge of the future, but as the changes piled up, his knowledge became less useful. Still, he kept many secrets from the other angels, including his guilt over seeing his brother sacrifice himself to send him back in time to begin with.
** In Part 4, Senator Otto (a counterpart of Kaiser Otto I) came from [=Dragoon9105=]'s timeline, where the Anniona dynasty rules a different Holy Roman Empire. He suffered significant culture shock from seeing a culture and society that was so similar yet so different from his own, particularly pointing out the differences in comic book superheroes. He also could not believe his counterpart was a Kaiser as he himself amounted to nothing in his world. Concurrently with Senator Otto's visit, his version of Gandhi also crossed over thanks to Gabriel's meddling. In the Annionaverse, Gandhi was a drunk and traumatized war veteran who had just lost his wife to suicide, and he had no idea what was happening when he ended up in the Hohenzollernverse and met his counterpart, Neta Gandhi.
** In Part 5, X-Division interrupts a Worm cult's attempts to interfere with history. The cult brings forward a woman, Theodora Doukas, from 1910 in an attempt to kill her before she becomes the Reich's first female senator and advances the cause of women's rights. Theodora expresses confusion as to the modern day (especially because she found herself in the middle of an underground bunker being fought over between X-Division, Sentinel, the Inquisition, and Worm cultists) before concluding she will not understand it. She eventually returns home to set history on its proper course...[[spoiler: and also help X-Division by embedding a descendant as a spy in Sentinel from the very beginning]].
* {{Flanderization}}: UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck in Part 3 gets hit by it quite hard, to the point where he just can't shut up about iron and blood. Same with Dmitry Yazov in Part 5 who descends from Valentin Varennikov's friend and closest ally to a sadistic madman who fires nukes at random, shoots his own generals at random, and then surrenders without a fight. In Part 5, the LKR (Liberal-Conservative Reformers) is a centrist political party disgusted by the ideological extremism and outdatedness of the traditional socialist/social-meritocratic SPR and center-right CMU. But their legitimate grievances are quickly flanderized quite hard as the LKR is represented by a single unnamed politician who frequently interrupts random Diet speeches with shouts of "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" Thus, nobody takes these alleged centrists seriously (Merkel and the CMU still consider themselves actual centrists). By 2035, LKR Guy has completely lost his marbles. He now spends most of his time simply screaming "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" for little reason.
* ForegoneConclusion: Diana's Worm-given visions of the future, including her death and the annihilation of the Reich and Hohenzollerns, which she fears she can't change. In 2029, Diana sees a vision of her death as well as those of the other members of X-Division, as well as who kills them. [[spoiler: Despite her best efforts, everything happens exactly as she was shown.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** The end of Part 4 was Gabriel/Zen BreakingTheFourthWall, by posting the end of the Kingdom Come AAR. [[spoiler: That world was [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt purged of all life due to XA-1005C virus]]. [[OhCrap Guess what makes an appearance in Part 5?]]]]
** Diana's visions throughout Part 5 after coming into contact with a Worm-influenced artifact seem to be hinting to future events, including [[spoiler: her and X-Division's deaths and a far future war between the Annionaverse and Hohenzollernverse]]. Despite her best efforts, her visions came true exactly as she foretold.
* ForeverWar: The Fifty Years' War of Part 2 looked like it would never end, as heretic militias kept rising up to replace those that were destroyed as soon as the Inquisition cracked down. The Commonwealth Wars also looked like they would never end as it always seemed like Lithuania and Russia wanted to fight each other.
* ForgedByTheGods: The legendary sword Enonon was technically forged by normal humans, but it was blessed by angels to give it the power to resist the Worm's eldritch influence.
* ForGreatJustice:
** Friedrich the Great and Wilhelm fought for justice in Part 1, hoping to unite the people of Europe against a common enemy and towards a better and more just future (as well as freedom from the Worm). Otto upheld the principles of justice against the Angeloi and Soviets in Parts 4-5 by rejecting extremism and defending meritocracy and the Augustinian Code.
** It was also Prince Horst's driving belief that justice was something everyone deserved.
* FormerRegimePersonnel: Reza Khan ruling Persia once again after getting defeated. Originally rising to power as the first fascist ruler in the world, he remained hugely popular after the war, and the Romans restored him to power as a meritocratic leader. After the 2003 invasion of Mexico, the Reich appointed former regime general Huicton Ollin as a temporary leader for a new meritocratic Mexico.
* ForWantOfANail: Due to this being an alternate history, there are many examples.
** Erik the Red's expedition proceeded almost exactly as in real life, but the natives he fought being slightly more aggressive led to his expedition being captured instead of forced to leave, with the end result being the rise of the Mexica Empire and its invasion of Europe centuries later, leading to centuries of hatred and war between the Reich and Mexico.
** Friedrich the Great replaced an existing margrave of Brandenburg who has been largely ignored by history. But just taking his spot was enough to completely change the course of history, bringing the Reich into existence.
** The Song fleet's decision to not make a stand in the Pearl River delta against the Mongol hordes leads to the Song emperor's survival and the birth of a new nation in Penglai.
** Franz Ferdinand's car randomly breaking down in a side alley in Lublin left an opening for the assassin Gediminas Principas to kill him, sparking World War I and leading to the rise of the Soviet Commune.
** Inquisitor Engelbert Dolfuss' spur of the moment decision to murder Leon Trotsky and frame the Angeloi to bring the Soviets into World War II worked exactly as expected, in that it brought the Soviets into the war. Engelbert, though, did not count on the Soviets to take Roman land as well, setting the stage for the Cold War.
*** Engelbert's return to Vienna by way of a train through Vienna inadvertently leads to the Angeloi cracking down on the local resistance cell, which kills Anne Frank's parents and leads her to become the Valkyrie, as well as indirectly leading to the birth of Diana Frank and ultimately her saving the world in 2015 when she figures out how to shut down SVI and stop Sentinel from using it.
** The Syndicate's decision to abduct Annie Humboldt instead of her brother Anders leads Anders to get interested in researching UFO phenomenon, ultimately founding the X-Division and bringing down the Syndicate years later. In the Annionaverse, the Syndicate abducted Anders instead and never fell there. The fall of the Syndicate in the Hohenzollernverse creates a political climate which allows [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] to rise to power. [[spoiler: Elias' regime ultimately kills Anders Humboldt]].
** Diana Frank and Angelica Haus's attempt to stop [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's coup]] leads to a high speed car chase through the streets of downtown Berlin, causing a car crash which leads to Princess Wilhelmina's car getting stuck in a traffic jam, indirectly saving her from [[spoiler: Elias' massacre]] at the Diet, her destination.
* FounderOfTheKingdom: Friedrich the Great is traditionally considered the founder of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the Reich, although it was his grandson Friedrich the Glorious who really founded the Reich by uniting both the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire under his rule.
* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: At the end of Part 4, Gabriel absorbs enough divine power to begin breaking the fourth wall, "taking over" Zen's forum account and directly interacting with other viewers on the thread, generally gloating about his divinity and demanding everyone worship him. Even after he is defeated, he continues to "take over" Zen's account, even posting a fake ending for Part 4 attempting to trick the viewers before posting the link to Part 5. Occasionally, he still appears in Zen's posts, identified by crossed-out text complaining about certain story events, mostly events involving the Worm (which even he is terrified by).
* FullCircleRevolution: The Maximists temporarily overthrew the old meritocratic regime and set about making a superior democratic one, but they themselves suffered several revolutions which ultimately ended establishing dictatorships far worse than what they believed the old regime was.
* TheFundamentalist:
** Af-Quetzalcoatl and the so-called Mexicanist State of Cemanahuac are crazy religious fundamentalists practicing human sacrifice and calling for the expulsion of all foreigners from the Eimericas.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn and the Committee]] are crazy Christian fundamentalists calling for a purification of the state and a return to traditional values.

[[folder:G-L]]
* GadgeteerGenius:
** Nikola Tesla was a brilliant scientist in the early 1900s who discovered many new applications for electricity and electric power. He founded Tesla Dynamic, a multinational corporation that is still in existence 100 years later under his descendants Wilhelm Tesla (who invented many different biological weapons and methods to cross over into the Annionaverse) and Theodor Tesla (who reverse engineers Annionaverse technology).
** Walter Humboldt was Wilhelm Tesla's friend and colleague, and together they invented many crazy things like a drug that draws out latent psionic powers and universe-crossing technology.
** To some extent, Alex Humboldt, Alexandra Hansen, Magnus Kvensen, Thea Tesla also fit, having built a revolutionary particle accelerator which led them to discover a completely new element.
* GameBreakingBug: A bug with the political parties scripting in the Part 5 mod caused the game itself to crash throughout the in-game year 2001, forcing Zen to replay that year multiple times.
* GamerChick:
** Despite being a feared assassin trained from childhood to take down entire governments, Olga Kirova is open about her love for anime, manga, Internet culture, and video games like Final Fantasy and Persona.
** Princess Wilhelmina herself has inadvertently cultivated a reputation as a "college gamer" for having played many video games during and after college. Even in her fifties she is still a huge JRPG fan, even quoting iconic Final Fantasy and Xenoblade lines to inspire the people during tense situations.
* TheGeneralissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek reigned as a brutal right-wing dictator as in real life during his decades-long dictatorship over China between the second and third world wars. Han Xianyu is a huge fan of him and seeks to emulate his brutal reign.
* GenericFederationNamedEmpire: More nuanced than usual, due to the 1000 years of history and multiple polities with differing origins and goals. There is no "generic" federation as all countries have names, though not all are federations or empires. Examples of federations and related entities include the Eimerican Federation, the CSSR, Srivijaya, the CSA/CSSA, Eimerican Commune, and Livonia. Examples of empires include the Reich (which because it's called the Reich could fit into the "generic empire" category), China, India, Russia, Scandinavia, Persia, Mali, Penglai, and Fusang.
* GentlemanAdventurer:
** The Inquisitor Owen Niederung used his regular job as a paleontologist to travel around the world digging up supernatural artifacts.
** Captain Nemo, an Indian prince, left India after being disgusted by court politics and land wars to travel through the world's oceans in an advanced submarine, the Nautilus. After his death, the Nautilus passed to his successor, Petros Arronax, who continued its journey until his own death, after which Nemo's granddaughter Sita took command of the Nautilus and used it to take her country and throne back from the Rasas.
* GilliganCut: In 2038, as [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's Crusaders and Chinese forces]] independently storm a Yavdian bunker where [[spoiler: the remains of Wilhelmina's government in exile is hiding]], general Gebhard Remmele orders his men to hold the line and not let any enemy soldier get past them into the bunker. Of course, right after he says that, the scene changes to "not that long afterward" when [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] is executing survivors in the bunker command center, [[spoiler: Kresge]] has been captured, Gebhard is badly wounded and hiding, and everyone else is dead.
* GodAndSatanAreBothJerks: God is implied to have appeared as an Italian guy who likes to play checkers in the 1990s, while X-Division was investigating a serial killer. He didn't help much, but he gave Diana some good music tracks. Lucifer appeared in Part 2 as a malevolent archangel who wants to start the Apocalypse.
* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: Pagan gods are dependent on human worship for their powers. When their followers convert to other religions, the gods' powers weaken.
* TheGoodKing: Kaiser Otto reigned as a just Kaiser for well over 100 years, leading his country through many crises to an era of peace and prosperity. He upheld the country's meritocratic traditions and reformed the old Metternich system into something much fairer and representative of the population.
* TheGoodKingdom: The Reich of the 21st century is a beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world. Its Augustinian Code is a constitution which guarantees certain rights and freedoms to all citizens equally, and many successive Kaisers have upheld the nation's traditions over the centuries, even in the face of threats like the Mexica Empire, the Angeloi, and the Soviets which all sought to destroy the Roman way of life. [[spoiler: Brutally put to an end after Elias Anhorn's takeover turns the Reich into TheEmpire.]]
* GoodRepublicEvilEmpire: The Sunset Invasion saw the Reich, which had just left a century of peace, pitted against the Mexica Empire, an invading conqueror bent on destroying the Reich and enslaving and sacrificing its people. When Wilhelm III was killed by Ocuil Acatl, his son Siegfried rallied the legions and fought back for the sake of the peoples of Europe. In Part 5, this dynamic can again be seen in the meritocratic Reich's showdown with the totalitarian Soviet Russia, [[spoiler: and then ironically in reverse with Elias' totalitarian Reich's showdown against a meritocratic Russia]].
* TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil:
** In the Cold War and World War III, the Reich fought for liberty, meritocracy, and freedom for the people of the world against totalitarianism. Meanwhile, the Chinese dictatorship under Chiang Kai-Shek simply sought to maintain its own power, with the added ideology of Sinocentrism (the world should revolve around China) in opposition to the Reich, so while it is bad it isn't too bad. The Soviet Commune outwardly wanted world revolution and the replacement of capitalism and monarchy with equalism and republics, with Molotov and Varennikov going further and calling for the complete eradication of the Roman identity, making it even worse than China.
** By 2035, the world has again been forced into a tense stalemate between two rival ideological blocs, [[spoiler: the nationalists and religious fundamentalists led by Elias Anhorn's genocidal totalitarian Reich and an increasingly authoritarian China and its alliance of authoritarians]]. Wedged in between these two authoritarian blocs are a few scattered meritocracies and democracies, led by Russia, which lack the economic or military clout to stand up for themselves.
* GoldDigger: Maike Richter took advantage of a mentally unstable and recently widowed Helmut Kohl to seize control of his finances and affairs, representing him "in his name" as a far right activist who cozied up to neo-Angeloi militias and foreign dictators, even butting heads with the Kaiser himself.
* {{Golem}}:
** The Inquisition made use of combat golems as shock troops in World War II, notably in the siege of Vienna.
** An original Islamic version of a golem, which Zen named the takwin, appeared in much the similar role as the original golem. It was summoned by a grieving Muslim family to avenge their relative, who was killed by neo-Angeloi racists.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: In the finale of the Sentinel arc, it is revealed that Strughold, the leader of the former Syndicate, has been imprisoned inside a Sentinel black site for almost twenty years after the Syndicate fell. He has since gone mad, with Pavel Novak explaining his insanity was the result of learning the existence of Sentinel within the Syndicate. However, the contents of his ramblings, namely the phrase [[spoiler: "What was shall be"]], implies he may have instead been exposed to [[spoiler: the Worm's influence]].
* GoodAngelBadAngel: Taken to the extremes across all of angelkind. There are millions of good and bad angels, each influencing different people in various ways. Wilhelm constantly tries to suggest good things, while Raphael sows chaos by starting rebellions, usurping thrones, causing fifty-year-long religious wars, beginning the Apocalypse itself, and murdering several Kaisers outright.
* GoodOlBoy: Josh is an extreme example, having embraced regressive far right views regarding women, political authority, and human rights and using violence to enforce those views on others.
* {{Gotterdammerung}}: What Archangel Gabriel ultimately intends to accomplish by [[spoiler: becoming God and remaking the universe in his image]], and is the [[TitleDrop title for the fourth installment of this story]], focusing on this universe's World War II.
* GovernmentConspiracy: The Syndicate and Sentinel were conspiracies within the Roman government. The former's goal was to pave the way for an alien invasion, while the latter's goal was to subvert the former from within after the Syndicate began devoting resources to stalling and preventing the invasion.
* GovernmentInExile: The Samrat Chakravartin Purandarandasa of India flees to the Indian colonies in Africa following a revolution in 1918. His government is dissolved in 1940 after fascist Ethiopians conquer Indian Africa and execute him, but his great-granddaughter comes back to avenge him and take her birthright. The kingdoms of Kanata, Scandinavia, Russia, Yavdi, and Fox were also overthrown a few years later. After World War III and the fall of equalism, all were restored to their proper countries. In Part 5, [[spoiler: a Roman government in exile is established in Kyiv after Elias' takeover, with Princess Wilhelmina taking part in its creation but refusing to lead it]]. As circumstances develop, [[spoiler: Wilhelmina gradually accepts her responsibilities and takes up leadership roles]], but by then it becomes too late as in 2038 [[spoiler: Russia is steamrolled and conquered within a week of World War IV starting, and she is forced to flee to first Yavdi and then Persia, each time seeing more and more of her supporters be killed]]. It then gets even worse, as even though [[spoiler: Wilhelmina firmly accepted her role as the next Kaiserin and leader of the Romans, the increasingly nationalist Persian government shut down her government in exile, expelled all of her supporters, and imprisoned her in a hospital with no way of contacting anyone]].
* GracefulLadiesLikePurple: Princess Wilhelmina is associated with the color purple and likes wearing purple clothes.
* GrandFinale: Zen wrote the final mission of X-Division in 2015 as a grand finale in itself, despite not even reaching the chronological halfway point in Part 5. To send off a story arc that lasted two real life years, there were plenty of callbacks, both to the original X-Division arc of 1992-2001 and the Fringe arc of 2008-2011. Anders and Angela visit Normandy again, seeing all of the sights they did on their first mission there in 1992. They meet the characters of Nick and Sarah again, whom they worked with during the Fringe arc. After 23 years of open hostilities, X-Division finally dealt with Pavel Novak, learned what Sentinel truly was, and [[spoiler: got the truth out to the public]]. Finally, Anders met [[spoiler: the Smoking Man]] one last time and Angela was [[spoiler: reunited with her long-lost daughter Alexandra]], while Wilhelm appears to ominously hint about the future.
* GreaseMonkey:
** As a teenager, Diana Frank liked tinkering with cars and motorcycles, having been taught how to do so by her mother Anne.
** Thea isn't afraid to get her hands dirty while fixing particle accelerators, which impresses Alexandra's husband Magnus as he assumed she was a sheltered rich girl.
* TheGreatDepression: A massive economic downturn happened in 1929 as in real life, causing unemployment to skyrocket and productivity to decline. This created the desperate circumstances that led many to join Markos Angelos and give his movement greater power and influence. In Part 5, the world descends into an even worse economic depression after [[spoiler: Elias' takeover of the Reich]] and the ensuing complete collapse of the global economy.
* GreekFire: Greek Fire remained a potent Roman weapon from the medieval period onward. It was briefly stolen by a pirate in Part 1, forcing Saint Wilhelmina to recover it herself. It was even used during World War I but has since been phased out in favor of more effective napalm.
* TheGreys: The Jotun aliens fit the description of stereotypical Roswell Gray aliens.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: In [[spoiler: World War IV]] in 2038, the major powers are [[spoiler: the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem and Han's China]], both totalitarian superpowers. The only free nation that can still stand up to them is [[spoiler: Persia]], but even that country has its own major flaws, namely a powerful xenophobic grassroots movement that has swept into power nationalists who [[spoiler: hate Roman refugees and want to expel them all, among other anti-Roman policies adopted out of vengeance to Jerusalem]]. Despite its drawbacks, [[spoiler: Persia]] is still the world's best chance at freedom.
* GutPunch:
** In 2001, Anders Humboldt was arrested and put on a show trial. However, X-Division broke him out. Just when it looked like they were going to get away with it, Sentinel brought down its hammer. The division was shut down and the agents were declared fugitives. Anders' mother was assassinated, and so was the Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, X-Division's biggest ally. Just when it looked like it couldn't get worse...the November 9 attacks happened, and Diana's mother was killed in it. The attacks would directly lead to the Patriot Act, which would vastly expand Sentinel's influence. X-Division ended up isolated in a cabin in the woods, watching as Sentinel won over and over again.
** In 2030, [[spoiler: Elias]] masterminds a coup in which assassins loyal to him [[spoiler: massacre the Diet during a national address from the Kaiser]]. Diana and her Athanatoi agents, having learned about the plot, rush to stop it, but they find [[spoiler: Elias]] had known of their efforts for some time, and despite their best efforts, [[spoiler: the massacre]] proceeds as planned. Diana [[spoiler: is then killed by Elias' men.]]
** In 2034, Anders Humboldt returns to Constantinople to write one last story about Elias Anhorn. Although he gets most of the article written, Argus storms the office [[spoiler: and kills him before he can escape]]. Meanwhile, Angela Hansen heads to Damascus to drive her family out of the country. But the drive does not go as planned. Although they narrowly escape [[spoiler: the nuking of the Middle East]], her parents [[spoiler: are killed in a car crash]], Alex's friends [[spoiler: are brutally lynched]], and she herself is [[spoiler: ambushed and killed by Argus]] literally a hundred feet from the border.
* HaveYouSeenMyGod: No one in Heaven can contact Him, leaving the angels to their own devices and doing what they believe to be His will. Temporarily subverted when God seems to have shown up in an Italian neighborhood in Constantinople in the 1990s to dance and talk about music before leaving again.
* HeelFaceDoorSlam:
** [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl]], after being constantly humiliated and forced to obey [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s every order to tear down the Reich and everything it stood for, realized the error of his past "vulture" ways. Hoping to make amends for his actions, he found a way to undo the blackmail binding him. Freed from [[spoiler: Elias]]'s control, he immediately left the country to help overseas resistance forces. After a dream in which he makes amends with dead family members he had previously wronged, [[spoiler: his plane is suddenly blown up by an orbital space laser, and Elias uses his death as a rallying cry to boost his own power]].
** [[spoiler: Jacob Baldouin]] was a former member of Thierry Baudet's inner circle who was promoted to [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]'s Committee after 2030. After two years of presiding over the Committee's authoritarian policies, he decided he'd had enough and that he had become no better than the corrupt mainstream establishment he thought he was fighting against. He walked out of the room, intending to figure out what he would do next, [[spoiler: only for a suicide bomber to blow him up, allowing Elias to turn him into a Committee martyr murdered by Mexicanist terrorists]].
* HeroesRUs:
** The main four members of the X-Division (Anders, Angela, Olga, and Diana) count. Their mission from 1992 to 2015 is to stop an impending alien invasion and their human allies in the Syndicate and Sentinel.
** By 2037, the torch seems to have been taken up by X-Division's children (Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen) as well as Princess Wilhelmina, Thea Tesla, and Magnus Kvensen, as they work to [[spoiler: oppose Elias Anhorn's regime from abroad]].
* HeelFaceTurn:
** Olga Kirova was introduced as an enemy assassin and super-spy to defeat Anne Frank in World War III, but after learning of her past (long hidden from her by the Party) and meeting Anne herself, she eventually turns on the Soviets and joins Anne in taking down Valentin Varennikov.
** In Part 4, Ludwig Angelos, the son of dictator Markos Angelos, is introduced as a kid who is being bullied. He got rid of his bully by [[spoiler: leaving him to die in a loyalist bombing run while everyone else escapes to a bunker]], embracing an ideal of strength. However, by the end of that part, he realizes the error of not only what he had done but also reject his father's brutal regime. By Part 5, [[spoiler: he has become a Basque elder who intentionally abandoned the Angelos name and peacefully leads his adopted community for the better]].
** By Part 5, many of the main antagonist nations from Parts 1-4 have redeemed themselves as heroic meritocracies and democracies opposing authoritarianism in [[spoiler: the Reich]].
*** In Part 1, the Mexica Empire was first introduced in the form of Ocuil Acatl's invasion fleet. In Part 5, the meritocratic nation of Mexico leads an Eimerican Federation civilian fleet across the Atlantic to deliver supplies and evacuate European refugees. The flagship of this fleet is called the Ocuil Acatl.
*** In Parts 1 and 2, Persia was a recurring antagonist in the Middle East, fighting the Reich numerous times over parts of Mesopotamia. In Part 5, Persia welcomes thousands of [[spoiler: Roman]] refugees fleeing totalitarianism and is committed to a meritocratic way of life. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, this hospitality doesn't last,]] as by June 2039, [[spoiler: all of the Roman refugees have been expelled by a nationalist government]].
*** In Parts 1-3, Lithuania and Scandinavia frequently declared wars on the Reich and Russia, notably in the Commonwealth Wars which saw the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth rampage across Eastern Europe. By Part 5, both nations have given up their militaristic culture, with Scandinavian adopting a pacifist democratic system and Lithuania becoming a meritocracy, and now they are firmly opposed to totalitarianism. Lithuania in particular has developed the Tiger's Defense military cybersecurity network designed to protect the world's Internet against malicious actors. However, by 2039, [[spoiler: Scandinavia has returned to militarism as a survival mechanism after Jerusalem began a genocide against its people and poisoned its very land with chemical weapons, while Lithuania lost Tiger's Defense and likewise takes up militarism once again]].
*** Russia was an antagonist in the later Part 3, some of Part 4, and the first half of Part 5 as the Soviets, but after World War III, it became a meritocratic monarchy. After 2030 and [[spoiler: the Reich's descent into totalitarianism]], Russia has effectively become the leader of the free world and the anti-authoritarian movement. At least until [[spoiler: the Reich invades it and effortlessly crushes it within a week]] in 2039.
*** After [[spoiler: Russia is nuked on the first day of World War IV and conquered a week later]], former antagonist Persia, which had fought the Reich repeatedly during Parts 1-2 and before the point of divergence for thousands of years, takes up the mantle of "leader of the free world" against the totalitarian powers.
* HegemonicEmpire: Rome has been the dominant superpower throughout the whole series, with land on almost every continent, the largest military and economy, and a political system and national language copied all over the world.
* HellHasNewManagement: After the Apocalypse ended in Part 2, Lucifer was locked away in a cage somewhere in Hell, and the demon Fergus seizes power as the new king of Hell.
* HeManWomanHater: Having embraced [[spoiler: the Committee]]'s anti-feminist propaganda, Josh hates women and views them as less than him, even [[spoiler: beating his own wife and having her sent to her execution for a minor offense, then beating his second wife to death for not making a dinner he liked]].
* HeroicBastard: Prince Kirill, the illegitimate son of Tsaritsa Sbyslava of Russia and Kaiser Friedrich the Glorious, pressed his claim to the Roman throne but was not a jerk about it, instead fighting his half-sister, Saint Wilhelmina, honorably and respectfully and expressing regret that they have to fight at all. His descendants, known as the Romanovs, remain influential nobles in Russia, with the youngest being Ilyana Romanova.
* HeroicLineage: The Hohenzollerns claim descent from the hero Friedrich the Great, who united most of Europe under his rule by both diplomacy and conquest.
* HeroicNeutral: A perfect description of the Reich trying to keep the status quo, as its main diplomatic stance is neutral interventionism where it will only fight to maintain balance in the world. Throughout Part 2, Russia, Lithuania, and Scandinavia went to war with each other constantly, and although the Reich always came to Russia's aid, when negotiating the peace the Reich enforced the status quo whenever possible.
* HeroicRussianEmigre: A large number of the Russian population, including most of the nobility and the two surviving Rurikid heirs, fled to the Tsarist government in exile in Sweden.
* HeroesPreferSwords:
** The weapon of choice of Friedrich the Great and his successors was Enonon, a medieval sword symbolizing their legitimacy.
** Subverted with the angel Constantine, who used a lance as opposed to his sword-using brother Wilhelm.
** Once guns become commonplace and easy to use, swords become a rarity until [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina begins wielding Enonon again]] in 2039.
* HiddenAgendaVillain: The Smoking Man initially seems to be helping the aliens take over the planet, but secretly he was actually working to stop the invasion by developing a cure and vaccine to the alien virus which would enslave humanity.
* HidingBehindReligion:
** In Part 2, angels and demons hid behind the Iconoclast Reformation to start the Apocalypse. There was nothing wrong with the religion itself, as Wilhelm pointed out, but the movement was corrupted by supernatural influences.
** In Part 5, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn and his Committee]] hide behind Christianity, specifically an extremely warped interpretation of the Bible, to commit unspeakable atrocities, and murder anyone else who interprets the Bible differently.
* TheHighMiddleAges: This series begins in the 13th century, during this era, but it often jumps back 200 years to fill in the gaps between the start of the game in 1066 and the Aztec invasion of the 1240s.
* HiredGuns:
** The mercenaries in Part 2. Some seemed to be very well educated and tried to exploit legal loopholes to get excused for war crimes, leading to the Trial of the Hundred Mercenaries, a defining moment for the development of the rule of law in the Reich.
** In Part 5, Argus is a prominent private military corporation which trains mercenaries for hire until being bought out by Tesla Dynamic and becoming a paramilitary organization under [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]].
* HistoricalCharactersFictionalRelative:
** The fictional Gediminas Princip is the Lithuanian cousin of the real life Gavrilo Princip...and also took his role as a terrorist assassin who set off World War I.
** Gavrilo Princip eventually survives World War I, gets married, and has a family, raising a fictional son Mihailo (who in Part 5 becomes the equivalent of John [=McCain=]). Mihailo in turn has his own son, Slobodan Princip...who is a (non-war criminal) counterpart of the notorious real life figure Slobodan Milosevic.
** Victoria Louise is based on the real life German duchess Victoria Louise, one of the children of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Zen moved her birth year back to make her a similar age as Otto, and her father is the fictional Duke Franz Ferdinand, leader of the Maximist branch of the Hohenzollerns (and who should not be confused for his friend Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, who is actually based on the OTL archduke). Duke Franz Ferdinand is depicted with photos of Wilhelm II.
** Anne Frank survives World War II, marries Peter (the boy who had hidden with her in the attic in OTL), and has a fictional daughter, Diana, and son, Tobias.
* HistoricalInJoke:
** The Inquisitor Munster explains that in 1962, nuclear war erupted between the Reich and the Soviet Commune over Cuba, but the Inquisition reset time to avert that.
** The Hohenzollernverse's version of Forrest Gump has Forrest be responsible for much the same events in the original film, only at the end he runs into the battlefield of Parnu and trips a fleeing Dmitry Yazov, ending the war.
* HistoricalRapSheet: The Smoking Man was responsible for murdering Abraham Green (Martin Luther King Jr.), Ragnar Beck (John F. Kennedy), and Mikhail Gorbachev. He also installed Zolton Huicton (Saddam Hussein) as a dictator in Mexico and caused the Miracle on Ice hockey victory.
* HistoryRepeats:
** When her grandson Friedrich is born, Wilhelmina flashes back to her own childhood, remembering her earliest memory of her great-grandmother Zita taking her to visit Otto in 1985, while her mother was trapped in Vienna. This scene was previously shown in 1985 and featured a conversation in which Zita encourages Otto to come out of his slump. Wilhelmina sees it from her own point of view as a three-year-old girl. In the present day, she promises Friedrich she will make sure his childhood isn't as dark.
** In 2036, Wilhelmina visits an abandoned house where fifty years earlier, her mother signed the peace treaty ending World War III. She sees echoes of that past event there and listens to her mother's words during the conference.
* HolyCity: Jerusalem remains a holy city here as in real life.
* UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire: One of the predecessors of the Reich and the empire Friedrich the Great eventually came to rule. It was united with the Byzantine Empire by political marriage and became a single realm with it under Friedrich the Glorious.
* HopeSpringsEternal:
** Even in the darkest hours of 1941, when all else seemed lost and he was reduced to a handful of Greek villages against the Angeloi onslaught, Otto remained hopeful he could turn things around, and he ultimately did.
** Sixty years later, in the aftermath of the November 9 attacks and Sentinel triumphant, Anders maintained hope, believing that as long as he was still alive, there was still a chance of defeating Sentinel.
** In 2037, although [[spoiler: global meritocracy/democracy]] is at its weakest, there is still hope the future will be better, as the true heir to the throne, Princess Wilhelmina, is still free to lead global opposition against [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]. A year later, though, [[spoiler: that hope is quickly snuffed out when Elias detonates hundreds of nukes over every major city and conquers Russia, starting World War IV.]] Hope does return when [[spoiler: Wilhelmina ultimately takes up the mantle of leadership and begins organizing a resistance in Persia]], but in 2039 [[spoiler: that is ''again'' snuffed out when Persia dismantles her movement, imprisons her, and exiles her supporters to die]]. Still, there is a shred of hope even after all that as [[spoiler: the supporters resolve to find a new home where they can keep their ideals alive]].
* TheHorde: The Mongols and Timurids were hordes of horse-riding nomads coming in from the east to plunder and conquer. While not horse riders due to not having horses, the Aztecs fulfilled the same purpose but from the west.
* HordesFromTheEast: The Mongols and Timurids of Part 1 invaded from the east, sweeping aside the Saray and Ghaznavid empires like they were nothing and going toe to toe with the Reich.
* HowTheMightyHaveFallen:
** The Soviet Commune went from being a spacefaring nuclear superpower on par with the Reich and China to being a second-rate backwater with a perpetually broken economy and a problem with drug cartels and corruption. However, by 2030, under the leadership of [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]] Russia had stabilized its economy and overcome the cartels and corruption...just in time to deal with [[spoiler: a hostile totalitarian Reich south of the border]].
** Mexico went from being the feared Mexica Empire, whose territories spanned across the New World and both sides of the Atlantic and whose armies went toe to toe with the Reich, to being a third-rate backwater with a perpetually broken economy and a problem with sectarian terrorists and corruption. However, after 2020, investment and aid from the Eimerican Federation succeeded in stabilizing Mexico, leaving it still mostly poor but at least stable now.
* HumanitysWake: This describes the aftermath of ancient humanity's end 150,000 years ago. After an unspecified cataclysm, humanity started over as hunter-gatherers, with few ruins of their former greatness.
* HumanSacrifice: Practiced by the Aztecs in Part 1 before being abolished in Part 2. Mexicanist extremists in Part 5 and Tarascan in Part 3 attempted to bring it back.
* HumongousMecha: Near the end of Part 2, a mysterious giant humanoid robot appears in the countryside outside Naples, wreaking havoc on local villages before Kaiser Friedrich Augustin IV leads an army to fight it. After the ensuing battle, the giant disappears, leaving no traces.
* IAmNotMyFather:
** Princess Wilhelmina ultimately came to realize that to be a good person and great ruler, she did not have to constantly emulate everything her mother did. She did not have to be a second Elisabeth Alexandra, only be true to herself and her ideals.
** Wilhelm Karl insisted he was not his father and spend his first twelve years on the throne attempting to be the opposite of Otto, believing this was how he could forge his own path. [[spoiler: He later realizes that he didn't have to tear everything down to be himself, but by then it was too late.]]
** Josh similarly insisted he was not his father, who was an abusive alcoholic who beat him and his mother and shot his innocent dog in the head while trying to turn a young Josh from a kindhearted kid into a cruel man. When he meets his father again years later, he realizes they aren't so different after all...but then Josh rejects his father again, saying he is what his father failed to be.
** Alex Humboldt intentionally went down a different path from both his father and mother, as his parents wanted him to have a civilian life far from any fighting.
** Anders Humboldt grew up believing his father Walter was an insane and immoral scientist who got an assistant killed in a lab accident and was subsequently institutionalized. For decades, he refused to call Walter anything other than "Walter," believing he was a madman. Anders raised himself to be different from Walter and not follow in his footsteps. His sister Anna likewise holds the same views towards Walter.
** Conrad Humboldt likewise also hated his father Robert Bischoff, even adopting his mother's last name to reject him. Conrad considered Robert a traitor for apparently siding with the Angeloi during World War II (while Conrad sided with the loyalists), not realizing that [[spoiler: Robert had been forced to work for the Angeloi against his will and was secretly sabotaging their nuclear weapons research program]]. Even after learning the truth, Conrad kept the Humboldt name and passed it down to his son, Walter.
** Theodor Tesla claimed he was much different from his adopted uncle and predecessor as CEO, Wilhelm Tesla, who had masterminded a crazy plot to destroy both the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse to make himself the god of a new reality. At first, it seemed like he was quite different as CEO of Tesla Dynamic. However, Theodor [[spoiler: ended up being just as crazy in the end, if not even crazier]].
* IHaveNoSon:
** Wilhelm Karl feared Otto thought of him like this, [[spoiler: especially after he killed him, but this is subverted when Wilhelm Karl converses with the ghost of his father, who explains he was only sad and disappointed in himself for not guiding Wilhelm Karl better]].
** Josh Johansen's abusive father Danuta definitely thought of his son like this, as Josh as a child was kind and timid instead of hypermasculine and violent like Danuta. However, by the time Josh meets his father again to receive this revelation, he has become even more bloodthirsty and brutal than his own father...[[spoiler: and this time, he himself disowns his father]].
** As children, Theodor Tesla and his younger sister Thea were orphaned after Red Army Faction terrorists killed their parents in the 1990s. Theodor grew up to be a bitter and spiteful man hating everything remotely left-wing, and once [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn seized power, he joined Elias' regime and passed strict laws against anything he perceived as left-wing, including women's rights]]. On the other hand, his sister Thea, who had fallen in love with her coworker Alex Humboldt, did not share her brother's hatred. When Theodor ordered Thea to choose between him or Alex, Thea chose Alex. This led Theodor to attempt to hunt down the two of them with Argus. [[spoiler: When Argus surrounds and prepares to execute them, Theodor declares Thea is no sister of his for constantly siding with Alex against him...but Thea herself embraces the disowning]].
** Ruby Moreau has disowned her little brother Kurt Moreau for staying with the Argus private security corporation after [[spoiler: Argus became the Committee's paramilitary secret police]].
* TheIdealist:
** Anders Humboldts is an idealist who believes in revealing the objective truth to the public, even when it is a painful truth the public does not want to hear. He fought for 23 years to expose a government conspiracy to support an alien invasion of Earth, believing it was in the people's interests to know of it.
** Prince Horst von Hohenzollern believes in a universal ideal of justice which is his duty to uphold. He went into the military with the hope of bringing justice to evildoers and protecting the weak and helpless, in line with traditional ideals of knightly chivalry.
** Thierry Baudet envisions a Reich free of what he views as the party cartel, the mainstream political establishment which has ruled the Reich for two hundred years. He considers the establishment as having grown stagnant and complacent, content in keeping the unsustainable status quo while social inequality increases and the environment collapses around the world. Forming a new political faction, The Forum, Thierry hopes to present a new opinion and political voice to represent those forgotten by the party cartel. With The Forum in politics, he hopes that the party cartel can either be set on a new and better course or be replaced with The Forum to bring new blood into government.
** Olga Kirova calls Wilhelmina an idealist and encourages her to remain hopeful while Olga handles all of the gritty and pragmatic stuff.
* IJustWantToBeNormal:
** Princess Wilhelmina doesn't see anything wrong with being a princess, but she also doesn't want to stay above everyone else. Sometimes, she just wants to have a normal life.
** Anne Frank attempted to raise her daughter Diana away from the rough and lonely life of a resistance leader, spy, and Athanatoi agent, making sure Diana had both of her parents growing up (unlike Anne, who lost her parents at 12). But her efforts weren't successful, as Diana ultimately followed her mother into the Athanatoi against her will.
** Diana herself also tried raising her son Alex away from the life of an Athanatoi agent, going as far as to not teach him any fighting skills. Unlike her own mother, she was definitely successful, as Alex instead became a physicist.
* {{Immortality}}: Various supernatural and celestial beings are immortal, although most can still be killed.
** Vampires don't age, but they can be killed by decapitation, among other things, or turned back into normal humans by the Inquisition's technology.
** Angels and demons, as celestial beings, are immortal, but they can be killed with specific anti-angel or anti-demon weapons or spells. However, angels cannot be permanently killed, instead reviving after several centuries.
** Presumably God is immortal, but little is known about God.
** Pagan gods are also immortal, with many having existed for thousands of years, but they can be hurt like normal humans and possibly killed by supernatural abilities like demonic powers. One pagan god sacrificed his life force to fuel a powerful spell, although he said he would revive after several centuries, much like angels.
** A 10th century Frenchwoman named Jenny inadvertently gained immortality after making a wish with a traveling djinn that turned her into another djinn. She spent the next thousand years granting wishes and watching the wishes inevitably backfire on everyone, until X-Division met her and Anders used his wish to grant her own: to become mortal again.
** Sentinel's supersoldiers are a rare non-magical example. They are almost completely invincible, surviving the most deadly situations like being tossed in an ocean for months, being crushed by a garbage truck, electrocuted on power lines, shot dozens of times, blown up in big explosions, and being set on fire. They can only be killed by decapitation or after being reverted to normal humans by a Sentinel failsafe.
** The Worm is immortal due to existing outside of time.
* ImperialChina: China is still a monarchy under the Ming Dynasty, although the Song (Australian), Jin (Californian), and Tran (Vietnamese) dynasties also still exist. China was Rome's archnemesis in Parts 3-4 and a friendly ally and rival to Rome after 1989 in Part 5. However, as of 2030, the [[spoiler: Song Dynasty]] was overthrown and replaced with a republic, while the [[spoiler: Jin Dynasty]] was marginalized by a powerful nationalist legislature and the Tran ceded most power and influence to the transnational Srivijaya Commonwealth. And throughout that decade, the nationalist Han Xianyu amasses power in mainland China, by 2039 [[spoiler: turning it into another totalitarian regime opposed to the Reich]].
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: Initially played straight during Otto's escape from Berlin in Part 4, where the Angeloi soldiers shooting at him all missed, something he remarked on, [[spoiler: but later revealed to be subverted because the now-angel Saint Wilhelmina, secretly possessing Victoria Louise, redirected all of the bullets away for their safety]].
* ImposterForgotOneDetail: In the Fringe arc of Part 5, the Annionaverse counterpart of [[spoiler: Angela Hansen]] secretly switches places with her Hohenzollernverse counterpart as part of the Annionaverse X-Division's plan to spy on its counterpart and sabotage all of its operations. This trope is actually subverted because the imposter herself did a very bad job of disguising her own identity, like naming the wrong actors for movies, the wrong movie endings, inadvertently insulting late family and friends her counterpart was very close to, and even dismissing the entire Sentinel conspiracy. Yet she only says this stuff to Anders Humboldt, who despite dozens of warning flags overlooks everything and sees nothing wrong. The imposter soon learns of Anders' cluelessness and takes it up a notch by intentionally saying more errors just to see how far she can go. She is ultimately only busted when [[spoiler: her Hohenzollernverse counterpart herself escapes imprisonment and outright calls Anders about her situation]].
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Anne Frank developed a tactic she called "blind firing," in which she learned to instinctively fire without stopping to aim but still hit her target with a generally fatal shot. This tactic was passed down to her daughter, Diana, and Olga Kirova and Angelica Haus.
* InMediasRes: The story begins in 1236, when the Roman Empire was dealing with the 13th Century Crisis, with events from 1066 to 1236 revealed later on.
* InsecureProtagonistArrogantAntagonist: As of 2035, there are multiple insecure protagonists and arrogant antagonists.
** Princess Wilhelmina is nervous and shy. She does not like leading people, nor does she think she is a good leader. She fears herself or her family being targeted by her many enemies if she stands up. However, when she realizes she will still be targeted regardless of what she does, she becomes more assertive.
** Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen barely escaped a genocidal regime which wants them dead. Now in exile, they are split on what to do next: either protest the injustices happening at home and risk their family still trapped there being targeted, or stay quiet and concede to the regime that way. Alex is worried about his new life and if he can really make a difference in the world.
** Josh has become a smug and arrogant man who gloats about his superiority, beats down everyone who opposes him, and constantly spouts hypermasculine and ultranationalist propaganda. Sometimes, he mocks his enemies, saying he will kill their families right before killing them, or mocks any opponents who are still alive, saying he has completely won.
** Many protagonists remark on how supporters and important individuals of [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime]], among them [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn and Theodor Tesla]], have a trademark smug look on their faces, as if gloating about their victory.
* InSpiteOfANail: Despite the point of divergence happening in the 11th century, many elements of 20th-21st century society are still remarkably familiar compared to OTL. Many movies, video games, books, and even video game ''mods'' are still the same, with varying degrees of difference. World War II even plays out similarly to real life, with the final Eastern Europe postwar borders nearly exactly the same. The archangel Uriel justifies this as something called dimensional convergence, where two universes start to overlap in events and cultures despite having very different origins. He warns the ultimate outcome of convergence is the two universes overlapping so much that they destroy each other, and his goal is to cause a major event in one universe (World War I) which would cause the two universes to diverge again.
* InterdimensionalTravelDevice:
** Walter invented two separate methods of crossing over to the Annionaverse, one which would tear a hole in reality to get there (destabilizing the Annionaverse's reality in the process), and the other by means of Angela Hansen tapping into psychic powers to bring everyone over there.
** David Jansen created another method of crossing over by tearing open a similar portal at a weak point in reality, only he powered it by using a crystal in Mina Schaefer's robotic arm.
** Annionaverse Walter Humboldt found two other ways of crossing over. In the first method, he waits for the two universes' frequencies to line up and then "pushing" the person/object into the other universe. In the second, he uses the law of conservation of mass to "swap" two objects of the same mass.
* InvadedStatesOfAmerica: The Reich launched the Sunrise Invasion in the late 18th century with the goal of avenging the Sunset Invasion and permanently ending the Mexica Empire as a major threat. A century later, Roman troops invaded the Meskwaki Empire from allied Kanata as part of the Great Eimerican Wars to maintain the status quo in North Eimerica.
* InvadingRefugees:
** In the 2010s, many Mexican refugees fled Mexico because of the brutality of the so-called Mexicanist State terrorist group (MSC). They settled in Roman Neurhomania, where locals feared they could have been infiltrated by terrorists and turned into an invasion force for MSC.
** In the 2030s, many [[spoiler: Roman]] refugees fled [[spoiler: the Reich]] because of the brutality of the so-called [[spoiler: Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]] regime. They settled in Russia and Persia, where locals fear they may have brought the regime's spies and beliefs with them as a fifth column. These locals ultimately influence the Persian government, which [[spoiler: becomes nationalistic and xenophobic to the point where it expels all Romans and exiles them to certain death]] in 2039.
* InvincibleHero: Saint Wilhelmina never lost a single battle and even received an in game power up that boosted her martial stats to ridiculous levels so that ''it was almost impossible for her to lose any game battle'', even if she was ridiculously outnumbered.
* InvincibleVillain: Josh Johansen shaped up to be an invincible villain, as he hadn't lost a single battle since his fight with Alex in middle school. Every single battle he participated in only makes him stronger and more arrogant. He went from beating up protesters to slaughtering East African rebels to [[spoiler: teabagging the body of the chancellor of India right after murdering her and crippling the emperor of India]]. He even went up against the legendary [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]] herself and ''easily won''. His gear also got an upgrade as he continues. After defeating [[spoiler: Diana Frank]], he took her motorcycle and modified it into a dangerous weapon of war. After killing [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]], he takes her weapons and makes them his own. In April 2039, [[spoiler: he ultimately got his comeuppance due to the ingenuity and teamwork of Alex and his friends countering his strength and brutality]].
* InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves:
** The Soviets claim this of the capitalist system in Parts 3-5, believing the Reich would inevitably collapse in on itself due to the wealth inequality and social stratification of its society. In 1986, Vyacheslav Molotov warned that if the Reich continued on its current path, it would suffer the same fate as the Soviets within fifty years. [[spoiler: In a way, he was completely right, as by 2036 the Reich had become an even worse totalitarian regime.]]
** When negotiating a deal with the aliens, the Syndicate threatened to make humanity destroy itself in nuclear war to deny a habitable Earth to the aliens.
** The Worm cult ''wants'' humanity to destroy itself in nuclear war so they can rule over the ashes.
* IronLady: Margaret Thatcher still exists as the Iron Lady (known as the Eisenfrau) and pursued a hawkish foreign policy alongside Roland Wilson and Golda Meier.
* IsntItIronic: Attempted to be averted by Zen every time he posts a link for recommended listening music, such as using "Every Breath You Take" when X-Division is literally being watched by the Sentinel conspiracy as they escape certain death. Even the ''genre and era'' of the songs chosen is tailored to the time period and character. When Angela is one of the main characters, the songs chosen are usually hits from the 80s and 90s, as Angela constantly listens to them on her Walkman. When Wilhelmina becomes a main character, Zen begins using video game music as Wilhelmina grew up on video games. In newer chapters, Zen even posts commentary on the context each track was originally used in and how that same context even applies to this story.
* IstanbulNotConstantinople: Due to this being an alternate history, there are plenty.
** Of course, Istanbul is Constantinople. In the Annionaverse, Constantinople was renamed to Konstanstadt.
** Many Central/Eastern European cities still have German names. For example, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and Kaliningrad are still known as Danzig, Breslau, and Konigsberg.
** New York City is known as both Manhattan and Gunnolfsfell.
** Quebec City is known as Markland.
** Boston is Harbor City.
** Germany, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Romania, and Turkey are known as Germania, Gallia, Britannia, Hibernia, Caledonia, Hispania, Lusitania, Italia, Illyria, Dacia, and Anatolia.
** Although the name Iran is used by Persians, the nation is still generally known as Persia by non-Persians.
** Ethiopia is mainly known as Abyssinia, although Ethiopia is also acceptable.
** The Americas are known as the Eimericas, although China calls it Fusang and Mexico calls it Cemanahuac.
** Australia is known as Penglai.
** The Byzantine Empire was never known as such and is always referred to as either the Empire of the Greeks, the Eastern/Sceond Empire, or simply as the Roman Empire/Basileia Rhomaion.
* JackOfAllStats:
** Saint Wilhelmina's game stats in Part 1 were the highest of any playable Hohenzollern ever.
** In Part 5, when war broke out between the Reich and the Soviet Commune, Zen gave the Soviets an insane boost to all military-related stats. In 2039, when [[spoiler: World War IV began]], the same stat boost was reused and given to [[spoiler: China]].
* JerksAreWorseThanVillains: Josh arguably comes across as even worse than the main villain of the Committee story arc, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]. While [[spoiler: Elias]]' motives are understandable and he is brutal and crazy in his methods, Josh is even worse as not only shows no remorse but in fact feels nothing but glee and euphoria when he kills, making even [[spoiler: Theodor Tesla]] scared of him. He has a terribly warped view of toxic masculinity and is willing to insult and abuse his own uncle Gustav if Gustav doesn't adhere to those standards. He has no qualms with murdering innocents at all and just lives to make people suffer.
* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Josh is an irredeemable jerk whose jerkiness gets worse and worse with not only nobody to call him out but also everyone around him encouraging and celebrating his worst qualities. He has now become a brutal soldier who feels nothing but euphoria when he guns down innocent civilians, and he'd gladly do it again. For higher profile kills like [[spoiler: the chancellor of India]], he will even teabag their bodies to assert his dominance.
* JusticeWillPrevail: Prince Horst's motto during his campaign against terrorist groups in Mexico and Malaya. He believed in a universal code of justice and spent his life (also sacrificing it) in defense of it. Ironically, Elias Anhorn also believes the same thing...though his definition of justice wildly differs.
* JustTheFirstCitizen: Friedrich the Great considered himself merely the first citizen among the Roman people, and Wilhelmina wants to follow in his footsteps.
* {{Kaiserreich}}: The Reich has been occasionally referred to as the Kaiserreich. It is a German-style monarchy which in the past had heavy militaristic, aristocratic, and industrial themes. The head of state is referred to as the Kaiser, and portraits of historical German and Austrian monarchs were used to depict various Kaisers. The ruling dynasty is also named the Hohenzollerns, although they are not the historical Hohenzollerns. In the game code for Part 5, Zen explains he gave the Reich a special government type called "Kaiserreich."
* KickTheDog: Josh's father Danuta straight up forces Josh to shoot his dog in the head as a punishment for not being manly enough.
* KidHeroAllGrownUp: Anne, Diana, Olga, Angela, and Otto were all introduced as children or teenagers and are/were last seen in old age.
* KillItWithFire: The go-to solution for neutralizing Worm artifacts is to have an angel teleport them into the sun and incinerate them there. Sarah outright says to kill them with fire.
* KillSat:
** The Reich pursued its own version of the real life Strategic Defense Initiative (here called SVI from its German translation), a network of satellites designed to shoot down incoming nukes and get around mutually assured destruction. Unlike in real life, the project was completed and the satellite network went online in 1985. Over the next few decades, it was upgraded to not only shoot down nukes with lasers but also hit targets on the ground with energy blasts and rail gun tungsten rounds. In 2038, [[spoiler: it met its end as China destroyed it with anti-satellite weapons, filling Earth's orbit with high speed debris and rendering space travel extremely difficult]].
** In April 2039, Ryukyu deployed its own orbital weapons network, dubbed Ten-Gushiku. Each Amamikiyu satellite in the Ten-Gushiku network is equipped with multiple independently firing coilguns which fire projectiles with far more power than the Roman system ever did, [[spoiler: obliterating an entire Chinese fleet in its initial deployment]].
* KingIncognito: In 1989, as pro-democracy protesters gather in Nanjing to demand an end to the military junta ruling China for the last 50 years, the junta instead sends in tanks to crush them. As the tanks roll in, a lone man in a suit emerges from the crowd to stand in their way. He announces he is the Emperor of China himself, having gone incognito to participate in the protests away from the prying eyes of the junta, and orders the soldiers to stand down. They oblige, and the junta collapses soon afterward.
* KlingonPromotion:
** After he returns from Europe defeated by the Reich and Scandinavia, Tlacaelel Acatl bribes the Mexica court and then kills the huetlatoani with a single gunshot, taking his throne for himself at the end of Part 1.
** In Part 5, Valentin Varennikov has General Secretary Gorbachev assassinated and then seizes power for himself.
** After Valentin is himself captured by Olga Kirova and Anne Frank and effectively deposed, Dmitry Yazov releases a fake story claiming he had been killed and then seizes power for himself.
** In 2030, with Thierry Baudet's CB party victorious in the recent examinations and about to form a new administration, Thierry's second-in-command Elias Anhorn [[spoiler: stages a coup which not only wipes out almost all of the Roman government but kills Thierry and most of his inner circle, leaving nobody to oppose his seizure of power]].
** In April 2039, after [[spoiler: the Battle of Isfahan]] in which [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn is killed and Theodor Tesla is captured]], the remaining members of the Committee reorganize their own government to [[spoiler: sideline Theodor, forget Elias]], and strip all lower-ranking Committee leaders of their authority, centralizing power in the top three Regents: [[spoiler: Philemon Moria, Josiah Burkard, and Heinrich Dandolo]].
* LackOfEmpathy: Wilhelm Karl initially showed a lack of empathy when his sister and mother died, although this is implied to not be the full story, and Wilhelm Karl claims the media took his reactions out of context to create controversy. He most certainly showed no sympathy (even fake sympathy) when [[spoiler: he murdered his father and his brother died]]. In one high-profile case involving Japanese democracy activists protesting outside the palace, he not only showed no empathy but ordered them all arrested and deported back to certain death in Japan...[[spoiler: although by this point he was forced to show no sympathy and do all this by Elias Anhorn. In reality, he felt completely disgusted by what he had done.]]
* LadyOfWar: Even as older women, Anne and Diana Frank still maintained an aura of elegance and strength as they put their enemies in their places. In her older years, Olga Kirova still joined the battlefield on some occasions, intervening to save [[spoiler: Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen]] from Argus at the age of almost 70. Here, she used her commanding and intimidating presence, as well as her reputation and [[spoiler: political power]], to secure the outcomes she wanted independently of fighting.
* TheLateMiddleAges: Part 1 continued through to the Late Middle Ages, when the Mexica Empire was decisively pushed out of Europe and the Augustinian Code was written.
* TheLastDance:
** The angel Constantine went down in a blaze of glory at the end of the doomed timeline, using all of his remaining strength to save his brother Wilhelm and send him back in time.
** [[spoiler: Angela Hansen]] also went down in a blaze of glory at the end of her life. Surrounded by Argus mercenaries out to slaughter her and her family, she sacrificed herself and took out as many of Argus as she could to save her family.
** To protect her friend, [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]], from being captured by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn's Crusaders]], [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]] sacrificed herself to take down as many enemies as possible to distract them from [[spoiler: Wilhelmina]]'s escape, ultimately being [[spoiler: executed by Elias]].
* LastOfHisKind:
** Kaiserin Victoria Louise was the last of the distant Maximist branch of Hohenzollerns. The rest of her family had been murdered by Markos Angelos in the final days of World War II, while her children were legally considered descendants of her husband Otto's main Siegfriedist branch. [[spoiler: Subverted when it is found that both branches are really descended from the same original branch, making the distinctions pointless.]]
** The senator Izinchi Ochimeca is [[spoiler: the only survivor of Elias Anhorn's Reichstag massacre, having luckily escaped by virtue of being out of town for her sister's wedding]].
** August, an aspiring doctor, finds himself the last survivor of [[spoiler: the Schweinfurt family after Elias Anhorn ordered them purged]].
** As of April 2039, [[spoiler: Ilyana Romanova]] is the last of the [[spoiler: Russian Romanov family]], and [[spoiler: the main branch of the Hohenzollern dynasty]] has been reduced to two members: [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina and her grandson Friedrich]].
* LastStand:
** After the fall of Constantinople in 1941, it looked like it was the end of the loyalist cause. From a village outside Constantinople, Otto rallied his troops for one last offensive to retake the city, knowing if he lost, it would be all over for him.
** In April 2039, as [[spoiler: World War IV]] reaches its climax, the remaining forces of the free world make their last stand against the armies of totalitarianism. In Scandinavia, the former rebel Clara leads the townspeople of Tingvalla in a desperate battle to defend their town against an invading army. In Lithuania, [[spoiler: Boris Bradziunas]] and his men engage their enemies in trench warfare despite being heavily outnumbered. In Mesopotamia, the young soldier Samir Tetchu and his comrades are besieged by an overwhelming and unrelenting onslaught, leaving them no choice but to dig in and hold the line. At Hawaii, the brilliant Ryukyuan admiral Higa Ryunosuke leads his fleet of outdated battleships, old aircraft carriers, captured enemy ships, and exiled navies from conquered nations against the most powerful enemy fleets in the Pacific. And finally, in Persia, [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina's resistance]] faces its greatest challenge as [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn personally leads an army to invade Isfahan]], while the scientists Alex, Alexandra, Thea, and Magnus prepare to fight [[spoiler: Theodor Tesla and Josh Johansen]].
* LawfulStupid: Manfred believes if he and everyone else follows the law, no matter how ridiculous the law gets, everything will be okay. That is why he does absolutely nothing and tries to follow the law even as the Reich [[spoiler: turns into a totalitarian dictatorship and begins "disappearing" his fellow citizens]]. Of course, this [[spoiler: doesn't end well]] for him.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Diana Frank inadvertently does this twice.
** The first time is in 2001 when she meets an eccentric Italian man implied to be God and plays checkers with him. The man makes cryptic allusions as to all of reality being just like the game of checkers, to which Diana refuses to believe that all of her reality is merely part of a game being played by someone and watched by someone else.
** The second time is in 2014 when she escapes a highly realistic virtual reality created by the latest incarnation of the COS. Upon returning to the real world, she briefly questions if she isn't in yet another simulation, staring off into nowhere in particular (implied to be the "camera"), before saying everything is too real to be another simulation.
* LeaveHimToMe: On April 2, 2039, as the [[spoiler: Battle of Isfahan]] rages on, [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]] faces down her sworn enemy, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]]. Her friend and ally, [[spoiler: Gunduz]], offers to instantly obliterate him with a single tank round, but she refuses, as she wants to deal with him herself.
* LegendaryWeapon: The sword Enonon is well known as the legendary heirloom of the Hohenzollerns, a symbol of their legitimacy and right to rule for having elevated Friedrich the Great from a lowly baron of a Holy Roman Empire border march to the Kaiser of the Romans. Pretenders to the throne, as well as exiled princes and princesses, seek to claim the sword to prove they are the rightful rulers of the Reich. Many Romans, including [[spoiler: Wilhelmina's daughter-in-law Lisa]], the Varangian [[spoiler: Justin Wassermann]], and [[spoiler: Jessica/Yulia Ilyushina]], sacrifice their lives to either protect the sword or get it to the rightful heir to the throne. In 2038, it is revealed that [[spoiler: Enonon has a latent power that can be drawn out by the right wielder, or rather that it can channel the latent power within the right wielder to enhance its use]].
* LikeFatherLikeSon:
** Diana Frank and Olga Kirova certainly followed in the footsteps of their mothers Anne Frank and Tatiana Kirova by becoming special agents and highly trained spies. However, neither Anne nor Tatiana wanted their daughters to follow them into their dangerous careers.
** Alexandra Hansen inherited some degree of her mother Angela's feisty temper (at least the temper Angela had when she was younger), as well as her red hair.
** Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra inherited her father Otto's charisma, eagerness to help others, and tolerant and understanding personality. In turn, Elisabeth Alexandra's daughter Wilhelmina inherited these same traits, being very similar to her mother as a result, to the point where she based almost her entire personality around emulating her respected mother.
** Ultimately seen to be fulfilled by Josh with his father Danuta. However, although Josh acknowledges they are very similar, he claims they are ultimately different in that he succeeded where his father failed and has become what his father failed to be, a vulture who ruthlessly takes advantage of every opportunity.
** Funny enough, Olga's niece Tania Kirova followed in her footsteps, despite both Tania's mother and Olga herself disapproving of her career choice. But instead of becoming a spy, Tania is now an admiral and a sniper.
* LikeFatherUnlikeSon:
** Alex Humboldt certainly did not follow in his mother Diana's footsteps, which was something she actually wanted. Instead, he became a physicist.
** Initially seen to be fulfilled by Josh Johansen and his father Danuta, as Josh intentionally tried to be different from his abusive father, but later subverted when he realizes he ended up almost exactly like his father.
** Wilhelm Karl did not approve of his father Otto's perceived weakness, instead striving to be himself, be a man, and be the exact opposite of his father by taking control and commanding respect from the nation. [[spoiler: He later realizes he was a fool to do this and sought to make up for it.]]
* LikeASonToMe: Anne Frank considers Olga to be like her second daughter, hoping to make up for failing to save Olga's mother, her best friend. Olga also considers Anne to be her second mother and Diana Frank to be her sister.
* LittleMissBadass:
** At the age of 12, Anne Frank lost her parents to the Angeloi and vowed revenge. With the help of the billionaire and retired superhero vigilante Tobias Wagner, she trained in martial arts, and by the age of 13 she was a feared fighter who exacted justice upon the Angeloi.
** Decades later, Olga Kirova was orphaned at the age of 6, allegedly by Anne. Valentin Varennikov adopted her and raised her as a KGB super-assassin. At 16, Olga could singlehandedly take down entire Roman platoons with little more than a pistol and her bare hands. When Anne told her the truth about her parents' deaths, Olga immediately turned on Valentin and easily defeated him and all of the soldiers he sent after her.
* LivingLegend: Kaiser Otto's long reign exceeds the lifespan of the Soviet Commune, the Chinese junta, and the Angeloi regime. Ascending to the throne when he was 6 in 1918 and reigning until he was 107 in 2018, he lived through many different eras from the Imperial Century to the modern day and established many hallmarks of the current world order.
* LostTechnology: The ancient human civilization had technology far exceeding that of the 21st century. It had healing machines that could heal critical wounds in minutes, spaceships, advanced energy weapons, and even a machine that could destroy the reality of an entire universe (though that was due to [[spoiler: time travel from the future]]). 21st century humanity does not know how to build any of this.
* LoveAtFirstSight: After being accidentally run over by Thea Tesla when he tried to jaywalk, Alex Humboldt instantly fell in love with her when she took off her helmet to apologize. To his benefit, she also fell in love with him and asked him on a date.
* LovecraftLite: The fight against the Worm currently seems to fit. The focus isn't on this conflict, but from what has been seen there have been few Lovecraftian tropes fully implemented. Wilhelm doesn't go fully insane from encountering the Worm (although it's implied he and his human host would if they had encountered It longer), there are no themes of hopelessness in the face of an uncaring cosmos, and it seems like there may be a definitive end to this fight (even if the Worm Itself can't be destroyed permanently).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:M-R]]
* MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter: Thea Tesla is Theodor Tesla's little sister and his equal when it comes to technological matters. However, she did not inherit Theodor's blind hatred for all things left-wing and [[spoiler: eventually betrays him to protect her boyfriend, Alex Humboldt]].
* MagicVersusScience: Subverted in how the Inquisition integrates science and technology with magic. They now have guns firing magic-infused bullets, phones that can cast spells on the go, and combat golems to deploy in wartime, among other things.
* {{Magitek}}: The Inquisition explaining, controlling, and manipulating magic with the newest technology. Magic-infused knives made in the medieval period to fight angels and demons were replaced with guns that could do the same thing but more effectively. Spellbooks and tomes are now replaced with phones.
* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: At least two of Kaiserin Ida's children with Friedrich the Great were actually illegitimate, having been fathered by two other men.
* MamaBear: One neo-Angeloi thought it was a good idea to hold Diana's son Alex hostage. He thought wrong as Diana put him in his place.
* ManchurianAgent: [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]] was secretly brainwashed by the KGB as a failsafe against betrayal, with the programming triggered by listening to certain codewords on a tape. [[spoiler: Her father Boris Kirov]] was similarly brainwashed.
* MartyrdomCulture: The Norse in Parts 1-3 before World War I believed dying in battle guaranteed them a place in Valhalla, and so they made every effort to martyr themselves in combat. This practice died out after Scandinavia's defeat and partition in World War I, after which the Scandinavians abandoned the more militaristic elements of their faith.
* MasqueradeEnforcer: One of the Inquisition's primary goals is to keep the supernatural world hidden from the mundane world.
* MeaningfulRename:
** America is named Eimerica instead, after the explorer Kristoff Eimerich. The Aztecs call the New World Cemanahuac, while the Chinese call it Fusang.
** Sometime in late Part 3 or early Part 4, "barrels" (a shout-out to the TL-191 book series) became referred to as "tanks" as in OTL. Zen initially made this retcon for his own convenience, but in Part 5 it is explained that the name change also occurred in-universe.
** Between the 2010s and 2030s, many names in the Eimericas became renamed with native or Norse names. Manhattan (despite being a native-based name) became Gunnolfsfell.
** After 2037, [[spoiler: the Reich]] is officially dissolved and replaced with a regime known as the [[spoiler: Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem]].
* MenDontCry: Josh believes it is unmanly to cry or show any emotions.
* MentorArchetype: Oskar sought to be this for his students Alex and Josh, but while Alex took his advice and teachings to heart, Josh outright rejected them.
* MexicoCalledTheyWantTexasBack: The region that in OTL would be Texas (here known as Hasiinay) has been part of the Mexica Empire/Mexico for centuries, but it was taken by the Meskwaki Empire and would be fought over for many decades. By Part 5, Mexico has not only lost the region to an independent Hasiinay, but Hasiinay has itself taken territory south of the Rio Grande from Mexico. Mexico naturally wants the land back.
* TheMiddleAges: This is when the series begins, with the Reich forming in the twelfth century.
* MissionControl: Annie was the "girl in the chair" for the Bremerhaven rebels, specifically Clara, Angelica, and Anna, but she wasn't particularly good at it...
* ModernMayincatecEmpire: Justified, as the Native [[MeaningfulRename Eimerican]] civilizations of this world were much more advanced than their counterparts in real life, having already been in control of large swathes of land by the time the Europeans arrived in the New World (an earlier Norse visit which went wrong was responsible for the natives getting their new technology). The Inca Empire still rules a good chunk of South Eimerica in the 21st century, bordering the Roman colony of Neurhomania. The Aztecs were the dominant Eimerican superpower until the 18th century when they were permanently crippled by the Reich's Sunrise Invasion, while the Mayans remain a major commercial and trade power into the 21st century. All three and the other Eimerican nations are now united under the Eimerican Federation, a supranational entity much like the European Union only much more powerful and centralized.
* TheMole:
** Reinhard Heydrich in Part 4 was secretly an Angeloi spy feeding loyalist information to Angelos. This led to the loss of Constantinople to the Angeloi and Otto being forced into a small village in the countryside.
** In Part 5, [[spoiler: Gertrude Anhorn]] was a mole within [[spoiler: Wilhelm Karl]]'s secret plot to escape [[spoiler: Elias' blackmail]].
* MoralDisambiguation: In the early 2000s, much emphasis was placed on the fact that politics and diplomacy was morally gray, and even the Roman government made questionable policy decisions like waging overseas wars and ignoring many social issues at home. This went out the window starting in 2030 when [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn took over and turned the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship that commits genocide and other human rights abuses and then sought to conquer and genocide the entire world]] starting in 2038.
* MoreDespicableMinion: Josh Johansen proved to be more despicable than his own bosses in [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] and [[spoiler: Theodor Tesla]]. He gleefully kills everyone he's told to kill without feeling anything, in fact feeling euphoria as he does so. He won't hesitate to bash in a little boy's skull and then teabag his corpse. He sent his own wife to execution for a relatively minor offense, then afterward has no problems with marrying a child and then abusing her so badly she dies. Family ties mean nothing to him: he delights in killing his own abusive dad and tormenting his uncle. Even [[spoiler: Theodor Tesla]] is shocked at how monstrous Josh can be.
* MultiversalConqueror:
** Wilhelm Tesla sought to destroy both the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse so he could become the god of a new universe.
** Diana's visions imply the Annionaverse of the future will invade and possibility conquer the Hohenzollernverse.
* MultiMookMelee: Anne Frank, Tatiana Kirova, Diana Frank, and Olga Kirova frequently took on many enemies at the same time, easily defeating them all.
* {{Multiverse}}: Many universes where history diverged in various ways exist simultaneously, but divine realms such as Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are separated from it, therefore encompassing every universe in existence all the same. And then the Soviets of the Hohenzollernverse managed to nuke Heaven first.
* {{Nanomachines}}:
** The Jotun aliens intended to take over the world by infecting humanity with a virus that turns humans into slaves and incubators for new Jotun. This virus would be delivered by a nanobot swarm known as the black oil, which in turn would be delivered by bees. The black oil itself could infect targets on its own through an advanced AI system that could seek out organic life forms.
** Pavel Novak used a nanobot-only derivative of the black oil to infect Erich Hansen and take over his body's cardiovascular functions with the nanobots, allowing him to effectively hold Erich's own body hostage by directing the nanobots to induce a stroke or heart attack at will.
* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Gandhi's Rasas and Angelos' Angeloi are fascist organizations that rose to power in India and the Reich in the 1920s and 30s, with Gandhi and his Rasas particularly pursuing many real life Nazi policies.
* NaziNobleman: The Angeloi family, at the center of the fascist Angeloi faction, are nobles. Because they were nobles, after the war Otto rendered the nobility powerless to prevent another rebellion from families like the Angeloi.
* NearVillainVictory:
** The Worm had basically won and taken over all of reality in the alternate 1453, but Wilhelm traveled back time at the last moment to stop that.
** By 2035, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] had taken over the entire Reich, with the people firmly behind him and all serious opposition destroyed. The former members of the X-Division [[spoiler: died trying but failing to stop him]]. Everything seems bleak as [[spoiler: Elias continues turning the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship]], but all hope hasn't been lost yet, as the princess Wilhelmina has fled to Russia, where she helps a growing resistance movement. [[spoiler: Hope is then lost when Russia is conquered in November 2038, forcing Wilhelmina to flee again, but it is regained when she arrives in Persia to rebuild her movement, and then it is dashed ''again'' when a nationalist Persian government dismantles her movement and imprisons her]].
* NegativeSpaceWedgie: The Philosopher's Stone in Part 5 was a mysterious artifact connected to the Worm, with accompanying reality warping powers. The Rasa general Patel was transformed into a Worm-corrupted human when he used it, while Arabia Gruber and Diana Frank simply got visions of the future when they used it. Sentinel also attempted to use it to manipulate historical events by pulling Theodora Doukas out of the timeline and attempting to kill her before she could become the first female Roman senator.
* {{Nephilim}}: The angel Sarah Milton's daughters, Kaiserin Wilhelmina II and Victoria I, were both nephilim, with some angelic powers. However, they didn't have any opportunity to use their abilities, and both died childless.
* TheNewTens: Angela Merkel was chancellor of Rome this entire decade, which also saw the final downfall of Sentinel, the second interaction with the Annionaverse, and the rise of Thierry Baudet. Kaiser Otto died in 2018 and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm Karl.
* TheNewTwenties: More environmental awareness happened this decade. Merkel remained chancellor the entire decade. Compared to the previous decade, not much else happened so far other than the founding of the Eimerican Federation and Srivijaya Commonwealth at the start of the decade and a military intervention in East Africa at the end of it.
* NGOSuperpower:
** Tesla Dynamic is a large multinational corporation with business interests in every country
** The Shepherds' Brotherhood is the largest charity in the Reich.
** Argus is the largest private military company in the world.
* NoBudget: Russia constantly went bankrupt every few years between 1986 and 2030.
* NoDoubtTheYearsHaveChangedMe:
** After the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 and shenanigans with the Annionaverse in 2011, Anders Humboldt comes to the realization that he is no longer the same person he was in 1992 when he began his quest to uncover the Syndicate.
** Wilhelm Karl gradually reconsiders his previous "vulture" mentality after certain events in 2030.
* NomDeGuerre:
** Anne Frank adopted the nickname "Valkyrie" during her war years.
** Olga had the codename "Firebird."
** Julian Anniona adopted the pseudonym Julius Andersen when interacting with Persian politicians.
** In the Annionaverse, Angelica Neumann is known as the "Valkyrie of Alençon."
* NoNameGiven:
** Even about twenty years after his introduction, LKR Guy still has no official name, being referred to only as "the LKR guy" or whatever his current job is.
** The Smoking Man, a recurring antagonist to X-Division, intentionally has no name given other than "the smoking man" or "Cigarette Guy." Investigating his past, X-Division finds he could be known as Karl Gerhard Busch Verbringen, but that name is very likely to be a pseudonym like hundreds of other names, and thus the Smoking Man remains nameless.
* NoFullNameGiven:
** The police officer and later Police Commissioner Kresge has been a recurring ally to X-Division since his first appearance in the 1990s, ultimately rising to [[spoiler: reluctant leader of the Roman resistance]]...but he has yet to receive a first name of any kind.
* NorseByNorsewest: The Vikings before Part 1 went northwest to discover the Eimericas. Some were captured by natives and over time made their way to Mexico, teaching their technology to the natives and leading to the creation of the Mexica Empire, the main antagonist of Parts 1-2.
* NostalgiaFilter:
** Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old East German regime) is prevalent in the former Occupied Territories as in real life.
** Zen has implied the history he wrote of the Reich has been filtered through nostalgia (and forum rules) to overlook negative incidents like ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, and suppression of left-wing movements.
* NotAlwaysEvil: China was the main antagonist of Part 3 (opposing the Reich in World War I) and a secondary antagonist in 4 (opposing the Reich in World War II), but even then it was willing to work with the Reich against a common foe in the Soviet Commune during World War III.
* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: The whole world changed on November 2, 2038 when [[spoiler: Jerusalem detonates nukes over every major city, killing 800 million people]]. The focus of the story arc changes from [[spoiler: resisting Jerusalem's tyrannical rule and assembling an international coalition to bring it down]] to merely [[spoiler: surviving Jerusalem's nuclear attacks and military onslaught]].
* NoTrueScotsman:
** The attitude of other Native Eimericans towards the Mexica Empire regarding their place in the Pan-Eimerican Bloc that was forming several years before World War I, because of the Acatl dynasty's partial Norse ancestry.
** Elias Anhorn has very strict standards on who is a man, a Roman, and a Christian. [[spoiler: And he will do everything he can to purge and enslave those who don't fit those standards.]]
* NotSoDifferentRemark:
** In 2006, Olga visits an imprisoned Valentin Varennikov to get closure on her past. What ensues is a lengthy argument on whether Olga made the right choice to defect to the Reich and what really separates her from Valentin. In the end, they both were servants of a large authoritarian regime (Sentinel and old Russia) which didn't hesitate to discard them once their purpose was over. Valentin later claims the Reich and the Soviets were the same thing, as both suppress dissenting viewpoints they don't like, only the Soviets were more honest about doing so. Olga refuses to acknowledge this.
** In 2037, Olga and Tsar Borislav, after narrowing averting a diplomatic crisis, have a discussion on what exactly it is they're really opposing. Borislav makes the case that [[spoiler: the Jerusalem regime of Elias Anhorn]] is the same as the Reich and could only have come about from Roman culture, society, and values. In a way, [[spoiler: Jerusalem]] is the shadow of the Reich, waiting to emerge when the people are scared enough. Olga again denies this, believing they are not the same, but she then remembers what Valentin said all those years ago. Borislav then tells her she must be consistent when dealing with these matters: while it is okay to reject a trade deal with [[spoiler: Jerusalem]] which would render them economically subservient, an almost identical arrangement was the norm under the Reich.
** After exposing the Sentinel scandal, albeit with the truth still slightly obscured and watered down, the Smoking Man appears to congratulate Anders on his victory, comparing him to both himself and Conrad Humboldt. Anders denies the comparison, saying he succeeded in getting the truth out there, but the Smoking Man points out he didn't reveal the full truth as he once wanted. The initial idealism and final pragmatism of Anders Humboldt reminded the Smoking Man of the man Conrad was and became.
** The LKR Guy frequently claims "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" It's never clear what two sides he's referring to though.
** In April 2039, Alex Humboldt and Josh Johansen face off for one last time. Over the course of their conversation, Alex explains that they aren't so different, at least when they started out as kids. Both were bright-eyed boys who loved learning, but circumstances around them shaped who they became. Alex had a loving family and many friends who kept him on the right path, while Josh had an abusive father who suppressed his best qualities and encouraged his worst. He even remarks that if their situations were reversed, Alex could have ended up just like Josh.
* NukeEm:
** Raphael claimed he nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. In Part 4, the Soviets use their own nukes on Warsaw, Konigsberg and Dresden, and then Heaven itself.
** In 2037 in Part 5, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] nuked multiple cities, including many under his own control, just to [[spoiler: intimidate anti-Elias rebels into surrendering]].
** In 2038, [[spoiler: Elias]] nukes [[spoiler: almost every major city in the world, killing 800 million people]]. And that was just on the ''first'' day of [[spoiler: World War IV]].
* NumberedSequels: Each part following the transition from the Crusader Kings II segment to Europa Universalis IV has its own title.
** Part 1 (Crusader Kings II) had no title, but zenphoenix's signature has it titled as Kaiser of the Romans.
** Part 2 (Europa Universalis IV) is titled Uber Alles.
** Part 3.1 (Victoria II, 1836-1914) is titled The Imperial Century.
** Part 3.2 (Victoria II, 1914-1936) is titled [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck Iron and Blood]].
** Part 4 (Hearts of Iron III) is titled {{Gotterdammerung}}. The title briefly changed to "Gabriel's Empire" when Gabriel usurped God's power and took over Zen's account.
** Part 5.1 (Victoria II New World Order mod, 1945-1986) is titled The Fallen Phoenix.
** Part 5.2 (New World Order, 1986-2018) is titled The Rising Phoenix.
** Part 5.3 (New World Order, 2018-2037) is titled The Renewed Phoenix.
** Part 5.4 (New World Order, 2037-ongoing) is titled The Holy Phoenix.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Josh Johansen may seem like a stereotypical bully and all-around jerk, but this is really a mask for his intelligence, which he demonstrates by being surprisingly knowledgeable about historical events in class. It also lures his enemies into a false sense of security. When his teacher Oskar lowered his guard and revealed he was gay, Oskar used that to call the cops and get him arrested.
* ObiWanMoment: Kaiser Otto's last moments, in which he warns Wilhelm Karl he will not get what he wants if he continues down the path he chose. [[spoiler: He was right, and Wilhelm Karl realized it too late.]]
* OmnicidalManiac: Angelos and Gandhi both committed genocide against many different groups, with the latter going mad by the end of World War II. Valentin Varennikov, after starting World War III, didn't hesitate to kill anyone who stood in his way, from civilians of the Occupied Territories to his own citizens. [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn is willing to nuke even his own cities just to kill rebels, sacrificing as many people as possible to get what he wants.]]
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Johann von Neumann and Alan Turing are depicted as acting like Sherlock Holmes (with Oppenheimer as Moriarty) and are knowledgeable in many different disciplines from nuclear physics to cryptography and astrophysics. Decades later, Walter Humboldt took this even further with his extensive knowledge of biology, chemistry, universe-hopping physics, and advanced mathematics.
* {{Omniglot}}: All angels can speak every human language fluently.
* OnceDoneNeverForgotten:
** After an encounter with vampires on one of his cases, Anders insisted on denying the possibility of vampires, calling them psychological even years later. The same thing happened when angels appeared on one of his cases, as he firmly denied they were involved and attributed their acts to regular people.
** The Lithuanian chancellor Boris Bradziunas once made an Office reference during a conference of world leaders, something Olga now refuses to let go in subsequent meetings.
** During an interview, the senator Izinchi Ochimeca talks about how the November 9 attacks were being used as an excuse to infringe on Roman Nahuas' civil liberties just because "some people did something." Of course, the media then took that quote out of context and spent the next twenty years calling her a traitor and disrespectful to the troops and the dead of November 9.
* OncePerEpisode: Across the X-Division, Fringe, and Sentinel arcs, no matter what each individual story is about, the members of X-Division will always find a way to work in a reference to Sentinel in conversation, culminating in Sentinel's actual reveal at the end of the first X-Division arc.
* OneManArmy:
** Anne laid waste to entire armies of Angeloi. Tatiana and Olga both took on armies of Soviets. They all won easily.
** Saint Wilhelmina did this in the game, as her martial stats were so absurdly high that any army she commanded, no matter how small, could easily destroy even enemy armies three times as large.
** Kaiser Reinhard I thought he could do this with two men against an entire Norse invasion, but those two men just...died.
* OneWorldOrder: Rome has been the world's undisputed hyperpower since 1989, but that has changed since 2020 with the rise of the Eimerican Federation, the Srivijaya Commonwealth, and an outward looking China. That has most certainly changed since 2030 with [[spoiler: the Reich's descent into totalitarianism]], an increasingly nationalist China, a politically neutered India, and a significantly crippled Schengen Pact. It has been completely shattered as of 2038 when [[spoiler: the Reich, as the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, started World War IV and nuked every single major city on Earth]].
* OrcusOnHisThrone: The aliens in Part 5 were a looming threat X-Division had to stop as soon as possible...but they rarely ever showed up in person, and the invasion itself never happened as they suffered a civil war and were forced to abandon their plans due to incurring heavy losses.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe:
** Gandhi was disgusted by how his Annionaverse counterpart was a washed-up drunk veteran whose wife committed suicide, while Annionaverse Gandhi hated how the Neta was a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac and worked to undermine him.
** Kaiser Otto was initially so traumatized at the sight of Senator Otto (after everything that had happened to him over the last few months) that he almost killed himself.
** Annionaverse Angela, when impersonating Hohenzollernverse Angela, believed her counterpart was weak and had bad taste in pop culture.
** Hohenzollernverse Olga initially felt jealous of her counterpart having had a normal childhood, while Annionaverse Olga was disgusted at how her counterpart was raised as a murderous assassin, but they eventually reconciled.
* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Angels here are vastly different from the stereotypical pop culture depiction of angels. They are emotional, petty, and manipulative, with some viewing humans as lesser creations of God. They appear as formless energy beings in their true forms, which mortal humans cannot see without getting their eyes burned out, and must take human hosts to interact with the mortal world. They can also be killed by special anti-angel weapons, but their souls are immortal, so they revive after a few centuries.
* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Demons here are not like those seen in traditional pop culture. Instead, they are formless clouds of black particles giving off a sulfur smell which can possess a human. They can be killed with special anti-demon weapons, both in human and cloud form.
* OurGodsAreDifferent: Pagan gods exist within the Judeo-Christian pantheon, but they are vastly weaker. They are dependent on human worship for power, and as the world moved away from paganism towards the Abrahamic faiths, they became little more than regular people with some supernatural powers. They are still immortal, though.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires here share little similarities with traditional pop culture depictions other than having fangs, the need to drink blood, and the ability to turn normal humans. They have long lifespans, with one young vampire in the 1990s having lived since at least the 1920s, but can be killed by decapitation. Over the centuries, the Inquisition first deported almost every vampire in Europe to reservations in Dacia (Romania) before figuring out a way to "cure" vampirism and turn them all back into normal humans.
* OutsideContextProblem:
** In Part 1, the Mexica Empire invaded from literally off the game map at a time when most people were unaware of the New World. They came with a vastly different culture and practices which seemed completely alien to the Romans and fought in a way the legions were unaccustomed to.
** In Part 5, the Worm is vastly beyond anything humans and even angels can comprehend, making it difficult for them to develop an effective response to It.
* ParentChildTeam: In 1985, Anne Frank and her daughter Diana teamed up to protect a young Angela Hansen and the royals Kaiserin Victoria Louise and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra from the Soviet assassin Olga Kirova, leading her on an intense car chase and extended battle through the streets of wartorn Vienna.
* PenName: Before becoming a political figure, Mohandas Gandhi used the pen name Chandra Gupta to publish his works.
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: The Soviet Commune was a repressive totalitarian dictatorship which suppressed religion, individuality, and traditional culture in favor of futurism and an extreme interpretation of Marxism. When the Soviet Army seized the Occupied Territories, General Secretary Molotov implemented a policy of deromanization in which all traces of the Roman identity, from the German and Greek languages to Romanitas, were eradicated in favor of long-marginalized local cultures (Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Polish, and so on). All opposition to Soviet rule was brutally suppressed, especially under General Secretary Varennikov.
* ThePhilosopherKing:
** Saint Wilhelmina was known to have written many poems and proverbs still widely known eight hundred years after her death.
** Friedrich the Great introduced the ideas of meritocracy and equality to the peoples of Europe in opposition to feudalism, creating a philosophy which called for all people to be judged equally on the basis of merit instead of being born into their social status.
* PhilosophersStone: Exists as a reality warping artifact linked to the Worm. It was dug up in Giza by the treasure hunter Arabia Gruber, who sought to keep it out of the hands of the Rasa general Patel. Patel ultimately got his hands on the stone, which corrupted him into a Worm-mutated human, but Gruber killed him. Also handling the stone, Gruber received visions of the future, leading up to the Reich's possible demise in the (as of now) unreleased Part 6. Sentinel later got its hands on the stone and attempted to use it as a time machine so they could rewrite history to their advantage, but Diana Frank and Wilhelm destroyed it.
* DepletedPhlebotinumShells: In the medieval era, angels and demons could only be killed by special daggers enchanted with specific anti-angel/demon spells. The Inquisition later melted down many daggers to make anti-angel/demon bullets and make their job much easier.
* PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs: Lucifer's fall from Heaven allegedly killed the dinosaurs.
* PintSizedPowerhouse: Although Ryukyu is the smallest nation in the world and irrelevant in the larger geopolitical landscape, it proudly maintains a ridiculously large navy on par with those of the major powers. When [[spoiler: World War IV]] begins, Ryukyu demonstrates that [[spoiler: it isn't joking when it says it can go toe to toe with the major powers]], as its navy takes on [[spoiler: and shatters the fleets of Jerusalem, China, and Penglai with clever tactics and advanced military technology like orbital weapons]], establishing Ryukyu as a major power in its own right and not one to be underestimated.
* {{Pirate}}: Kyrillos in Part 1 was a pirate who went toe to toe with Saint Wilhelmina after stealing the formula for Greek Fire. After he was brought to justice, Wilhelmina recognized his unique achievement of being the only pirate ever to have successfully stolen the formula. As a reward, and to prevent him from going back to his pirate life, she granted him a noble title. Centuries later, he would be revered as a folk hero. Alex Humboldt's high school in the 21st century was named after him.
* ThePlotReaper:
** The deaths of the parents of Anne Frank and Olga Kirova set their character arcs in motion, spurring them both to get revenge against the alleged killers. Anne became a vigilante and resistance fighter who rose to become the leader of the Frankfurt resistance during World War II, while Olga became a KGB assassin with the goal of killing Anne, until Anne told her the truth about her parents' death and Olga rebelled against Valentin Varennikov.
** Elias Anhorn's arc was set into motion when his sister Ellie died of cancer she developed after inhaling toxins while working as a first responder during the November 9 attacks. As a result, he and his friends enlisted in the army and were deployed to Mexico...where his friends were ALSO killed in a terrorist ambush. The cold reception he received when he escaped the ambush barely alive set him down a dark path of revenge against whom he saw as his sister and friends' true killer: [[spoiler: the entire Hohenzollern family]]. His subsequent purge of [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] in turn sets [[spoiler: Princess Wilhelmina]] down the path of becoming a leader to oppose him.
* PoliteVillainsRudeHeroes: Although the Smoking Man was shown to do morally reprehensible things like give up his own daughter as a guinea pig for the aliens, personally assassinate the equivalents of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Mikhail Gorbachev despite largely sympathizing with what they wanted, and plotted the subjugation and enslavement of humanity, he still acts like a polite gentleman to his opponents, casually discussing his plans and gloating about his inevitable victories. In contrast, Anders Humboldt, one of the heroes of this story arc, is rude and crass towards him, not wanting to hear his monologues or sweet talking. When he needs to get information on the Syndicate and has to get it from the Smoking Man, he just wants the Smoking Man to give him what he wants immediately.
* PoliticallyActivePrincess: Wilhelmina, at least after [[spoiler: an assassination attempt]] in 2037.
* PoliticallyCorrectHistory:
** Zen admits his depiction of Roman history has been filtered to give a more neutral/positive light on certain events, like glossing over what amounts to ethnic and religious cleansing by the first three Kaisers, as well as the Reich's colonization of Neurhomania and Africa. He explained some of this was because of forum rules. However, in Part 5, the narrative has become less afraid of discussing what really happened in those events.
** In Part 4, Zen was forced to avoid talking too much about the Holocaust or other World War II atrocities due to HOI3-specific forum rules regarding depictions of the Holocaust, but this was made up for in Part 5, as forum rules for Victoria 2 were more lenient.
** In-universe, [[spoiler:Elias Anhorn]] and Josh Johansen both think the "new" historical narrative is too politically correct...and now seek to "correct" the narrative back to what it once was...and then some.
* PoliticallyCorrectVillain: The Syndicate/Sentinel are embedded within every national government, particularly the Roman government, keeping the chancellors pawns and Kaiser Otto unaware. They make use of political correctness to silence anybody who starts to uncover the truth, labeling them as racists, misogynists, tax evaders, or anything to "cancel" them.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Elias Anhorn dislikes the political correctness of the mainstream establishment and isn't afraid to speak his mind against them. He calls out the establishment on its hypocrisy about the climate crisis and rails against cancel culture. He doesn't hesitate to say what needs to be said about climate change, political action, and Christian values. [[spoiler: After his MASSIVE villain turn coup, he becomes a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain.]]
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] becomes this after he reveals his true colors in 2030. He suppresses others who speak their mind against him, takes over the establishment, is hypocritical about the climate crisis, and weaponizes cancel culture.
* {{Precursors}}: Ancient humanity had a technologically advanced spacefaring civilization 150,000 years ago, before an unknown cataclysm destroyed them. Fragments of their technology are occasionally dug up in the modern day, and modern humans barely understand how to use them, let alone replicate them.
* PrecursorKillers: It is frequently said that ancient humanity was a powerful spacefaring civilization with interstellar colonies, sprawling cities, and a flourishing society. But 150,000 years ago, it was completely wiped out and almost entirely purged from the geological record, leaving few traces of its existence. Even today, nobody knows why it ended. Diana and Angela wondered if the Jotun aliens who are trying to invade Earth in the present day were responsible, but surviving records from 150,000 years ago seem to imply the Jotun were humanity's ''allies'' back then. Later, Diana sees a vision of ancient humanity and its end, in which the flesh melts off humans' bones like liquid and all of Earth bursts into flames. Still, this tells her little about who actually did it, only that to destroy such a powerful civilization and erase almost every trace of it, they must have been even more powerful.
* PrecursorWorship: The Worm cult has its origins in ancient humanity's civilization 150,000 years ago, and current members still adhere to many traditions, such as the ancient human language, from that era. They practically worship their old cult from that era and seek to replicate its success in bringing down the rest of ancient humanity.
* PrincessProtagonist: Princess Wilhelmina, daughter of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors: Argus Security is a private military company contracted by the Roman government to help with riot control and counterterrorism in Mexico, Lithuania, and at home in the Reich. After leaving the military, Gustav Johansen was recruited into Argus by his colleague Kurt Moreau and provided security at Wilhelm Karl's coronation. Argus' influence gradually expands over the next twenty years, with powerful financial and government backers in Theodor Tesla and Elias Anhorn.
* PointOfDivergence: The main points of divergence for this story are Friedrich the Great becoming the margrave of Brandenburg in 1066 and Erik the Red's expedition several decades prior being captured instead of driven off. Another point of divergence simultaneous with Friedrich the Great's appearance is the Pagan Resurgence, when various pagan states centralize, standardize their faiths, and fight off invading Christian or Islamic kingdoms, while many prominent Christian or Muslim leaders converted back to pagan faiths, among them Harald Hardrada who became the first Norse Fylkir. Indirectly, the existence of ancient humanity could also be another point of divergence, but modern human history would go exactly the same if it did not exist. Zen has said he considers the Cybrex war from Stellaris (which happened 600,000 years ago) as another point of divergence as the Cybrex would attack in a different direction, creating a completely unique starting scenario for Stellaris, but not affect human history on Earth if it doesn't directly attack it.
* ProudToBeAGeek:
** Olga Kirova is an assassin who can easily solo entire armies and take down a nation on her own. She is also a huge anime and video game geek who knows all of the popular movie tropes and is more Internet-savvy than the rest of the X-Division.
** Princess Wilhelmina is a geek, having cultivated a reputation as a gamer who loves [=JRPGs=] in college which still follows her around thirty years later.
* ThePurge:
** After seizing power in Part 2, the usurper Malcolm Bethune ordered loyal troops to purge the entire Hohenzollern family. Only two members of the family, Sophia and her cousin Friedrich, survived the purge.
** Centuries later, in Part 4, Angelos carried out multiple purges during his rise to power. At the beginning of his coup, he tricked the entire Diet into assembling in the Reichstag chamber and then massacred them all. At the end of World War II, he massacred the entire Maximist branch of the Hohenzollerns rather than let them fall into the hands of the Soviets.
** Performed once again in 2030 by [[spoiler:Elias and the Committee]], in which they purge basically everyone who isn't a [[spoiler: heterosexual, non-leftist Roman Christian]].
** Performed yet ''again'' by [[spoiler: Elias and the Committee]] in 2034 to purge any remaining serious opposition leaders.
** Performed a ''third'' time by [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] in 2038 to purge [[spoiler: all of the Hohenzollerns]]...''again''.
* PurpleIsPowerful: The Reich and its Kaisers are associated with the color purple.
* PurposelyOverpowered:
** Although the original Sunset Invasion scenario was already designed to make the Aztec invasion overpowered relative to the player, Zen made it even more overpowered in Part 1 by giving them more troops that weren't subject to attrition penalties and only despawned if they were killed, so the AI would have armies of millions of troops which could only be defeated in battle, not by stalling out with attrition. The same troop bonuses were given to other hordes like the Mongols and Timurids.
** In Part 5, when World War III began, Zen admitted that the Reich, even with the many military and economic debuffs given over the last 40 years, was still far too overpowered, so he gave the Soviets an insane military buff which increased the strength, resilience, and morale of the Soviet Army and allowed them to win many decisive victories early in the war. This became a story point later in Part 5 when [[spoiler: the Reich becomes a totalitarian world pariah and uses its military and economic clout to impose its will on its neighbors]].
* PyrrhicVictory: World War II ends in a Roman victory, although it came at a serious cost. China's democracy was silenced and replaced with a military dictatorship. India is split under joint Roman-Chinese occupation. The Roman heartland is in ruins, with its industry destroyed, military split and weakened, and people tired. The Soviets are on the rise, having seized the Occupied Territories from the Reich and consolidated their control over North Eimerica by destroying the Axis-allied nations there. This sets the stage for the Cold War of Part 5.
* QuantityVsQuality:
** The Reich's military doctrine for much of its history is to switch between quantity and quality, since it has both. During World War I, it heavily relied on quantity to make up for the heavy losses it sustained.
** Chinese military doctrine, specifically naval doctrine, emphasizes numerical superiority to overwhelm enemies. Chinese fleets are supposed to spread out over a large area of water to increase the amount of territory covered and to make their numbers appear even bigger.
* QualityOverQuantity:
** While the Reich does try to field more soldiers and ships than any other country, it doesn't neglect quality as well, making sure Roman soldiers are the best trained in the world. This came in handy during wars when quantity was no longer guaranteed, like during the Maximist Wars (when Wolfgang Ludendorff took on Maximist militias far larger than his forces) and World War II (when the Reich was split in a civil war and most of the troops sided with Markos Angelos).
** Ryukyu has heavily emphasized quality over quantity for its entire existence, focusing on devising the best strategies and doctrines to counter far larger enemies that would almost always outnumber and outgun anything the small island kingdom can produce. This proves in handy when it [[spoiler: takes on ''all'' of the major totalitarian powers in the Pacific Ocean]]...and ''wins''.
* TheQuisling: Vidkun Quisling still sold out the Kanatan government in exile (Norway) to the Angeloi, giving them complete control over Scandinavia. After the loyalists liberated Scandinavia, he was put on trial and executed.
* RageAgainstTheHeavens: At the end of Part 4, the Soviets nuked Heaven, almost killing all of the angels. In Part 3, the Inquisition invaded both Hell and Heaven to accomplish their goals of sealing off Hell (successfully) and kicking Gabriel out of Heaven (a complete failure).
* RagsToRoyalty:
** Friedrich the Great started as a minor baron of the Eastern March, based in a border town known as Berlin. Over the course of ten years, he rose through the ranks thanks to his charisma, his merits, and his friends (including at least one angel) helping him out, ultimately winning the First Crusade and becoming King of the Germans and Jerusalem. Following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich, he was elected the next Holy Roman Emperor. Under his reign, he reconciled the empires of both the Germans and the Greeks and negotiated a military alliance and political marriage which put both under Hohenzollern rule, paving the way for his grandson Friedrich the Glorious' restoration of the Reich.
** Gunhilda was a peasant girl from the village of Kujawy, Poland who claimed to hear the voices of angels. She was welcomed into Friedrich the Glorious' court, where she proved herself to be a master tactician and military genius who led the Roman legions to victory after victory. She eventually married Friedrich the Glorious himself, and her children became the first of the powerful Schweinfurt dynasty.
** The peasant Sarah Milton similarly heard the voices of angels centuries later, later saving Kaiser Wolfram from the angels' assassination attempt. The two later married as well, making Sarah an empress.
* RealEventFictionalCause: Raphael claims the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was caused by Lucifer falling to Earth.
* RealMenHateAffection: Josh hates showing any sentimentality or emotion, seeing that as weakness.
* ARealManIsAKiller: Josh measures his manliness by how many enemies he has killed. Especially high profile ones like [[spoiler: Diana Frank, Anders Humboldt, Angela Hansen, and the chancellor of India]].
* {{Realpolitik}}:
** The Vienna resistance decided to join forces with Leon Trotsky, an ideological enemy, to bring the Soviets into the war against the Angeloi. When Trotsky refused to do so, the resistance murdered him and implicated the Angeloi in the crime, angering the Soviets under Molotov into declaring war anyways.
** In 2037, [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn and his Committee]] use their hard and soft power to force neighboring nations into political and economic submission. Troops stationed in [[spoiler: Yavdi and India]] force the two nations to become compliant and install friendly right-wing governments. Josiah Burkard goes to Russia to negotiate a trade deal in which Russia would apparently be saved from an impending famine, but at the cost of [[spoiler: Russia being bound to the Reich's economic sphere and all Roman refugees being deported to certain death]]. The deal turned out to be very popular among the desperate Russian public until it was ultimately derailed by Princess Wilhelmina.
* RedBaron:
** In Part 1, the Zunist warlord Timur was feared as the Iron Khan, while his son Shah Rukh adopted the nickname of the Lord of Asia.
** In Part 4, Anne Frank became known as the Valkyrie resistance leader who almost singlehandedly liberated both a concentration camp and the entire city of Frankfurt from the Angeloi.
** In Part 5, Olga Kirova was initially known as the feared Firebird assassin, the Soviets' answer to the Valkyrie. She was trained to be able to take down entire armies on her own so she could stand a chance against Anne.
* RedemptionRejection: Josh was offered TWO chances at redemption by his teacher Oskar, who saw his internal conflict, understood his home situation, and appreciated his passion for learning things. Oskar genuinely wanted to help Josh out, but Josh instead had him arrested on false charges, ending his teaching career. Years later, Oskar met Josh again and was not mad about what had happened, instead offering to help Josh become the good man he could always be. Josh responded to this second offer by [[spoiler: straight up killing him and hanging his body on a crane with a slur written on him for all to see]].
* RedScare:
** In Part 5, Senator Joseph [=McCarthy=] still started a witch-hunt across Roman society for alleged equalist infiltrators as he did in real life.
** [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]] takes the Red Scare to the extreme, even by [=McCarthy=]'s standards, and violently purges anyone he remotely''suspects'' of leftist sentiments, even if they are as moderate as women's rights.
* ReignOfTerror:
** After seizing power, Valentin Varennikov rolled back all of the reforms Gorbachev made and sent in the KGB and army to brutally silence any opposition to his rule in both Russia and the Occupied Territories.
** [[spoiler: The Reich]] has been in a constant reign of terror since 2034 as undesirables, political dissidents, and ethnic and religious minorities are violently purged or forced into concentration camps. And as of 2039, it is only getting ''worse''.
* RelationshipReveal: In 2036, after stealing the [[spoiler: legendary sword Enonon]], the Russian spy Yulia escapes back to Russia, pursued by Theodor Tesla's drones. She eventually gets her package over the border, even though she is fatally wounded in the process. As she dies, the audience learns not only is Yulia really [[spoiler: the previously recurring character Jessica from the Fringe arc]], but she is also married to [[spoiler: Olga Kirova]].
* ReligionIsRight: The Abrahamic God exists, as do angels, and demons, and other supernatural entities from Abrahamic lore, as well as at least a dozen major pagan gods.
* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: Vampires, werewolves, and alien supersoldiers can only be killed by decapitation.
* RepressiveButEfficient:
** Rasa India developed nukes in World War II (but never got the chance to use them), and it passed on the technology to the Angeloi, who in turn got their nukes stolen and used against them by the Soviets. The Reich played catch-up because both the Angeloi/Rasas and Soviets kept sabotaging the loyalist nuclear program.
** In Part 5, even after becoming a totalitarian hellhole, [[spoiler: the Reich]] ''still'' has a much better and efficient environmental policy than much of the rest of the world, having slashed carbon emissions and transitioned to renewable energy sources much more than anyone else. And since the regime has done a very good job of tying its image to environmentalism, that in turn makes environmentalism stigmatized in the rest of the world as it is seen as totalitarian and tyrannical. As a result, many other nations have openly abandoned environmentalism altogether. This gradually stops applying as [[spoiler: World War IV]] consumes more resources than can be replaced and repressive economic reforms begin cutting into efficiency.
* TheRepublic: China in Parts 3 and 5 is a democratic country, a constitutional monarchy with an elected legislature and constitution. The Reich from Part 2 onwards strives to be a fair nation with respect for the rule of law, tolerance of different cultures and religions, and equality under the Kaiser through the Augustinian Code. As of 2035, [[spoiler: neither the Reich nor China qualifies anymore, instead falling into TheEmpire.]]
* RescuedFromTheUnderworld: Mansur Shah Mukhtar was broken out of Hell by the Inquisition in Part 2.
* ResetButton:
** In 1962, nuclear war broke out, destroying humanity. However, the Inquisition reset the timeline and prevented it from happening to begin with.
** Wilhelm pushes an extreme version of the reset button to ''create'' the Hohenzollernverse by jumping back from a bad future where the Worm won and changing the past so humanity stood a chance against it, by uniting under the Reich.
* LaResistance:
** Otto's loyalists kept up the fight all across the Reich as more of the nation fell under the rule of Markos Angelos. Even when the military stopped fighting, resistance cells led by the likes of Anne Frank, Engelbert Dolfuss, Conrad Humboldt, Hans Hansen, and Osterhild Anniona kept fighting the Angeloi.
** In Part 5, various rebel groups rise up against the totalitarian dictatorship of [[spoiler: Elias Anhorn]], among them the people of the rebellious city of [[spoiler: Bremerhaven]].
* ResurgentEmpire: The Reich entered 1946 and Part 5 a broken and battered shell of what it once was. Its industry lay in ruins, its military was divided and shattered, and swathes of the heartland were under Soviet occupation. But within 40 years, all that was reversed. The industry was rebuilt, the military was reorganized, and after World War III, the Soviet Commune was destroyed and the Occupied Territories retaken. By 1989, the Reich was indisputably the sole hyperpower in the world, reflected in the updated title for Part 5: Rising Phoenix (used from 1986 and 2018).
* {{Retcon}}: Zen has repeatedly retconned multiple plot elements.
** In Part 1, it was said that multiple Romance cultures (like French, Castilian Spanish, Portuguese, and non-Lombard Italian) and other cultures (like Polish, Arabic, and Scottish) were completely eradicated by the Reich, to the point where near the end of Part 1 some characters wondered why French wine was still called French wine if France didn't even exist. The same treatment was applied to Islam. However, by Part 4, Zen walked this back saying these cultures and Islam weren't fully wiped out but instead reduced to small minorities in their own homes (to the point where the word "France" has been forgotten the general Roman public by the 1990s), with the Muslims being scattered into their own diaspora across Europe. By Part 5, the remaining French populations have undergone a cultural revival from the 2000s on, a French Lives Matter movement has taught many non-French about the continued discrimination they face, and Angelica Haus, a character from a French town, has become more conscious about her French roots, even starting to speak partly in French.
** Friedrich the Great was originally written as an ambitious military commander and feudal lord who won fame and political power after emerging victorious in the First Crusade, but Part 5 reinterprets him as a charismatic leader who promoted humanistic and tolerant views which rallied many different peoples under his banner, allowing him to build a power base to establish the Reich. That itself is later retconned when it is revealed Wilhelm had directed Friedrich the Great to create the Reich to unite Europe against the Worm cult.
** The doomed timeline Wilhelm originally left was based on a previous Crusader Kings II game Zen played and never finished (hence why it was completely destroyed at the end), but Part 5 retcons that to be a timeline in which the Worm won and reality was under Its complete control, with Wilhelm just barely escaping into the past to avert this terrible future.
** In-game, the name of the Holy Roman Empire had been changed to "German Empire" after Friedrich the Great was elected Kaiser, but there have been no references to this in the story after Part 1, with everyone only referring to the Holy Roman Empire. The name change [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness effectively never happened]].
** Wilhelm's own origins were also retconned. In Part 1, one of Wilhelm's early stories showed he was merely the player avatar for a human character in "real life," also known as the world of Zen's previous AAR "Return of the Celestial Empire." There, he fought the angel Constantine, the avatar of the player's brother, and killed him. The names Wilhelm and Constantine come from the names of the human players controlling them, implying Hohenzollern Empire is really a game of Crusader Kings II being played in the Return of the Celestial Empire universe. However, Zen eventually declared this story non-canon and severed all ties with Return of the Celestial Empire from Part 2 on, and in Part 5, the angel Constantine instead sacrifices his life in the doomed future to save Wilhelm.
** Saint Wilhelmina was initially depicted as a perfect and always just and good ruler, but from Part 3 on, Zen brought to light the many atrocities and persecutions that happened under her reign, such as deportations of Muslims and Arabs, the suppression of the French and Poles, and her clash with the Catholic Church. In Part 5, Zen then expands on her actions by saying this arose out of a fear of the Worm Cult after it killed her parents, but she soon grew out of control with her purges and deportations and had to be called out on it by Saint Gunhilda.
** In Part 2, it was said the Reich almost always peacefully colonized new lands in South America and Africa, coexisting with native peoples instead of conquering and enslaving them as colonizers did in real life. However, Zen later points out that may not always have been the case. By Part 5, there are many African nationalist and separatist movements, having formed out of frustration of the European-dominated Roman government constantly ignoring their existence.
** In Part 3, the Reich emerged as a firm opponent of liberal movements and supporter of continued absolutism. However, by the end of that part, this has been tweaked to instead be an opposition to ''democratic'' movements (associated with China) and support for a meritocratic system (which were represented by the absolute monarchy government type in-game due to Zen not wanting to mod the game so much it would be incompatible with conversion to the next game).
** In Part 2, it was said the illegitimate Hohenzollern Anatolian branch legitimized itself by marrying into the Syrian line, but in Part 5, Zen claimed this was being retconned away. [[spoiler: Later un-retconned to such an extent that 21st century Hohenzollerns were ironically ''legitimized'' through descent from this branch.]]
** In Part 5, the djinn Jenny claims she granted wishes to Markos Angelos and Valentin Varennikov, implying that was how they gained power and started world wars. It is not explained how exactly this happened and no further details are provided.
** In Part 5, the Smoking Man is allegedly shown to murder Ragnar Beck, Abraham Green, and Mikhail Gorbachev, but Zen later retcons that story into a state of semi-canonicity, where it could have happened or not.
** Anders Humboldt's first introduction is as a baby in January 1969. He is later retconned to be a few years older as he was much older when he witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens in 1972.
** Many New World and African placenames were retconned to remove traces of European influence. For example, Tejas became Hasiinay, Creek became Este Muskokulke, and Cherokee became Tsalagehi Ayeli.
** Recent gameplay chapters have even retconned the ''game map itself'' to avoid borders based on real life, like the borders of US states still being present in the game code. The result is that Zen personally redrew the entire world map so that the borders would make more sense in universe. Even a few minor countries, such as Brunei, were retconned out of existence.
* {{Revision}}:
** Friedrich the Great, Friedrich the Glorious, and Saint Wilhelmina got significant character development in Part 5, after spending Parts 1-2 being depicted as almost perfect semi-mythical heroes.
** The bad alternate future timeline is heavily revised by still kept mostly the same. Instead of the Apocalypse happening and ending the world, the Apocalypse was intentionally started to end the world with the goal of denying it to the Worm.
** Erich Hansen refers to his wife as "Sharon" in his first appearance. However, when Mrs. Hansen appears thirty years later in the X-Division arc, her first name is given as "Magda." It is soon revealed that Sharon is her middle name.
* RevolvingDoorRevolution: Mexico suffered through multiple revolutions over the 20th century, with the old Mexica Empire being replaced by fascists, then equalists, then fascists again, and finally the Mexica Empire again.
* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman:
** Adolf Hitler remained in art school here, and without anything like the German loss in World War I, he never develops the anti-Semitism or fascist ideas he did in real life. Instead, he is hired as a painter in the imperial court. During World War II, he opposes Markos Angelos and helps Otto escape Berlin. After the war, he goes into the animation industry and establishes Adolf Hitler Pictures, the equivalent of Disney.
** Joseph Stalin remained in the seminary and was ordained as an Orthodox priest. Instead of becoming a brutal communist dictator, he became the Ecumenical Patriarch and took a very hardline stance against equalism.
** Mussolini and Goebbels become respected radio news anchors opposed to the Angeloi.
** Vladimir Putin became a 90s action movie star, filling in Keanu Reeves' role in popular culture.
* TheRichWantToBeRicher: Theodor Tesla isn't satisfied with owning the largest and most profitable company in the Reich. After gaining political power in 2030, he sets about rolling back workplace regulations, gutting labor unions, and forcing his workers to work long hours in dangerous conditions to make even more money. When the government gives him a contract to [[spoiler: deport ethnic and religious minorities out of the country]] by plane, he has the planes depressurized, which kills everyone onboard. This allows him to save money which he would have used to buy fuel, pressurize the cabins, feed the passengers, and pay the pilots for a full trip.
* RightWingMilitiaFanatic: The "patriot" movement arose in the 1990s after Helmut Kohl destigmatized nationalism during World War III. These "patriots" embraced various far right and neo-Angeloi ideas, among them "sovereign citizen" movements which alleged the modern Reich is merely a Chinese-owned corporate puppet regime with no authority to enforce laws over Roman citizens. One such fanatic is Maike Richter, a gold-digger who manipulated the widowed and mentally incapacitated Helmut Kohl into supporting a far-right agenda during his retirement.
* RisingEmpire: In 1105, Friedrich the Great's death united the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires under the rule of the same person, his grandson Friedrich the Glorious. Proclaiming the restoration of the Roman Empire as the Reich, Friedrich II embarked on a twenty-year campaign to restore the empire to its rightful borders across all of Europe. By the time of his death in 1126, the empire had established itself as the dominant power in the known world, with its territory stretching from Ireland in the west to Arabia in the east.
* TheRoaringTwenties: After World War I, the Reich entered a period of rising economic prosperity but also terrible wealth inequality, leading to a massive general strike in 1926 the young Otto skillfully negotiated an end to.
* RoswellThatEndsWell: In Part 5, an alien ship crashes in Agadir, Mauretania, and kickstarts seventy years of conspiracy and shadow politics between humanity and the alien Jotun.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Kaiser Otto was an active ruler from the very beginning. As a teenager, he personally negotiated an end to the general strike of 1926, putting himself in danger to do so. As a young man in World War II, he involved himself in his generals' strategy sessions and made sure as many of his citizens were okay as possible. After the war, he amended the Augustinian Code and overhauled the political system to be more fair to all citizens while also preventing the return of the Angeloi. At great personal risk again, he made several high-profile visits to occupied Berlin to speak out against the Soviets. His legacy of duty and service was passed on to his children Elisabeth Alexandra and Georg, as well as Elisabeth Alexandra's daughter Wilhelmina. His middle child, Wilhelm Karl, eventually came around to doing something, namely [[spoiler: working to make amends for his past misdeeds by helping the anti-Elias resistance]].
* RulingFamilyMassacre:
** Malcolm Bethune ordered the massacre of all of the Hohenzollerns in Part 2 after seizing power in the Anarchy.
** In Part 3, the Bolsheviks massacred the Russian royal family as in real life, but here there were two survivors who escaped and formed a government in exile.
** In Part 4, Markos Angelos massacred all of the Maximists when it became clear Berlin was lost to the Soviets and they were all trapped inside.
** In Part 5, it is implied this happened to the Japanese royal family after Paulluists (right-wing nationalists) seize power in southern Japan.
** In 2038, it happens to [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] again when Elias Anhorn [[spoiler: orders their purge after delegitimizing them and fabricating a story about a coup attempt]].
** Later in 2038, it happens to [[spoiler: the Hohenzollerns]] ''again'' when Elias Anhorn [[spoiler: confronts Princess Wilhelmina in a Yavdian bunker and murders three out of six Hohenzollerns in front of her]].
* RunningGag:
** Molotov is obsessed with getting a new desk for his office, and the entire Soviet government, even during World War III, is fully committed to preventing him from getting one, going to extreme lengths to do so. When he finally gets a desk...[[spoiler: he ends up throwing it out a window]]. This gag is even referenced 3 real life years and 20-30 in-universe years later when Molotov is brought up again.
** Throughout the X-Division arcs, Angela refuses to let Anders drive, even when they're using Anders' car. Eventually, Diana and Olga join in on the joke as well.
** Angela is first introduced post-World War III attempting to electrocute a dead body as part of a lesson for new Athanatoi recruits. The lesson is interrupted by the Smoking Man, who assigns her to X-Division. Since then, she has tried to find opportunities to electrocute dead bodies, but never found one. She was especially happy about the opportunity to electrocute an ''invisible'' dead body on one of her cases, though that never came to pass.
** Every time Angela mentions vampires, angels, or anything else associated with Christianity, Anders can't help but immediately deny it as "psychological" in nature and attribute it to mundane matters, departing from his usual mentality of accepting impossible explanations for their cases. Parodied when his father Walter mentions aliens in a later case but immediately dismisses the possibility in much the same way, much to Anders' frustration.
** Pavel Novak almost always says his catchphrase "surprise motherfrakker" when he reappears in the story, but everyone, including the Smoking Man himself, hates his catchphrase and would rather die than hear it again.
** The bartender Jessica is introduced in the Fringe arc as a former KGB agent and friend of Olga resettled as a civilian in the Reich. When reuniting, Olga makes up a cover story about her and Anders being married, which Jessica believes and mentions constantly for the rest of the arc. Even after [[spoiler: Jessica and Olga get married]] and [[spoiler: Jessica is fatally wounded]], she can't help but make one last joke about Olga and Anders being married.
[[/folder]]