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* UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci
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* UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinciCreator/LeonardoDaVinci
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A fable is a succint, allegorical short tale in prose or verse that conveys, highlights and illustrates a moral lesson, frequently by using anthropomorphized [[BeastFable animals]], plants, [[AnimateInanimateObject inanimate objects]], fantastical creatures and forces of nature as main characters (differently from parables, which only use people). A fable can also be called an apologue, though some definitions consider the latter to be more focused on the moral than in the narrative elements.
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with a third-person narrator and accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and can change according to the point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in the Middle Ages as well --, but entered the school system and got associated with ChildrensLiterature due to their didactic and fantastic nature. In the West, the most influential fabulists are [[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] -- considered to be the codifier of the genre as we know it -- and [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]] -- who retold and popularized several fables from Western and Eastern sources in the Modern age. Fables from India also had great global importance, with the ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}'' being translated to countless languages and influencing literature all across Eurasia. In Feudal Japan, fables can be seen among literature such as the ''Kojiki'' and ''Nihon shoki'', reaching their height during the UsefulNotes/KamakuraShogunate.
Fables traditionally differ from {{Fairy Tale}}s by focusing on delivering the final life lesson, whereas fairy tales don't necessarily teach morals, or at least don't highlight their specific lesson as much or as explicitly. Similarly, they are often different from {{Legend}}s in that they are timeless and unconnected from specific locations and cultures, being able to be understood through several places and time periods far removed from their origins and remain relevant. That said, the line between fable, fairytale and other traditional folktales is blurred, and the term fable has also been used for any fantastic, ludic or imaginative narrative in general.
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with a third-person narrator and accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and can change according to the point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in the Middle Ages as well --, but entered the school system and got associated with ChildrensLiterature due to their didactic and fantastic nature. In the West, the most influential fabulists are [[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] -- considered to be the codifier of the genre as we know it -- and [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]] -- who retold and popularized several fables from Western and Eastern sources in the Modern age. Fables from India also had great global importance, with the ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}'' being translated to countless languages and influencing literature all across Eurasia. In Feudal Japan, fables can be seen among literature such as the ''Kojiki'' and ''Nihon shoki'', reaching their height during the UsefulNotes/KamakuraShogunate.
Fables traditionally differ from {{Fairy Tale}}s by focusing on delivering the final life lesson, whereas fairy tales don't necessarily teach morals, or at least don't highlight their specific lesson as much or as explicitly. Similarly, they are often different from {{Legend}}s in that they are timeless and unconnected from specific locations and cultures, being able to be understood through several places and time periods far removed from their origins and remain relevant. That said, the line between fable, fairytale and other traditional folktales is blurred, and the term fable has also been used for any fantastic, ludic or imaginative narrative in general.
to:
A fable is a succint, allegorical short tale in prose or verse that conveys, highlights and illustrates a moral lesson, frequently by using anthropomorphized [[BeastFable animals]], plants, [[AnimateInanimateObject inanimate objects]], fantastical creatures and forces of nature as main characters (differently from parables, which only use people). A fable can also be called an apologue, though some definitions consider the latter to be more focused on the moral than in the narrative elements.
elements. The one who writes or tells fables is called a fabulist.
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with a third-person narrator and accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation andcan may change according to the point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in the Middle Ages as well --, but entered the school system and got associated with ChildrensLiterature due to their didactic and fantastic nature. In the West, the most influential fabulists are [[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] -- considered to be the codifier of the genre as we know it -- and [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]] -- who retold and popularized several fables from Western and Eastern sources in the Modernage.age, including Aesop's. Fables from India also had great global importance, with the ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}'' being translated to countless languages and influencing literature all across Eurasia. In Feudal Japan, fables can be seen among literature such as the ''Kojiki'' and ''Nihon shoki'', reaching their height during the UsefulNotes/KamakuraShogunate.
Fables While both are traditional stories, fables traditionally differ from {{Fairy Tale}}s by focusing on delivering the final life lesson, whereas fairy tales don't necessarily teach morals, or at least don't highlight their specific lesson as much or as explicitly. Similarly, they are often different from {{Legend}}s in that they are timeless and unconnected from specific locations and cultures, being able to be understood through several places and time periods far removed from their origins and remain relevant. That said, the line between fable, fairytale and other traditional folktales is blurred, and the term fable has also been used for any fantastic, ludic or imaginative narrative in general.
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with a third-person narrator and accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in the Middle Ages as well --, but entered the school system and got associated with ChildrensLiterature due to their didactic and fantastic nature. In the West, the most influential fabulists are [[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] -- considered to be the codifier of the genre as we know it -- and [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]] -- who retold and popularized several fables from Western and Eastern sources in the Modern
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* ''Fábulas'' by Monteiro Lobato, as part of the ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'' series.
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* ''Fábulas'' by Monteiro Lobato, as part of the ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'' ''Sítio do Picapau Amarelo'' series.
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The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and can change according to the point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
to:
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with a third-person narrator and accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the moral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and can change according to the point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
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* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': "Foney Fables" is a collection of shorts that spoofs several fairy tales and fables.
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* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'':
** "Foney Fables" is a collection of shorts that spoofs several fairy tales andfables.fables.
** "Literature/TheTortoiseAndTheHare" is spoofed in a trio of WesternAnimation/BugsBunny cartoons -- "WesternAnimation/TortoiseBeatsHare", "WesternAnimation/TortoiseWinsByAHare" and "WesternAnimation/RabbitTransit" -- in which Bugs races against Cecil Turtle. They are among the few cartoons in which Bugs is the loser of the story.
** "Foney Fables" is a collection of shorts that spoofs several fairy tales and
** "Literature/TheTortoiseAndTheHare" is spoofed in a trio of WesternAnimation/BugsBunny cartoons -- "WesternAnimation/TortoiseBeatsHare", "WesternAnimation/TortoiseWinsByAHare" and "WesternAnimation/RabbitTransit" -- in which Bugs races against Cecil Turtle. They are among the few cartoons in which Bugs is the loser of the story.
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* ''Aesop's Fables'' was a series began by Creator/{{Terrytoons}} creator Paul Terry in the silent era and continued by Creator/VanBeurenStudios. They were only fables in the loosest sense, consisting mostly of aimlessly plotted stories starring FunnyAnimals, with the moral at the end most likely being a SpoofAesop.
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* ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'': The "Aesop and Son" segments have Aesop try to teach his son a lesson by telling one of his fables, after which the son would provide an alternative joke moral.
* Many of the ''WesternAnimation/SillySymphonies'' were adapted from fables, such as "WesternAnimation/TheTortoiseAndTheHare", "Literature/TheGrasshopperAndTheAnts", and "WesternAnimation/TheCountryCousin".
* Many of the ''WesternAnimation/SillySymphonies'' were adapted from fables, such as "WesternAnimation/TheTortoiseAndTheHare", "Literature/TheGrasshopperAndTheAnts", and "WesternAnimation/TheCountryCousin".
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[[AC:Film - Animated]]
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[[AC:Film - -- Animated]]
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Created from YKTTW
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A link to something about "Fable" sent you to this page. The context of the link should help you figure out which page you want.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', an Xbox and PC video game series that first started in 2004.
** ''VideoGame/FableI'', the first game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableII'', the second game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'', the third game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableTheJourney'', the fifth game in the above series.
* ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
* BeastFable, a story that replaces humans with animal stereotypes.
* ''Manga/{{Fable}}'', a 2014 manga written/drawn by Katsuhisa Minami and published by Kodansha under the Young Magazine label.
If a direct wick has led you here, please correct the link so that it points to the corresponding article.
----
* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', an Xbox and PC video game series that first started in 2004.
** ''VideoGame/FableI'', the first game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableII'', the second game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'', the third game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableTheJourney'', the fifth game in the above series.
* ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
* BeastFable, a story that replaces humans with animal stereotypes.
* ''Manga/{{Fable}}'', a 2014 manga written/drawn by Katsuhisa Minami and published by Kodansha under the Young Magazine label.
If a direct wick has led you here, please correct the link so that it points to the corresponding article.
----
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[[quoteright:350:[[Literature/AesopsFables https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_tortoise_and_the_hare___project_gutenberg_etext_19994.jpg]]]][[caption-width-right:350:[-"The Hare and the Tortoise", by Milo Winter-]]]
Alink fable is a succint, allegorical short tale in prose or verse that conveys, highlights and illustrates a moral lesson, frequently by using anthropomorphized [[BeastFable animals]], plants, [[AnimateInanimateObject inanimate objects]], fantastical creatures and forces of nature as main characters (differently from parables, which only use people). A fable can also be called an apologue, though some definitions consider the latter to something about "Fable" sent be more focused on the moral than in the narrative elements.
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before youto this page. leap" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/019.html The context Fox and the Goat]]"), "to cry wolf" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/043.html The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf / The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]") and so on. Keep in mind, however, that while the intention of teaching is clear, the exact meaning of the link should help you figure out which page you want.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', an Xboxmoral in fables [[AlternateAesopInterpretation might be open to interpretation and PC video game series that first started in 2004.
** ''VideoGame/FableI'',can change according to the first game point of view]], especially since the sayings explicitly resuming the lesson were often added [[NewerThanTheyThink long after the original fables were written]].
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in theabove series.
** ''VideoGame/FableII'',Middle Ages as well --, but entered the second game school system and got associated with ChildrensLiterature due to their didactic and fantastic nature. In the West, the most influential fabulists are [[Literature/AesopsFables Aesop]] -- considered to be the codifier of the genre as we know it -- and [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]] -- who retold and popularized several fables from Western and Eastern sources in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'',Modern age. Fables from India also had great global importance, with the third game in ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}'' being translated to countless languages and influencing literature all across Eurasia. In Feudal Japan, fables can be seen among literature such as the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableTheJourney'',''Kojiki'' and ''Nihon shoki'', reaching their height during the fifth game in UsefulNotes/KamakuraShogunate.
Fables traditionally differ from {{Fairy Tale}}s by focusing on delivering theabove series.
* ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', a comic seriesfinal life lesson, whereas fairy tales don't necessarily teach morals, or at least don't highlight their specific lesson as much or as explicitly. Similarly, they are often different from {{Legend}}s in that they are timeless and unconnected from specific locations and cultures, being able to be understood through several places and time periods far removed from their origins and remain relevant. That said, the line between fable, fairytale and other traditional folktales is blurred, and the term fable has also been used for any fantastic, ludic or imaginative narrative in general.
Despite its name, the genre isn't inherently the same as the BeastFable trope, as the latter is about stories using animals as allegories for human society in general, not necessarily to teach a moral like a fable classically does. They overlap and the trope was influenced by the genre (hence its name), but not all fables feature animals (such as "[[https://read.gov/aesop/143.html The North Wind and the Sun]]" and "[[https://read.gov/aesop/011.html The Oak and the Reeds]]") and not all {{Beast Fable}}s focus on conveying universal, everyday moral lessons (such as ''Literature/ReynardTheFox'' and ''Literature/AnimalFarm'').
Common characters fromold fables can appear in FairyTaleFreeForAll settings, as well as in a FracturedFairyTale. If you are searching for the videogame series, check [[VideoGame/{{Fable}} here]]. For the comic book, see ComicBook/{{Fables}}, and for the manga, see Manga/TheFable.
----
[[index]]
[[header:Fabulists]]
* Creator/{{Aesop}}
* Gáspár Heltai
* Ivan Krylov
* Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine
* Vishnu Sharma
* Vardan Aygektsi
* Phaedrus
* UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci
* Creator/LeoTolstoy
* John Gay
* Creator/MarieDeFrance
* Robert Dodsley
* Tomás de Iriarte
[[header:Collections, Compilations and Individual Fables]]
* ''Literature/AesopsFables''
** "Literature/TheGrasshopperAndTheAnts"
* ''Fables'' by La Fontaine
* ''Fábulas'' by Monteiro Lobato, as part of the ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'' series.
* ''Hitopadesha''
* ''Kalila wa-Dimna''
* ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}''
* "Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs"[[note]]Sometimes. It is more often considered to be a fairy tale[[/note]]
[[/index]]
----
!!Common tropes in fables:
* AnAesop: Fables are the TropeCodifier for the main moral lesson teached in a work. They may be either subtle or resumed in a final phrase or stanza, but they always intend to pass a message about how to differenciate right and wrong, properly behave in an ethical way, foresee attempts at deceit, lead with difficult situations and live life.
* {{Allegory}}: These storiesand fairy tales living in New York City.
* BeastFable, a story that replaces humans with animal stereotypes.
* ''Manga/{{Fable}}'', a 2014 manga written/drawn by Katsuhisa Minami and published by Kodansha under the Young Magazine label.
If a direct wick has led you here, please correct the link so that it pointsusually make use of metaphors through facets of nature to tell stories relating to the corresponding article.human experience.
----* BeastFable: Fables are famous for usually featuring animal characters with human qualities, thus using [[AnimalStereotypes the traits associated with them and their roles in nature]] to further convey the moral: [[CunningLikeAFox the fox is cunning]], the [[KingOfBeasts lion]] and the tiger are mighty, [[SavageWolves the wolf is vicious]], [[DiligentDraftAnimal the ox is strong]], the ant is hard-working etc.. This allows fables to save text, since the symbolism already associated with specific animals means the story can reduce the amount of description and make itself briefer.
* NamelessNarrative: Being meant to be universal and straightforward tales, rarely do fables name any of their characters, who are instead called after their species or role.
* OlderThanDirt: They are some of the oldest forms of storytelling out there: anthropomorphic animals, at least, date far back to engravings in Ancient Egypt.
* {{Satire}}: Alongside their moralizing lessons, some fables also allegorically criticized powerful people of their time, acting as a folk expression against dominant classes; in fact, Aesop and Phaedrus, two of the most important fabulists in History, were probably both slaves. For example, "The Animals Sick of the Plague" ends with the council of animals flattering predators like lions, tigers and wolves despite their admittedly evil deeds and instead declaring a donkey wicked merely for having eaten a little grass from someone else once, and its moral is that the judgement of a court will be biased towards the more powerful. In addition, the moral of "The Wolf and the Lamb" is that tyrants always find pretext for tyranny.
* TalkingAnimal: Most of the most famous fables incorporate animals with human characteristics, talking either [[AnimalTalk between each other]] or with humans and other kinds of characters. If they are otherwise normal animals, {{Civilized Animal}}s or {{Funny Animal}}s depends on the author and illustrator, though.
!!Adaptations, pastiches, parodies or other uses of fables in works
[[AC:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/MonicasGang'' occasionally adapts famous fables with their characters, both in the main line and in additional educational books. For example, in the edition Mônica n° 127/Globo, the story "Fables" has Blue, Franklin's dog, disdain the book of fables his owner was reading, since the dog's individual stories in the comics already have talking animals that [[AnimalTalk only humans can't understand]]. However, Blue accidentally [[PortalBook falls into the book, ending up in a land where all the classic fables take place]] and the morals appear as [[MetafictionalDevice literal pieces of paper delivering the lesson]]. He loses a bet after betting on the hare from "The Hare and the Tortoise", gets chased by the wolf from "The Wolf and the Lamb", gets tricked by the fox from "The Fox and the Goat" and in return tricks her into tasting castor beans in "The Fox and the Grapes", until he finally returns home.
[[AC:Film - Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'''s premise is inspired by "The Grasshopper and the Ants", portraying the grasshoppers as bullying the ants into giving them food.
[[AC:Literature]]
* ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'': Besides the book ''Fábulas'', in which [[FramingDevice Mrs. Benta tells several classic fables and some of her own to the folks of the farm]], some of the chapters from ''Reinações de Narizinho'', the first novel of the series, involve the kids using the Pirlimpimpim Dust to travel to the Land of Fables. There, they witness famous stories and rescue the donkey from the fable "The Animals Sick of the Plague" from being killed by the King Lion and the council of animals, welcoming him to go back with them to live in the farm afterwards. The Talking Donkey then becomes a somewhat recurring character in the franchise, being named "Counselor" by Emília in the following book ''Viagem ao Céu'' due to the former's words of wisdom.
* ''Literature/HowARealistHeroRebuiltTheKingdom'': InUniverse, Souma illustrates a flaw he noticed in the [[FictionalGenevaConventions Mankind Declaration]] with a parable about a DivineConflict between a God of the East who believed all mankind should be equal, and a God of the West who believed all mankind should be free. The God of the East eventually broke up, but this caused unforeseen problems in countries that had declared themselves neutral. This story is [[FantasyConflictCounterpart an in-universe allegory]] to the Helsinki Accords ratified by several countries during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and how they later hampered the international response to UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars in the 1990s.
[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/WaltDisneyPresents'': The first half of "From Aesop to Hans Christian Andersen" is devoted to the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. The former's segment features a biography of Aesop and a brief adaptation of "The Frog and the Ox" before presenting the Disney version of ''WesternAnimation/TheTortoiseAndTheHare''. La Fontaine's segment gives an overview of some of his "elegant" takes of Aesop's tales, including "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse", before segueing into Disney's modern retelling, ''WesternAnimation/TheCountryCousin''.
[[AC:Music]]
* Music/SasakureUK's "A Soliloquy of The Boy who Cried Wolf" is based on the eponymous Aesop's fable.
[[AC:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheCrow'' is a series of animated shorts whose first episode is based on "The Fox and the Grapes", with the title also being the same as the eponymous fable.
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': "Foney Fables" is a collection of shorts that spoofs several fairy tales and fables.
----
->'''''"Seek new terrain to admire, but explore [[DarthWiki/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife with parsimony]]"'''''
A
The plot of a fable often consists on a simple and concise narrative with accessible language, frequently concluding with a maxim resuming and explicitly stating the values arised from the story (called the moral) that often can be or become a popular saying; several popular expressions come from these folk tales, such as "sour grapes" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/005.html The Fox and the Grapes]]"), "slow and steady wins the race" ("[[https://read.gov/aesop/025.html The Hare and the Tortoise]]"), "look before you
* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', an Xbox
** ''VideoGame/FableI'',
Fables are some of the oldest and most enduring and widespread genres of storytelling, present in almost every country as amusing, humorous ways of teaching or reflecting about truth and morality and passing down valuable folk wisdom. Much like fairytales, fables were originally targeted towards a relatively wider age span -- many stories from Phaedrus and La Fontaine carry political overtones and irony satirizing elements of their time, and they were used to teach adults in the
** ''VideoGame/FableII'',
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'',
** ''VideoGame/FableTheJourney'',
Fables traditionally differ from {{Fairy Tale}}s by focusing on delivering the
* ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series
Despite its name, the genre isn't inherently the same as the BeastFable trope, as the latter is about stories using animals as allegories for human society in general, not necessarily to teach a moral like a fable classically does. They overlap and the trope was influenced by the genre (hence its name), but not all fables feature animals (such as "[[https://read.gov/aesop/143.html The North Wind and the Sun]]" and "[[https://read.gov/aesop/011.html The Oak and the Reeds]]") and not all {{Beast Fable}}s focus on conveying universal, everyday moral lessons (such as ''Literature/ReynardTheFox'' and ''Literature/AnimalFarm'').
Common characters from
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[[index]]
[[header:Fabulists]]
* Creator/{{Aesop}}
* Gáspár Heltai
* Ivan Krylov
* Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine
* Vishnu Sharma
* Vardan Aygektsi
* Phaedrus
* UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci
* Creator/LeoTolstoy
* John Gay
* Creator/MarieDeFrance
* Robert Dodsley
* Tomás de Iriarte
[[header:Collections, Compilations and Individual Fables]]
* ''Literature/AesopsFables''
** "Literature/TheGrasshopperAndTheAnts"
* ''Fables'' by La Fontaine
* ''Fábulas'' by Monteiro Lobato, as part of the ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'' series.
* ''Hitopadesha''
* ''Kalila wa-Dimna''
* ''Literature/{{Panchatantra}}''
* "Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs"[[note]]Sometimes. It is more often considered to be a fairy tale[[/note]]
[[/index]]
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!!Common tropes in fables:
* AnAesop: Fables are the TropeCodifier for the main moral lesson teached in a work. They may be either subtle or resumed in a final phrase or stanza, but they always intend to pass a message about how to differenciate right and wrong, properly behave in an ethical way, foresee attempts at deceit, lead with difficult situations and live life.
* {{Allegory}}: These stories
* BeastFable, a story that replaces humans with animal stereotypes.
* ''Manga/{{Fable}}'', a 2014 manga written/drawn by Katsuhisa Minami and published by Kodansha under the Young Magazine label.
If a direct wick has led you here, please correct the link so that it points
* NamelessNarrative: Being meant to be universal and straightforward tales, rarely do fables name any of their characters, who are instead called after their species or role.
* OlderThanDirt: They are some of the oldest forms of storytelling out there: anthropomorphic animals, at least, date far back to engravings in Ancient Egypt.
* {{Satire}}: Alongside their moralizing lessons, some fables also allegorically criticized powerful people of their time, acting as a folk expression against dominant classes; in fact, Aesop and Phaedrus, two of the most important fabulists in History, were probably both slaves. For example, "The Animals Sick of the Plague" ends with the council of animals flattering predators like lions, tigers and wolves despite their admittedly evil deeds and instead declaring a donkey wicked merely for having eaten a little grass from someone else once, and its moral is that the judgement of a court will be biased towards the more powerful. In addition, the moral of "The Wolf and the Lamb" is that tyrants always find pretext for tyranny.
* TalkingAnimal: Most of the most famous fables incorporate animals with human characteristics, talking either [[AnimalTalk between each other]] or with humans and other kinds of characters. If they are otherwise normal animals, {{Civilized Animal}}s or {{Funny Animal}}s depends on the author and illustrator, though.
!!Adaptations, pastiches, parodies or other uses of fables in works
[[AC:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/MonicasGang'' occasionally adapts famous fables with their characters, both in the main line and in additional educational books. For example, in the edition Mônica n° 127/Globo, the story "Fables" has Blue, Franklin's dog, disdain the book of fables his owner was reading, since the dog's individual stories in the comics already have talking animals that [[AnimalTalk only humans can't understand]]. However, Blue accidentally [[PortalBook falls into the book, ending up in a land where all the classic fables take place]] and the morals appear as [[MetafictionalDevice literal pieces of paper delivering the lesson]]. He loses a bet after betting on the hare from "The Hare and the Tortoise", gets chased by the wolf from "The Wolf and the Lamb", gets tricked by the fox from "The Fox and the Goat" and in return tricks her into tasting castor beans in "The Fox and the Grapes", until he finally returns home.
[[AC:Film - Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'''s premise is inspired by "The Grasshopper and the Ants", portraying the grasshoppers as bullying the ants into giving them food.
[[AC:Literature]]
* ''Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo'': Besides the book ''Fábulas'', in which [[FramingDevice Mrs. Benta tells several classic fables and some of her own to the folks of the farm]], some of the chapters from ''Reinações de Narizinho'', the first novel of the series, involve the kids using the Pirlimpimpim Dust to travel to the Land of Fables. There, they witness famous stories and rescue the donkey from the fable "The Animals Sick of the Plague" from being killed by the King Lion and the council of animals, welcoming him to go back with them to live in the farm afterwards. The Talking Donkey then becomes a somewhat recurring character in the franchise, being named "Counselor" by Emília in the following book ''Viagem ao Céu'' due to the former's words of wisdom.
* ''Literature/HowARealistHeroRebuiltTheKingdom'': InUniverse, Souma illustrates a flaw he noticed in the [[FictionalGenevaConventions Mankind Declaration]] with a parable about a DivineConflict between a God of the East who believed all mankind should be equal, and a God of the West who believed all mankind should be free. The God of the East eventually broke up, but this caused unforeseen problems in countries that had declared themselves neutral. This story is [[FantasyConflictCounterpart an in-universe allegory]] to the Helsinki Accords ratified by several countries during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and how they later hampered the international response to UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars in the 1990s.
[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/WaltDisneyPresents'': The first half of "From Aesop to Hans Christian Andersen" is devoted to the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. The former's segment features a biography of Aesop and a brief adaptation of "The Frog and the Ox" before presenting the Disney version of ''WesternAnimation/TheTortoiseAndTheHare''. La Fontaine's segment gives an overview of some of his "elegant" takes of Aesop's tales, including "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse", before segueing into Disney's modern retelling, ''WesternAnimation/TheCountryCousin''.
[[AC:Music]]
* Music/SasakureUK's "A Soliloquy of The Boy who Cried Wolf" is based on the eponymous Aesop's fable.
[[AC:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheCrow'' is a series of animated shorts whose first episode is based on "The Fox and the Grapes", with the title also being the same as the eponymous fable.
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': "Foney Fables" is a collection of shorts that spoofs several fairy tales and fables.
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->'''''"Seek new terrain to admire, but explore [[DarthWiki/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife with parsimony]]"'''''
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** ''[[Videogame/FableTheJourney Fable: The Journey]]'', the latest game in the above series.
* ''Comicbook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
* ''Comicbook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
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** ''[[Videogame/FableTheJourney Fable: The Journey]]'', ''VideoGame/FableTheJourney'', the latest fifth game in the above series.
*''Comicbook/{{Fables}}'', ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
*
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* ''Manga/{{Fable}}'', a 2014 manga written/drawn by Katsuhisa Minami and published by Kodansha under the Young Magazine label.
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** ''[[Videogame/FableTheJourney Fable: The Journey]]'', the latest game in the above series.
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* ''{{Fables}}'', a comic series about characters from old stories and fairy tales living in New York City.
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* ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', a Xbox and PC video game series that first started in 2004.
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** ''VideoGame/FableII'', the second game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'', the third game in the above series.
** ''VideoGame/FableIII'', the third game in the above series.
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* BeastFable, a story that replaces humans with animal stereotypes.
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[[quoteright:289:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Fable-Cover-001_3837.png]]
[[caption-width-right:289:Warning: Objects in pool may be less evil than they appear.]]
-->''For every choice, a consequence.''
A game released by Lionhead Studios in 2004, created by [[BlackAndWhite Peter Molyneux]]. It spent four years in production, and was thought to be {{Vaporware}} for a while, before it was released to [[HypeBacklash extremely]] [[YourMileageMayVary polarizing]] [[BrokenBase reviews]]. The video game itself is an Action-RPG, with the player's decisions affecting the gameplay. Unfortunately, the differences in gameplay boiled down to people either flocking to you or running in fear depending on whether you were good or evil, and the KarmaMeter ended up being purely aesthetic.
The game still received praise for being rather open-ended with both questing and character creation, and is regarded by some as a genuinely good game, just not [[WhatCouldHaveBeen what it could have been]].
Despite the flaws and mixed reception, the game went on to be one of the top selling games on the original Xbox.
A sequel was released in 2008, and was met with [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel surprisingly positive reviews]]. It improved the KarmaMeter, adding Purity and Corruption alongside good and evil, and increased the role the character's actions played in the game's world. While one can still attack a town and kill everyone in it, doing so hurts the town's economy and make the villagers hate you, increasing prices at shops and lessening the quality of the items sold.
''Fable III'' was released in 2010, set 50 years after the events of the last game. It heavily simplifies gameplay elements established in the first and second games, but introduces some new ones, such as weapons that morph in appearance, and to the ability to rule a kingdom half-way through the game.
The three games are mainly set in Albion ([[IThoughtItMeant not]] [[NamesTheSame that]] [[{{Albion}} one]]), a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture land based on England]] during the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution respectively. In the first two games, the player takes on the role of an orphan who grows up to become an archetypal action hero determined to exact vengeance upon those who killed his loved ones when he was a child. The third game has you control a prince or princess, who quests to overthrow his or her brother, the corrupt king of Albion. In each game, depending on your playstyle, TheQuest may take the backseat to WideOpenSandbox gameplay and {{Irrelevant Side Quest}}s.
Peter Molyneux has stated a desire to continue the series even as far as a ''Fable 5'', but only time will tell.
'Fable: The Journey' is to be released in 2012, although little is known about it as of yet.
----
!!! This game provides examples of:
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In ''Fable III'' the Bowerstone Sewers are surprisingly roomy, and apparently so clean your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there! Justified because Bowerstone is based off an old-style European city
* ActorAllusion: Where do you meet Ben Finn (played by Simon Pegg)? During the section where you fight the walking dead Hollow Men, [[ShaunOfTheDead of course.]]
* AdultFear: Herman in Fable II is looking for his son, Joey in the Hobbe Caves. You decide to help him, and later he finds his son was turned into a Hobbe. He is then killed.
* {{AFGNCAAP}}: That it averts this is one of the original's main criticisms. ''Fable I'' was supposed to have the option to play as a female character, but the feature was removed before the game was released. Actions the player chooses to make in the game (any of the games) affect the main character's physical appearance, including height, skin color, and body type.
* AHomeownerIsYou: Houses are available for sale, and can generate income when rented out.
* AlmostLethalWeapons: Even some of the better weapons deal <100 damage. Without augments and skillranks, killing enemies will take quite awhile. In Fable 2, almost all legendary weapons are Badass. Get a master weapon (doesn't even matter which) with 4 augment slots and put different damaging augments on. You will slay thousands with 1-3 attacks each, MAXIMUM.
* AltarTheSpeed: Romancing someone enough to want to marry you takes about 5 minutes of flirting, and presenting a gift or 3.
** Once you get your appearance and renown up, you can actually get people to [[LoveAtFirstSight fall in love with you by]] ''[[LoveAtFirstSight walking past them]]''
*** TruthInTelevision: Screaming [[ElvisPresley Elvis]]/[[TheBeatles Beatles]]/etc. fans show the same tendencies.
*** TruthInTelevision: And once they find out you're a regular person, they start getting upset when you neglect them while saving the world.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Hobbes, children that have had their souls devoured by an evil nymphs--Hobbes can do this to other children, and apparently suggestible males. Also [[spoiler:Chesty]], makes no real sense and apparently has been killing people for some time and has ultimate control over his insane dimension. "Do you like doggies? I love doggies! Let's play with doggies!"
* AnachronismStew: Not so much in the original ''Fable'', but very apparent in ''Fable 2'' and ''3''.
* AndYourLittleDogToo: The second game does a ''very'' good job of making you ''hate'' Lucien.
* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou
* AnnouncerChatter: During The Crucible in 2 and [[spoiler: Reaver's Mansion in 3]].
* AnticlimaxBoss: At the end of ''Fable 2'', when you finally catch up to Lord Lucien, [[spoiler: you simply shoot him in the head (or Reaver does it for you if you hesitate). It's not even a fight, you just kill the sucker.]] The actual final boss is so unremarkable that few players will realize that it is the such until the main quest ends about twenty minutes later.
* {{Antihero}} The player character can be anywhere on the scale, and you encounter several of these over the course of the series, such as Garth, who is a type 2, and Reaver, who is a type 5.
* AnythingThatMoves: Disturbingly hinted at with Reaver in III. [[spoiler:His guests at an orgy-filled party are all balverines.]]
** Also, his "Pleasure Chamber" (which you can infiltrate for a quest) has chickens roaming around and locked in cages hanging from the ceiling.
*** More disturbingly, if you loot the chamber you'll found about a half-dozen condoms and...a summon creatures potion. What...what does he use it for? [[YouDoNOTWantToKnow Do I even want to know?]]
* ApocalypticLog: Aurora in ''Fable III''. The citizens posted messages about how the eternal night destroyed their town as most of the populace including women and children were slaughtered. Yes, it's as depressing as it sounds.
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: Walter]] while [[DemonicPossession possessed]] by [[spoiler: The Crawler]] in ''Fable III''. He encourages the player, "Don't hold back!" when you attack him.
* ArrowsOnFire: Played straight.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In both games, after you commit crimes in a town, a guard will run up to you and charge you with a list of all of them, offering you options of how to respond to the charges (pay a fine, run away, etc). In many cases, you've just finished rampaging through a town destroying everything and every one in your path, and then a guard charges you with 30+ counts of murder and one count of vandalism from that door you kicked down.
* AssholeVictim: Reaver's assistant sexually harasses a woman. [[spoiler: She turns out to be a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent balverine]] and kills him]]
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: ''Fable III'', of course.
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler: Lady Grey in ''Fable 2'' if the Love Hurts subquest is completed.]]
* {{Badass}}: Many people throughout Albion's history, but those who bear the blood of the Archons are pretty much born to badassery.
* BadassBack: If you block an enemy's attack from behind in ''Fable I'', you parry without even turning around.
* BadassBeard: Walter in ''Fable III''.
* BadassBookworm: Briar Rose in ''Fable I''. Garth in ''Fable II''.
* BadassLongcoat: Seriously needs to be mentioned for ''Fable 2'', You got Highwaymen coats, Noble Gent's coats, and a few others, of course they look more badass with the right colours.
* BaldOfEvil: Literally, in the first game; The horns evil-doers sprout cause a receding hairline. Averted in the second game, wherein Ghoulish players will still have a full head of hair when they sprout their horns. Some sort of twisted demonic evolution at work?
* BeardOfEvil: Logan has one to add to his ObviouslyEvil appearance.
* BerserkButton: In Fable III, if you have the Ravenscar Keep DLC[[spoiler: Do NOT mess with the hero's dog, even if you have him strapped to a chair. They won't keep him tied down.]]
* BettingMiniGame: Several in fact.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Hammer. She's sweet and chatty. Then her dad gets killed...
* {{BFS}}: The "swords" that the Dwellers in ''Fable III'' are seen using are basically supersized cleavers.
* BigBad: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] in ''Fable I''
** Lord Lucien in ''Fable II''
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]]] in ''Fable III''
* BigBeautifulWoman: There is a poster of a woman like this in Fable III, and she is called "Big Bess".
** Hammer's fans might describe her this way.
** It is also an option for the heroine to be one.
* {{Bittersweet Ending}}: [[spoiler: Fable II, if you chose The Sacrifice for your wish. Even in the other endings, you've received whatever it was you so desperately wanted, but Theresa's closing lines in the game open the possibility that the whole thing was a XanatosGambit to put the power of the Spire in her hands.]]
** [[spoiler: In Fable III, the game ends with the Hero forced to kill his lifelong mentor and friend Walter, who'd been possessed by [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]. Also, depending on how full the kingdom's treasury was, the vast majority of Albion could be dead, and depending on how many promises you've had to break, you may have alienated some of your old friends and allies.]]
* BlackAndWhiteMorality: One of the game's most distinctive features is its morality system, whereby any issue the player decides the outcome of involves either [[ZeroPunctuation mawkish virtue or extravagant malevolence with no middle ground]]. This is especially {{egregious}} around more complicated issues such as ones involving [[EternalProhibition prohibition]].
* BlackCloak: While not evil, per se, Theresa in ''Fable II'' is a MysteriousProtector, and wears a [[http://files.xboxic.com/xbox-360/fable-2/fable2trailer.jpg heavy cloak]]. This is also because she is specifically pointed out as a [[BlindSeer blind seeress]].
* BlessedAreTheCheesemakers: "Do you like cheese? Me, I love a bit of cheese. Cheesy, cheesy cheese." "The Badgers are stealing the cheese."
* BookEnds: Fable III has [[spoiler: the beginning of your first fight and the end of you last one with Walter, and he even recites the same basic line about stories he told you of your father/mother when you were a child.]]
--> ''Prince/ss'': "Teach me how to be a hero.
** There's also book ends for the first part of the game.
-->'''Logan:''' [[spoiler: You have the power over life and death. Now choose.]]
* BowAndSwordInAccord: The first games hero.
* BrawnHilda: In Fable 2, a female player character with maxed out physique will look like [[http://www.timing-design.com/crap/fable2-monster.jpg this]]. The third game fixes the problem but still alters the physique. There's also Hammer, though YourMileageMayVary whether she's this or a HotAmazon.
** When did [[DragonAge Sten]] grow breasts?
** When did ''[[LegacyOfKain Kain]]'' grow breasts?
** Fable 3 fixes this by keeping maxed out physique at a relatively realistic level and having the bodies still match the voices.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: As mentioned below, banshees say some nasty things in an attempt to demoralize you. At least one line is directed towards the ''player'' :
--> "Think about all the endless hours you've wasted playing this game. And for what? Nothing!"
** Done by The Hero in Fable 3 during the "Darkness Incarnate" quest.
-->'''Sir Walter:''' Do you sometimes get the feeling someone's playing a game with you?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: The 5-Star Dog Potion for Fable 3, which is only obtainable by purchase on Xbox Live and instantly maxes out your dog's fighting and treasure-finding abilities.
* BrokenBird: Sparrow gets shit on in the opening cut scene and it goes downhill from there.
* BrokenBridge: Demon Doors, kind of. Not to mention an actual Broken Bridge in Fable II.
** In Fable 3, in Millfields, there is a sidequest to fund a new bridge which will let you get to Driftwood, [[spoiler:location of one of the four golden keys.]]
* BritishAccents Of many flavors, though mostly of the OopNorth variety.
* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Maze]]
* BullyHunter: Both games have this as at least an option. Its optional in Fable 1, your character can instead choose to be the bully. In Fable 2, its compulsory as your character has to fight off an adolescent thug who was tormenting a dog after Rose has a {{Leeroy Jenkins}} bully hunter moment herself. (She runs up to challenge the thug and promptly gets knocked out.)
* ButchLesbian: One of the many many ways to shape your female character in Fable II.
* ButThouMust: [[spoiler:The Bandit King sends assassins after the Hero whether you kill him or not]]. Also when Herman is at the door in Hobbe cave, if you use Will to kill his (now Hobbeified) son, he dies anyway. Also is the reason [[spoiler: Theresa took the Spire and gets you to usurp Logan, because if you don't Albion is doomed.]]
* TheCaligula: Logan. [[spoiler:Subverted later, where it turns out he's actually a WellIntentionedExtremist attempting to prepare Albion for The Crawler.]]
* CallBack: The Gnomes, one of the collection sidequests for ''III'', are given life (and attitude) by an insulting Gargoyle from ''II''.
* CaptainErsatz: ''Fable II'''s Theresa looks and sounds a lot like [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Kreia]].
** Actually, she is voiced by [[Film/HarryPotter Madam Hooch]]
* CameraScrew: The camera tends to whip around to look at whatever the game thinks you should be looking at. This leads to a particularly irritating moment about two thirds through the second game where to bypass an unnecessary enemy, you're running directly sideways and almost backward with no way to look at what's in front of you.
* CampGay: You can make your character this in Fable II and III if you so desire.
* CampStraight: Your character can be created to be this.
* CardCarryingVillain: Lesley.
-->'''Lesley:''' We owe you. '''[[LargeHam The cause of EVIL owes you!]]'''
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Played with in minor ways in the first two, but utterly bitchslaps you in Fable III [[spoiler: just like they did Logan.]]
* CharacterAlignment:[[invoked]] There's nine convenient titles in the second game.
** LawfulGood:[[invoked]] Saint.
** NeutralGood:[[invoked]] Philanthropist.
** ChaoticGood:[[invoked]] Decadent.
** LawfulNeutral:[[invoked]] Puritan.
** TrueNeutral:[[invoked]] Oppurtunist.
** ChaoticNeutral:[[invoked]] Debaser.
** LawfulEvil:[[invoked]] Fanatic.
** NeutralEvil:[[invoked]] Demon.
** ChaoticEvil:[[invoked]] Ghoul.
* ChargedAttack: Ranged attacks in the first game and melee flourishes in the second game can be held indefinitely, allowing the player to theoretically charge for minutes and then release a massively powerful attack. Ranged attacks in the second game, some spells in the first game, and all spells in the second game can be held for a finitely more powerful attack. Also, to a lesser extent, flourishes in the second game. All magic and flourishes with both weapons in the third game.
** In ''Fable III'', you can kill any creature quickly if you manage a charged melee attack, then quickly [[FinishingMove finish it]] by stabbing it (or crushing its head) while knocked to the ground.
* [[ChekhovsGun Chekov's Gun]]: [[spoiler: That music box...]]
* ChestMonster: Chesty, a unique example in Fable 2 who greets the hero in his own nightmare asking if he wants to "play a game" with him (his favorite game involves tearing off a person's legs and throwing them into a pool with flesh eating piranhas.) Unlike most examples however, the chest itself isn't the dangerous (gameplay wise), just his "friends" and "doggies."
** In Fable III, [[spoiler: Chesty returns, challenging you to a game of chess. he eventually gets bored, and has the lifesize gamepieces attack you directly.]]
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:Theresa]] controls both sides of the central conflict of ''Fable II'', convincing Lucien to build the Spire then [[spoiler:assembling and manipulating the four Heroes into killing him]] in a magnificent XanatosGambit that results in [[spoiler:Theresa claiming the power of the Spire for herself]]. In ''Fable III'', she is not only behind your development as a Hero, but [[spoiler: provoked Logan into becoming a tyrant by telling him the EldritchAbomination that nearly killed him is coming to Albion.]]
* ChildrenAreInnocent: Invoked by a Demon Door in Fable 3
* CityGuards: And then some. Arguably one of the most famous examples.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Walter suffers from this. With good reason.
* CloudCuckoolander: Many in the series, but Bernard in ''Fable III'' tops the list. He has a deathly fear of chickens, thinking they're an evil force. This may have been caused by Arthur taunting him with letters insinuating a CosmicHorrorStory:
-->'''Letter:''' My dear Bernard, One of these days the Chicken God is going to come down from the Celestial Coop in the Sky and '''PECK OUT YOUR EYES! SO THERE!!!''' Arthur.
* ClowncarGrave:
** Lychfield Cemetery.
** Don't forget Bowerstone Cemetery.
** The Tomb of Heroes
** Shelly Crypt.
** Basically anywhere that in anyway some people could conceivably have died in, in Fable III.
*** Justified with wisps in the second game. A wisp takes up far less space than an actual Hollow Man.
* CollectionSidequest: Silver Keys, Hero Dolls...Saving islands from blizzards...Killing 50 odd hobbes...bandit slaughtering in its various forms....
* CombatPragmatist: Reaver. The description of the 'Red Dragon' really says it all. The best shot in Albion heard of Reaver's skill and so challenged him to an "honourable shooting challenge". Reaver's reply was to shoot him in the head.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Spell Weaving in III. Basically, it lets you combine two spells into a single, powerful attack. And is awesome.
* ComingOutStory: The 'Blind Date' sidequest in Fable II.
* ContinuityNod: In ''Fable III'', one of the first quests is called "Chicken Chaser", which was infamously the default title for your hero in the first game, and a title you could adopt in the second. ''Fable III'' also has a museum in a basement in Bowerstone Old Town that features artifacts from the first two games.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Reaver in the third game. He's making the best out of the industrial age.
* CrapsackWorld: Aurora in ''Fable III'' during Eternal Darkness. And how. And if [[spoiler: your character makes the wrong choices when you be come the ruler of Albion. The kingdom quickly becomes one of these.]]
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Derek of the second game, in a funny sort of way. In the prologue you meet him as he asks you to collect some warrants he has carelessly allowed to blow away through an alleyway, and comes across as rather incompetent, but if you listen to him, he swears "I'm going to clear up this town." If you help him get the warrants, he's as good as his word. If you don't... He even gets a book written about him.
* [[CrystalDragonJesus Crystal Dragon]] [[strike:[[CrystalDragonJesus Jesus]]]] {{Satan}}: Skorm.
** Also Avo, who would be God. Subverted in that according to the Oracle, both were made up by a trader who happened to find the locations rich with light and dark [[{{Mana}} Will]]. However, that doesn't explain the deep voices that echo in the temple...
* CuteBruiser: Your main character as a child in Fable 2 isn't nearly as powerful as the rest listed on this tropes examples, but it is notable that he/she manages to take down a much larger bully in a few hits with nothing more than a toy sword and a spitball shooter. Consider the fact that Rose, a much older teen, got knocked out in one headbutt from this guy.
* CutsceneIncompetence: Justified in the first game, as [[spoiler:it ''is'' the Satanic Jack of Blades capturing you]].
* TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget: Lucien goes from trying to resurrect his family, to trying to eliminate death, to trying to eliminate chaos, to trying to replace Albion with his own kingdom.
** Subverted with Logan in ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: He never forgot why he was behaving like a tyrant. When you capture him, he has no VillainousBreakdown. He [[GracefulLoser calmly surrenders]] quickly and tells you exactly why he did what he did.]]
* DatingSim: More present in the second game than the first. In the first all you can do is perform expressions, give gifts, and be generally attractive to make a person fall for you, and once you're married your wife will stay with you unless you go out of your way to abuse her regularly. In the second, one trait an [=NPC=] can have is a favorite place, and taking them there will make them more receptive to romance. There's even an achievement for taking someone on the perfect date. Also, in the second game wives have various demands that must be met or else their happiness goes down and you might come home to news that your family's leaving you. As mentioned above under AltarTheSpeed, in both games if you're very famous and/or very good looking, you can (somewhat realistically) walk through town and find yourself surrounded by women you haven't met begging to marry you.
** Done much more realistically in III, you actually have to be friends first, and do some nice things, as well as hug them, tickle them, etc.
* DeadLittleSister: Lord Lucien in ''Fable II'' got his StartOfDarkness when his wife and daughter died of an unexpected illness. He quickly gives the main character a dead older sister.
* DeadpanSnarker: The hero of Fable 3 has his/her moments.
* DeathByNewberyMedal: The ending of the prologue in Fable II.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the first game you could carry several resurrection phials, but if you ran out you were sent back to your most recent save. In Fable 2, the developers consciously removed "death" from the game, both because they decided there was no good way to implement it (simply going back to a checkpoint isn't fun, and any significant negative consequences caused testers to turn off their X-boxes before the autosave to avoid them) and because they realized the game was supposed to be the epic tale of a famous hero, and in any other medium you'd never expect him to be killed by some random bandit. So in the second game, when your health drops to zero you simply fall to the ground momentarily, receive a scar, and lose any experience still on the ground. Ditto with 3, but if you're even mildly proficient with any kind of combat ability, you will be fine.
* DegradedBoss: The Commandant. Inadvertently, as you meet Commandants whilst protecting Garth as he's doing his ritual, and a fair few more show up in Fable III.
** After Saker is defeated in Fable 3, a few hours later clones of him with enhanced Will Powers start showing up with his mercenary goons, with no explanation whatsoever. This after he personally pledges that they won't meddle in your affairs again, and since you've ruined his base of operations.
*** To be fair to Sakers promise; you can freely enter, hang out, and even make friends with the mercs in his camp if you spare him. The ones outside may be attacking you due to being away from the boss, or even a separate faction of mercenaries that the developers were too lazy or unable to give proper backstory to.
* DemBones: Hollow Men.
* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler: The Crawler's]] special power.
* DepravedBisexual: Reaver, from Fable 2. The Player character can be one too, if they want.
* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Seems to be the cause of Reaver's cruelty, according to the fifth and final page of his journal. He reacted as many of us would to what he went through as a youth in Oakvale - He broke down and decided that he was a monster for what he'd done. Where he differed was that when he regained his composure, he started ACTING like one.]]
* DevelopersRoom: The headstones in the graveyard are mostly developer injokes.
* DisposableSexWorker: Hire a prostitute in Fable II and III, have sex with him or her, and then kill them if you wish.
* DontTryThisAtHome: Unprotected sex is ''much'' safer than using a condom your dog dug up in the woods or a back alley.
* DownerEnding: ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: If you choose to make life better, and drain the vault, better be ready after you win to see a ''lot'' of corpses littering the land. The land is beautiful, friendly... and dead. On the other hand, be a tyrant and have everyone living - and hating your living guts.]]
** Of course, you can TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding with [[spoiler: virtually all your citizens (minus soldiers who died in battle) surviving by keeping the land beautiful as well as work your butt off and coming up with the 9 million gold you need to keep the citizens alive AND keep all your promises]]
*** Or, just do the sensible thing (available in Fable 2 also), which is to buy property and rent it out. Buy every house and every shop, set rents & prices low, then doodle through the game at your leisure. You can't spend fast enough.
* TheDragon: [[spoiler: In Fable, Maze is TheDragon to Jack of Blades]] and the Commandant and the Great Shard are the Dragons to Lord Lucien. The Commandant's personality screen even describes him as Lucien's right hand man.
* DragQueen: In Fable III, one of the achievements requires your hero to dress in the clothing of the opposite gender.
* TheDreaded: Any sufficiently famous and evil hero will have this effect on townsfolk, except for those with the [[FearlessFool "brave"]] trait in II. Some may even run on sight. Enemies remain unaffected though. Which sucks, you'd think they would have learned.
* DrillSergeantNasty: That Goddamn Commandant!
* DroneJam: As if the escort missions weren't annoying enough to start with.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second half of Fable 3. You have become the friggin' ''King'' (or ''Queen'') and individuals still ask you to do petty jobs. Of course, if you plan on doing all those things that deplete the country's treasury, you're going to have to find ways to make an enormous amount of money to put back into the treasury, and one way to make money to buy enough real estate for a solid income is to do those pie-making/blacksmithing/lute-playing minigames at max skill level.
** Worse yet, in one storyline required quest, you must [[spoiler: Halt a robbery]]. The fellow in charge of said spoilered event scoffs at you, even though you're the freakin' ''King/Queen'' of the ''entire country'' and had to carve a bloody swathe through two to three small armies, and staged a coup against the resident tyrant, practically single-handedly. Said fellow is universally agreed to be [[spoiler: TooDumbToLive]] by every player who encounters him.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: If you want to save your kingdom and be loved by your people, you're going to have to work for it. That's right, Your Majesty, I want one hundred pies done by nightfall!
* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler: The Crawler.]]
* EliteMooks: Spire Guards in Fable 2. (Though it seems justified as most spire guards are either mercs hired from champions of [[FightClubbing The Crucible]], or [[CriminalAmnesiac just have their memories and identity ripped apart and become unthinking brutes]]. Balverines are a lot tougher in Fable III, complete with tactics and dodging, and they're faster. They also replace most enemies at night as the game progresses.
* EnemyChatter: When fighting a banshee in the second game, they will attempt to demoralize you by saying some pretty horrible and personal things to the player character. The worst of which is this exchange:
--> ''"Did you know Rose didn't die right away from that shot? No, she watched you fall through that window, heard as your body thudded against the ground and cried bitter tears before a final shot from Lucien ended her life."''
** It also gives the player an opportunity to deliver a satisfying ShutUpHannibal to the bitch.
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]] takes it a step further, not only insulting and threatening the player, but reminding the hero of all his/her failures and inadequacies in a [[NightmareFuel very booming, mocking voice,]] NON-STOP, every time you face his horde. To quote Walter:]]
--> [[spoiler: Walter: ''"Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP!!!!!"'']]
** Bandits and mercenaries usually comment on what you're doing specifically--it's often hilarious. "Magic's not fair!"
*** The funniest thing is that even if you're playing as a squeaky clean good guy and aren't doing anything otherwise threatening, town guards in Fable 2 will still comment negatively if you drink a health potion near them. "Don't you dare drink a health potion!" "What's that? A health potion? You cheeky bugger!" "We really need to get those health potions banned!"
* EscortMission: The first game has some awful examples. Significantly easier in the sequel, as the escorts are now either affected by GameplayAllyImmortality or their survival isn't actually required. One quest even gives you the option of looting your escort's NiceHat off his body and wearing it to trick the quest giver into thinking you're him.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The main character is always either referred to as "Hero" or whatever title he currently has. In Fable III, you are, Prince/Princess, Hero or King/Queen.
** Rose in ''Fable II'' refers to the Hero by his/her nickname "Sparrow".
* EveryoneIsBi: In the original. Though many folks took a while to admit it.
* EverythingsBetterWithChickens: There's chickens all over the place in the games. The later games also include a "chicken" action and a chicken costume. [[spoiler: In the Quest 'The Game' you'll come across firebreathing demon chickens. It makes sense in context, of course.]]
** [[spoiler: 'The Game' is pure awesome on so many levels.]]
* EvilLaugh: {{Lampshaded}} by Lesley in ''Fable III''.
-->'''Lesley:''' Time for an evil laugh? Yeah, I think. '''MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!'''
** And now for something [[HellIsThatNoise far less funny.]]
-->'''[[spoiler:The Crawler:]]''' ''Ahh huhahahahahahaha...''
* EvilVersusEvil: ''Fable III'': [[spoiler: Logan's tyranny was not because he was evil, but he was committing evil acts to prepare for a greater evil - the destruction of Albion by The Crawler.]]
* EvillyAffable: Reaver. Very much so.
* TheEvilPrince: The player character of Fable III, either [[KarmaMeter subverted or played straight]].
* ExpansionPack: ''The Lost Chapters'', which adds many more side quests, another fight with [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] and several new weapons.
* {{Expy}}: Ransom Locke is an Expy of SherlockHolmes, complete with deerstalker cap.
* EvilPaysBetter:
** Several missions in the first two games have good and evil variants, and generally the evil ones pay more, though sometimes the evil option is [[ForTheEvulz just to have an evil option]].
** In the first game, you can only buy property once the owner is dead, meaning you can massacre a town and then get rich buying and renting out the empty houses.
*** The second game subverts this in that while killing someone will drop the price of their property, getting the owner to like you will have the same if not a greater effect. The second and third play it straight, though, with the option to be bad and hike up rent prices or be good and lower them.
** This essentially becomes the plot of Fable 3 after [[spoiler: you become monarch and discover you need to raise an army to fight the Crawler]]. You can either screw your allies over and make loads of gold, or give everyone what they want and plunge the kingdom's treasury into negative numbers.
* EyeScream: The protagonist's sister in the original ''Fable'' had her eyes sliced out during the bandit raid in the prologue when she refused to tell them anything about her brother.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Played with, with Samarkand; It's obviously got Asian characteristics, since it is the source of katanas in the game world. However, it's also Garth's homeland - and he's black.
** Aurora in ''Fable III'' is a distinctly Arab city.
** Albion in the original ''Fable'' seems to very typically parallel Great Britain during the High Middle Ages. Five centuries later in ''Fable 2'' and ''3'', it is heavily based on Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a lot of SteamPunk tossed in.
* FacialMarkings: Toned down from the blue veins in the first two ''Fable'' games, using magic in ''Fable III'' will eventually cause you to get the equivalent of ornate tattoos around your eyes.
** It's actually just whichever tattoos you're wearing, they begin to glow once you reach a certain level of magic.
* FantasyGunControl: Averted as guns are one of the new invention that appeared in the time between the first game and second game. Albion has a lot of dedicated alchemists who are always busy making new discoveries. The use of Will seems to have dramatically declined since the first game as guns have made magic much less impressive as a weapon and were crucial in the destruction of the Guild. In Fable 2 few practice magic with the exception of the Hero, a few key [=NPCs=] and hobbes (who seem to have their own kind of nature driven magic).
* {{Fartillery}}: In Fable 3, your farts are a lot louder and longer than the past installments and they're shown to be capable of rendering [=NPCs=] unconscious.
* FertileFeet
* FinishHim: In ''Fable'', Jack of Blades orders you to do this to [[spoiler:Whisper]]. You can refuse, although you forfeit a cash prize. Also, Twinblade and [[spoiler: Saker]].
* FighterMageThief: Known in the game as Strength, Will and Skill respectively. Or you can just combine all three into you.
** Though the Thief also doubles as an Archer in the first game, and Gunner in the second and third.
* FireIceLightning: Averted in the first two games, which had Fire and Lightning spells, but no Ice. The third game finally adds an Ice spell.
* FiveManBand:
** TheHero: ...[[CaptainObvious The]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hero]]
** TheLancer: Theresa, Hammer/Reaver (Depending on whether the Hero is good or evil)
** TheBigGuy: Hammer
** TheSmartGuy: Garth, Theresa
** TheChick: Hammer or [[TheDarkChick Rea]][[TokenEvilTeammate ver]]
* FlippingTheBird: One of the many actions your character can do in ''Fable II''.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the ''Fable II'' intro, a sparrow takes a dump on the main character just before the action starts. While his/her sister Rose seems to think that it may be a sign of good luck, the character's life is going to take a big dump on him/her with the events that follow.
* FullCircleRevolution: It's possible for [[spoiler: you]] to be just as bad or ''even worse than'' Logan
* GallowsHumour: ''Til Death Do Us Part'', a quest in Fable II, requires you to court someone who's fiancé killed themselves. One of their disliked expressions is Play Dead.
* GameBreakingBug: If you jump at the right spot in the Guild Cave at the beginning of the game, you can jump through the wall and get stuck outside of the map. Since this is an important scene and you haven't found any other locations, you can not fast travel out of it. If you save there, you must start the game over. On the bright side, since it's at the start of the game, you don't lose too much.
* GayOption: All three games allow the main character to marry people of the same sex, though the first game doesn't provide the same benefits for a gay marriage as it does for a straight one.
** Also true of the second game. You can't have any children (or, in a lesbian marriage, protected sex) in a gay marriage. Unless you find a certain potion...see below.
** The simplified communication system in Fable 3 makes this almost mandatory when trying to haggle with a shopkeeper or convincing someone to like you. Friendly gestures? No, you either passionately dance together or you fart on their head.
** To be fair however, the protection is condoms. Not really that applicable for a lesbian couple.
*** Fable 3 has the ability to adopt a child, so it is possible for gay couples to finally have kids.
* [[spoiler:GenderBender]]: The Potion of Highly Surprising Transformation. [[hottip:*:and in the fable 3 downloadable content, if you are playing as a woman then [[spoiler: Commander Milton]] transforms into the Queen.]]
* GenreBlindness: Walter. [[spoiler:Hey look, a swirling purple seal on a pit in the middle of an ominous cave surrounded by skeletons. I know! Let's pick up a book full of arcane symbols and read from it!]]'
** Though, to his defense, [[spoiler: there was no way either of them could have expected what they ran into in that cave. Plus it was kinda the only way out, so even if he did, he more or less didn't have a choice]]
* GentleGiant:
** Sister Hannah aka Hammer in ''Fable II''.
** Boulder in Fable ''III''.
** Possibly a Hero from Fable 2 and 3. In 3 you are always larger than 95% of the populace. In fact, people of the same height as the player actually ''shrink'' when interacting with them including other heroes (players) visiting your world!
* GentlemanAdventurer: Charlie/Charles from Fable 2.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Mourningwood. Think about it's name...
** In the Mercenary Shooting range it is possible to win a rifle called The Money Shot.
** In-universe-The pub in Bowerstone is called "The Cock in the Crown," an obvious TakeThat at Logan.
* GiantMook: In Fable 3, the bands of highwaymen usually have a member who's about ten feet tall and built like a small mountain. And can shoot fire at you. And can perform a ShockwaveStomp fire attack.
* GondorCallsForAid: The first half of ''Fable III''.
* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: In Fable 2, having sex gets you some Good points so long as you don't pay for it. Even if you do pay, if you use a condom you still get a net gain of 5 good points.
* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades' M.O.]]
** [[spoiler: The Crawler does this, too.]]
* [[GuileHero Guile Antihero]]: Reaver.
** Although his talent for [[ImprobableAimingSkills shooting anyone in the world anywhere anytime instantaneously whenever he feels like it]] [[{{Immortality}} forever]] means that his cunning doesn't get much of a work out.
* GroinAttack: Fable 2 has an achievement for shooting a certain amount of enemies in the groin. Furthermore, in Fable 3, one of the flourish/counter attack animations if you're fighting Dark Minions with a hammer? You swing the hammer and slam it into their groin so hard that they break apart. Hell ''yes''.
** The hero of brightwall has a vendetta against testicles.
* GuideDangIt At the end of Fable 3 [[spoiler: a lot of people are shocked when the countdown goes from Day 121 to the final attack and they have not had the chance to transfer the funds into the treasury, resulting in a high death toll. Instead of going forward into a war-torn Bowerstone, simply pan the camera around and go other way, which takes you back to Day 121 to carry on as before.]]
* HammerSpace: Ranged weapons tend to disappear when sheathed (Fable 1 & pistols in 2). More of a glitch really, in Fable 2 sometimes you can see the pistol strapped to your chest, but VERY rarely.
** ''Fable III'' averts this. You either strap the rifle to your back or put your pistol in a side holster.
** You can also see your melee weapon being sheathed
* HasTwoMommies: A new option in Fable III allows gay couples to adopt children.
* HauntedHouse: Sunset House plays this straight. At first it's just a pile of rubble (during the day) or a ghost (during the night), and you can only enter it once you solve a puzzle to restore it to its "living" state. When you get inside, you're greeted by a skeleton hanging from the ceiling inside of a smoking, dilapidated ruin. A note from the previous owner explains what happened here, and that the house is cursed and possessed by some sort of a demon. When you go to sleep in the bed up the stairs, the demon, which calls itself "Chesty", challenges you to a twisted game of chess. Once defeated, the demon becomes fond of you and gives you ownership of the house, allowing you to access the rest of it. Solving a puzzle in the dining room allows you to jump through the mirror into a nice, clean, intact version of the house's interior through which you can exit. The demon is still there, though, and both sides of the house have an eerie, desolate atmosphere about them. That and the fact that the area immediately outside the house is infested with Hollow Men and Hobbes is probably why it can't be used as a family home, can't be rented out, and only sells for 18,000 gold despite being the largest and most posh home in the game.
* {{Herald}}: Theresa
* HeroicMime: In the second game the player character has no dialogue but interacts with others using gestures. The first game has a few words, although it more or less follows this trope as well. In the third game, the hero finally speaks, but still lets most of the other characters do all the talking 95% of the time.
* HeroicSociopath: Certainly an option.
** Reaver is this in the second game.
* HeroicWillpower: This is literally the explanation for how DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist for you in Fable 2 - after you run out of health, you are knocked out, then you get up again with health replenished and enemies knocked back. Ditto with Fable III, but it probably helps that you're the strongest living conduit for magic remaining in the world.
* HeyItsThatVoice: Fable 3's got a wealth of this. [[{{Blackadder}} Stephen Fry]], [[ShaunOfTheDead Simon Pegg]], [[MontyPython John Cleese]], [[HarryPotter Zoe Wanamaker]], among others.
** The original Fable has Hugo Myatt as the voice of the Guildmaster. Yes, you get Treguard from {{Knightmare}} telling you what to do. I'm surprised he doesn't say "Oooh, nasty!" when you're knocked out.
** Ron Glass (aka [[{{Firefly}} Shepherd Book]]) plays Garth, the Hero of Will in ''Fable II''.
* HistoryRepeats: In a ''very'' bad way: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades is an immortal entity that attaches itself to a new host each time the old one is destroyed by tricking the owner into wearing its mask.]] Fortunately, you can end the cycle for good--and in fact ''Fable II'' reveals that it's {{Canon}} that this happened.
** Also in Fable II, the Tattered Spire [[spoiler: was constructed by the Archon of the Old Kingdom, and used to re-create the world, just as Lucien is trying to do.]]
* HoistByHisOwnPetard The Guildmaster for a hero who kills him, in an odd way. In his youth, he was one of the heroes who rebelled against the idea that heroes absolutely had to be good, arguing that heroes had to be free to make their own choices. (The ideology of choice is a big thing in Albion.) If your hero becomes an evil monster who turns on his mentor, it produces a certain irony. Combined with FridgeBrilliance, as the Guildmaster goes into a rant about the morality of your characters actions. One wonders if at any point the Guildmaster had a similar speech aimed at himself, being warned that destroying the laws governing a heroes actions would create a force that would destroy him. Ultimately, this immorality in many heroes leads to their destruction on the advent of readily available firearms when people don't need heroes any more and don't put up with their rampages.
* {{Homage}}: Possibly...let's see there's an ArtifactOfDoom ([[spoiler:Jack's mask]]), and it can only be destroyed for good by [[TheLordOfTheRings throwing it into a volcano]].
** The Understone district is an [[{{Fallout}} underground city sealed off from the surface by a gear-shaped door, ruled over by a man who keeps the citizens in line with warnings about mutants on the surface.]]
* HumanoidAbomination: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades, due to DemonicPossession.]]
* HotAmazon: Hammer, if you're into big women. Definitely the Fable 3 Princess/Queen, ultimate warrior, check; kind of dominant, check; tall and hot, well, starts off check at any rate.
* HundredPercentCompletion: There's an achievement for this.
* IAmAHumanitarian:
** Hobbes.
** [[spoiler: Lesley.]]
--->'''[[spoiler: Lesley:]]''' Come back later and I'll have a peasant on the barbie for you!
* IceCreamKoan: The advice the gnome collection gives in ''Fable III''.
* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Shows up at least once in each game. The first has a demon door that asks you to perform an evil act in front of him, in the second you'll only be let into the Temple of Shadows if you eat several crunchy chicks, and in the third Leslie will only trust you if you kill a man for him.
* {{Immortality}}: The descendants of Black and the lineage of the Archons are Type II immortals bolstered by exceptional strength, ability and cunning. [[spoiler: Reaver is a Type IX who trades the youths of innocent victims to malignant spirits in return for his own eternal vigor.]] Scythe is a Type IV, implied to have lost his soul and thus is incapable of true death.
* ImmortalityImmorality: Reaver.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Fable III has an auto targeting system that leads to this for the player character. For example: you can be facing away from a [[{Mook}} mook]] and hit said mook by pointing your gun over shoulder without even looking. Reaver is shown to have similar abilities.
* InfantImmortality: While children can die in terms of the plot, sometimes even on-screen, the player character in both Fable and Fable II can't kill children. This is likely due to it being developed in Great Britain, where it's illegal to sell a game that allows killing children.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Sword of Aeons, in the regular version of the first game is the strongest weapon in the game. In the UpdatedRerelease, it's only the strongest one handed sword, as its attack power is halved. Avo's Tear is equal to the Sword of Aeons, and almost identical in appearance, but it's gotten in a much nicer way.
* InkSuitActor:
** Garth resembles. his voice actor, [[BarneyMiller Ron]] [[{{Firefly}} Glass]]
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: Another of the game's major criticisms. You can, however, hop over them in Fable II and III.
* {{Interface Screw}}: It is possible to get quite inebriated in Fable's pubs, causing temporary visual distortion and sluggish control, vomiting makes it better though.
** You know you're in ''serious'' trouble when this occurs in ''Fable III.''' Even your Sanctuary, (essentially, the pause screen you can walk around inside of) is not immune to the forces of TheCorruption! Ewwww....
* ItIsBeyondSaving: Lucian, the villain of ''Fable 2'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.
* ItIsNotYourTime: "Death is not your destiny today, little Sparrow."
* KarmaHoudini: ''Reaver''. In Fable 2, in his debut he kills a number of artists who fail to capture his essence ''just so'' in whatever medium they're using(painting, sculpting, photography, etc). We later find out that he was responsible for the destruction of Oakvale hundreds of years ago and that he's sacrificed the youths of others to keep his own youth. The most he ever gets from his actions is a bit of [[DeadpanSnarker snark]] from your companions, and even then, only in passing. The trend continues in Fable 3, set fifty years later, where he's a captain of industry, and filthy stinking rich. His factories are manned by children and he makes his debut in this game by shooting a protester. Repeatedly. He then threatens to do the same to anyone who so much as whispers a complaint about the hellish working conditions. After Logan's downfall, he becomes one of your top brass, and the worst you can do to him is mildly inconvenience him by choosing someone else's argument over his. You, of course, ignore the fact he attempted to murder you in a cruel and gruesome way. For sport. Bastard runs off during the final battle too, could have used the Hero of Skill again.
** Worse than that, when you reject his proposals and build something, it's his company that builds it! There's KarmaHoudini and then there's ''Reaver''.
** [[spoiler: Logan]] if you choose to spare him in Fable 3.
* KarmaMeter: Fairly bizarrely ranked, too.
** Fable II also has Purity and Corruption, which represent how well you take care of your body and how people perceive you. These change depending on things such as whether you drink alcohol, give money to the poor or how much you charge people for renting your houses.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Averted. Katanas are decent weapons, but there are better ones. They are, however, better than their Longsword equivalents. The most powerful legendary melee weapon is a katana. If you want to blaze through combat, katanas can end fight in less than a minute.
* KickTheDog: The Hero can do a few of these. But there's also a literal example of this, too. And Reaver does it all the time.
** This trope was nearly quoted every time the developers discussed the dog in interviews. One of his main purposes is as an easy way to introduce a character - if someone shows up and [[KickTheDog kicks your dog]] you know they're a bastard, if they [[PetTheDog pet your dog]] you know they're friendly.
* [[KillerRabbit Killer Chicken]]: It's no ordinary chicken. It's a ''demonic firebreathing'' chicken!
** One tombstone in the mercenary camp in Fable III claims the deceased was killed by a hamster.
* KnightTemplar : Several, bt perhaps most extremely [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* LampshadeHanging: ''Fable III'': "Why do you guys want to put ''chickens'' in everything?!"
* LargeHam: Jolly ol' [[StephenFry Reaver]]. It's [[CompleteMonster basically his only redeeming quality]].
** Nicolas Hoult (Elliot) and the female hero's voice actress during intimate moments.
** A less comedic version, but whoever voices [[spoiler: The Crawler]] seems to certainly enjoy playing [[spoiler: an EldritchAbomination]].
-->[[spoiler: '''The Crawler''' Are you blind yet? ARE YOU BLIND YET?!]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: While you're exploring Shadelight in Aurora.
-->'''Walter:''' Um. Do you ever get the feeling someone's playing games with us?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
** In Fable 3, in a side quest where you act out a story narrated by wizards:
-->''Wizard 1:'' Our hero resolved to talk to the townsfolk, to learn more information about the missing princess.
-->''Wizard 2:'' You're kidding, right? If the hero starts talking to all the villagers, we'll be here forever!
-->''Wizard 1:'' Well, some people like to hear what the villagers have to say, and immerse themselves in the story world.
-->''Wizard 2:'' This is like the time you told me everybody reads item descriptions. '''No one reads item descriptions.'''
* LeeroyJenkins: Rose gets a moment of this. When you're walking through an alleyway, a dog yelping is heard. Cue Rose rushing right up to its tormentor to challenge him, hands on hips... only to get promptly knocked out by a head butt, leaving you, her much smaller but thankfully [[CuteBruiser surprisingly tough]] sibling to take the bully down. She gets up and, of course, promptly says "Thanks! I could've taken him though..." in true Leeroy style. It does illustrate the fact that while Rose is trying to be a responsible adult figure, she's still just a kid herself.
* LipstickLesbian: You can create your female character to be like this in Fable II and III.
* LostForever:
** In the first ''Fable'', [[spoiler:if you turn in Lady Grey rather than marry her, you can never get through the Demon Door near her home.]]
** Also, if you give all your Silver Keys to the demon door in the Necropolis before you've collected all of them and opened all the treasure chests, you will never be able to open the chests afterwards as there won't be enough silver keys left in the world for you to collect.
** If you don't have the Knothole Island DLC and [[spoiler:you don't choose the Love ending, then all items buried beneath the ground]] are LostForever, unless you shell out the dough for the DLC, which gives you the opportunity to rectify that problem.
* LoudOfWar: In the first game, the Hero is tortured by listening to the warden read homegrown poetry, which all the other characters treat as worse than the standard whips and chains in the torture chamber.
* MachiavelliWasWrong: [[spoiler:This was the reason Maze didn't kill the Hero.]]
* MaskPower: Jack of Blades.
* MatchMakerQuest
* MeaningfulName: Oh dear God Sparrow.
** "Theresa" sounds quite a bit like "Teiresias", a reoccurring figure in Greek storytelling as the archetypal BlindSeer.
* MedievalStasis: Brutally averted. As time passes (between games, anyway), Albion transforms from Stock European Fantasy to an Industrial nation in the cusp of revolution.
* [[spoiler: MentorOccupationalHazard: Poor, poor Walter. Also Captain Swift, whose death is particularly hard on Ben Finn.]]
* TheMinionMaster: With the Raise Dead spell.
* MissionControlIsOffItsMeds: Jack of Blades does this in the end of the expansion pack to the first game.
* TheMole: Lilith in Fable II. She runs up to you and she exclaims, distraught, that her family had been attacked. Her husband had been killed and her son had been kidnapped. She requests that the Hero rescue her son who had apparently been taken to the nearby Howling Halls by Balverines. Hammer agrees to this and, along the way to Howling Halls, reassures Lilith a few times that they will rescue her son. However, this all turns out to be a trap, and once inside the Howling Halls, she exclaims "Children, I bring you flesh!" in a demonic tone and disappears, prompting her "children" to attack. Once all of the Balverines are defeated, she reappears as a White Balverine and attacks the Hero, who eventually kills her. You can just beat the crap out of her upon meeting her, you'll get some evil points, but 2 lines of extra dialogue.
** If you look at her info, one of her likes is "Travel-Ready Beef Jerky". This could be a hint at her love for flesh as a Balverine.
* MoodWhiplash: ''Fable III'' is basically the same lighthearted game we all know with the occasional serious moments and emotional manipulation that we've come to expect from the series. [[spoiler: Then you meet The Crawler]] and suddenly the entire game is DarkerAndEdgier. Even the way you sit on the throne when you become the ruler indicates this isn't what you were expecting.
* MoreCriminalsThanTargets: There seems to be an endless supply of bandits and other troublemakers to deal with.
* MissionPackSequel: For the first half of the game, Fable 3 is very much this in relation to Fable 2, but once you [[spoiler: become King/Queen]] it becomes somewhat different.
* MostGamersAreMale. {{Lampshaded}} during the faux ''DungeonsAndDragons'' adventure in ''Fable III'''.
-->'''"Wizard"''': Yeah, and the princess is ''[[MsFanservice really hot]]''.
** GirlOnGirlIsHot: If you're playing as a female character during this quest, the three gamers in charge of the game take notice. One of them definitely approves.
** Part of the reasons many males make female characters.
* MultipleEndings: The first game has two, though the UpdatedRerelease continues the story past that, and makes which you chose less important by [[spoiler: weakening the SwordOfAeons if you choose to get it, and giving you the identical Avo's Tear if you choose not to.]]
** Fable II has three endings: [[spoiler:Sacrifice/Many, Love/Few, and Wealth/One]]. Each ending has its ups and downs, and you may spend a lot of time thinking about which one you want. However, the choice is somewhat cheapened by one of the rewards having no noticeable effect on the world as a whole, the second impacting gameplay significantly, and the third reward is something that is likely for an evil/corrupt player to already have, and not particularly difficult for a good character to obtain either.
* TheMusketeer: The second and third games' main characters.
* MyMasterRightOrWrong: Jasper will continue [[YesMan serve]] the Hero no matter how many villagers he kills, how many unjust decisions he makes as a tyrannical ruler...[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous and no matter how ridiculous they dress]].
** This isn't to say that he holds back any commentary. After all, his voice actor IS [[JohnCleese John Cleese]].
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: There's a story that tells of a Hobbe living in a town and becoming the Village Idiot. Once he spoke, everyone knew what he was and killed him. Ouch.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: "Jack of Blades," "Reaver," and many more--especially ''you'', if you choose certain titles.
** "Crap it's Nobhead! Ahhh!!!"
*** ''Sybil [[SleepingBeauty Malificent]]''?
* NecessarilyEvil: In ''Fable III'', if you don't have a crapton of gold, you must be this [[spoiler: if you want money to save your people.]]
** Also [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* {{Necromantic}}: The gravekeeper in ''Fable 2'' towards Lady Elvira Grey. Though she's been deceased for five centuries, he's been obsessed with her ever since he first saw a picture of her. He recruits the player to gather her dismembered body parts in order to resurrect her. Said resurrection process also includes a bit of magic to make her fall in love with the first person she sees (which he intends to be himself, of course). Because of this, it can [[GoneHorriblyWrong go horribly wrong]] if the player doesn't leave the room before the spell takes full effect, since they are always the first person she sees upon waking.
* NiceHat: Reaver's massive top-hat in the third game. The crown.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: To an extent in ''Fable II''. [[spoiler:Lucien intends to deal with a prophecy of four Heroes that will stop him by murdering your sister and NEARLY killing you.]]
* NightmarishFactory: Reaver's factory in Bowerstone Industrial. If you're a good king, you can turn it into a school (which Reaver takes credit for, natch).
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: In the first, these are slow enemies that hit hard and [[ZergRush like to come in numbers]].
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In 3, you meet an annoying artist named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade Thomas Kaidkin]]. But then you kill him, so...InvertedTrope?
* [[NoExportForYou No Port For You]]: There's no sign of a PC version of Fable 2.
* NonActionBigBad: [[spoiler:Lucien is killed rather unceremoniously in the end either by you or Reaver.]]
** [[spoiler: Not to mention Logan. Once you storm his throne room, he surrenders with surprising grace.]]
* NoNameGiven: Though {{Fanon}} uses the name Sparrow (a childhood name used by Rose and Theresa) for the Fable II protagonist. In Fable III even in subtitles you are simply named by your title, and you only have three: Prince/Princess, Hero and King/Queen. The previous Hero is referred to as the Hero King or Hero Queen or simply a variant of "the last Hero".
* NonLethalKO: The second and third games. ''You can't die''. If you run out of health and don't have any resurrection phials, you get a scar and lose any uncollected experience, or in the case of the third game, you just lose any experience to the next guild seal, be you five or ninety-five percent of the way there.
* NostalgicMusicbox: Near the end of ''Fable II'', the player character encounters the music box from the prologue in a moving scene.
* NotUsingTheZWord: Hollow Men. {{Lampshaded}} in ''Fable III''
-->'''Reaver:''' We can't call them zombies - the Hollow Men Anti-Defamation League is getting stronger all the time.
* ObviousBeta: Fable 2, on launch, lacked much of the promised multiplayer support, though a patch was available to add much of it. More serious are the instabilities and bugged quests that can make the game unbeatable, of which Lionhead has presently acknowledged two serious ones.
* OldDarkHouse: The Sunset House in ''Fable III'' plays this to a tee. To begin with, it's located in a very remote, isolated area (accessed by a lonely, easily unnoticed path from a region that is infested with angry spirits and zombies). On top of that, all you will find at first is a pile of debris from a destroyed house; but when you visit it at night, you see the intact house as a transparent, glowy white apparition sitting ominously at the top of the hill. By solving a puzzle in the gazebo off to the west side of the area, the house is magically restored from it's ghostly state and you can now enter it. But even when restored, the house still looks eerie as heck sitting atop that hill, and even after the related quest is completed, the area around it is always infested with Hollow Men and unique, creepy looking Hobbes. However, if all of that wasn't creepy enough, [[ItGotWorse what you find inside makes all of it even worse]].
* OldShame: An in-universe example, with Phillip Morrley's lost play, "The Ham Sandwich", hated by its creator, [[StylisticSuck and with good reason]]
* OnlySixFaces
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Balverines [[strike:could]] ''totally'' count. They're smack dab in "CallARabbitASmeerp" territory.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: They're called "[[NotUsingTheZWord Hollow Men]]"; they're corpses that have been possessed by restless, angry spirits called "Wisps" (which basically look like little blue balls of light), and all of the ones we see are just skeletons.
** Actually, we do see ''one'' that really is "zombie like" in Fable 3 - during "The Hollow Legion" quest, we are briefly told that a soldier named Lieutenant Simmons was killed the night before the player arrived. During the battle with the legion of Hollow Men, a rogue wisp flies into Simmons' grave and possesses his partially rotten corpse. {{Squick}}.
* PainfullySlowProjectile: Magic in Fable 2 basically requires to to stand there and charge it. Getting hit does not ruin your concentration, but it is entirely impractical. And in some instances, (like against [[DoomsdayDevice The Shard]]), it's mandatory. (To a lesser extent this applies to most ranged weapons that have slow attack speeds or immensely draconic reload time.) Time Control and Raise Dead help.
** Averted by one particular gun in Fable 2 though, which is basically a machine gun. It just required you to press the shoot button really fast.
* PaperThinDisguise: In ''Fable 3'', there's a particular quest where the player must dress up as a mercenary, and pose as their comrade "Jimmy" in order to sneak into their camp. It somewhat makes sense if the PC is male, but if female, somehow they remain oblivious to the fact that "Jimmy" suddenly has breasts. (all outfits in the game, regardless of which sex they're meant for, have both male and female models to fit the PC's body.)
* PetInterface: Your dog in Fable 2 and 3.
* PlayableEpilogue
* PoorCommunicationKills: Half of Fable 3's plot revolves around this. [[spoiler: After returning from Aurora with an entire army missing, Logan could have confided in his private council (Walter, The Hero, et al) the actual events that elapsed there. Despite what Theresa says about, "The Crawler is something you had to see for yourself", in a world where monsters roam the land and cosmic abominations from The Void are renown throughout history it would not have been hard to persuade his closest friends to trust him and help enable intelligent policy revisions to prepare for invasion. ]]
** [[spoiler: Let's not forget about the families of Logan's legion of dead soldiers who make no effort to inquire as to what happened exactly. Or the fact that ''nobody'' mentions how Logan underwent such a vicious personality shift after his little expedition.]]
* PowerUpFood: In Fable 2, food items not only heal the player, they also affect the hero's appearance and status.
* {{Precursors}}: The Old Kingdom, which left behind a variety of ruins and [[ArtifactOfDoom Artifacts Of Doom]], most notably the Sword of Aeons and the Spire.
** The continent of Aurora has ruins of a magnificent civilization, but the only population now is a small port town. It is possible that [[spoiler:The Crawler]] was responsible for its collapse but no real clues are given either way.
* PropRecycling: The magic music box from ''Fable II'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbeUcbeIAZI appears]] in ''Fable III'' prominently as the proof Sabine needs that the main character is a Hero.
** Also, every weapon used by an NPC other than Walter is from Fable II.
* QueerRomance: An option throughout the series.
* RapidAging: In Fable 1, your character would get a little older every time you leveled up. This wasn't to scale with anyone else, which lead to somewhat disconcerting scenes where you finally meet your long-lost sister who appears to be a young woman while you're a geezer.
** ''Only'' if you extensively used magic, which ages you prematurely.
*** In Fable I your character ages 0.7 years for each rank you buy in any ability. Even if you ignored Will entirely, you'd still be in your fifties by the end of the game.
*** Hell, if you rank yourself enough, you'll look older than your ''[[spoiler:mother]]'' when you finally see her!
** In Fable II, there is a location in Oakvale where you or a girl can be sacrificed. If you choose to sacrifice yourself, you age rapidly.
* ReligionOfEvil: Temple of Skorm in the first game, Temple of Shadows in the second. Dark Sanctum in the third.
* TheReveal: In Fable III [[spoiler: Logan hadn't gone mad with power, but mad with fear of the Crawler, and his tyrannical actions were to generate enough money for the treasury to raise an army to fight the Crawler. A Treasury you will either empty to keep your promises to the people who helped you gain the throne, or break them to ensure Albion and everyone in it can be saved.]]
* RewardingVandalism: Zigzagged across the series, with barrels in Fable 1 revealing humble loot upon smashing, but their descendants in Fable 2 and 3 exuding no such treasures.
* RichBitch: Many of the locals in Fairfax Gardens.
* RoadCone: The murals in the ruined Heroes' Guild in ''Fable II'' show that ''The Lost Chapters'' was {{canon}}, and that in the last scene of that the hero chose to [[spoiler:destroy Jack of Blades instead of become him]].
* {{Roma}}: The stereotype is subverted; though the hero(ine) of ''Fable II'' is raised in a Gypsy caravan, they are more or less normal people making a decent living. Theresa fits the stereotype, though she isn't one.
* RPGMechanicsVerse: In a side quest in ''Fable III'', some amateur wizards teleport you into a ''DungeonsAndDragons''-style adventure module, where RPG tropes are {{lampshaded}} and parodied.
* RuleOfFun: Despite all of their flaws, the games can be genuinely entertaining.
* RunningGag: Reaver attempting to get an image of himself every time the Hero visits him in Fable 2. [[spoiler: It always ends in Reaver finding something he doesn't like about the image, then shooting the artist]].
** [[spoiler: And then horribly, horribly not funny when you see the third artist is Barnum.]]
* SadisticChoice:
** Aside from the ending of ''Fable II'', when you decide [[spoiler: whether to age yourself or allow an innocent girl to be.]]
** ''Fable III'' starts out with one in which [[spoiler: you have to choose between your lifelong friend/lover and a group of peasants to be executed. There's no third option, either. If you wait too long to decide, ''all of them'' will be executed.]]. You'll also have to make some hard decisions after your rise to power, whether to [[spoiler: spend the money to keep your promises, or exploit the land and earn money to fund the defense against the shadow monsters.]]
*** The first sadistic choice is (only slightly) devalued when you realise there is no moral implication in making it. (Shown by the blank decision buttons, rather than them being surrounded by a soft light or fire.) [[spoiler: And devalued further because the peasants never appear again if left alive, although your love interest will...]][[spoiler: and you have to decide whether to tell him/her to abandon their new fiance when you end up saving them both later on in the game.]]
**** And neither of which are ANYTHING compared to Fable III's penultimate choice: choosing between being a noble and just king with a poor treasury [[spoiler: and a dead land and populace when The Crawler comes along]] or being just as bad a tyrant as Logan was in order to fill the state's coffers [[spoiler: to try and save all human life in Albion and beyond.]] [[spoiler: You CAN TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding, but it is quite literally backbreaking.]]
* SaintlyChurch:
** The Cult of Avo in Fable I
** The Temple of Light in Fable II
* SamusIsAGirl: Despite the fact that everyone calls Chesty a "he" (even Chesty), according to the Fable Wiki, Chesty is, in fact, a girl.
* ScaryBlackMan: Thunder in Fable I. He's the biggest, burliest bastard in the whole of Albion, and he hates your guts no matter what you do[[spoiler:, even if you take mercy on his sister in the arena]].
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Guards will force you to either pay a fine or do community service as punishment for your crimes. A player who has aquired a significant amount of the businesses in the game will have so much income that these fines become very trivial.
* SelfImposedChallenge: The first game allows the player to make boasts before quests, where the player gambles money on being able to complete it [[FightInTheNude nude]], unarmed, or with some other added challenge. Also, all three games change the character's appearance in part based on their combat style (using their stats in the first two, and their actions in the third), causing people who are going for a certain look to deliberately not use the character's full power, such as ignoring melee to avoid building muscle.
* SequelHook: The See the Future Downloadable content, which sets up Fable 3 starring the child of Fable 2's main character as a monarch.
* SeriesMascot: Chickens
* ServileSnarker: Jasper, your butler, who is voiced by JohnCleese.
** Most definitely confirmed in the most recent [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amu6w5pc99c dev journal video]].
-->'''John Cleese''': ''(recording dialogue)'' Ah, a new mask! You'll be completely anonymous wearing this on your face! Wear it anywhere else on your person and I expect you will achieve exactly the opposite effect.
** Hobson is even more snarky. If you decide to lower taxes, it depletes the treasury, to which Hobson sarcastically says, "How very ''noble'' of you", using "noble" as a veiled insult.
* SexyWalk: When the Princess in ''Fable III'' walks normally, she swivels her hips quite a bit.
* ShopKeeper: They are everywhere in the series, they can even be killed if you wish.
* ShopliftAndDie: In the original Fable, you can get away with various crimes if you're not seen, but if you're caught in the act you'll be attacked by the guards. Once your guile level is high enough, you can attempt to steal items from shops. Getting caught sets the guards on you. This almost counts as a [[UselessUsefulSpell Useless Useful Skill]]: by the time you're leveled high enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the effort.
** ''Fable 2'' revamped the stealing skill: now, anyone can steal from anything at any time. All you have to do is hold A, which causes an "eye" meter to appear. If the eye is closed, no one can see you and you're safe from reprisal. If the eye meter is open, you can stop stealing and no one seems to care that you had your hand in the cash register but didn't take anything. Of course, there's a rare (but significant) bug where, if you steal something when no one can see you, then hang around that area long enough for the house owner or shopkeeper to notice that the item is missing, then ''everyone'' knows it was you.
** Stealing in the original ''Fable'' was a great way to make a ton of cash early in the game. Head over to the weapon smiths, get him to follow you, get him drunk, leave him alone, go back and steal all the augments laying around, sell them back to him or to someone else and make tens of thousands of gold for a few minutes of work.
** Let's not forget that if you got caught stealing(or trespassing, etc.) then when the guards come to attack you, you could simply say "Sorry." if you were generally a nice guy. They simply let you go.
* ShoutOut:
** ''Fable 2'' endings are [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan "The Needs of the Many", "The Needs of the Few", and "The Needs of the One".]]
** Listen to the children as they play in Fable 2 and if you know your video games you'll be able to pick out shout outs to ''TheLegendOfZelda'', ''BioShock'', ''TheElderScrolls'' and many others. There's even a ''PlanescapeTorment'' joke in there.
** Speaking of BioShock shout-outs, Lucien at one point asks of the player, "Would you kindly step into the circle?" May also be a LampshadeHanging to the fact that there's no way to continue in the plot without doing this, even when you the player know what's going to happen because of it.
** Another shout out - an Achievement in Fable II is called The Black Knight, where you kill a hollow man in a specific and brutal way, where you shoot out their weapon, shoot off his head, and then finish him off. Without the right knowledge, this still makes sense since a black knight is usually brutal and not known for chivalry. But others may notice that the achievement description after you get it ends with: "Turns out it wasn't a [[MontyPython flesh wound]]."
** There's also the guards in the first Fable, who will shout out "Its just a flesh wound!" when they're running low on HP.
** In Fable 2, a minor NPC who gives several quests is named Giles. He has a son named [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Rupert.]] The first quest he gives you has you killing a bandit named Ripper. And his wife was named Jenny.
** The Tombstones in Bowerstone Cemetery make references to [[PiratesOfTheCaribbean Pirates Of The Caribbean]].
** A store in Bloodstone and a house in Old Town both are called the "Dark Mark", a likely reference to the [[HarryPotter Harry Potter]] series.
** Also [[SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Max and Sam]] Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get Sam and Max home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
** [[{{Halo}} Really? Hal's sword? Hal's rifle? Hal's armor? REALLY?]]
** The archaeologist who offers you some quests in Fable 2 is named Belle Rennock; shift some syllables around and this could easily be a reference to Rene Belloq, the evil archaeologist from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
** [[SonicTheHedgehog "You're too slow!"]]
** In ''Fable III'', one of the quests inside a pen-and-paper RPG, you are told to get [[OrderOfTheStick "Skymetal"]] to make a +5, er, +3 sword. (It's too early in the session for that high level a sword.)
*** The RPGers are named, [[DarthsAndDroids Ben and Jim.]]
** From Reaver's challenge:
--->'''Hatch:''' [[MontyPython That hobbe is dead. He is deceased. He has shuffled off this mortal coil!]]
** ''Fable III'': One Achievement is "[[{{Predator}} If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It]]"
*** And another one- "[[{{TheMatrix}} We need guns, lots of guns]]"
** One of the clothing options in ''Fable III'' is a rather... [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sharp-looking"]] [[{{Sharpe}} green military uniform]].
** Several shout outs to ''ShaunOfTheDead'' can be found when you meet Major Swift and Ben Finn. One obvious one is that they are defending themselves from waves of undead hollow men when you get there.
** A tombstone in the Mercenary camp contains the inscription.: [[MonkeyIsland Tried to hold his breath for ten minutes.]]
*** Another tombstone in Mourningwood reads "[[LegendOfZelda It's dangerous to go alone, take this.]]" Digging up the grave reveals a toy sword.
** Tons of Shout Outs to Bullfrog/Lionhead employees on cemetary graves, usually with an IncrediblyLamePun (Sam Van Tilburgh died of "diary-ea" - he also worked on ''BlackAndWhite''.)
** Speaking of Shout Outs and the Mourningwood Cemetary: "In loving memory of Arnold. [[{{Terminator}} He won't be back.]]
** In ''Fable III'', there's a man whose life's work is [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy to insult everyone in Albion. It's implied that he does it in alphabetical order too.]]
** HPLovecraft: [[TomeOfEldritchLore The Normanomicon]].
*** And a subtle one: Miska's Tonics.
** [[GuitarHero Lute Hero, one of the minigames in 3.]]
** In the Brightwall quest where you round up the chickens, after getting the chickens to follow you they cluck the ending credits tune from RobotChicken.
** [[{{Film/Arthur}} Hobson]], a ServileSnarker for a rich guy in ''Fable III''.
** If you wear the Mercenary Beard in ''Fable III'', Jasper will sometimes remark, "[[HalfLife That beard should be a real boon if you're seeking a job in the technology sector]]."
** In ''Fable III'', one of the cells in Ferret's Bowerstone Market hideout contains a hobb worshiping a [[CompanionCube box]] with a [[{{Portal}} pink heart]] on each side.
*** There's also [[TheCakeIsALie a white cake]] in a table near the cell.
** In the original ''Fable'', the [[{{Superman}} Kryndon]] tattoo.
--> The Kryndons are an old order of assassins who live normal lives by day.
* ShutUpHannibal: A by-the-book example at the end of Fable 2, with [[spoiler: either the PlayerCharacter or Reaver interrupting the BigBad's ramblings with a bullet]].
** And in ''Fable III'', where [[spoiler: Walter, being psychologically hounded by the Crawler, throws his torch at the thing, causing it to cry out in pain and disappear. The fact that it easily recovers and kidnaps Walter a few moments later should be ignored.]]
* SlouchOfVillainy: Logan [[http://images.wikia.com/fable/images/d/df/Loganthrone.jpg demonstrates]].
* SmugSnake: Reaver. He talks the talk, but the one time in game he gets a chance to pull a true MagnificentBastard move, the much more magnificent Lucien outdoes him handily.
** If you maxed out your Skill abilities before hand, you can even out-shoot Reaver [[spoiler:in the tunnels when Lucien's men are coming after you]], making his position as the Hero of Skill rather... dubious.
** Reaver becomes an ''insufferable'' Smug Snake in ''Fable III''. Part of the smugness comes from the fact [[spoiler: he never gets any sort of comeuppance. He can deflect bullets with just a thin cane, YOU try and kill him. [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney Other then that, he has a crapload of gold and runs a significant portion of Bowerstone]] ]]
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The Good/Evil choices in the ruling part of Fable 3 in regards to [[spoiler: preparing for the crawler]]. Do you turn a orphanage into a brothel for the extra money [[spoiler: therefore lessening the overall casualty rate]] or spend thousands turning it into a sanctuary to help the needy?
* [[BeardOfEvil Soul Patch Of Evil]]: Logan.
* SoundtrackDissonance: At the end of the second, [[spoiler:in the "Perfect World," you as a child pass through a burning, destroyed portion of the farm while a soothing music box plays in the background.]]
* SpoonyBard: Roland the Bard, who, after you complete a quest, sings of your glory at Bloodstone, and at The Sandgoose in Oakfield.
* StartOfDarkness:
** Lucien was a genuinely good and competent ruler before the deaths of his wife and sister. After that, his sanity very slowly begins to erode as his obsession with the Spire increases.
** Logan [[spoiler: lost an army to and was nearly killed by the Crawler, and then told it was coming for Albion.]]
** The beginning childhood sections of the first two games could also be this for the player, as the first hero's [[DoomedHometown village is massacred, his father among the victims.]] The BigBad Lucien of the second game shoots your sister shortly into the game's plot, and also shoots you, leaving you for dead.
* StealthPun: Hobbes are nasty, brutish, and short.
** In case you missed it, this is probably a reference to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".
*** In a GeniusBonus vein, about Thomas Hobbes, [[spoiler:Logan is acting in accordance with his ideas as set forth in "Leviathan".]]
** Mourningwood. Ha ha.
* SteamPunk: Very prevalent in the second and third games.
* StopHelpingMe: The Guild Master in the first Fable. "Try to get your combat multiplier ''even '''higher'''''!" "Your health is low. Do you have any potions? Or food?" "Check the guild for more quests."
** Parodied in one scene in ''The Lost Chapters'' where [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] starts mocking these things. ''"Hero, there is an important quest card waiting for you at the bottom of a slime pit!"''
** Your Combat multiplier is atrocious!
** Apparently not just limited to players. In Fable 2, some of the loading screens mention a rumor that the Guild Master was eventually found dead with the words "Your health is low" carved into his forehead.
* StoutStrength: Hammer. She is a very big lady with a very big hammer that she uses very well.
* StraightGay: Another possible way to play your character.
* StylisticSuck: Phillipith Morreley's lost play "The Ham Sandwich"
* SuddenlyVoiced: Your hero in ''Fable III''.
** It doesnt really count when they are a new character.
* SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom
* SureWhyNot: So when Peter Molyneux heard that the humor of his games was comparable to that of MontyPython, guess how he reacted? He hired JohnCleese to be your butler in the third game!
** When demoing the co-op for Fable 2, a common question was "can you marry your henchman?" The developers responded that you couldn't because they simply hadn't thought of it. In Fable 3, there are achievements for marrying (You married another player! N.B. Marriage not binding in any real court of law.) and having a child (We all knew this day would come. Having children online is finally a reality.) with another player over Xbox Live.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Mercenaries for bandits.
* SweetPollyOliver: One early mission in III requires you to infiltrate a mercenary camp disguised as a male merc, regardless of your character's gender.
* SwordAndGun: Essentially mandatory in the third game, even more-so that it's predecessor.
* TakeThat: During the quest "The Game", which takes place inside a model D&D-esque setting, there is a switch that none of the gamers thought was their responsibility to rig, so it does nothing when pulled. One of the gamers suggests making [[TheElderScrollsFour a cloud of butterflies appear]]. His friend comments; [[DuelingGames "Worst. Game. Ever."]]
* TakeThatMe: There's a quest in Fable 3 where you enter a DungeonsAndDragons style game. You kill the villain in this game by hitting him once with a bane-sword. One of the Dungeon Masters says "What kind of rubbish game lets you kill the villain in one blow?" [[spoiler: In Fable 2, this is exactly how you kill the villain.]]
* TakingTheBullet: [[spoiler: Your dog near the end of II.]]
* TarotMotifs: Tarot cards become all-important in ''Fable II''.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: Millfields in ''Fable III'' is one of the most dangerous and aggravating areas of the game because it's utterly ''crawling'' with troops of bandits. This is very odd considering that it's the most elitist rich and upscale area of the game, where many of Albion's nobles and wealthiest citizens live, and logically it should be one of the most heavily guarded places in the kingdom. Mind you, there ''are'' guards there, but there are so ridiculously few of them patrolling the area that their presence is totally ineffective. The bandits attack other NPC's just the same as they do to the player, which often leads to random citizens being slaughtered left and right. If there happens to be a guard nearby, he will try to fight them off, but unless the player helps out, he will usually die fairly quickly due to being severely outnumbered (on top of that, most guards are rather weak in combat).
* TheObiWan: Sir Walter Beck in the third game. Sometimes he edges by TheDumbledore territory.
* TheQuietOne: The hero in Fable 3. His/her dialogue is fully voiced, and this trope is well averted during the prologue, but for some reason the player character goes all quiet after that and very, very rarely ever speaks for the rest of the game.
* TheVamp: Elvira ("Lady") Grey, the seductive and villainous mayor of Bowerstone in ''Fable''. Though she does fall genuninely in love with the Hero of Oakvale.
* ThoseTwoGuys: Sam and Max in ''Fable II'' and ''III''. How bad are they? Their mother's grave says: "Here lies Elizabeth Spade, at peace. ADDENDUM: Now her sons have joined her, the above inscription is no longer accurate."
-->'''Sam's Grave:''' This is all Max's fault.
-->'''Max's Grave:''' I had it all under control, then Sam cocked it up.
* TimeSkip: Of 500 years between I and II. ''III'' is set only fifty years after ''II''.
** To a lesser extent, there's one at the beginning of both games, both about 10 years or so, plus a ''second'' 10 year skip in Fable II, when you go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth.
* ToiletHumour: So much of it in Fable II.
* TooDumbToLive: Mercenaries will charge the ruler of Albion. Even if the king or queen couldn't cast a spell to make flaming swords appear to kill them with one stab, it's still less than intelligent to attack a person commanding armies and [[spoiler: is the only thing standing between them and utter genocide.]]
* TrailersAlwaysLie: The trailers of Fable III say ''nothing'' about [[spoiler: The Crawler]], just explaining the first half of the plot, deposing your brother.
* TrainingDummy: The tutorial dummies.
* TransparentCloset: Averted during the "Blind Date" quest in Fable II, the father doesn't know his son is gay.
* {{Transvestite}}: Some of the prostitutes in Fable II and III.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Lady Grey doesn't care about your appearance.
* UncleSamWantsYou: The "Albion Needs YOU" posters.
* UnexpectedGenreChange: Oh sure, there are scary moments in all three games. But the in the third game, when you visit Aurora, the game's tone shifts abruptly from, admittedly, somewhat dark fantasy straight into full-blown horror. And very well done at that.
* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Oh, where do we start? The first game is rife with these, with the most famous being the sandgoose and the Singing Sword, as well as the Dragon Cliff, the music box, and a host of other things.
* UselessUsefulStealth: Required to get past one section of the first game, pretty useless everywhere else.
* VideoGameCaringPotential: Especially in Fable II, where the game tries to make you love your dog and your family. Which gives the player [[spoiler: real motivation to kill the game's BigBad because he [[PlayerPunch ''murders'' your spouse AND children near the end of the game.]] And if that wasn't enough, he [[ShootTheDog shoots your dog]] because said dog [[TakingTheBullet takes the bullet for you.]]]]
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: ''Chicken Kickin'''!
** The game makes you care about your family, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a player from starting a vicious cycle of domestic violence.
** There is even less stopping you from sacrificing your wife in Fable 2. You gain 100 good points and some renown for marrying her, 50 good points for having a child and only 100 evil points for sacrificing her. A net gain of 50 good points and some renown for marrying and killing random women (in fable 1 though it can be a very efficent source of money and renown).
** Play some mind games with multiple wive/husbands,mostly to be a JerkAss. Just gather them together for some time alone and watch what goes down from. Always a laugh for an evil character.
** Those are all only scratching the ''surface'' of what's possible. You can walk into a town and massacre everyone with your powers, ruin the economy by jacking up everyone's rent, sell people into slavery, curse a young girl to be turned into an old crone...there are some sick possibilities in Fable.
* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: Averted. You getting stronger invariably means random {{Mooks}} will too, although you still get stronger at a far quicker rate than they do.
* VillainousBreakdown: Lucien has one at the end of ''Fable II''
* VillainousCrossdresser: In Fable III, a couple of portraits in Reaver's mansion indicate that he is one.
* VolcanicVeins
* WearingAFlagOnYourHead: Or on your underpants.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Lucien starts out as this, although he gets corrupted and more insane as he continues his quest.
** [[spoiler:Played straight by Logan in the third game.]] When he says "This is my Albion. Its city will bow to my law , or they will burn. Its mountains will bend to my will , or they will fall. This is my Albion. Its people will do as I say or they will die. Its future will be as I decree, or it will end. I have seen what must be done, and nothing will stand in my way. We will be greater and we will be stronger, no matter what sacrifices we must make. This is my Albion... and I will see it destroyed before I surrender it.", he's not going on a Caligula rant, but an actual statement of ''fact''.
* [[WhatMeasureIsAMook What Measure Is A Civilian]]: In ''Fable III'', apparently each life can be saved for 1gp.
* WhyWontYouDie: Humorously lampshaded by Major Swift and Ben Finn. (Fable 3)
-->'''Swift:''' ''Lieutenant Simmons! I specifically instructed you to remain buried!''
-->'''Finn:''' Oh, doesn't anyone follow orders anymore?!
* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: In Fable 2, you will come to rely on potions if you don't want to [[ScarsAreForever "die".]] Food is also cheap and effective way to heal yourself while in town, and can do wonders for your appearance and alignment.
* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: [[spoiler: Whisper admitting you've always been the better Hero, (assuming you spare her).]]
* WriterOnBoard: Killing your wife gets you 60 evil points. Divorcing her gets you ''600.''
** Of course, usually if your wife asks for a divorce, you've been a real physically abusive JerkAss up to that point.
*** Or if you don't regularly visit him/her.
**** The game glitches with this, where you have to visit your spouse every 20 MINUTES or else she divorces you (unless you own the entire town and put the rent down by 25%, making the ENTIRE TOWN absolutely go apeshit over you)
** And a vegetarian diet lets you max out Purity points...
*** Unless you eat Crunchy Chicks, which are ''live baby chickens''.
*** And ''delicious.''
*** It's also a bit of a SesameStreet food lesson, as healthier food tends to give you positive purity (and in the case of tofu, morality) to reflect your self-discipline. Meat, as in many real philosophies, is considered an indulgence.
*** The loading screens mention that you gain purity from eating vegetables, because unlike meat, no animals were harmed to make your dinner.
* [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes Why Did It Have To Be Caves]]: Poor Walter keeps running into them. It's funny at first. [[spoiler: [[FunnyAneurysmMoment Then you learn]] [[IronWoobie why he's afraid of them.]]]]
** If you're wondering exactly why, [[spoiler: during the war, he and his unit sought shelter in a cave to hide from the enemy's army. The enemy did not follow them, instead they blasted the entrance, leaving him and his two surviving men trapped in the absolute darkness of the cave for three days]].
* XanatosGambit / XanatosRoulette: It's heavily implied that Theresa was manipulating both Lucien and the Hero and was responsible for much of ''Fable II'''s plot.
** In ''Fable III'', Reaver's company profits whether or not you decide in his favor.
* XMeetsY: The developers have described Fable II as "A MontyPython sketch directed by TimBurton. It's a dark fairy tale with a light-hearted English twist."
* YaoiFangirl: The dead author of the in-game book "The Pangs of Sunset" in Fable 3, a book that [[HoYay ships]] Reaver and Garth from the second game. She's mentioned to have also written a SlashFic between Lucien (bad guy from Fable 2) and Jack of Blades (bad guy from the first Fable). She ships Theresa and Hammer, too.
** If you look well, the cover of said book is mysteriously stained with blood. [[TheNosebleed Maybe one of the readers got too "excited"...]]
* YouALLLookFamiliar: Lampshaded in a loading screen in the second game, with something along the lines of, "After many years of research, we have come to the conclusion that many of Albion's citizens sound ''exactly'' the same!"
* YouAreNumberSix: 'You are number 273. That number is not randomly assigned. It is because I have broken 272 guards already. And I will break you.'
* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: You must find expression manuals in the world if you want to learn to do seemingly basic things like laughing, raising your middle finger, or plenty of other basics.
[[caption-width-right:289:Warning: Objects in pool may be less evil than they appear.]]
-->''For every choice, a consequence.''
A game released by Lionhead Studios in 2004, created by [[BlackAndWhite Peter Molyneux]]. It spent four years in production, and was thought to be {{Vaporware}} for a while, before it was released to [[HypeBacklash extremely]] [[YourMileageMayVary polarizing]] [[BrokenBase reviews]]. The video game itself is an Action-RPG, with the player's decisions affecting the gameplay. Unfortunately, the differences in gameplay boiled down to people either flocking to you or running in fear depending on whether you were good or evil, and the KarmaMeter ended up being purely aesthetic.
The game still received praise for being rather open-ended with both questing and character creation, and is regarded by some as a genuinely good game, just not [[WhatCouldHaveBeen what it could have been]].
Despite the flaws and mixed reception, the game went on to be one of the top selling games on the original Xbox.
A sequel was released in 2008, and was met with [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel surprisingly positive reviews]]. It improved the KarmaMeter, adding Purity and Corruption alongside good and evil, and increased the role the character's actions played in the game's world. While one can still attack a town and kill everyone in it, doing so hurts the town's economy and make the villagers hate you, increasing prices at shops and lessening the quality of the items sold.
''Fable III'' was released in 2010, set 50 years after the events of the last game. It heavily simplifies gameplay elements established in the first and second games, but introduces some new ones, such as weapons that morph in appearance, and to the ability to rule a kingdom half-way through the game.
The three games are mainly set in Albion ([[IThoughtItMeant not]] [[NamesTheSame that]] [[{{Albion}} one]]), a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture land based on England]] during the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution respectively. In the first two games, the player takes on the role of an orphan who grows up to become an archetypal action hero determined to exact vengeance upon those who killed his loved ones when he was a child. The third game has you control a prince or princess, who quests to overthrow his or her brother, the corrupt king of Albion. In each game, depending on your playstyle, TheQuest may take the backseat to WideOpenSandbox gameplay and {{Irrelevant Side Quest}}s.
Peter Molyneux has stated a desire to continue the series even as far as a ''Fable 5'', but only time will tell.
'Fable: The Journey' is to be released in 2012, although little is known about it as of yet.
----
!!! This game provides examples of:
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In ''Fable III'' the Bowerstone Sewers are surprisingly roomy, and apparently so clean your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there! Justified because Bowerstone is based off an old-style European city
* ActorAllusion: Where do you meet Ben Finn (played by Simon Pegg)? During the section where you fight the walking dead Hollow Men, [[ShaunOfTheDead of course.]]
* AdultFear: Herman in Fable II is looking for his son, Joey in the Hobbe Caves. You decide to help him, and later he finds his son was turned into a Hobbe. He is then killed.
* {{AFGNCAAP}}: That it averts this is one of the original's main criticisms. ''Fable I'' was supposed to have the option to play as a female character, but the feature was removed before the game was released. Actions the player chooses to make in the game (any of the games) affect the main character's physical appearance, including height, skin color, and body type.
* AHomeownerIsYou: Houses are available for sale, and can generate income when rented out.
* AlmostLethalWeapons: Even some of the better weapons deal <100 damage. Without augments and skillranks, killing enemies will take quite awhile. In Fable 2, almost all legendary weapons are Badass. Get a master weapon (doesn't even matter which) with 4 augment slots and put different damaging augments on. You will slay thousands with 1-3 attacks each, MAXIMUM.
* AltarTheSpeed: Romancing someone enough to want to marry you takes about 5 minutes of flirting, and presenting a gift or 3.
** Once you get your appearance and renown up, you can actually get people to [[LoveAtFirstSight fall in love with you by]] ''[[LoveAtFirstSight walking past them]]''
*** TruthInTelevision: Screaming [[ElvisPresley Elvis]]/[[TheBeatles Beatles]]/etc. fans show the same tendencies.
*** TruthInTelevision: And once they find out you're a regular person, they start getting upset when you neglect them while saving the world.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Hobbes, children that have had their souls devoured by an evil nymphs--Hobbes can do this to other children, and apparently suggestible males. Also [[spoiler:Chesty]], makes no real sense and apparently has been killing people for some time and has ultimate control over his insane dimension. "Do you like doggies? I love doggies! Let's play with doggies!"
* AnachronismStew: Not so much in the original ''Fable'', but very apparent in ''Fable 2'' and ''3''.
* AndYourLittleDogToo: The second game does a ''very'' good job of making you ''hate'' Lucien.
* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou
* AnnouncerChatter: During The Crucible in 2 and [[spoiler: Reaver's Mansion in 3]].
* AnticlimaxBoss: At the end of ''Fable 2'', when you finally catch up to Lord Lucien, [[spoiler: you simply shoot him in the head (or Reaver does it for you if you hesitate). It's not even a fight, you just kill the sucker.]] The actual final boss is so unremarkable that few players will realize that it is the such until the main quest ends about twenty minutes later.
* {{Antihero}} The player character can be anywhere on the scale, and you encounter several of these over the course of the series, such as Garth, who is a type 2, and Reaver, who is a type 5.
* AnythingThatMoves: Disturbingly hinted at with Reaver in III. [[spoiler:His guests at an orgy-filled party are all balverines.]]
** Also, his "Pleasure Chamber" (which you can infiltrate for a quest) has chickens roaming around and locked in cages hanging from the ceiling.
*** More disturbingly, if you loot the chamber you'll found about a half-dozen condoms and...a summon creatures potion. What...what does he use it for? [[YouDoNOTWantToKnow Do I even want to know?]]
* ApocalypticLog: Aurora in ''Fable III''. The citizens posted messages about how the eternal night destroyed their town as most of the populace including women and children were slaughtered. Yes, it's as depressing as it sounds.
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: Walter]] while [[DemonicPossession possessed]] by [[spoiler: The Crawler]] in ''Fable III''. He encourages the player, "Don't hold back!" when you attack him.
* ArrowsOnFire: Played straight.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In both games, after you commit crimes in a town, a guard will run up to you and charge you with a list of all of them, offering you options of how to respond to the charges (pay a fine, run away, etc). In many cases, you've just finished rampaging through a town destroying everything and every one in your path, and then a guard charges you with 30+ counts of murder and one count of vandalism from that door you kicked down.
* AssholeVictim: Reaver's assistant sexually harasses a woman. [[spoiler: She turns out to be a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent balverine]] and kills him]]
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: ''Fable III'', of course.
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler: Lady Grey in ''Fable 2'' if the Love Hurts subquest is completed.]]
* {{Badass}}: Many people throughout Albion's history, but those who bear the blood of the Archons are pretty much born to badassery.
* BadassBack: If you block an enemy's attack from behind in ''Fable I'', you parry without even turning around.
* BadassBeard: Walter in ''Fable III''.
* BadassBookworm: Briar Rose in ''Fable I''. Garth in ''Fable II''.
* BadassLongcoat: Seriously needs to be mentioned for ''Fable 2'', You got Highwaymen coats, Noble Gent's coats, and a few others, of course they look more badass with the right colours.
* BaldOfEvil: Literally, in the first game; The horns evil-doers sprout cause a receding hairline. Averted in the second game, wherein Ghoulish players will still have a full head of hair when they sprout their horns. Some sort of twisted demonic evolution at work?
* BeardOfEvil: Logan has one to add to his ObviouslyEvil appearance.
* BerserkButton: In Fable III, if you have the Ravenscar Keep DLC[[spoiler: Do NOT mess with the hero's dog, even if you have him strapped to a chair. They won't keep him tied down.]]
* BettingMiniGame: Several in fact.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Hammer. She's sweet and chatty. Then her dad gets killed...
* {{BFS}}: The "swords" that the Dwellers in ''Fable III'' are seen using are basically supersized cleavers.
* BigBad: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] in ''Fable I''
** Lord Lucien in ''Fable II''
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]]] in ''Fable III''
* BigBeautifulWoman: There is a poster of a woman like this in Fable III, and she is called "Big Bess".
** Hammer's fans might describe her this way.
** It is also an option for the heroine to be one.
* {{Bittersweet Ending}}: [[spoiler: Fable II, if you chose The Sacrifice for your wish. Even in the other endings, you've received whatever it was you so desperately wanted, but Theresa's closing lines in the game open the possibility that the whole thing was a XanatosGambit to put the power of the Spire in her hands.]]
** [[spoiler: In Fable III, the game ends with the Hero forced to kill his lifelong mentor and friend Walter, who'd been possessed by [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]. Also, depending on how full the kingdom's treasury was, the vast majority of Albion could be dead, and depending on how many promises you've had to break, you may have alienated some of your old friends and allies.]]
* BlackAndWhiteMorality: One of the game's most distinctive features is its morality system, whereby any issue the player decides the outcome of involves either [[ZeroPunctuation mawkish virtue or extravagant malevolence with no middle ground]]. This is especially {{egregious}} around more complicated issues such as ones involving [[EternalProhibition prohibition]].
* BlackCloak: While not evil, per se, Theresa in ''Fable II'' is a MysteriousProtector, and wears a [[http://files.xboxic.com/xbox-360/fable-2/fable2trailer.jpg heavy cloak]]. This is also because she is specifically pointed out as a [[BlindSeer blind seeress]].
* BlessedAreTheCheesemakers: "Do you like cheese? Me, I love a bit of cheese. Cheesy, cheesy cheese." "The Badgers are stealing the cheese."
* BookEnds: Fable III has [[spoiler: the beginning of your first fight and the end of you last one with Walter, and he even recites the same basic line about stories he told you of your father/mother when you were a child.]]
--> ''Prince/ss'': "Teach me how to be a hero.
** There's also book ends for the first part of the game.
-->'''Logan:''' [[spoiler: You have the power over life and death. Now choose.]]
* BowAndSwordInAccord: The first games hero.
* BrawnHilda: In Fable 2, a female player character with maxed out physique will look like [[http://www.timing-design.com/crap/fable2-monster.jpg this]]. The third game fixes the problem but still alters the physique. There's also Hammer, though YourMileageMayVary whether she's this or a HotAmazon.
** When did [[DragonAge Sten]] grow breasts?
** When did ''[[LegacyOfKain Kain]]'' grow breasts?
** Fable 3 fixes this by keeping maxed out physique at a relatively realistic level and having the bodies still match the voices.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: As mentioned below, banshees say some nasty things in an attempt to demoralize you. At least one line is directed towards the ''player'' :
--> "Think about all the endless hours you've wasted playing this game. And for what? Nothing!"
** Done by The Hero in Fable 3 during the "Darkness Incarnate" quest.
-->'''Sir Walter:''' Do you sometimes get the feeling someone's playing a game with you?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: The 5-Star Dog Potion for Fable 3, which is only obtainable by purchase on Xbox Live and instantly maxes out your dog's fighting and treasure-finding abilities.
* BrokenBird: Sparrow gets shit on in the opening cut scene and it goes downhill from there.
* BrokenBridge: Demon Doors, kind of. Not to mention an actual Broken Bridge in Fable II.
** In Fable 3, in Millfields, there is a sidequest to fund a new bridge which will let you get to Driftwood, [[spoiler:location of one of the four golden keys.]]
* BritishAccents Of many flavors, though mostly of the OopNorth variety.
* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Maze]]
* BullyHunter: Both games have this as at least an option. Its optional in Fable 1, your character can instead choose to be the bully. In Fable 2, its compulsory as your character has to fight off an adolescent thug who was tormenting a dog after Rose has a {{Leeroy Jenkins}} bully hunter moment herself. (She runs up to challenge the thug and promptly gets knocked out.)
* ButchLesbian: One of the many many ways to shape your female character in Fable II.
* ButThouMust: [[spoiler:The Bandit King sends assassins after the Hero whether you kill him or not]]. Also when Herman is at the door in Hobbe cave, if you use Will to kill his (now Hobbeified) son, he dies anyway. Also is the reason [[spoiler: Theresa took the Spire and gets you to usurp Logan, because if you don't Albion is doomed.]]
* TheCaligula: Logan. [[spoiler:Subverted later, where it turns out he's actually a WellIntentionedExtremist attempting to prepare Albion for The Crawler.]]
* CallBack: The Gnomes, one of the collection sidequests for ''III'', are given life (and attitude) by an insulting Gargoyle from ''II''.
* CaptainErsatz: ''Fable II'''s Theresa looks and sounds a lot like [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Kreia]].
** Actually, she is voiced by [[Film/HarryPotter Madam Hooch]]
* CameraScrew: The camera tends to whip around to look at whatever the game thinks you should be looking at. This leads to a particularly irritating moment about two thirds through the second game where to bypass an unnecessary enemy, you're running directly sideways and almost backward with no way to look at what's in front of you.
* CampGay: You can make your character this in Fable II and III if you so desire.
* CampStraight: Your character can be created to be this.
* CardCarryingVillain: Lesley.
-->'''Lesley:''' We owe you. '''[[LargeHam The cause of EVIL owes you!]]'''
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Played with in minor ways in the first two, but utterly bitchslaps you in Fable III [[spoiler: just like they did Logan.]]
* CharacterAlignment:[[invoked]] There's nine convenient titles in the second game.
** LawfulGood:[[invoked]] Saint.
** NeutralGood:[[invoked]] Philanthropist.
** ChaoticGood:[[invoked]] Decadent.
** LawfulNeutral:[[invoked]] Puritan.
** TrueNeutral:[[invoked]] Oppurtunist.
** ChaoticNeutral:[[invoked]] Debaser.
** LawfulEvil:[[invoked]] Fanatic.
** NeutralEvil:[[invoked]] Demon.
** ChaoticEvil:[[invoked]] Ghoul.
* ChargedAttack: Ranged attacks in the first game and melee flourishes in the second game can be held indefinitely, allowing the player to theoretically charge for minutes and then release a massively powerful attack. Ranged attacks in the second game, some spells in the first game, and all spells in the second game can be held for a finitely more powerful attack. Also, to a lesser extent, flourishes in the second game. All magic and flourishes with both weapons in the third game.
** In ''Fable III'', you can kill any creature quickly if you manage a charged melee attack, then quickly [[FinishingMove finish it]] by stabbing it (or crushing its head) while knocked to the ground.
* [[ChekhovsGun Chekov's Gun]]: [[spoiler: That music box...]]
* ChestMonster: Chesty, a unique example in Fable 2 who greets the hero in his own nightmare asking if he wants to "play a game" with him (his favorite game involves tearing off a person's legs and throwing them into a pool with flesh eating piranhas.) Unlike most examples however, the chest itself isn't the dangerous (gameplay wise), just his "friends" and "doggies."
** In Fable III, [[spoiler: Chesty returns, challenging you to a game of chess. he eventually gets bored, and has the lifesize gamepieces attack you directly.]]
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:Theresa]] controls both sides of the central conflict of ''Fable II'', convincing Lucien to build the Spire then [[spoiler:assembling and manipulating the four Heroes into killing him]] in a magnificent XanatosGambit that results in [[spoiler:Theresa claiming the power of the Spire for herself]]. In ''Fable III'', she is not only behind your development as a Hero, but [[spoiler: provoked Logan into becoming a tyrant by telling him the EldritchAbomination that nearly killed him is coming to Albion.]]
* ChildrenAreInnocent: Invoked by a Demon Door in Fable 3
* CityGuards: And then some. Arguably one of the most famous examples.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Walter suffers from this. With good reason.
* CloudCuckoolander: Many in the series, but Bernard in ''Fable III'' tops the list. He has a deathly fear of chickens, thinking they're an evil force. This may have been caused by Arthur taunting him with letters insinuating a CosmicHorrorStory:
-->'''Letter:''' My dear Bernard, One of these days the Chicken God is going to come down from the Celestial Coop in the Sky and '''PECK OUT YOUR EYES! SO THERE!!!''' Arthur.
* ClowncarGrave:
** Lychfield Cemetery.
** Don't forget Bowerstone Cemetery.
** The Tomb of Heroes
** Shelly Crypt.
** Basically anywhere that in anyway some people could conceivably have died in, in Fable III.
*** Justified with wisps in the second game. A wisp takes up far less space than an actual Hollow Man.
* CollectionSidequest: Silver Keys, Hero Dolls...Saving islands from blizzards...Killing 50 odd hobbes...bandit slaughtering in its various forms....
* CombatPragmatist: Reaver. The description of the 'Red Dragon' really says it all. The best shot in Albion heard of Reaver's skill and so challenged him to an "honourable shooting challenge". Reaver's reply was to shoot him in the head.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Spell Weaving in III. Basically, it lets you combine two spells into a single, powerful attack. And is awesome.
* ComingOutStory: The 'Blind Date' sidequest in Fable II.
* ContinuityNod: In ''Fable III'', one of the first quests is called "Chicken Chaser", which was infamously the default title for your hero in the first game, and a title you could adopt in the second. ''Fable III'' also has a museum in a basement in Bowerstone Old Town that features artifacts from the first two games.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Reaver in the third game. He's making the best out of the industrial age.
* CrapsackWorld: Aurora in ''Fable III'' during Eternal Darkness. And how. And if [[spoiler: your character makes the wrong choices when you be come the ruler of Albion. The kingdom quickly becomes one of these.]]
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Derek of the second game, in a funny sort of way. In the prologue you meet him as he asks you to collect some warrants he has carelessly allowed to blow away through an alleyway, and comes across as rather incompetent, but if you listen to him, he swears "I'm going to clear up this town." If you help him get the warrants, he's as good as his word. If you don't... He even gets a book written about him.
* [[CrystalDragonJesus Crystal Dragon]] [[strike:[[CrystalDragonJesus Jesus]]]] {{Satan}}: Skorm.
** Also Avo, who would be God. Subverted in that according to the Oracle, both were made up by a trader who happened to find the locations rich with light and dark [[{{Mana}} Will]]. However, that doesn't explain the deep voices that echo in the temple...
* CuteBruiser: Your main character as a child in Fable 2 isn't nearly as powerful as the rest listed on this tropes examples, but it is notable that he/she manages to take down a much larger bully in a few hits with nothing more than a toy sword and a spitball shooter. Consider the fact that Rose, a much older teen, got knocked out in one headbutt from this guy.
* CutsceneIncompetence: Justified in the first game, as [[spoiler:it ''is'' the Satanic Jack of Blades capturing you]].
* TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget: Lucien goes from trying to resurrect his family, to trying to eliminate death, to trying to eliminate chaos, to trying to replace Albion with his own kingdom.
** Subverted with Logan in ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: He never forgot why he was behaving like a tyrant. When you capture him, he has no VillainousBreakdown. He [[GracefulLoser calmly surrenders]] quickly and tells you exactly why he did what he did.]]
* DatingSim: More present in the second game than the first. In the first all you can do is perform expressions, give gifts, and be generally attractive to make a person fall for you, and once you're married your wife will stay with you unless you go out of your way to abuse her regularly. In the second, one trait an [=NPC=] can have is a favorite place, and taking them there will make them more receptive to romance. There's even an achievement for taking someone on the perfect date. Also, in the second game wives have various demands that must be met or else their happiness goes down and you might come home to news that your family's leaving you. As mentioned above under AltarTheSpeed, in both games if you're very famous and/or very good looking, you can (somewhat realistically) walk through town and find yourself surrounded by women you haven't met begging to marry you.
** Done much more realistically in III, you actually have to be friends first, and do some nice things, as well as hug them, tickle them, etc.
* DeadLittleSister: Lord Lucien in ''Fable II'' got his StartOfDarkness when his wife and daughter died of an unexpected illness. He quickly gives the main character a dead older sister.
* DeadpanSnarker: The hero of Fable 3 has his/her moments.
* DeathByNewberyMedal: The ending of the prologue in Fable II.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the first game you could carry several resurrection phials, but if you ran out you were sent back to your most recent save. In Fable 2, the developers consciously removed "death" from the game, both because they decided there was no good way to implement it (simply going back to a checkpoint isn't fun, and any significant negative consequences caused testers to turn off their X-boxes before the autosave to avoid them) and because they realized the game was supposed to be the epic tale of a famous hero, and in any other medium you'd never expect him to be killed by some random bandit. So in the second game, when your health drops to zero you simply fall to the ground momentarily, receive a scar, and lose any experience still on the ground. Ditto with 3, but if you're even mildly proficient with any kind of combat ability, you will be fine.
* DegradedBoss: The Commandant. Inadvertently, as you meet Commandants whilst protecting Garth as he's doing his ritual, and a fair few more show up in Fable III.
** After Saker is defeated in Fable 3, a few hours later clones of him with enhanced Will Powers start showing up with his mercenary goons, with no explanation whatsoever. This after he personally pledges that they won't meddle in your affairs again, and since you've ruined his base of operations.
*** To be fair to Sakers promise; you can freely enter, hang out, and even make friends with the mercs in his camp if you spare him. The ones outside may be attacking you due to being away from the boss, or even a separate faction of mercenaries that the developers were too lazy or unable to give proper backstory to.
* DemBones: Hollow Men.
* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler: The Crawler's]] special power.
* DepravedBisexual: Reaver, from Fable 2. The Player character can be one too, if they want.
* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Seems to be the cause of Reaver's cruelty, according to the fifth and final page of his journal. He reacted as many of us would to what he went through as a youth in Oakvale - He broke down and decided that he was a monster for what he'd done. Where he differed was that when he regained his composure, he started ACTING like one.]]
* DevelopersRoom: The headstones in the graveyard are mostly developer injokes.
* DisposableSexWorker: Hire a prostitute in Fable II and III, have sex with him or her, and then kill them if you wish.
* DontTryThisAtHome: Unprotected sex is ''much'' safer than using a condom your dog dug up in the woods or a back alley.
* DownerEnding: ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: If you choose to make life better, and drain the vault, better be ready after you win to see a ''lot'' of corpses littering the land. The land is beautiful, friendly... and dead. On the other hand, be a tyrant and have everyone living - and hating your living guts.]]
** Of course, you can TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding with [[spoiler: virtually all your citizens (minus soldiers who died in battle) surviving by keeping the land beautiful as well as work your butt off and coming up with the 9 million gold you need to keep the citizens alive AND keep all your promises]]
*** Or, just do the sensible thing (available in Fable 2 also), which is to buy property and rent it out. Buy every house and every shop, set rents & prices low, then doodle through the game at your leisure. You can't spend fast enough.
* TheDragon: [[spoiler: In Fable, Maze is TheDragon to Jack of Blades]] and the Commandant and the Great Shard are the Dragons to Lord Lucien. The Commandant's personality screen even describes him as Lucien's right hand man.
* DragQueen: In Fable III, one of the achievements requires your hero to dress in the clothing of the opposite gender.
* TheDreaded: Any sufficiently famous and evil hero will have this effect on townsfolk, except for those with the [[FearlessFool "brave"]] trait in II. Some may even run on sight. Enemies remain unaffected though. Which sucks, you'd think they would have learned.
* DrillSergeantNasty: That Goddamn Commandant!
* DroneJam: As if the escort missions weren't annoying enough to start with.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second half of Fable 3. You have become the friggin' ''King'' (or ''Queen'') and individuals still ask you to do petty jobs. Of course, if you plan on doing all those things that deplete the country's treasury, you're going to have to find ways to make an enormous amount of money to put back into the treasury, and one way to make money to buy enough real estate for a solid income is to do those pie-making/blacksmithing/lute-playing minigames at max skill level.
** Worse yet, in one storyline required quest, you must [[spoiler: Halt a robbery]]. The fellow in charge of said spoilered event scoffs at you, even though you're the freakin' ''King/Queen'' of the ''entire country'' and had to carve a bloody swathe through two to three small armies, and staged a coup against the resident tyrant, practically single-handedly. Said fellow is universally agreed to be [[spoiler: TooDumbToLive]] by every player who encounters him.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: If you want to save your kingdom and be loved by your people, you're going to have to work for it. That's right, Your Majesty, I want one hundred pies done by nightfall!
* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler: The Crawler.]]
* EliteMooks: Spire Guards in Fable 2. (Though it seems justified as most spire guards are either mercs hired from champions of [[FightClubbing The Crucible]], or [[CriminalAmnesiac just have their memories and identity ripped apart and become unthinking brutes]]. Balverines are a lot tougher in Fable III, complete with tactics and dodging, and they're faster. They also replace most enemies at night as the game progresses.
* EnemyChatter: When fighting a banshee in the second game, they will attempt to demoralize you by saying some pretty horrible and personal things to the player character. The worst of which is this exchange:
--> ''"Did you know Rose didn't die right away from that shot? No, she watched you fall through that window, heard as your body thudded against the ground and cried bitter tears before a final shot from Lucien ended her life."''
** It also gives the player an opportunity to deliver a satisfying ShutUpHannibal to the bitch.
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]] takes it a step further, not only insulting and threatening the player, but reminding the hero of all his/her failures and inadequacies in a [[NightmareFuel very booming, mocking voice,]] NON-STOP, every time you face his horde. To quote Walter:]]
--> [[spoiler: Walter: ''"Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP!!!!!"'']]
** Bandits and mercenaries usually comment on what you're doing specifically--it's often hilarious. "Magic's not fair!"
*** The funniest thing is that even if you're playing as a squeaky clean good guy and aren't doing anything otherwise threatening, town guards in Fable 2 will still comment negatively if you drink a health potion near them. "Don't you dare drink a health potion!" "What's that? A health potion? You cheeky bugger!" "We really need to get those health potions banned!"
* EscortMission: The first game has some awful examples. Significantly easier in the sequel, as the escorts are now either affected by GameplayAllyImmortality or their survival isn't actually required. One quest even gives you the option of looting your escort's NiceHat off his body and wearing it to trick the quest giver into thinking you're him.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The main character is always either referred to as "Hero" or whatever title he currently has. In Fable III, you are, Prince/Princess, Hero or King/Queen.
** Rose in ''Fable II'' refers to the Hero by his/her nickname "Sparrow".
* EveryoneIsBi: In the original. Though many folks took a while to admit it.
* EverythingsBetterWithChickens: There's chickens all over the place in the games. The later games also include a "chicken" action and a chicken costume. [[spoiler: In the Quest 'The Game' you'll come across firebreathing demon chickens. It makes sense in context, of course.]]
** [[spoiler: 'The Game' is pure awesome on so many levels.]]
* EvilLaugh: {{Lampshaded}} by Lesley in ''Fable III''.
-->'''Lesley:''' Time for an evil laugh? Yeah, I think. '''MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!'''
** And now for something [[HellIsThatNoise far less funny.]]
-->'''[[spoiler:The Crawler:]]''' ''Ahh huhahahahahahaha...''
* EvilVersusEvil: ''Fable III'': [[spoiler: Logan's tyranny was not because he was evil, but he was committing evil acts to prepare for a greater evil - the destruction of Albion by The Crawler.]]
* EvillyAffable: Reaver. Very much so.
* TheEvilPrince: The player character of Fable III, either [[KarmaMeter subverted or played straight]].
* ExpansionPack: ''The Lost Chapters'', which adds many more side quests, another fight with [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] and several new weapons.
* {{Expy}}: Ransom Locke is an Expy of SherlockHolmes, complete with deerstalker cap.
* EvilPaysBetter:
** Several missions in the first two games have good and evil variants, and generally the evil ones pay more, though sometimes the evil option is [[ForTheEvulz just to have an evil option]].
** In the first game, you can only buy property once the owner is dead, meaning you can massacre a town and then get rich buying and renting out the empty houses.
*** The second game subverts this in that while killing someone will drop the price of their property, getting the owner to like you will have the same if not a greater effect. The second and third play it straight, though, with the option to be bad and hike up rent prices or be good and lower them.
** This essentially becomes the plot of Fable 3 after [[spoiler: you become monarch and discover you need to raise an army to fight the Crawler]]. You can either screw your allies over and make loads of gold, or give everyone what they want and plunge the kingdom's treasury into negative numbers.
* EyeScream: The protagonist's sister in the original ''Fable'' had her eyes sliced out during the bandit raid in the prologue when she refused to tell them anything about her brother.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Played with, with Samarkand; It's obviously got Asian characteristics, since it is the source of katanas in the game world. However, it's also Garth's homeland - and he's black.
** Aurora in ''Fable III'' is a distinctly Arab city.
** Albion in the original ''Fable'' seems to very typically parallel Great Britain during the High Middle Ages. Five centuries later in ''Fable 2'' and ''3'', it is heavily based on Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a lot of SteamPunk tossed in.
* FacialMarkings: Toned down from the blue veins in the first two ''Fable'' games, using magic in ''Fable III'' will eventually cause you to get the equivalent of ornate tattoos around your eyes.
** It's actually just whichever tattoos you're wearing, they begin to glow once you reach a certain level of magic.
* FantasyGunControl: Averted as guns are one of the new invention that appeared in the time between the first game and second game. Albion has a lot of dedicated alchemists who are always busy making new discoveries. The use of Will seems to have dramatically declined since the first game as guns have made magic much less impressive as a weapon and were crucial in the destruction of the Guild. In Fable 2 few practice magic with the exception of the Hero, a few key [=NPCs=] and hobbes (who seem to have their own kind of nature driven magic).
* {{Fartillery}}: In Fable 3, your farts are a lot louder and longer than the past installments and they're shown to be capable of rendering [=NPCs=] unconscious.
* FertileFeet
* FinishHim: In ''Fable'', Jack of Blades orders you to do this to [[spoiler:Whisper]]. You can refuse, although you forfeit a cash prize. Also, Twinblade and [[spoiler: Saker]].
* FighterMageThief: Known in the game as Strength, Will and Skill respectively. Or you can just combine all three into you.
** Though the Thief also doubles as an Archer in the first game, and Gunner in the second and third.
* FireIceLightning: Averted in the first two games, which had Fire and Lightning spells, but no Ice. The third game finally adds an Ice spell.
* FiveManBand:
** TheHero: ...[[CaptainObvious The]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hero]]
** TheLancer: Theresa, Hammer/Reaver (Depending on whether the Hero is good or evil)
** TheBigGuy: Hammer
** TheSmartGuy: Garth, Theresa
** TheChick: Hammer or [[TheDarkChick Rea]][[TokenEvilTeammate ver]]
* FlippingTheBird: One of the many actions your character can do in ''Fable II''.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the ''Fable II'' intro, a sparrow takes a dump on the main character just before the action starts. While his/her sister Rose seems to think that it may be a sign of good luck, the character's life is going to take a big dump on him/her with the events that follow.
* FullCircleRevolution: It's possible for [[spoiler: you]] to be just as bad or ''even worse than'' Logan
* GallowsHumour: ''Til Death Do Us Part'', a quest in Fable II, requires you to court someone who's fiancé killed themselves. One of their disliked expressions is Play Dead.
* GameBreakingBug: If you jump at the right spot in the Guild Cave at the beginning of the game, you can jump through the wall and get stuck outside of the map. Since this is an important scene and you haven't found any other locations, you can not fast travel out of it. If you save there, you must start the game over. On the bright side, since it's at the start of the game, you don't lose too much.
* GayOption: All three games allow the main character to marry people of the same sex, though the first game doesn't provide the same benefits for a gay marriage as it does for a straight one.
** Also true of the second game. You can't have any children (or, in a lesbian marriage, protected sex) in a gay marriage. Unless you find a certain potion...see below.
** The simplified communication system in Fable 3 makes this almost mandatory when trying to haggle with a shopkeeper or convincing someone to like you. Friendly gestures? No, you either passionately dance together or you fart on their head.
** To be fair however, the protection is condoms. Not really that applicable for a lesbian couple.
*** Fable 3 has the ability to adopt a child, so it is possible for gay couples to finally have kids.
* [[spoiler:GenderBender]]: The Potion of Highly Surprising Transformation. [[hottip:*:and in the fable 3 downloadable content, if you are playing as a woman then [[spoiler: Commander Milton]] transforms into the Queen.]]
* GenreBlindness: Walter. [[spoiler:Hey look, a swirling purple seal on a pit in the middle of an ominous cave surrounded by skeletons. I know! Let's pick up a book full of arcane symbols and read from it!]]'
** Though, to his defense, [[spoiler: there was no way either of them could have expected what they ran into in that cave. Plus it was kinda the only way out, so even if he did, he more or less didn't have a choice]]
* GentleGiant:
** Sister Hannah aka Hammer in ''Fable II''.
** Boulder in Fable ''III''.
** Possibly a Hero from Fable 2 and 3. In 3 you are always larger than 95% of the populace. In fact, people of the same height as the player actually ''shrink'' when interacting with them including other heroes (players) visiting your world!
* GentlemanAdventurer: Charlie/Charles from Fable 2.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Mourningwood. Think about it's name...
** In the Mercenary Shooting range it is possible to win a rifle called The Money Shot.
** In-universe-The pub in Bowerstone is called "The Cock in the Crown," an obvious TakeThat at Logan.
* GiantMook: In Fable 3, the bands of highwaymen usually have a member who's about ten feet tall and built like a small mountain. And can shoot fire at you. And can perform a ShockwaveStomp fire attack.
* GondorCallsForAid: The first half of ''Fable III''.
* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: In Fable 2, having sex gets you some Good points so long as you don't pay for it. Even if you do pay, if you use a condom you still get a net gain of 5 good points.
* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades' M.O.]]
** [[spoiler: The Crawler does this, too.]]
* [[GuileHero Guile Antihero]]: Reaver.
** Although his talent for [[ImprobableAimingSkills shooting anyone in the world anywhere anytime instantaneously whenever he feels like it]] [[{{Immortality}} forever]] means that his cunning doesn't get much of a work out.
* GroinAttack: Fable 2 has an achievement for shooting a certain amount of enemies in the groin. Furthermore, in Fable 3, one of the flourish/counter attack animations if you're fighting Dark Minions with a hammer? You swing the hammer and slam it into their groin so hard that they break apart. Hell ''yes''.
** The hero of brightwall has a vendetta against testicles.
* GuideDangIt At the end of Fable 3 [[spoiler: a lot of people are shocked when the countdown goes from Day 121 to the final attack and they have not had the chance to transfer the funds into the treasury, resulting in a high death toll. Instead of going forward into a war-torn Bowerstone, simply pan the camera around and go other way, which takes you back to Day 121 to carry on as before.]]
* HammerSpace: Ranged weapons tend to disappear when sheathed (Fable 1 & pistols in 2). More of a glitch really, in Fable 2 sometimes you can see the pistol strapped to your chest, but VERY rarely.
** ''Fable III'' averts this. You either strap the rifle to your back or put your pistol in a side holster.
** You can also see your melee weapon being sheathed
* HasTwoMommies: A new option in Fable III allows gay couples to adopt children.
* HauntedHouse: Sunset House plays this straight. At first it's just a pile of rubble (during the day) or a ghost (during the night), and you can only enter it once you solve a puzzle to restore it to its "living" state. When you get inside, you're greeted by a skeleton hanging from the ceiling inside of a smoking, dilapidated ruin. A note from the previous owner explains what happened here, and that the house is cursed and possessed by some sort of a demon. When you go to sleep in the bed up the stairs, the demon, which calls itself "Chesty", challenges you to a twisted game of chess. Once defeated, the demon becomes fond of you and gives you ownership of the house, allowing you to access the rest of it. Solving a puzzle in the dining room allows you to jump through the mirror into a nice, clean, intact version of the house's interior through which you can exit. The demon is still there, though, and both sides of the house have an eerie, desolate atmosphere about them. That and the fact that the area immediately outside the house is infested with Hollow Men and Hobbes is probably why it can't be used as a family home, can't be rented out, and only sells for 18,000 gold despite being the largest and most posh home in the game.
* {{Herald}}: Theresa
* HeroicMime: In the second game the player character has no dialogue but interacts with others using gestures. The first game has a few words, although it more or less follows this trope as well. In the third game, the hero finally speaks, but still lets most of the other characters do all the talking 95% of the time.
* HeroicSociopath: Certainly an option.
** Reaver is this in the second game.
* HeroicWillpower: This is literally the explanation for how DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist for you in Fable 2 - after you run out of health, you are knocked out, then you get up again with health replenished and enemies knocked back. Ditto with Fable III, but it probably helps that you're the strongest living conduit for magic remaining in the world.
* HeyItsThatVoice: Fable 3's got a wealth of this. [[{{Blackadder}} Stephen Fry]], [[ShaunOfTheDead Simon Pegg]], [[MontyPython John Cleese]], [[HarryPotter Zoe Wanamaker]], among others.
** The original Fable has Hugo Myatt as the voice of the Guildmaster. Yes, you get Treguard from {{Knightmare}} telling you what to do. I'm surprised he doesn't say "Oooh, nasty!" when you're knocked out.
** Ron Glass (aka [[{{Firefly}} Shepherd Book]]) plays Garth, the Hero of Will in ''Fable II''.
* HistoryRepeats: In a ''very'' bad way: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades is an immortal entity that attaches itself to a new host each time the old one is destroyed by tricking the owner into wearing its mask.]] Fortunately, you can end the cycle for good--and in fact ''Fable II'' reveals that it's {{Canon}} that this happened.
** Also in Fable II, the Tattered Spire [[spoiler: was constructed by the Archon of the Old Kingdom, and used to re-create the world, just as Lucien is trying to do.]]
* HoistByHisOwnPetard The Guildmaster for a hero who kills him, in an odd way. In his youth, he was one of the heroes who rebelled against the idea that heroes absolutely had to be good, arguing that heroes had to be free to make their own choices. (The ideology of choice is a big thing in Albion.) If your hero becomes an evil monster who turns on his mentor, it produces a certain irony. Combined with FridgeBrilliance, as the Guildmaster goes into a rant about the morality of your characters actions. One wonders if at any point the Guildmaster had a similar speech aimed at himself, being warned that destroying the laws governing a heroes actions would create a force that would destroy him. Ultimately, this immorality in many heroes leads to their destruction on the advent of readily available firearms when people don't need heroes any more and don't put up with their rampages.
* {{Homage}}: Possibly...let's see there's an ArtifactOfDoom ([[spoiler:Jack's mask]]), and it can only be destroyed for good by [[TheLordOfTheRings throwing it into a volcano]].
** The Understone district is an [[{{Fallout}} underground city sealed off from the surface by a gear-shaped door, ruled over by a man who keeps the citizens in line with warnings about mutants on the surface.]]
* HumanoidAbomination: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades, due to DemonicPossession.]]
* HotAmazon: Hammer, if you're into big women. Definitely the Fable 3 Princess/Queen, ultimate warrior, check; kind of dominant, check; tall and hot, well, starts off check at any rate.
* HundredPercentCompletion: There's an achievement for this.
* IAmAHumanitarian:
** Hobbes.
** [[spoiler: Lesley.]]
--->'''[[spoiler: Lesley:]]''' Come back later and I'll have a peasant on the barbie for you!
* IceCreamKoan: The advice the gnome collection gives in ''Fable III''.
* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Shows up at least once in each game. The first has a demon door that asks you to perform an evil act in front of him, in the second you'll only be let into the Temple of Shadows if you eat several crunchy chicks, and in the third Leslie will only trust you if you kill a man for him.
* {{Immortality}}: The descendants of Black and the lineage of the Archons are Type II immortals bolstered by exceptional strength, ability and cunning. [[spoiler: Reaver is a Type IX who trades the youths of innocent victims to malignant spirits in return for his own eternal vigor.]] Scythe is a Type IV, implied to have lost his soul and thus is incapable of true death.
* ImmortalityImmorality: Reaver.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Fable III has an auto targeting system that leads to this for the player character. For example: you can be facing away from a [[{Mook}} mook]] and hit said mook by pointing your gun over shoulder without even looking. Reaver is shown to have similar abilities.
* InfantImmortality: While children can die in terms of the plot, sometimes even on-screen, the player character in both Fable and Fable II can't kill children. This is likely due to it being developed in Great Britain, where it's illegal to sell a game that allows killing children.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Sword of Aeons, in the regular version of the first game is the strongest weapon in the game. In the UpdatedRerelease, it's only the strongest one handed sword, as its attack power is halved. Avo's Tear is equal to the Sword of Aeons, and almost identical in appearance, but it's gotten in a much nicer way.
* InkSuitActor:
** Garth resembles. his voice actor, [[BarneyMiller Ron]] [[{{Firefly}} Glass]]
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: Another of the game's major criticisms. You can, however, hop over them in Fable II and III.
* {{Interface Screw}}: It is possible to get quite inebriated in Fable's pubs, causing temporary visual distortion and sluggish control, vomiting makes it better though.
** You know you're in ''serious'' trouble when this occurs in ''Fable III.''' Even your Sanctuary, (essentially, the pause screen you can walk around inside of) is not immune to the forces of TheCorruption! Ewwww....
* ItIsBeyondSaving: Lucian, the villain of ''Fable 2'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.
* ItIsNotYourTime: "Death is not your destiny today, little Sparrow."
* KarmaHoudini: ''Reaver''. In Fable 2, in his debut he kills a number of artists who fail to capture his essence ''just so'' in whatever medium they're using(painting, sculpting, photography, etc). We later find out that he was responsible for the destruction of Oakvale hundreds of years ago and that he's sacrificed the youths of others to keep his own youth. The most he ever gets from his actions is a bit of [[DeadpanSnarker snark]] from your companions, and even then, only in passing. The trend continues in Fable 3, set fifty years later, where he's a captain of industry, and filthy stinking rich. His factories are manned by children and he makes his debut in this game by shooting a protester. Repeatedly. He then threatens to do the same to anyone who so much as whispers a complaint about the hellish working conditions. After Logan's downfall, he becomes one of your top brass, and the worst you can do to him is mildly inconvenience him by choosing someone else's argument over his. You, of course, ignore the fact he attempted to murder you in a cruel and gruesome way. For sport. Bastard runs off during the final battle too, could have used the Hero of Skill again.
** Worse than that, when you reject his proposals and build something, it's his company that builds it! There's KarmaHoudini and then there's ''Reaver''.
** [[spoiler: Logan]] if you choose to spare him in Fable 3.
* KarmaMeter: Fairly bizarrely ranked, too.
** Fable II also has Purity and Corruption, which represent how well you take care of your body and how people perceive you. These change depending on things such as whether you drink alcohol, give money to the poor or how much you charge people for renting your houses.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Averted. Katanas are decent weapons, but there are better ones. They are, however, better than their Longsword equivalents. The most powerful legendary melee weapon is a katana. If you want to blaze through combat, katanas can end fight in less than a minute.
* KickTheDog: The Hero can do a few of these. But there's also a literal example of this, too. And Reaver does it all the time.
** This trope was nearly quoted every time the developers discussed the dog in interviews. One of his main purposes is as an easy way to introduce a character - if someone shows up and [[KickTheDog kicks your dog]] you know they're a bastard, if they [[PetTheDog pet your dog]] you know they're friendly.
* [[KillerRabbit Killer Chicken]]: It's no ordinary chicken. It's a ''demonic firebreathing'' chicken!
** One tombstone in the mercenary camp in Fable III claims the deceased was killed by a hamster.
* KnightTemplar : Several, bt perhaps most extremely [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* LampshadeHanging: ''Fable III'': "Why do you guys want to put ''chickens'' in everything?!"
* LargeHam: Jolly ol' [[StephenFry Reaver]]. It's [[CompleteMonster basically his only redeeming quality]].
** Nicolas Hoult (Elliot) and the female hero's voice actress during intimate moments.
** A less comedic version, but whoever voices [[spoiler: The Crawler]] seems to certainly enjoy playing [[spoiler: an EldritchAbomination]].
-->[[spoiler: '''The Crawler''' Are you blind yet? ARE YOU BLIND YET?!]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: While you're exploring Shadelight in Aurora.
-->'''Walter:''' Um. Do you ever get the feeling someone's playing games with us?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
** In Fable 3, in a side quest where you act out a story narrated by wizards:
-->''Wizard 1:'' Our hero resolved to talk to the townsfolk, to learn more information about the missing princess.
-->''Wizard 2:'' You're kidding, right? If the hero starts talking to all the villagers, we'll be here forever!
-->''Wizard 1:'' Well, some people like to hear what the villagers have to say, and immerse themselves in the story world.
-->''Wizard 2:'' This is like the time you told me everybody reads item descriptions. '''No one reads item descriptions.'''
* LeeroyJenkins: Rose gets a moment of this. When you're walking through an alleyway, a dog yelping is heard. Cue Rose rushing right up to its tormentor to challenge him, hands on hips... only to get promptly knocked out by a head butt, leaving you, her much smaller but thankfully [[CuteBruiser surprisingly tough]] sibling to take the bully down. She gets up and, of course, promptly says "Thanks! I could've taken him though..." in true Leeroy style. It does illustrate the fact that while Rose is trying to be a responsible adult figure, she's still just a kid herself.
* LipstickLesbian: You can create your female character to be like this in Fable II and III.
* LostForever:
** In the first ''Fable'', [[spoiler:if you turn in Lady Grey rather than marry her, you can never get through the Demon Door near her home.]]
** Also, if you give all your Silver Keys to the demon door in the Necropolis before you've collected all of them and opened all the treasure chests, you will never be able to open the chests afterwards as there won't be enough silver keys left in the world for you to collect.
** If you don't have the Knothole Island DLC and [[spoiler:you don't choose the Love ending, then all items buried beneath the ground]] are LostForever, unless you shell out the dough for the DLC, which gives you the opportunity to rectify that problem.
* LoudOfWar: In the first game, the Hero is tortured by listening to the warden read homegrown poetry, which all the other characters treat as worse than the standard whips and chains in the torture chamber.
* MachiavelliWasWrong: [[spoiler:This was the reason Maze didn't kill the Hero.]]
* MaskPower: Jack of Blades.
* MatchMakerQuest
* MeaningfulName: Oh dear God Sparrow.
** "Theresa" sounds quite a bit like "Teiresias", a reoccurring figure in Greek storytelling as the archetypal BlindSeer.
* MedievalStasis: Brutally averted. As time passes (between games, anyway), Albion transforms from Stock European Fantasy to an Industrial nation in the cusp of revolution.
* [[spoiler: MentorOccupationalHazard: Poor, poor Walter. Also Captain Swift, whose death is particularly hard on Ben Finn.]]
* TheMinionMaster: With the Raise Dead spell.
* MissionControlIsOffItsMeds: Jack of Blades does this in the end of the expansion pack to the first game.
* TheMole: Lilith in Fable II. She runs up to you and she exclaims, distraught, that her family had been attacked. Her husband had been killed and her son had been kidnapped. She requests that the Hero rescue her son who had apparently been taken to the nearby Howling Halls by Balverines. Hammer agrees to this and, along the way to Howling Halls, reassures Lilith a few times that they will rescue her son. However, this all turns out to be a trap, and once inside the Howling Halls, she exclaims "Children, I bring you flesh!" in a demonic tone and disappears, prompting her "children" to attack. Once all of the Balverines are defeated, she reappears as a White Balverine and attacks the Hero, who eventually kills her. You can just beat the crap out of her upon meeting her, you'll get some evil points, but 2 lines of extra dialogue.
** If you look at her info, one of her likes is "Travel-Ready Beef Jerky". This could be a hint at her love for flesh as a Balverine.
* MoodWhiplash: ''Fable III'' is basically the same lighthearted game we all know with the occasional serious moments and emotional manipulation that we've come to expect from the series. [[spoiler: Then you meet The Crawler]] and suddenly the entire game is DarkerAndEdgier. Even the way you sit on the throne when you become the ruler indicates this isn't what you were expecting.
* MoreCriminalsThanTargets: There seems to be an endless supply of bandits and other troublemakers to deal with.
* MissionPackSequel: For the first half of the game, Fable 3 is very much this in relation to Fable 2, but once you [[spoiler: become King/Queen]] it becomes somewhat different.
* MostGamersAreMale. {{Lampshaded}} during the faux ''DungeonsAndDragons'' adventure in ''Fable III'''.
-->'''"Wizard"''': Yeah, and the princess is ''[[MsFanservice really hot]]''.
** GirlOnGirlIsHot: If you're playing as a female character during this quest, the three gamers in charge of the game take notice. One of them definitely approves.
** Part of the reasons many males make female characters.
* MultipleEndings: The first game has two, though the UpdatedRerelease continues the story past that, and makes which you chose less important by [[spoiler: weakening the SwordOfAeons if you choose to get it, and giving you the identical Avo's Tear if you choose not to.]]
** Fable II has three endings: [[spoiler:Sacrifice/Many, Love/Few, and Wealth/One]]. Each ending has its ups and downs, and you may spend a lot of time thinking about which one you want. However, the choice is somewhat cheapened by one of the rewards having no noticeable effect on the world as a whole, the second impacting gameplay significantly, and the third reward is something that is likely for an evil/corrupt player to already have, and not particularly difficult for a good character to obtain either.
* TheMusketeer: The second and third games' main characters.
* MyMasterRightOrWrong: Jasper will continue [[YesMan serve]] the Hero no matter how many villagers he kills, how many unjust decisions he makes as a tyrannical ruler...[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous and no matter how ridiculous they dress]].
** This isn't to say that he holds back any commentary. After all, his voice actor IS [[JohnCleese John Cleese]].
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: There's a story that tells of a Hobbe living in a town and becoming the Village Idiot. Once he spoke, everyone knew what he was and killed him. Ouch.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: "Jack of Blades," "Reaver," and many more--especially ''you'', if you choose certain titles.
** "Crap it's Nobhead! Ahhh!!!"
*** ''Sybil [[SleepingBeauty Malificent]]''?
* NecessarilyEvil: In ''Fable III'', if you don't have a crapton of gold, you must be this [[spoiler: if you want money to save your people.]]
** Also [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* {{Necromantic}}: The gravekeeper in ''Fable 2'' towards Lady Elvira Grey. Though she's been deceased for five centuries, he's been obsessed with her ever since he first saw a picture of her. He recruits the player to gather her dismembered body parts in order to resurrect her. Said resurrection process also includes a bit of magic to make her fall in love with the first person she sees (which he intends to be himself, of course). Because of this, it can [[GoneHorriblyWrong go horribly wrong]] if the player doesn't leave the room before the spell takes full effect, since they are always the first person she sees upon waking.
* NiceHat: Reaver's massive top-hat in the third game. The crown.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: To an extent in ''Fable II''. [[spoiler:Lucien intends to deal with a prophecy of four Heroes that will stop him by murdering your sister and NEARLY killing you.]]
* NightmarishFactory: Reaver's factory in Bowerstone Industrial. If you're a good king, you can turn it into a school (which Reaver takes credit for, natch).
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: In the first, these are slow enemies that hit hard and [[ZergRush like to come in numbers]].
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In 3, you meet an annoying artist named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade Thomas Kaidkin]]. But then you kill him, so...InvertedTrope?
* [[NoExportForYou No Port For You]]: There's no sign of a PC version of Fable 2.
* NonActionBigBad: [[spoiler:Lucien is killed rather unceremoniously in the end either by you or Reaver.]]
** [[spoiler: Not to mention Logan. Once you storm his throne room, he surrenders with surprising grace.]]
* NoNameGiven: Though {{Fanon}} uses the name Sparrow (a childhood name used by Rose and Theresa) for the Fable II protagonist. In Fable III even in subtitles you are simply named by your title, and you only have three: Prince/Princess, Hero and King/Queen. The previous Hero is referred to as the Hero King or Hero Queen or simply a variant of "the last Hero".
* NonLethalKO: The second and third games. ''You can't die''. If you run out of health and don't have any resurrection phials, you get a scar and lose any uncollected experience, or in the case of the third game, you just lose any experience to the next guild seal, be you five or ninety-five percent of the way there.
* NostalgicMusicbox: Near the end of ''Fable II'', the player character encounters the music box from the prologue in a moving scene.
* NotUsingTheZWord: Hollow Men. {{Lampshaded}} in ''Fable III''
-->'''Reaver:''' We can't call them zombies - the Hollow Men Anti-Defamation League is getting stronger all the time.
* ObviousBeta: Fable 2, on launch, lacked much of the promised multiplayer support, though a patch was available to add much of it. More serious are the instabilities and bugged quests that can make the game unbeatable, of which Lionhead has presently acknowledged two serious ones.
* OldDarkHouse: The Sunset House in ''Fable III'' plays this to a tee. To begin with, it's located in a very remote, isolated area (accessed by a lonely, easily unnoticed path from a region that is infested with angry spirits and zombies). On top of that, all you will find at first is a pile of debris from a destroyed house; but when you visit it at night, you see the intact house as a transparent, glowy white apparition sitting ominously at the top of the hill. By solving a puzzle in the gazebo off to the west side of the area, the house is magically restored from it's ghostly state and you can now enter it. But even when restored, the house still looks eerie as heck sitting atop that hill, and even after the related quest is completed, the area around it is always infested with Hollow Men and unique, creepy looking Hobbes. However, if all of that wasn't creepy enough, [[ItGotWorse what you find inside makes all of it even worse]].
* OldShame: An in-universe example, with Phillip Morrley's lost play, "The Ham Sandwich", hated by its creator, [[StylisticSuck and with good reason]]
* OnlySixFaces
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Balverines [[strike:could]] ''totally'' count. They're smack dab in "CallARabbitASmeerp" territory.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: They're called "[[NotUsingTheZWord Hollow Men]]"; they're corpses that have been possessed by restless, angry spirits called "Wisps" (which basically look like little blue balls of light), and all of the ones we see are just skeletons.
** Actually, we do see ''one'' that really is "zombie like" in Fable 3 - during "The Hollow Legion" quest, we are briefly told that a soldier named Lieutenant Simmons was killed the night before the player arrived. During the battle with the legion of Hollow Men, a rogue wisp flies into Simmons' grave and possesses his partially rotten corpse. {{Squick}}.
* PainfullySlowProjectile: Magic in Fable 2 basically requires to to stand there and charge it. Getting hit does not ruin your concentration, but it is entirely impractical. And in some instances, (like against [[DoomsdayDevice The Shard]]), it's mandatory. (To a lesser extent this applies to most ranged weapons that have slow attack speeds or immensely draconic reload time.) Time Control and Raise Dead help.
** Averted by one particular gun in Fable 2 though, which is basically a machine gun. It just required you to press the shoot button really fast.
* PaperThinDisguise: In ''Fable 3'', there's a particular quest where the player must dress up as a mercenary, and pose as their comrade "Jimmy" in order to sneak into their camp. It somewhat makes sense if the PC is male, but if female, somehow they remain oblivious to the fact that "Jimmy" suddenly has breasts. (all outfits in the game, regardless of which sex they're meant for, have both male and female models to fit the PC's body.)
* PetInterface: Your dog in Fable 2 and 3.
* PlayableEpilogue
* PoorCommunicationKills: Half of Fable 3's plot revolves around this. [[spoiler: After returning from Aurora with an entire army missing, Logan could have confided in his private council (Walter, The Hero, et al) the actual events that elapsed there. Despite what Theresa says about, "The Crawler is something you had to see for yourself", in a world where monsters roam the land and cosmic abominations from The Void are renown throughout history it would not have been hard to persuade his closest friends to trust him and help enable intelligent policy revisions to prepare for invasion. ]]
** [[spoiler: Let's not forget about the families of Logan's legion of dead soldiers who make no effort to inquire as to what happened exactly. Or the fact that ''nobody'' mentions how Logan underwent such a vicious personality shift after his little expedition.]]
* PowerUpFood: In Fable 2, food items not only heal the player, they also affect the hero's appearance and status.
* {{Precursors}}: The Old Kingdom, which left behind a variety of ruins and [[ArtifactOfDoom Artifacts Of Doom]], most notably the Sword of Aeons and the Spire.
** The continent of Aurora has ruins of a magnificent civilization, but the only population now is a small port town. It is possible that [[spoiler:The Crawler]] was responsible for its collapse but no real clues are given either way.
* PropRecycling: The magic music box from ''Fable II'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbeUcbeIAZI appears]] in ''Fable III'' prominently as the proof Sabine needs that the main character is a Hero.
** Also, every weapon used by an NPC other than Walter is from Fable II.
* QueerRomance: An option throughout the series.
* RapidAging: In Fable 1, your character would get a little older every time you leveled up. This wasn't to scale with anyone else, which lead to somewhat disconcerting scenes where you finally meet your long-lost sister who appears to be a young woman while you're a geezer.
** ''Only'' if you extensively used magic, which ages you prematurely.
*** In Fable I your character ages 0.7 years for each rank you buy in any ability. Even if you ignored Will entirely, you'd still be in your fifties by the end of the game.
*** Hell, if you rank yourself enough, you'll look older than your ''[[spoiler:mother]]'' when you finally see her!
** In Fable II, there is a location in Oakvale where you or a girl can be sacrificed. If you choose to sacrifice yourself, you age rapidly.
* ReligionOfEvil: Temple of Skorm in the first game, Temple of Shadows in the second. Dark Sanctum in the third.
* TheReveal: In Fable III [[spoiler: Logan hadn't gone mad with power, but mad with fear of the Crawler, and his tyrannical actions were to generate enough money for the treasury to raise an army to fight the Crawler. A Treasury you will either empty to keep your promises to the people who helped you gain the throne, or break them to ensure Albion and everyone in it can be saved.]]
* RewardingVandalism: Zigzagged across the series, with barrels in Fable 1 revealing humble loot upon smashing, but their descendants in Fable 2 and 3 exuding no such treasures.
* RichBitch: Many of the locals in Fairfax Gardens.
* RoadCone: The murals in the ruined Heroes' Guild in ''Fable II'' show that ''The Lost Chapters'' was {{canon}}, and that in the last scene of that the hero chose to [[spoiler:destroy Jack of Blades instead of become him]].
* {{Roma}}: The stereotype is subverted; though the hero(ine) of ''Fable II'' is raised in a Gypsy caravan, they are more or less normal people making a decent living. Theresa fits the stereotype, though she isn't one.
* RPGMechanicsVerse: In a side quest in ''Fable III'', some amateur wizards teleport you into a ''DungeonsAndDragons''-style adventure module, where RPG tropes are {{lampshaded}} and parodied.
* RuleOfFun: Despite all of their flaws, the games can be genuinely entertaining.
* RunningGag: Reaver attempting to get an image of himself every time the Hero visits him in Fable 2. [[spoiler: It always ends in Reaver finding something he doesn't like about the image, then shooting the artist]].
** [[spoiler: And then horribly, horribly not funny when you see the third artist is Barnum.]]
* SadisticChoice:
** Aside from the ending of ''Fable II'', when you decide [[spoiler: whether to age yourself or allow an innocent girl to be.]]
** ''Fable III'' starts out with one in which [[spoiler: you have to choose between your lifelong friend/lover and a group of peasants to be executed. There's no third option, either. If you wait too long to decide, ''all of them'' will be executed.]]. You'll also have to make some hard decisions after your rise to power, whether to [[spoiler: spend the money to keep your promises, or exploit the land and earn money to fund the defense against the shadow monsters.]]
*** The first sadistic choice is (only slightly) devalued when you realise there is no moral implication in making it. (Shown by the blank decision buttons, rather than them being surrounded by a soft light or fire.) [[spoiler: And devalued further because the peasants never appear again if left alive, although your love interest will...]][[spoiler: and you have to decide whether to tell him/her to abandon their new fiance when you end up saving them both later on in the game.]]
**** And neither of which are ANYTHING compared to Fable III's penultimate choice: choosing between being a noble and just king with a poor treasury [[spoiler: and a dead land and populace when The Crawler comes along]] or being just as bad a tyrant as Logan was in order to fill the state's coffers [[spoiler: to try and save all human life in Albion and beyond.]] [[spoiler: You CAN TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding, but it is quite literally backbreaking.]]
* SaintlyChurch:
** The Cult of Avo in Fable I
** The Temple of Light in Fable II
* SamusIsAGirl: Despite the fact that everyone calls Chesty a "he" (even Chesty), according to the Fable Wiki, Chesty is, in fact, a girl.
* ScaryBlackMan: Thunder in Fable I. He's the biggest, burliest bastard in the whole of Albion, and he hates your guts no matter what you do[[spoiler:, even if you take mercy on his sister in the arena]].
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Guards will force you to either pay a fine or do community service as punishment for your crimes. A player who has aquired a significant amount of the businesses in the game will have so much income that these fines become very trivial.
* SelfImposedChallenge: The first game allows the player to make boasts before quests, where the player gambles money on being able to complete it [[FightInTheNude nude]], unarmed, or with some other added challenge. Also, all three games change the character's appearance in part based on their combat style (using their stats in the first two, and their actions in the third), causing people who are going for a certain look to deliberately not use the character's full power, such as ignoring melee to avoid building muscle.
* SequelHook: The See the Future Downloadable content, which sets up Fable 3 starring the child of Fable 2's main character as a monarch.
* SeriesMascot: Chickens
* ServileSnarker: Jasper, your butler, who is voiced by JohnCleese.
** Most definitely confirmed in the most recent [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amu6w5pc99c dev journal video]].
-->'''John Cleese''': ''(recording dialogue)'' Ah, a new mask! You'll be completely anonymous wearing this on your face! Wear it anywhere else on your person and I expect you will achieve exactly the opposite effect.
** Hobson is even more snarky. If you decide to lower taxes, it depletes the treasury, to which Hobson sarcastically says, "How very ''noble'' of you", using "noble" as a veiled insult.
* SexyWalk: When the Princess in ''Fable III'' walks normally, she swivels her hips quite a bit.
* ShopKeeper: They are everywhere in the series, they can even be killed if you wish.
* ShopliftAndDie: In the original Fable, you can get away with various crimes if you're not seen, but if you're caught in the act you'll be attacked by the guards. Once your guile level is high enough, you can attempt to steal items from shops. Getting caught sets the guards on you. This almost counts as a [[UselessUsefulSpell Useless Useful Skill]]: by the time you're leveled high enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the effort.
** ''Fable 2'' revamped the stealing skill: now, anyone can steal from anything at any time. All you have to do is hold A, which causes an "eye" meter to appear. If the eye is closed, no one can see you and you're safe from reprisal. If the eye meter is open, you can stop stealing and no one seems to care that you had your hand in the cash register but didn't take anything. Of course, there's a rare (but significant) bug where, if you steal something when no one can see you, then hang around that area long enough for the house owner or shopkeeper to notice that the item is missing, then ''everyone'' knows it was you.
** Stealing in the original ''Fable'' was a great way to make a ton of cash early in the game. Head over to the weapon smiths, get him to follow you, get him drunk, leave him alone, go back and steal all the augments laying around, sell them back to him or to someone else and make tens of thousands of gold for a few minutes of work.
** Let's not forget that if you got caught stealing(or trespassing, etc.) then when the guards come to attack you, you could simply say "Sorry." if you were generally a nice guy. They simply let you go.
* ShoutOut:
** ''Fable 2'' endings are [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan "The Needs of the Many", "The Needs of the Few", and "The Needs of the One".]]
** Listen to the children as they play in Fable 2 and if you know your video games you'll be able to pick out shout outs to ''TheLegendOfZelda'', ''BioShock'', ''TheElderScrolls'' and many others. There's even a ''PlanescapeTorment'' joke in there.
** Speaking of BioShock shout-outs, Lucien at one point asks of the player, "Would you kindly step into the circle?" May also be a LampshadeHanging to the fact that there's no way to continue in the plot without doing this, even when you the player know what's going to happen because of it.
** Another shout out - an Achievement in Fable II is called The Black Knight, where you kill a hollow man in a specific and brutal way, where you shoot out their weapon, shoot off his head, and then finish him off. Without the right knowledge, this still makes sense since a black knight is usually brutal and not known for chivalry. But others may notice that the achievement description after you get it ends with: "Turns out it wasn't a [[MontyPython flesh wound]]."
** There's also the guards in the first Fable, who will shout out "Its just a flesh wound!" when they're running low on HP.
** In Fable 2, a minor NPC who gives several quests is named Giles. He has a son named [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Rupert.]] The first quest he gives you has you killing a bandit named Ripper. And his wife was named Jenny.
** The Tombstones in Bowerstone Cemetery make references to [[PiratesOfTheCaribbean Pirates Of The Caribbean]].
** A store in Bloodstone and a house in Old Town both are called the "Dark Mark", a likely reference to the [[HarryPotter Harry Potter]] series.
** Also [[SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Max and Sam]] Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get Sam and Max home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
** [[{{Halo}} Really? Hal's sword? Hal's rifle? Hal's armor? REALLY?]]
** The archaeologist who offers you some quests in Fable 2 is named Belle Rennock; shift some syllables around and this could easily be a reference to Rene Belloq, the evil archaeologist from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
** [[SonicTheHedgehog "You're too slow!"]]
** In ''Fable III'', one of the quests inside a pen-and-paper RPG, you are told to get [[OrderOfTheStick "Skymetal"]] to make a +5, er, +3 sword. (It's too early in the session for that high level a sword.)
*** The RPGers are named, [[DarthsAndDroids Ben and Jim.]]
** From Reaver's challenge:
--->'''Hatch:''' [[MontyPython That hobbe is dead. He is deceased. He has shuffled off this mortal coil!]]
** ''Fable III'': One Achievement is "[[{{Predator}} If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It]]"
*** And another one- "[[{{TheMatrix}} We need guns, lots of guns]]"
** One of the clothing options in ''Fable III'' is a rather... [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sharp-looking"]] [[{{Sharpe}} green military uniform]].
** Several shout outs to ''ShaunOfTheDead'' can be found when you meet Major Swift and Ben Finn. One obvious one is that they are defending themselves from waves of undead hollow men when you get there.
** A tombstone in the Mercenary camp contains the inscription.: [[MonkeyIsland Tried to hold his breath for ten minutes.]]
*** Another tombstone in Mourningwood reads "[[LegendOfZelda It's dangerous to go alone, take this.]]" Digging up the grave reveals a toy sword.
** Tons of Shout Outs to Bullfrog/Lionhead employees on cemetary graves, usually with an IncrediblyLamePun (Sam Van Tilburgh died of "diary-ea" - he also worked on ''BlackAndWhite''.)
** Speaking of Shout Outs and the Mourningwood Cemetary: "In loving memory of Arnold. [[{{Terminator}} He won't be back.]]
** In ''Fable III'', there's a man whose life's work is [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy to insult everyone in Albion. It's implied that he does it in alphabetical order too.]]
** HPLovecraft: [[TomeOfEldritchLore The Normanomicon]].
*** And a subtle one: Miska's Tonics.
** [[GuitarHero Lute Hero, one of the minigames in 3.]]
** In the Brightwall quest where you round up the chickens, after getting the chickens to follow you they cluck the ending credits tune from RobotChicken.
** [[{{Film/Arthur}} Hobson]], a ServileSnarker for a rich guy in ''Fable III''.
** If you wear the Mercenary Beard in ''Fable III'', Jasper will sometimes remark, "[[HalfLife That beard should be a real boon if you're seeking a job in the technology sector]]."
** In ''Fable III'', one of the cells in Ferret's Bowerstone Market hideout contains a hobb worshiping a [[CompanionCube box]] with a [[{{Portal}} pink heart]] on each side.
*** There's also [[TheCakeIsALie a white cake]] in a table near the cell.
** In the original ''Fable'', the [[{{Superman}} Kryndon]] tattoo.
--> The Kryndons are an old order of assassins who live normal lives by day.
* ShutUpHannibal: A by-the-book example at the end of Fable 2, with [[spoiler: either the PlayerCharacter or Reaver interrupting the BigBad's ramblings with a bullet]].
** And in ''Fable III'', where [[spoiler: Walter, being psychologically hounded by the Crawler, throws his torch at the thing, causing it to cry out in pain and disappear. The fact that it easily recovers and kidnaps Walter a few moments later should be ignored.]]
* SlouchOfVillainy: Logan [[http://images.wikia.com/fable/images/d/df/Loganthrone.jpg demonstrates]].
* SmugSnake: Reaver. He talks the talk, but the one time in game he gets a chance to pull a true MagnificentBastard move, the much more magnificent Lucien outdoes him handily.
** If you maxed out your Skill abilities before hand, you can even out-shoot Reaver [[spoiler:in the tunnels when Lucien's men are coming after you]], making his position as the Hero of Skill rather... dubious.
** Reaver becomes an ''insufferable'' Smug Snake in ''Fable III''. Part of the smugness comes from the fact [[spoiler: he never gets any sort of comeuppance. He can deflect bullets with just a thin cane, YOU try and kill him. [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney Other then that, he has a crapload of gold and runs a significant portion of Bowerstone]] ]]
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The Good/Evil choices in the ruling part of Fable 3 in regards to [[spoiler: preparing for the crawler]]. Do you turn a orphanage into a brothel for the extra money [[spoiler: therefore lessening the overall casualty rate]] or spend thousands turning it into a sanctuary to help the needy?
* [[BeardOfEvil Soul Patch Of Evil]]: Logan.
* SoundtrackDissonance: At the end of the second, [[spoiler:in the "Perfect World," you as a child pass through a burning, destroyed portion of the farm while a soothing music box plays in the background.]]
* SpoonyBard: Roland the Bard, who, after you complete a quest, sings of your glory at Bloodstone, and at The Sandgoose in Oakfield.
* StartOfDarkness:
** Lucien was a genuinely good and competent ruler before the deaths of his wife and sister. After that, his sanity very slowly begins to erode as his obsession with the Spire increases.
** Logan [[spoiler: lost an army to and was nearly killed by the Crawler, and then told it was coming for Albion.]]
** The beginning childhood sections of the first two games could also be this for the player, as the first hero's [[DoomedHometown village is massacred, his father among the victims.]] The BigBad Lucien of the second game shoots your sister shortly into the game's plot, and also shoots you, leaving you for dead.
* StealthPun: Hobbes are nasty, brutish, and short.
** In case you missed it, this is probably a reference to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".
*** In a GeniusBonus vein, about Thomas Hobbes, [[spoiler:Logan is acting in accordance with his ideas as set forth in "Leviathan".]]
** Mourningwood. Ha ha.
* SteamPunk: Very prevalent in the second and third games.
* StopHelpingMe: The Guild Master in the first Fable. "Try to get your combat multiplier ''even '''higher'''''!" "Your health is low. Do you have any potions? Or food?" "Check the guild for more quests."
** Parodied in one scene in ''The Lost Chapters'' where [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] starts mocking these things. ''"Hero, there is an important quest card waiting for you at the bottom of a slime pit!"''
** Your Combat multiplier is atrocious!
** Apparently not just limited to players. In Fable 2, some of the loading screens mention a rumor that the Guild Master was eventually found dead with the words "Your health is low" carved into his forehead.
* StoutStrength: Hammer. She is a very big lady with a very big hammer that she uses very well.
* StraightGay: Another possible way to play your character.
* StylisticSuck: Phillipith Morreley's lost play "The Ham Sandwich"
* SuddenlyVoiced: Your hero in ''Fable III''.
** It doesnt really count when they are a new character.
* SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom
* SureWhyNot: So when Peter Molyneux heard that the humor of his games was comparable to that of MontyPython, guess how he reacted? He hired JohnCleese to be your butler in the third game!
** When demoing the co-op for Fable 2, a common question was "can you marry your henchman?" The developers responded that you couldn't because they simply hadn't thought of it. In Fable 3, there are achievements for marrying (You married another player! N.B. Marriage not binding in any real court of law.) and having a child (We all knew this day would come. Having children online is finally a reality.) with another player over Xbox Live.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Mercenaries for bandits.
* SweetPollyOliver: One early mission in III requires you to infiltrate a mercenary camp disguised as a male merc, regardless of your character's gender.
* SwordAndGun: Essentially mandatory in the third game, even more-so that it's predecessor.
* TakeThat: During the quest "The Game", which takes place inside a model D&D-esque setting, there is a switch that none of the gamers thought was their responsibility to rig, so it does nothing when pulled. One of the gamers suggests making [[TheElderScrollsFour a cloud of butterflies appear]]. His friend comments; [[DuelingGames "Worst. Game. Ever."]]
* TakeThatMe: There's a quest in Fable 3 where you enter a DungeonsAndDragons style game. You kill the villain in this game by hitting him once with a bane-sword. One of the Dungeon Masters says "What kind of rubbish game lets you kill the villain in one blow?" [[spoiler: In Fable 2, this is exactly how you kill the villain.]]
* TakingTheBullet: [[spoiler: Your dog near the end of II.]]
* TarotMotifs: Tarot cards become all-important in ''Fable II''.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: Millfields in ''Fable III'' is one of the most dangerous and aggravating areas of the game because it's utterly ''crawling'' with troops of bandits. This is very odd considering that it's the most elitist rich and upscale area of the game, where many of Albion's nobles and wealthiest citizens live, and logically it should be one of the most heavily guarded places in the kingdom. Mind you, there ''are'' guards there, but there are so ridiculously few of them patrolling the area that their presence is totally ineffective. The bandits attack other NPC's just the same as they do to the player, which often leads to random citizens being slaughtered left and right. If there happens to be a guard nearby, he will try to fight them off, but unless the player helps out, he will usually die fairly quickly due to being severely outnumbered (on top of that, most guards are rather weak in combat).
* TheObiWan: Sir Walter Beck in the third game. Sometimes he edges by TheDumbledore territory.
* TheQuietOne: The hero in Fable 3. His/her dialogue is fully voiced, and this trope is well averted during the prologue, but for some reason the player character goes all quiet after that and very, very rarely ever speaks for the rest of the game.
* TheVamp: Elvira ("Lady") Grey, the seductive and villainous mayor of Bowerstone in ''Fable''. Though she does fall genuninely in love with the Hero of Oakvale.
* ThoseTwoGuys: Sam and Max in ''Fable II'' and ''III''. How bad are they? Their mother's grave says: "Here lies Elizabeth Spade, at peace. ADDENDUM: Now her sons have joined her, the above inscription is no longer accurate."
-->'''Sam's Grave:''' This is all Max's fault.
-->'''Max's Grave:''' I had it all under control, then Sam cocked it up.
* TimeSkip: Of 500 years between I and II. ''III'' is set only fifty years after ''II''.
** To a lesser extent, there's one at the beginning of both games, both about 10 years or so, plus a ''second'' 10 year skip in Fable II, when you go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth.
* ToiletHumour: So much of it in Fable II.
* TooDumbToLive: Mercenaries will charge the ruler of Albion. Even if the king or queen couldn't cast a spell to make flaming swords appear to kill them with one stab, it's still less than intelligent to attack a person commanding armies and [[spoiler: is the only thing standing between them and utter genocide.]]
* TrailersAlwaysLie: The trailers of Fable III say ''nothing'' about [[spoiler: The Crawler]], just explaining the first half of the plot, deposing your brother.
* TrainingDummy: The tutorial dummies.
* TransparentCloset: Averted during the "Blind Date" quest in Fable II, the father doesn't know his son is gay.
* {{Transvestite}}: Some of the prostitutes in Fable II and III.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Lady Grey doesn't care about your appearance.
* UncleSamWantsYou: The "Albion Needs YOU" posters.
* UnexpectedGenreChange: Oh sure, there are scary moments in all three games. But the in the third game, when you visit Aurora, the game's tone shifts abruptly from, admittedly, somewhat dark fantasy straight into full-blown horror. And very well done at that.
* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Oh, where do we start? The first game is rife with these, with the most famous being the sandgoose and the Singing Sword, as well as the Dragon Cliff, the music box, and a host of other things.
* UselessUsefulStealth: Required to get past one section of the first game, pretty useless everywhere else.
* VideoGameCaringPotential: Especially in Fable II, where the game tries to make you love your dog and your family. Which gives the player [[spoiler: real motivation to kill the game's BigBad because he [[PlayerPunch ''murders'' your spouse AND children near the end of the game.]] And if that wasn't enough, he [[ShootTheDog shoots your dog]] because said dog [[TakingTheBullet takes the bullet for you.]]]]
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: ''Chicken Kickin'''!
** The game makes you care about your family, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a player from starting a vicious cycle of domestic violence.
** There is even less stopping you from sacrificing your wife in Fable 2. You gain 100 good points and some renown for marrying her, 50 good points for having a child and only 100 evil points for sacrificing her. A net gain of 50 good points and some renown for marrying and killing random women (in fable 1 though it can be a very efficent source of money and renown).
** Play some mind games with multiple wive/husbands,mostly to be a JerkAss. Just gather them together for some time alone and watch what goes down from. Always a laugh for an evil character.
** Those are all only scratching the ''surface'' of what's possible. You can walk into a town and massacre everyone with your powers, ruin the economy by jacking up everyone's rent, sell people into slavery, curse a young girl to be turned into an old crone...there are some sick possibilities in Fable.
* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: Averted. You getting stronger invariably means random {{Mooks}} will too, although you still get stronger at a far quicker rate than they do.
* VillainousBreakdown: Lucien has one at the end of ''Fable II''
* VillainousCrossdresser: In Fable III, a couple of portraits in Reaver's mansion indicate that he is one.
* VolcanicVeins
* WearingAFlagOnYourHead: Or on your underpants.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Lucien starts out as this, although he gets corrupted and more insane as he continues his quest.
** [[spoiler:Played straight by Logan in the third game.]] When he says "This is my Albion. Its city will bow to my law , or they will burn. Its mountains will bend to my will , or they will fall. This is my Albion. Its people will do as I say or they will die. Its future will be as I decree, or it will end. I have seen what must be done, and nothing will stand in my way. We will be greater and we will be stronger, no matter what sacrifices we must make. This is my Albion... and I will see it destroyed before I surrender it.", he's not going on a Caligula rant, but an actual statement of ''fact''.
* [[WhatMeasureIsAMook What Measure Is A Civilian]]: In ''Fable III'', apparently each life can be saved for 1gp.
* WhyWontYouDie: Humorously lampshaded by Major Swift and Ben Finn. (Fable 3)
-->'''Swift:''' ''Lieutenant Simmons! I specifically instructed you to remain buried!''
-->'''Finn:''' Oh, doesn't anyone follow orders anymore?!
* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: In Fable 2, you will come to rely on potions if you don't want to [[ScarsAreForever "die".]] Food is also cheap and effective way to heal yourself while in town, and can do wonders for your appearance and alignment.
* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: [[spoiler: Whisper admitting you've always been the better Hero, (assuming you spare her).]]
* WriterOnBoard: Killing your wife gets you 60 evil points. Divorcing her gets you ''600.''
** Of course, usually if your wife asks for a divorce, you've been a real physically abusive JerkAss up to that point.
*** Or if you don't regularly visit him/her.
**** The game glitches with this, where you have to visit your spouse every 20 MINUTES or else she divorces you (unless you own the entire town and put the rent down by 25%, making the ENTIRE TOWN absolutely go apeshit over you)
** And a vegetarian diet lets you max out Purity points...
*** Unless you eat Crunchy Chicks, which are ''live baby chickens''.
*** And ''delicious.''
*** It's also a bit of a SesameStreet food lesson, as healthier food tends to give you positive purity (and in the case of tofu, morality) to reflect your self-discipline. Meat, as in many real philosophies, is considered an indulgence.
*** The loading screens mention that you gain purity from eating vegetables, because unlike meat, no animals were harmed to make your dinner.
* [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes Why Did It Have To Be Caves]]: Poor Walter keeps running into them. It's funny at first. [[spoiler: [[FunnyAneurysmMoment Then you learn]] [[IronWoobie why he's afraid of them.]]]]
** If you're wondering exactly why, [[spoiler: during the war, he and his unit sought shelter in a cave to hide from the enemy's army. The enemy did not follow them, instead they blasted the entrance, leaving him and his two surviving men trapped in the absolute darkness of the cave for three days]].
* XanatosGambit / XanatosRoulette: It's heavily implied that Theresa was manipulating both Lucien and the Hero and was responsible for much of ''Fable II'''s plot.
** In ''Fable III'', Reaver's company profits whether or not you decide in his favor.
* XMeetsY: The developers have described Fable II as "A MontyPython sketch directed by TimBurton. It's a dark fairy tale with a light-hearted English twist."
* YaoiFangirl: The dead author of the in-game book "The Pangs of Sunset" in Fable 3, a book that [[HoYay ships]] Reaver and Garth from the second game. She's mentioned to have also written a SlashFic between Lucien (bad guy from Fable 2) and Jack of Blades (bad guy from the first Fable). She ships Theresa and Hammer, too.
** If you look well, the cover of said book is mysteriously stained with blood. [[TheNosebleed Maybe one of the readers got too "excited"...]]
* YouALLLookFamiliar: Lampshaded in a loading screen in the second game, with something along the lines of, "After many years of research, we have come to the conclusion that many of Albion's citizens sound ''exactly'' the same!"
* YouAreNumberSix: 'You are number 273. That number is not randomly assigned. It is because I have broken 272 guards already. And I will break you.'
* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: You must find expression manuals in the world if you want to learn to do seemingly basic things like laughing, raising your middle finger, or plenty of other basics.
to:
[[caption-width-right:289:Warning: Objects in pool may be less evil than they appear.]]
-->''For every choice,
* ''VideoGame/Fable'', a
A game released by Lionhead Studios in 2004, created by [[BlackAndWhite Peter Molyneux]]. It spent four years in production,
The game still received praise for being rather open-ended with both questing and character creation, and is regarded by some as a genuinely good game, just not [[WhatCouldHaveBeen what it could have been]].
Despite the flaws and mixed reception, the game went on to be one of the top selling games on the original Xbox.
A sequel was released in 2008, and was met with [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel surprisingly positive reviews]]. It improved the KarmaMeter, adding Purity and Corruption alongside good and evil, and increased the role the character's actions played in the game's world. While one can still attack a town and kill everyone in it, doing so hurts the town's economy and make the villagers hate you, increasing prices at shops and lessening the quality of the items sold.
''Fable III'' was released in 2010, set 50 years after the events of the last game. It heavily simplifies gameplay elements established in the first and second games, but introduces some new ones, such as weapons that morph in appearance, and to the ability to rule a kingdom half-way through the game.
The three games are mainly set in Albion ([[IThoughtItMeant not]] [[NamesTheSame that]] [[{{Albion}} one]]), a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture land based on England]] during the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution respectively. In the first two games, the player takes on the role of an orphan who grows up to become an archetypal action hero determined to exact vengeance upon those who killed his loved ones when he was a child. The third game has you control a prince or princess, who quests to overthrow his or her brother, the corrupt king of Albion. In each game, depending on your playstyle, TheQuest may take the backseat to WideOpenSandbox gameplay and {{Irrelevant Side Quest}}s.
Peter Molyneux has stated a desire to continue the
'Fable: The Journey' is to be released in 2012, although little is known about it as of yet.
----
!!! This game provides examples of:
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In ''Fable III'' the Bowerstone Sewers are surprisingly roomy, and apparently so clean your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there! Justified because Bowerstone is based off an old-style European city
* ActorAllusion: Where do you meet Ben Finn (played by Simon Pegg)? During the section where you fight the walking dead Hollow Men, [[ShaunOfTheDead of course.]]
* AdultFear: Herman in Fable II is looking for his son, Joey in the Hobbe Caves. You decide to help him, and later he finds his son was turned into a Hobbe. He is then killed.
* {{AFGNCAAP}}: That it averts this is one of the original's main criticisms. ''Fable I'' was supposed to have the option to play as a female character, but the feature was removed before the game was released. Actions the player chooses to make in the game (any of the games) affect the main character's physical appearance, including height, skin color, and body type.
* AHomeownerIsYou: Houses are available for sale, and can generate income when rented out.
* AlmostLethalWeapons: Even some of the better weapons deal <100 damage. Without augments and skillranks, killing enemies will take quite awhile. In Fable 2, almost all legendary weapons are Badass. Get a master weapon (doesn't even matter which) with 4 augment slots and put different damaging augments on. You will slay thousands with 1-3 attacks each, MAXIMUM.
* AltarTheSpeed: Romancing someone enough to want to marry you takes about 5 minutes of flirting, and presenting a gift or 3.
** Once you get your appearance and renown up, you can actually get people to [[LoveAtFirstSight fall in love with you by]] ''[[LoveAtFirstSight walking past them]]''
*** TruthInTelevision: Screaming [[ElvisPresley Elvis]]/[[TheBeatles Beatles]]/etc. fans show the same tendencies.
*** TruthInTelevision: And once they find out you're a regular person, they start getting upset when you neglect them while saving the world.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Hobbes, children
* AnachronismStew: Not so much in the original ''Fable'', but very apparent in ''Fable 2'' and ''3''.
* AndYourLittleDogToo: The second game does a ''very'' good job of making you ''hate'' Lucien.
* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou
* AnnouncerChatter: During The Crucible in 2 and [[spoiler: Reaver's Mansion in 3]].
* AnticlimaxBoss: At the end of ''Fable 2'', when you finally catch up to Lord Lucien, [[spoiler: you simply shoot him in the head (or Reaver does it for you if you hesitate). It's not even a fight, you just kill the sucker.]] The actual final boss is so unremarkable that few players will realize that it is the such until the main quest ends about twenty minutes later.
* {{Antihero}} The player character can be anywhere on the scale, and you encounter several of these over the course of the series, such as Garth, who is a type 2, and Reaver, who is a type 5.
* AnythingThatMoves: Disturbingly hinted at with Reaver in III. [[spoiler:His guests at an orgy-filled party are all balverines.]]
** Also, his "Pleasure Chamber" (which you can infiltrate for a quest) has chickens roaming around and locked in cages hanging from the ceiling.
*** More disturbingly, if you loot the chamber you'll found about a half-dozen condoms and...a summon creatures potion. What...what does he use it for? [[YouDoNOTWantToKnow Do I even want to know?]]
* ApocalypticLog: Aurora in ''Fable III''. The citizens posted messages about how the eternal night destroyed their town as most of the populace including women and children were slaughtered. Yes, it's as depressing as it sounds.
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: Walter]] while [[DemonicPossession possessed]] by [[spoiler: The Crawler]] in ''Fable III''. He encourages the player, "Don't hold back!" when you attack him.
* ArrowsOnFire: Played straight.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In both games, after you commit crimes in a town, a guard will run up to you and charge you with a list of all of them, offering you options of how to respond to the charges (pay a fine, run away, etc). In many cases, you've just finished rampaging through a town destroying everything and every one in your path, and then a guard charges you with 30+ counts of murder and one count of vandalism from that door you kicked down.
* AssholeVictim: Reaver's assistant sexually harasses a woman. [[spoiler: She turns out to be a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent balverine]] and kills him]]
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: ''Fable III'', of course.
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler: Lady Grey in ''Fable 2'' if the Love Hurts subquest is completed.]]
* {{Badass}}: Many people throughout Albion's history, but those who bear the blood of the Archons are pretty much born to badassery.
* BadassBack: If you block an enemy's attack from behind in ''Fable I'', you parry without even turning around.
* BadassBeard: Walter in ''Fable III''.
* BadassBookworm: Briar Rose in ''Fable I''. Garth in ''Fable II''.
* BadassLongcoat: Seriously needs to be mentioned for ''Fable 2'', You got Highwaymen coats, Noble Gent's coats, and a few others, of course they look more badass with the right colours.
* BaldOfEvil: Literally, in the
* BeardOfEvil: Logan has one to add to his ObviouslyEvil appearance.
* BerserkButton: In Fable III, if you have the Ravenscar Keep DLC[[spoiler: Do NOT mess with the hero's dog, even if you have him strapped to a chair. They won't keep him tied down.]]
* BettingMiniGame: Several in fact.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Hammer. She's sweet and chatty. Then her dad gets killed...
* {{BFS}}: The "swords" that the Dwellers in ''Fable III'' are seen using are basically supersized cleavers.
* BigBad: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] in ''Fable I''
**
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]]] in ''Fable III''
* BigBeautifulWoman: There is a poster of a woman like this in Fable III, and she is called "Big Bess".
** Hammer's fans might describe her this way.
** It is also an option for the heroine to be one.
* {{Bittersweet Ending}}: [[spoiler: Fable II, if you chose The Sacrifice for your wish. Even in the other endings, you've received whatever it was you so desperately wanted, but Theresa's closing lines in the game open the possibility that the whole thing was a XanatosGambit to put the power of the Spire in her hands.]]
** [[spoiler: In Fable III, the game ends with the Hero forced to kill his lifelong mentor and friend Walter, who'd been possessed by [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]]. Also, depending on how full the kingdom's treasury was, the vast majority of Albion could be dead, and depending on how many promises you've had to break, you may have alienated some of your old friends and allies.]]
* BlackAndWhiteMorality: One of the game's most distinctive features is its morality system, whereby any issue the player decides the outcome of involves either [[ZeroPunctuation mawkish virtue or extravagant malevolence with no middle ground]]. This is especially {{egregious}} around more complicated issues such as ones involving [[EternalProhibition prohibition]].
* BlackCloak: While not evil, per se, Theresa in ''Fable II'' is a MysteriousProtector, and wears a [[http://files.xboxic.com/xbox-360/fable-2/fable2trailer.jpg heavy cloak]]. This is also because she is specifically pointed out as a [[BlindSeer blind seeress]].
* BlessedAreTheCheesemakers: "Do you like cheese? Me, I love a bit of cheese. Cheesy, cheesy cheese." "The Badgers are stealing the cheese."
* BookEnds: Fable III has [[spoiler: the beginning of your first fight and the end of you last one with Walter, and he even recites the same basic line about stories he told you of your father/mother when you were a child.]]
--> ''Prince/ss'': "Teach me how to be a hero.
** There's also book ends for the first part of the game.
-->'''Logan:''' [[spoiler: You have the power over life and death. Now choose.]]
* BowAndSwordInAccord: The first games hero.
* BrawnHilda: In Fable 2, a female player character with maxed out physique will look like [[http://www.timing-design.com/crap/fable2-monster.jpg this]]. The third game fixes the problem but still alters the physique. There's also Hammer, though YourMileageMayVary whether she's this or a HotAmazon.
** When did [[DragonAge Sten]] grow breasts?
** When did ''[[LegacyOfKain Kain]]'' grow breasts?
** Fable 3 fixes this by keeping maxed out physique at a relatively realistic level and having the bodies still match the voices.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: As mentioned below, banshees say some nasty things in an attempt to demoralize you. At least one line is directed towards the ''player'' :
--> "Think about all the endless hours you've wasted playing this game. And for what? Nothing!"
** Done by The Hero in Fable 3 during the "Darkness Incarnate" quest.
-->'''Sir Walter:''' Do you sometimes get the feeling someone's playing a game with you?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: The 5-Star Dog Potion for Fable 3, which is only obtainable by purchase on Xbox Live and instantly maxes out your dog's fighting and treasure-finding abilities.
* BrokenBird: Sparrow gets shit on in the opening cut scene and it goes downhill from there.
* BrokenBridge: Demon Doors, kind of. Not to mention an actual Broken Bridge in Fable II.
** In Fable 3, in Millfields, there is a sidequest to fund a new bridge which will let you get to Driftwood, [[spoiler:location of one of the four golden keys.]]
* BritishAccents Of many flavors, though mostly of the OopNorth variety.
* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Maze]]
* BullyHunter: Both games have this as at least an option. Its optional in Fable 1, your character can instead choose to be the bully. In Fable 2, its compulsory as your character has to fight off an adolescent thug who was tormenting a dog after Rose has a {{Leeroy Jenkins}} bully hunter moment herself. (She runs up to challenge the thug and promptly gets knocked out.)
* ButchLesbian: One of the many many ways to shape your female character in Fable II.
* ButThouMust: [[spoiler:The Bandit King sends assassins after the Hero whether you kill him or not]]. Also when Herman is at the door in Hobbe cave, if you use Will to kill his (now Hobbeified) son, he dies anyway. Also is the reason [[spoiler: Theresa took the Spire and gets you to usurp Logan, because if you don't Albion is doomed.]]
* TheCaligula: Logan. [[spoiler:Subverted later, where it turns out he's actually a WellIntentionedExtremist attempting to prepare Albion for The Crawler.]]
* CallBack: The Gnomes, one of the collection sidequests for ''III'', are given life (and attitude) by an insulting Gargoyle from ''II''.
* CaptainErsatz: ''Fable II'''s Theresa looks and sounds a lot like [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Kreia]].
** Actually, she is voiced by [[Film/HarryPotter Madam Hooch]]
* CameraScrew: The camera tends to whip around to look at whatever the game thinks you should be looking at. This leads to a particularly irritating moment about two thirds through the second game where to bypass an unnecessary enemy, you're running directly sideways and almost backward with no way to look at what's in front of you.
* CampGay: You can make your character this in Fable II and III if you so desire.
* CampStraight: Your character can be created to be this.
* CardCarryingVillain: Lesley.
-->'''Lesley:''' We owe you. '''[[LargeHam The cause of EVIL owes you!]]'''
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Played with in minor ways in the first two, but utterly bitchslaps you in Fable III [[spoiler: just like they did Logan.]]
* CharacterAlignment:[[invoked]] There's nine convenient titles in the second game.
** LawfulGood:[[invoked]] Saint.
** NeutralGood:[[invoked]] Philanthropist.
** ChaoticGood:[[invoked]] Decadent.
** LawfulNeutral:[[invoked]] Puritan.
** TrueNeutral:[[invoked]] Oppurtunist.
** ChaoticNeutral:[[invoked]] Debaser.
** LawfulEvil:[[invoked]] Fanatic.
** NeutralEvil:[[invoked]] Demon.
** ChaoticEvil:[[invoked]] Ghoul.
* ChargedAttack: Ranged attacks in
* ''{{Fables}}'', a
** In ''Fable III'', you can kill any creature quickly if you manage a charged melee attack, then quickly [[FinishingMove finish it]] by stabbing it (or crushing its head) while knocked to the ground.
* [[ChekhovsGun Chekov's Gun]]: [[spoiler: That music box...]]
* ChestMonster: Chesty, a unique example in Fable 2 who greets the hero in his own nightmare asking if he wants to "play a game" with him (his favorite game involves tearing off a person's legs and throwing them into a pool with flesh eating piranhas.) Unlike most examples however, the chest itself isn't the dangerous (gameplay wise), just his "friends" and "doggies."
** In Fable III, [[spoiler: Chesty returns, challenging you to a game of chess. he eventually gets bored, and has the lifesize gamepieces attack you directly.]]
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:Theresa]] controls both sides of the central conflict of ''Fable II'', convincing Lucien to build the Spire then [[spoiler:assembling and manipulating the four Heroes into killing him]] in a magnificent XanatosGambit that results in [[spoiler:Theresa claiming the power of the Spire for herself]]. In ''Fable III'', she is not only behind your development as a Hero, but [[spoiler: provoked Logan into becoming a tyrant by telling him the EldritchAbomination that nearly killed him is coming to Albion.]]
* ChildrenAreInnocent: Invoked by a Demon Door in Fable 3
* CityGuards: And then some. Arguably one of the most famous examples.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: Walter suffers from this. With good reason.
* CloudCuckoolander: Many in the series, but Bernard in ''Fable III'' tops the list. He has a deathly fear of chickens, thinking they're an evil force. This may have been caused by Arthur taunting him with letters insinuating a CosmicHorrorStory:
-->'''Letter:''' My dear Bernard, One of these days the Chicken God is going to come down from the Celestial Coop in the Sky and '''PECK OUT YOUR EYES! SO THERE!!!''' Arthur.
* ClowncarGrave:
** Lychfield Cemetery.
** Don't forget Bowerstone Cemetery.
** The Tomb of Heroes
** Shelly Crypt.
** Basically anywhere that in anyway some people could conceivably have died in, in Fable III.
*** Justified with wisps in the second game. A wisp takes up far less space than an actual Hollow Man.
* CollectionSidequest: Silver Keys, Hero Dolls...Saving islands from blizzards...Killing 50 odd hobbes...bandit slaughtering in its various forms....
* CombatPragmatist: Reaver. The description of the 'Red Dragon' really says it all. The best shot in Albion heard of Reaver's skill and so challenged him to an "honourable shooting challenge". Reaver's reply was to shoot him in the head.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Spell Weaving in III. Basically, it lets you combine two spells into a single, powerful attack. And is awesome.
* ComingOutStory: The 'Blind Date' sidequest in Fable II.
* ContinuityNod: In ''Fable III'', one of the first quests is called "Chicken Chaser", which was infamously the default title for your hero in the first game, and a title you could adopt in the second. ''Fable III'' also has a museum in a basement in Bowerstone Old Town that features artifacts from the first two games.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Reaver in the third game. He's making the best out of the industrial age.
* CrapsackWorld: Aurora in ''Fable III'' during Eternal Darkness. And how. And if [[spoiler: your character makes the wrong choices when you be come the ruler of Albion. The kingdom quickly becomes one of these.]]
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Derek of the second game, in a funny sort of way. In the prologue you meet him as he asks you to collect some warrants he has carelessly allowed to blow away through an alleyway, and comes across as rather incompetent, but if you listen to him, he swears "I'm going to clear up this town." If you help him get the warrants, he's as good as his word. If you don't... He even gets a book written
* [[CrystalDragonJesus Crystal Dragon]] [[strike:[[CrystalDragonJesus Jesus]]]] {{Satan}}: Skorm.
** Also Avo, who would be God. Subverted in that according to the Oracle, both were made up by a trader who happened to find the locations rich with light and dark [[{{Mana}} Will]]. However, that doesn't explain the deep voices that echo in the temple...
* CuteBruiser: Your main character as a child in Fable 2 isn't nearly as powerful as the rest listed on this tropes examples, but it is notable that he/she manages to take down a much larger bully in a few hits with nothing more than a toy sword and a spitball shooter. Consider the fact that Rose, a much older teen, got knocked out in one headbutt from this guy.
* CutsceneIncompetence: Justified in the first game, as [[spoiler:it ''is'' the Satanic Jack of Blades capturing you]].
* TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget: Lucien goes from trying to resurrect his family, to trying to eliminate death, to trying to eliminate chaos, to trying to replace Albion with his own kingdom.
** Subverted with Logan in ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: He never forgot why he was behaving like a tyrant. When you capture him, he has no VillainousBreakdown. He [[GracefulLoser calmly surrenders]] quickly and tells you exactly why he did what he did.]]
* DatingSim: More present in the second game than the first. In the first all you can do is perform expressions, give gifts, and be generally attractive to make a person fall for you, and once you're married your wife will stay with you unless you go out of your way to abuse her regularly. In the second, one trait an [=NPC=] can have is a favorite place, and taking them there will make them more receptive to romance. There's even an achievement for taking someone on the perfect date. Also, in the second game wives have various demands that must be met or else their happiness goes down and you might come home to news that your family's leaving you. As mentioned above under AltarTheSpeed, in both games if you're very famous and/or very good looking, you can (somewhat realistically) walk through town and find yourself surrounded by women you haven't met begging to marry you.
** Done much more realistically in III, you actually have to be friends first, and do some nice things, as well as hug them, tickle them, etc.
* DeadLittleSister: Lord Lucien in ''Fable II'' got his StartOfDarkness when his wife and daughter died of an unexpected illness. He quickly gives the main character a dead older sister.
* DeadpanSnarker: The hero of Fable 3 has his/her moments.
* DeathByNewberyMedal: The ending of the prologue in Fable II.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the first game you could carry several resurrection phials, but if you ran out you were sent back to your most recent save. In Fable 2, the developers consciously removed "death" from the game, both because they decided there was no good way to implement it (simply going back to a checkpoint isn't fun, and any significant negative consequences caused testers to turn off their X-boxes before the autosave to avoid them) and because they realized the game was supposed to be the epic tale of a famous hero, and in any other medium you'd never expect him to be killed by some random bandit. So in the second game, when your health drops to zero you simply fall to the ground momentarily, receive a scar, and lose any experience still on the ground. Ditto with 3, but if you're even mildly proficient with any kind of combat ability, you will be fine.
* DegradedBoss: The Commandant. Inadvertently, as you meet Commandants whilst protecting Garth as he's doing his ritual, and a fair few more show up in Fable III.
** After Saker is defeated in Fable 3, a few hours later clones of him with enhanced Will Powers start showing up with his mercenary goons, with no explanation whatsoever. This after he personally pledges that they won't meddle in your affairs again, and since you've ruined his base of operations.
*** To be fair to Sakers promise; you can freely enter, hang out, and even make friends with the mercs in his camp if you spare him. The ones outside may be attacking you due to being away from the boss, or even a separate faction of mercenaries that the developers were too lazy or unable to give proper backstory to.
* DemBones: Hollow Men.
* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler: The Crawler's]] special power.
* DepravedBisexual: Reaver, from Fable 2. The Player character can be one too, if they want.
* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Seems to be the cause of Reaver's cruelty, according to the fifth and final page of his journal. He reacted as many of us would to what he went through as a youth in Oakvale - He broke down and decided that he was a monster for what he'd done. Where he differed was that when he regained his composure, he started ACTING like one.]]
* DevelopersRoom: The headstones in the graveyard are mostly developer injokes.
* DisposableSexWorker: Hire a prostitute in Fable II and III, have sex with him or her, and then kill them if you wish.
* DontTryThisAtHome: Unprotected sex is ''much'' safer than using a condom your dog dug up in the woods or a back alley.
* DownerEnding: ''Fable III''. [[spoiler: If you choose to make life better, and drain the vault, better be ready after you win to see a ''lot'' of corpses littering the land. The land is beautiful, friendly... and dead. On the other hand, be a tyrant and have everyone living - and hating your living guts.]]
** Of course, you can TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding with [[spoiler: virtually all your citizens (minus soldiers who died in battle) surviving by keeping the land beautiful as well as work your butt off and coming up with the 9 million gold you need to keep the citizens alive AND keep all your promises]]
*** Or, just do the sensible thing (available in Fable 2 also), which is to buy property and rent it out. Buy every house and every shop, set rents & prices low, then doodle through the game at your leisure. You can't spend fast enough.
* TheDragon: [[spoiler: In Fable, Maze is TheDragon to Jack of Blades]] and the Commandant and the Great Shard are the Dragons to Lord Lucien. The Commandant's personality screen even describes him as Lucien's right hand man.
* DragQueen: In Fable III, one of the achievements requires your hero to dress in the clothing of the opposite gender.
* TheDreaded: Any sufficiently famous and evil hero will have this effect on townsfolk, except for those with the [[FearlessFool "brave"]] trait in II. Some may even run on sight. Enemies remain unaffected though. Which sucks, you'd think they would have learned.
* DrillSergeantNasty: That Goddamn Commandant!
* DroneJam: As if the escort missions weren't annoying enough to start with.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second half of Fable 3. You have become the friggin' ''King'' (or ''Queen'') and individuals still ask you to do petty jobs. Of course, if you plan on doing all those things that deplete the country's treasury, you're going to have to find ways to make an enormous amount of money to put back into the treasury, and one way to make money to buy enough real estate for a solid income is to do those pie-making/blacksmithing/lute-playing minigames at max skill level.
** Worse yet, in one storyline required quest, you must [[spoiler: Halt a robbery]]. The fellow in charge of said spoilered event scoffs at you, even though you're the freakin' ''King/Queen'' of the ''entire country'' and had to carve a bloody swathe through two to three small armies, and staged a coup against the resident tyrant, practically single-handedly. Said fellow is universally agreed to be [[spoiler: TooDumbToLive]] by every player who encounters him.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: If you want to save your kingdom and be loved by your people, you're going to have to work for it. That's right, Your Majesty, I want one hundred pies done by nightfall!
* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler: The Crawler.]]
* EliteMooks: Spire Guards in Fable 2. (Though it seems justified as most spire guards are either mercs hired from champions of [[FightClubbing The Crucible]], or [[CriminalAmnesiac just have their memories and identity ripped apart and become unthinking brutes]]. Balverines are a lot tougher in Fable III, complete with tactics and dodging, and they're faster. They also replace most enemies at night as the game progresses.
* EnemyChatter: When fighting a banshee in the second game, they will attempt to demoralize you by saying some pretty horrible and personal things to the player character. The worst of which is this exchange:
--> ''"Did you know Rose didn't die right away from that shot? No, she watched you fall through that window, heard as your body thudded against the ground and cried bitter tears before a final shot from Lucien ended her life."''
** It also gives the player an opportunity to deliver a satisfying ShutUpHannibal to the bitch.
** [[spoiler: [[EldritchAbomination The Crawler]] takes it a step further, not only insulting and threatening the player, but reminding the hero of all his/her failures and inadequacies in a [[NightmareFuel very booming, mocking voice,]] NON-STOP, every time you face his horde. To quote Walter:]]
--> [[spoiler: Walter: ''"Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP!!!!!"'']]
** Bandits and mercenaries usually comment on what you're doing specifically--it's often hilarious. "Magic's not fair!"
*** The funniest thing is that even if you're playing as a squeaky clean good guy and aren't doing anything otherwise threatening, town guards in Fable 2 will still comment negatively if you drink a health potion near them. "Don't you dare drink a health potion!" "What's that? A health potion? You cheeky bugger!" "We really need to get those health potions banned!"
* EscortMission: The first game has some awful examples. Significantly easier in the sequel, as the escorts are now either affected by GameplayAllyImmortality or their survival isn't actually required. One quest even gives you the option of looting your escort's NiceHat off his body and wearing it to trick the quest giver into thinking you're him.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The main character is always either referred to as "Hero" or whatever title he currently has. In Fable III, you are, Prince/Princess, Hero or King/Queen.
** Rose in ''Fable II'' refers to the Hero by his/her nickname "Sparrow".
* EveryoneIsBi: In the original. Though many folks took a while to admit it.
* EverythingsBetterWithChickens: There's chickens all over the place in the games. The later games also include a "chicken" action and a chicken costume. [[spoiler: In the Quest 'The Game' you'll come across firebreathing demon chickens. It makes sense in context, of course.]]
** [[spoiler: 'The Game' is pure awesome on so many levels.]]
* EvilLaugh: {{Lampshaded}} by Lesley in ''Fable III''.
-->'''Lesley:''' Time for an evil laugh? Yeah, I think. '''MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!'''
** And now for something [[HellIsThatNoise far less funny.]]
-->'''[[spoiler:The Crawler:]]''' ''Ahh huhahahahahahaha...''
* EvilVersusEvil: ''Fable III'': [[spoiler: Logan's tyranny was not because he was evil, but he was committing evil acts to prepare for a greater evil - the destruction of Albion by The Crawler.]]
* EvillyAffable: Reaver. Very much so.
* TheEvilPrince: The player character of Fable III, either [[KarmaMeter subverted or played straight]].
* ExpansionPack: ''The Lost Chapters'', which adds many more side quests, another fight with [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] and several new weapons.
* {{Expy}}: Ransom Locke is an Expy of SherlockHolmes, complete with deerstalker cap.
* EvilPaysBetter:
** Several missions in the first two games have good and evil variants, and generally the evil ones pay more, though sometimes the evil option is [[ForTheEvulz just to have an evil option]].
** In the first game, you can only buy property once the owner is dead, meaning you can massacre a town and then get rich buying and renting out the empty houses.
*** The second game subverts this in that while killing someone will drop the price of their property, getting the owner to like you will have the same if not a greater effect. The second and third play it straight, though, with the option to be bad and hike up rent prices or be good and lower them.
** This essentially becomes the plot of Fable 3 after [[spoiler: you become monarch and discover you need to raise an army to fight the Crawler]]. You can either screw your allies over and make loads of gold, or give everyone what they want and plunge the kingdom's treasury into negative numbers.
* EyeScream: The protagonist's sister in the original ''Fable'' had her eyes sliced out during the bandit raid in the prologue when she refused to tell them anything about her brother.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Played with, with Samarkand; It's obviously got Asian characteristics, since it is the source of katanas in the game world. However, it's also Garth's homeland - and he's black.
** Aurora in ''Fable III'' is a distinctly Arab city.
** Albion in the original ''Fable'' seems to very typically parallel Great Britain during the High Middle Ages. Five centuries later in ''Fable 2'' and ''3'', it is heavily based on Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a lot of SteamPunk tossed in.
* FacialMarkings: Toned down from the blue veins in the first two ''Fable'' games, using magic in ''Fable III'' will eventually cause you to get the equivalent of ornate tattoos around your eyes.
** It's actually just whichever tattoos you're wearing, they begin to glow once you reach a certain level of magic.
* FantasyGunControl: Averted as guns are one of the new invention that appeared in the time between the first game and second game. Albion has a lot of dedicated alchemists who are always busy making new discoveries. The use of Will seems to have dramatically declined since the first game as guns have made magic much less impressive as a weapon and were crucial in the destruction of the Guild. In Fable 2 few practice magic with the exception of the Hero, a few key [=NPCs=] and hobbes (who seem to have their own kind of nature driven magic).
* {{Fartillery}}: In Fable 3, your farts are a lot louder and longer than the past installments and they're shown to be capable of rendering [=NPCs=] unconscious.
* FertileFeet
* FinishHim: In ''Fable'', Jack of Blades orders you to do this to [[spoiler:Whisper]]. You can refuse, although you forfeit a cash prize. Also, Twinblade and [[spoiler: Saker]].
* FighterMageThief: Known in the game as Strength, Will and Skill respectively. Or you can just combine all three into you.
** Though the Thief also doubles as an Archer in the first game, and Gunner in the second and third.
* FireIceLightning: Averted in the first two games, which had Fire and Lightning spells, but no Ice. The third game finally adds an Ice spell.
* FiveManBand:
** TheHero: ...[[CaptainObvious The]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hero]]
** TheLancer: Theresa, Hammer/Reaver (Depending on whether the Hero is good or evil)
** TheBigGuy: Hammer
** TheSmartGuy: Garth, Theresa
** TheChick: Hammer or [[TheDarkChick Rea]][[TokenEvilTeammate ver]]
* FlippingTheBird: One of the many actions your character can do in ''Fable II''.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the ''Fable II'' intro, a sparrow takes a dump on the main character just before the action starts. While his/her sister Rose seems to think that it may be a sign of good luck, the character's life is going to take a big dump on him/her with the events that follow.
* FullCircleRevolution: It's possible for [[spoiler: you]] to be just as bad or ''even worse than'' Logan
* GallowsHumour: ''Til Death Do Us Part'', a quest in Fable II, requires you to court someone who's fiancé killed themselves. One of their disliked expressions is Play Dead.
* GameBreakingBug: If you jump at the right spot in the Guild Cave at the beginning of the game, you can jump through the wall and get stuck outside of the map. Since this is an important scene and you haven't found any other locations, you can not fast travel out of it. If you save there, you must start the game over. On the bright side, since it's at the start of the game, you don't lose too much.
* GayOption: All three games allow the main character to marry people of the same sex, though the first game doesn't provide the same benefits for a gay marriage as it does for a straight one.
** Also true of the second game. You can't have any children (or, in a lesbian marriage, protected sex) in a gay marriage. Unless you find a certain potion...see below.
** The simplified communication system in Fable 3 makes this almost mandatory when trying to haggle with a shopkeeper or convincing someone to like you. Friendly gestures? No, you either passionately dance together or you fart on their head.
** To be fair however, the protection is condoms. Not really that applicable for a lesbian couple.
*** Fable 3 has the ability to adopt a child, so it is possible for gay couples to finally have kids.
* [[spoiler:GenderBender]]: The Potion of Highly Surprising Transformation. [[hottip:*:and in the fable 3 downloadable content, if you are playing as a woman then [[spoiler: Commander Milton]] transforms into the Queen.]]
* GenreBlindness: Walter. [[spoiler:Hey look, a swirling purple seal on a pit in the middle of an ominous cave surrounded by skeletons. I know! Let's pick up a book full of arcane symbols and read from it!]]'
** Though, to his defense, [[spoiler: there was no way either of them could have expected what they ran into in that cave. Plus it was kinda the only way out, so even if he did, he more or less didn't have a choice]]
* GentleGiant:
** Sister Hannah aka Hammer in ''Fable II''.
** Boulder in Fable ''III''.
** Possibly a Hero from Fable 2 and 3. In 3 you are always larger than 95% of the populace. In fact, people of the same height as the player actually ''shrink'' when interacting with them including other heroes (players) visiting your world!
* GentlemanAdventurer: Charlie/Charles from Fable 2.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Mourningwood. Think about it's name...
** In the Mercenary Shooting range it is possible to win a rifle called The Money Shot.
** In-universe-The pub in Bowerstone is called "The Cock in the Crown," an obvious TakeThat at Logan.
* GiantMook: In Fable 3, the bands of highwaymen usually have a member who's about ten feet tall and built like a small mountain. And can shoot fire at you. And can perform a ShockwaveStomp fire attack.
* GondorCallsForAid: The first half of ''Fable III''.
* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: In Fable 2, having sex gets you some Good points so long as you don't pay for it. Even if you do pay, if you use a condom you still get a net gain of 5 good points.
* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades' M.O.]]
** [[spoiler: The Crawler does this, too.]]
* [[GuileHero Guile Antihero]]: Reaver.
** Although his talent for [[ImprobableAimingSkills shooting anyone in the world anywhere anytime instantaneously whenever he feels like it]] [[{{Immortality}} forever]] means that his cunning doesn't get much of a work out.
* GroinAttack: Fable 2 has an achievement for shooting a certain amount of enemies in the groin. Furthermore, in Fable 3, one of the flourish/counter attack animations if you're fighting Dark Minions with a hammer? You swing the hammer and slam it into their groin so hard that they break apart. Hell ''yes''.
** The hero of brightwall has a vendetta against testicles.
* GuideDangIt At the end of Fable 3 [[spoiler: a lot of people are shocked when the countdown goes from Day 121 to the final attack and they have not had the chance to transfer the funds into the treasury, resulting in a high death toll. Instead of going forward into a war-torn Bowerstone, simply pan the camera around and go other way, which takes you back to Day 121 to carry on as before.]]
* HammerSpace: Ranged weapons tend to disappear when sheathed (Fable 1 & pistols in 2). More of a glitch really, in Fable 2 sometimes you can see the pistol strapped to your chest, but VERY rarely.
** ''Fable III'' averts this. You either strap the rifle to your back or put your pistol in a side holster.
** You can also see your melee weapon being sheathed
* HasTwoMommies: A new option in Fable III allows gay couples to adopt children.
* HauntedHouse: Sunset House plays this straight. At first it's just a pile of rubble (during the day) or a ghost (during the night), and you can only enter it once you solve a puzzle to restore it to its "living" state. When you get inside, you're greeted by a skeleton hanging from the ceiling inside of a smoking, dilapidated ruin. A note from the previous owner explains what happened here, and that the house is cursed and possessed by some sort of a demon. When you go to sleep in the bed up the stairs, the demon, which calls itself "Chesty", challenges you to a twisted game of chess. Once defeated, the demon becomes fond of you and gives you ownership of the house, allowing you to access the rest of it. Solving a puzzle in the dining room allows you to jump through the mirror into a nice, clean, intact version of the house's interior through which you can exit. The demon is still there, though, and both sides of the house have an eerie, desolate atmosphere about them. That and the fact that the area immediately outside the house is infested with Hollow Men and Hobbes is probably why it can't be used as a family home, can't be rented out, and only sells for 18,000 gold despite being the largest and most posh home in the game.
* {{Herald}}: Theresa
* HeroicMime: In the second game the player character has no dialogue but interacts with others using gestures. The first game has a few words, although it more or less follows this trope as well. In the third game, the hero finally speaks, but still lets most of the other
* HeroicSociopath: Certainly an option.
** Reaver is this in the second game.
* HeroicWillpower: This is literally the explanation for how DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist for you in Fable 2 - after you run out of health, you are knocked out, then you get up again with health replenished and enemies knocked back. Ditto with Fable III, but it probably helps that you're the strongest living conduit for magic remaining in the world.
* HeyItsThatVoice: Fable 3's got a wealth of this. [[{{Blackadder}} Stephen Fry]], [[ShaunOfTheDead Simon Pegg]], [[MontyPython John Cleese]], [[HarryPotter Zoe Wanamaker]], among others.
** The original Fable has Hugo Myatt as the voice of the Guildmaster. Yes, you get Treguard
** Ron Glass (aka [[{{Firefly}} Shepherd Book]]) plays Garth, the Hero of Will in ''Fable II''.
* HistoryRepeats: In a ''very'' bad way: [[spoiler:Jack of Blades is an immortal entity that attaches itself to a new host each time the
** Also in Fable II, the Tattered Spire [[spoiler: was constructed by the Archon of the Old Kingdom,
* HoistByHisOwnPetard The Guildmaster for a hero who kills him, in an odd way. In his youth, he was one of the heroes who rebelled against the idea that heroes absolutely had to be good, arguing that heroes had to be free to make their own choices. (The ideology of choice is a big thing in Albion.) If your hero becomes an evil monster who turns on his mentor, it produces a certain irony. Combined with FridgeBrilliance, as the Guildmaster goes into a rant about the morality of your characters actions. One wonders if at any point the Guildmaster had a similar speech aimed at himself, being warned that destroying the laws governing a heroes actions would create a force that would destroy him. Ultimately, this immorality in many heroes leads to their destruction on the advent of readily available firearms when people don't need heroes any more and don't put up with their rampages.
* {{Homage}}: Possibly...let's see there's an ArtifactOfDoom ([[spoiler:Jack's mask]]), and it can only be destroyed for good by [[TheLordOfTheRings throwing it into a volcano]].
** The Understone district is an [[{{Fallout}} underground city sealed off from the surface by a gear-shaped door, ruled over by a man who keeps the citizens in line with warnings about mutants on the surface.]]
* HumanoidAbomination: [[spoiler: Jack of Blades, due to DemonicPossession.]]
* HotAmazon: Hammer, if you're into big women. Definitely the Fable 3 Princess/Queen, ultimate warrior, check; kind of dominant, check; tall and hot, well, starts off check at any rate.
* HundredPercentCompletion: There's an achievement for this.
* IAmAHumanitarian:
** Hobbes.
** [[spoiler: Lesley.]]
--->'''[[spoiler: Lesley:]]''' Come back later and I'll have a peasant on the barbie for you!
* IceCreamKoan: The advice the gnome collection gives in ''Fable III''.
* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Shows up at least once in each game. The first has a demon door that asks you to perform an evil act in front of him, in the second you'll only be let into the Temple of Shadows if you eat several crunchy chicks, and in the third Leslie will only trust you if you kill a man for him.
* {{Immortality}}: The descendants of Black and the lineage of the Archons are Type II immortals bolstered by exceptional strength, ability and cunning. [[spoiler: Reaver is a Type IX who trades the youths of innocent victims to malignant spirits in return for his own eternal vigor.]] Scythe is a Type IV, implied to have lost his soul and thus is incapable of true death.
* ImmortalityImmorality: Reaver.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Fable III has an auto targeting system that leads to this for the player character. For example: you can be facing away from a [[{Mook}} mook]] and hit said mook by pointing your gun over shoulder without even looking. Reaver is shown to have similar abilities.
* InfantImmortality: While children can die in terms of the plot, sometimes even on-screen, the player character in both Fable and Fable II can't kill children. This is likely due to it being developed in Great Britain, where it's illegal to sell a game that allows killing children.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Sword of Aeons, in the regular version of the first game is the strongest weapon in the game. In the UpdatedRerelease, it's only the strongest one handed sword, as its attack power is halved. Avo's Tear is equal to the Sword of Aeons, and almost identical in appearance, but it's gotten in a much nicer way.
* InkSuitActor:
** Garth resembles. his voice actor, [[BarneyMiller Ron]] [[{{Firefly}} Glass]]
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: Another of the game's major criticisms. You can, however, hop over them in Fable II and III.
* {{Interface Screw}}: It is possible to get quite inebriated in Fable's pubs, causing temporary visual distortion and sluggish control, vomiting makes it better though.
** You know you're in ''serious'' trouble when this occurs in ''Fable III.''' Even your Sanctuary, (essentially, the pause screen you can walk around inside of) is not immune to the forces of TheCorruption! Ewwww....
* ItIsBeyondSaving: Lucian, the villain of ''Fable 2'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.
* ItIsNotYourTime: "Death is not your destiny today, little Sparrow."
* KarmaHoudini: ''Reaver''. In Fable 2, in his debut he kills a number of artists who fail to capture his essence ''just so'' in whatever medium they're using(painting, sculpting, photography, etc). We later find out that he was responsible for the destruction of Oakvale hundreds of years ago and that he's sacrificed the youths of others to keep his own youth. The most he ever gets from his actions is a bit of [[DeadpanSnarker snark]] from your companions, and even then, only in passing. The trend continues in Fable 3, set fifty years later, where he's a captain of industry, and filthy stinking rich. His factories are manned by children and he makes his debut in this game by shooting a protester. Repeatedly. He then threatens to do the same to anyone who so much as whispers a complaint about the hellish working conditions. After Logan's downfall, he becomes one of your top brass, and the worst you can do to him is mildly inconvenience him by choosing someone else's argument over his. You, of course, ignore the fact he attempted to murder you in a cruel and gruesome way. For sport. Bastard runs off during the final battle too, could have used the Hero of Skill again.
** Worse than that, when you reject his proposals and build something, it's his company that builds it! There's KarmaHoudini and then there's ''Reaver''.
** [[spoiler: Logan]] if you choose to spare him in Fable 3.
* KarmaMeter: Fairly bizarrely ranked, too.
** Fable II also has Purity and Corruption, which represent how well you take care of your body and how people perceive you. These change depending on things such as whether you drink alcohol, give money to the poor or how much you charge people for renting your houses.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Averted. Katanas are decent weapons, but there are better ones. They are, however, better than their Longsword equivalents. The most powerful legendary melee weapon is a katana. If you want to blaze through combat, katanas can end fight in less than a minute.
* KickTheDog: The Hero can do a few of these. But there's also a literal example of this, too. And Reaver does it all the time.
** This trope was nearly quoted every time the developers discussed the dog in interviews. One of his main purposes is as an easy way to introduce a character - if someone shows up and [[KickTheDog kicks your dog]] you know they're a bastard, if they [[PetTheDog pet your dog]] you know they're friendly.
* [[KillerRabbit Killer Chicken]]: It's no ordinary chicken. It's a ''demonic firebreathing'' chicken!
** One tombstone in the mercenary camp in Fable III claims the deceased was killed by a hamster.
* KnightTemplar : Several, bt perhaps most extremely [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* LampshadeHanging: ''Fable III'': "Why do you guys want to put ''chickens'' in everything?!"
* LargeHam: Jolly ol' [[StephenFry Reaver]]. It's [[CompleteMonster basically his only redeeming quality]].
** Nicolas Hoult (Elliot) and the female hero's voice actress during intimate moments.
** A less comedic version, but whoever voices [[spoiler: The Crawler]] seems to certainly enjoy playing [[spoiler: an EldritchAbomination]].
-->[[spoiler: '''The Crawler''' Are you blind yet? ARE YOU BLIND YET?!]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: While you're exploring Shadelight in Aurora.
-->'''Walter:''' Um. Do you ever get the feeling someone's playing games with us?
-->'''Hero:''' All the time.
** In Fable 3, in a side quest where you act out a story narrated by wizards:
-->''Wizard 1:'' Our hero resolved to talk to the townsfolk, to learn more information about the missing princess.
-->''Wizard 2:'' You're kidding, right? If the hero starts talking to all the villagers, we'll be here forever!
-->''Wizard 1:'' Well, some people like to hear what the villagers have to say, and immerse themselves in the story world.
-->''Wizard 2:'' This is like the time you told me everybody reads item descriptions. '''No one reads item descriptions.'''
* LeeroyJenkins: Rose gets a moment of this. When you're walking through an alleyway, a dog yelping is heard. Cue Rose rushing right up to its tormentor to challenge him, hands on hips... only to get promptly knocked out by a head butt, leaving you, her much smaller but thankfully [[CuteBruiser surprisingly tough]] sibling to take the bully down. She gets up and, of course, promptly says "Thanks! I could've taken him though..." in true Leeroy style. It does illustrate the fact that while Rose is trying to be a responsible adult figure, she's still just a kid herself.
* LipstickLesbian: You can create your female character to be like this in Fable II and III.
* LostForever:
** In the first ''Fable'', [[spoiler:if you turn in Lady Grey rather than marry her, you can never get through the Demon Door near her home.]]
** Also, if you give all your Silver Keys to the demon door in the Necropolis before you've collected all of them and opened all the treasure chests, you will never be able to open the chests afterwards as there won't be enough silver keys left in the world for you to collect.
** If you don't have the Knothole Island DLC and [[spoiler:you don't choose the Love ending, then all items buried beneath the ground]] are LostForever, unless you shell out the dough for the DLC, which gives you the opportunity to rectify that problem.
* LoudOfWar: In the first game, the Hero is tortured by listening to the warden read homegrown poetry, which all the other characters treat as worse than the standard whips and chains in the torture chamber.
* MachiavelliWasWrong: [[spoiler:This was the reason Maze didn't kill the Hero.]]
* MaskPower: Jack of Blades.
* MatchMakerQuest
* MeaningfulName: Oh dear God Sparrow.
** "Theresa" sounds quite a bit like "Teiresias", a reoccurring figure in Greek storytelling as the archetypal BlindSeer.
* MedievalStasis: Brutally averted. As time passes (between games, anyway), Albion transforms from Stock European Fantasy to an Industrial nation in the cusp of revolution.
* [[spoiler: MentorOccupationalHazard: Poor, poor Walter. Also Captain Swift, whose death is particularly hard on Ben Finn.]]
* TheMinionMaster: With the Raise Dead spell.
* MissionControlIsOffItsMeds: Jack of Blades does this in the end of the expansion pack to the first game.
* TheMole: Lilith in Fable II. She runs up to you and she exclaims, distraught, that her family had been attacked. Her husband had been killed and her son had been kidnapped. She requests that the Hero rescue her son who had apparently been taken to the nearby Howling Halls by Balverines. Hammer agrees to this and, along the way to Howling Halls, reassures Lilith a few times that they will rescue her son. However, this all turns out to be a trap, and once inside the Howling Halls, she exclaims "Children, I bring you flesh!" in a demonic tone and disappears, prompting her "children" to attack. Once all of the Balverines are defeated, she reappears as a White Balverine and attacks the Hero, who eventually kills her. You can just beat the crap out of her upon meeting her, you'll get some evil points, but 2 lines of extra dialogue.
** If you look at her info, one of her likes is "Travel-Ready Beef Jerky". This could be a hint at her love for flesh as a Balverine.
* MoodWhiplash: ''Fable III'' is basically the same lighthearted game we all know with the occasional serious moments and emotional manipulation that we've come to expect from the series. [[spoiler: Then you meet The Crawler]] and suddenly the entire game is DarkerAndEdgier. Even the way you sit on the throne when you become the ruler indicates this isn't what you were expecting.
* MoreCriminalsThanTargets: There seems to be an endless supply of bandits and other troublemakers to deal with.
* MissionPackSequel: For the first half of the game, Fable 3 is very much this in relation to Fable 2, but once you [[spoiler: become King/Queen]] it becomes somewhat different.
* MostGamersAreMale. {{Lampshaded}} during the faux ''DungeonsAndDragons'' adventure in ''Fable III'''.
-->'''"Wizard"''': Yeah, and the princess is ''[[MsFanservice really hot]]''.
** GirlOnGirlIsHot: If you're playing as a female character during this quest, the three gamers in charge of the game take notice. One of them definitely approves.
** Part of the reasons many males make female characters.
* MultipleEndings: The first game has two, though the UpdatedRerelease continues the story past that, and makes which you chose less important by [[spoiler: weakening the SwordOfAeons if you choose to get it, and giving you the identical Avo's Tear if you choose not to.]]
** Fable II has three endings: [[spoiler:Sacrifice/Many, Love/Few, and Wealth/One]]. Each ending has its ups and downs, and you may spend a lot of time thinking about which one you want. However, the choice is somewhat cheapened by one of the rewards having no noticeable effect on the world as a whole, the second impacting gameplay significantly, and the third reward is something that is likely for an evil/corrupt player to already have, and not particularly difficult for a good character to obtain either.
* TheMusketeer: The second and third games' main characters.
* MyMasterRightOrWrong: Jasper will continue [[YesMan serve]] the Hero no matter how many villagers he kills, how many unjust decisions he makes as a tyrannical ruler...[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous and no matter how ridiculous they dress]].
** This isn't to say that he holds back any commentary. After all, his voice actor IS [[JohnCleese John Cleese]].
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: There's a story that tells of a Hobbe
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: "Jack of Blades," "Reaver," and many more--especially ''you'', if you choose certain titles.
** "Crap it's Nobhead! Ahhh!!!"
*** ''Sybil [[SleepingBeauty Malificent]]''?
* NecessarilyEvil: In ''Fable III'', if you don't have a crapton of gold, you must be this [[spoiler: if you want money to save your people.]]
** Also [[spoiler: Logan.]]
* {{Necromantic}}: The gravekeeper in ''Fable 2'' towards Lady Elvira Grey. Though she's been deceased for five centuries, he's been obsessed with her ever since he first saw a picture of her. He recruits the player to gather her dismembered body parts in order to resurrect her. Said resurrection process also includes a bit of magic to make her fall in love with the first person she sees (which he intends to be himself, of course). Because of this, it can [[GoneHorriblyWrong go horribly wrong]] if the player doesn't leave the room before the spell takes full effect, since they are always the first person she sees upon waking.
* NiceHat: Reaver's massive top-hat in the third game. The crown.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: To an extent in ''Fable II''. [[spoiler:Lucien intends to deal with a prophecy of four Heroes that will stop him by murdering your sister and NEARLY killing you.]]
* NightmarishFactory: Reaver's factory in Bowerstone Industrial. If you're a good king, you can turn it into a school (which Reaver takes credit for, natch).
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: In the first, these are slow enemies that hit hard and [[ZergRush like to come in numbers]].
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In 3, you meet an annoying artist named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade Thomas Kaidkin]]. But then you kill him, so...InvertedTrope?
* [[NoExportForYou No Port For You]]: There's no sign of a PC version of Fable 2.
* NonActionBigBad: [[spoiler:Lucien is killed rather unceremoniously in the end either by you or Reaver.]]
** [[spoiler: Not to mention Logan. Once you storm his throne room, he surrenders with surprising grace.]]
* NoNameGiven: Though {{Fanon}} uses the name Sparrow (a childhood name used by Rose and Theresa) for the Fable II protagonist. In Fable III even in subtitles you are simply named by your title, and you only have three: Prince/Princess, Hero and King/Queen. The previous Hero is referred to as the Hero King or Hero Queen or simply a variant of "the last Hero".
* NonLethalKO: The second and third games. ''You can't die''. If you run out of health and don't have any resurrection phials, you get a scar and lose any uncollected experience, or in the case of the third game, you just lose any experience to the next guild seal, be you five or ninety-five percent of the way there.
* NostalgicMusicbox: Near the end of ''Fable II'', the player character encounters the music box from the prologue in a moving scene.
* NotUsingTheZWord: Hollow Men. {{Lampshaded}} in ''Fable III''
-->'''Reaver:''' We can't call them zombies - the Hollow Men Anti-Defamation League is getting stronger all the time.
* ObviousBeta: Fable 2, on launch, lacked much of the promised multiplayer support, though a patch was available to add much of it. More serious are the instabilities and bugged quests that can make the game unbeatable, of which Lionhead has presently acknowledged two serious ones.
* OldDarkHouse: The Sunset House in ''Fable III'' plays this to a tee. To begin with, it's located in a very remote, isolated area (accessed by a lonely, easily unnoticed path from a region that is infested with angry spirits and zombies). On top of that, all you will find at first is a pile of debris from a destroyed house; but when you visit it at night, you see the intact house as a transparent, glowy white apparition sitting ominously at the top of the hill. By solving a puzzle in the gazebo off to the west side of the area, the house is magically restored from it's ghostly state and you can now enter it. But even when restored, the house still looks eerie as heck sitting atop that hill, and even after the related quest is completed, the area around it is always infested with Hollow Men and unique, creepy looking Hobbes. However, if all of that wasn't creepy enough, [[ItGotWorse what you find inside makes all of it even worse]].
* OldShame: An in-universe example, with Phillip Morrley's lost play, "The Ham Sandwich", hated by its creator, [[StylisticSuck and with good reason]]
* OnlySixFaces
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Balverines [[strike:could]] ''totally'' count. They're smack dab in "CallARabbitASmeerp" territory.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: They're called "[[NotUsingTheZWord Hollow Men]]"; they're corpses that have been possessed by restless, angry spirits called "Wisps" (which basically look like little blue balls of light), and all of the ones we see are just skeletons.
** Actually, we do see ''one'' that really is "zombie like" in Fable 3 - during "The Hollow Legion" quest, we are briefly told that a soldier named Lieutenant Simmons was killed the night before the player arrived. During the battle with the legion of Hollow Men, a rogue wisp flies into Simmons' grave and possesses his partially rotten corpse. {{Squick}}.
* PainfullySlowProjectile: Magic in Fable 2 basically requires to to stand there and charge it. Getting hit does not ruin your concentration, but it is entirely impractical. And in some instances, (like against [[DoomsdayDevice The Shard]]), it's mandatory. (To a lesser extent this applies to most ranged weapons that have slow attack speeds or immensely draconic reload time.) Time Control and Raise Dead help.
** Averted by one particular gun in Fable 2 though, which is basically a machine gun. It just required you to press the shoot button really fast.
* PaperThinDisguise: In ''Fable 3'', there's a particular quest where the player must dress up as a mercenary, and pose as their comrade "Jimmy" in order to sneak into their camp. It somewhat makes sense if the PC is male, but if female, somehow they remain oblivious to the fact that "Jimmy" suddenly has breasts. (all outfits in the game, regardless of which sex they're meant for, have both male and female models to fit the PC's body.)
* PetInterface: Your dog in Fable 2 and 3.
* PlayableEpilogue
* PoorCommunicationKills: Half of Fable 3's plot revolves around this. [[spoiler: After returning from Aurora with an entire army missing, Logan could have confided in his private council (Walter, The Hero, et al) the actual events that elapsed there. Despite what Theresa says about, "The Crawler is something you had to see for yourself", in a world where monsters roam the land and cosmic abominations from The Void are renown throughout history it would not have been hard to persuade his closest friends to trust him and help enable intelligent policy revisions to prepare for invasion. ]]
** [[spoiler: Let's not forget about the families of Logan's legion of dead soldiers who make no effort to inquire as to what happened exactly. Or the fact that ''nobody'' mentions how Logan underwent such a vicious personality shift after his little expedition.]]
* PowerUpFood: In Fable 2, food items not only heal the player, they also affect the hero's appearance and status.
* {{Precursors}}: The Old Kingdom, which left behind a variety of ruins and [[ArtifactOfDoom Artifacts Of Doom]], most notably the Sword of Aeons and the Spire.
** The continent of Aurora has ruins of a magnificent civilization, but the only population now is a small port town. It is possible that [[spoiler:The Crawler]] was responsible for its collapse but no real clues are given either way.
* PropRecycling: The magic music box from ''Fable II'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbeUcbeIAZI appears]] in ''Fable III'' prominently as the proof Sabine needs that the main character is a Hero.
** Also, every weapon used by an NPC other than Walter is from Fable II.
* QueerRomance: An option throughout the series.
* RapidAging: In Fable 1, your character would get a little older every time you leveled up. This wasn't to scale with anyone else, which lead to somewhat disconcerting scenes where you finally meet your long-lost sister who appears to be a young woman while you're a geezer.
** ''Only'' if you extensively used magic, which ages you prematurely.
*** In Fable I your character ages 0.7 years for each rank you buy in any ability. Even if you ignored Will entirely, you'd still be in your fifties by the end of the game.
*** Hell, if you rank yourself enough, you'll look older than your ''[[spoiler:mother]]'' when you finally see her!
** In Fable II, there is a location in Oakvale where you or a girl can be sacrificed. If you choose to sacrifice yourself, you age rapidly.
* ReligionOfEvil: Temple of Skorm in the first game, Temple of Shadows in the second. Dark Sanctum in the third.
* TheReveal: In Fable III [[spoiler: Logan hadn't gone mad with power, but mad with fear of the Crawler, and his tyrannical actions were to generate enough money for the treasury to raise an army to fight the Crawler. A Treasury you will either empty to keep your promises to the people who helped you gain the throne, or break them to ensure Albion and everyone in it can be saved.]]
* RewardingVandalism: Zigzagged across the series, with barrels in Fable 1 revealing humble loot upon smashing, but their descendants in Fable 2 and 3 exuding no such treasures.
* RichBitch: Many of the locals in Fairfax Gardens.
* RoadCone: The murals in the ruined Heroes' Guild in ''Fable II'' show that ''The Lost Chapters'' was {{canon}}, and that in the last scene of that the hero chose to [[spoiler:destroy Jack of Blades instead of become him]].
* {{Roma}}: The stereotype is subverted; though the hero(ine) of ''Fable II'' is raised in a Gypsy caravan, they are more or less normal people making a decent living. Theresa fits the stereotype, though she isn't one.
* RPGMechanicsVerse: In a side quest in ''Fable III'', some amateur wizards teleport you into a ''DungeonsAndDragons''-style adventure module, where RPG tropes are {{lampshaded}} and parodied.
* RuleOfFun: Despite all of their flaws, the games can be genuinely entertaining.
* RunningGag: Reaver attempting to get an image of himself every time the Hero visits him in Fable 2. [[spoiler: It always ends in Reaver finding something he doesn't like about the image, then shooting the artist]].
** [[spoiler: And then horribly, horribly not funny when you see the third artist is Barnum.]]
* SadisticChoice:
** Aside from the ending of ''Fable II'', when you decide [[spoiler: whether to age yourself or allow an innocent girl to be.]]
** ''Fable III'' starts out with one in which [[spoiler: you have to choose between your lifelong friend/lover and a group of peasants to be executed. There's no third option, either. If you wait too long to decide, ''all of them'' will be executed.]]. You'll also have to make some hard decisions after your rise to power, whether to [[spoiler: spend the money to keep your promises, or exploit the land and earn money to fund the defense against the shadow monsters.]]
*** The first sadistic choice is (only slightly) devalued when you realise there is no moral implication in making it. (Shown by the blank decision buttons, rather than them being surrounded by a soft light or fire.) [[spoiler: And devalued further because the peasants never appear again if left alive, although your love interest will...]][[spoiler: and you have to decide whether to tell him/her to abandon their new fiance when you end up saving them both later on in the game.]]
**** And neither of which are ANYTHING compared to Fable III's penultimate choice: choosing between being a noble and just king with a poor treasury [[spoiler: and a dead land and populace when The Crawler comes along]] or being just as bad a tyrant as Logan was in order to fill the state's coffers [[spoiler: to try and save all human life in Albion and beyond.]] [[spoiler: You CAN TakeAThirdOption and EarnYourHappyEnding, but it is quite literally backbreaking.]]
* SaintlyChurch:
** The Cult of Avo in Fable I
** The Temple of Light in Fable II
* SamusIsAGirl: Despite the fact that everyone calls Chesty a "he" (even Chesty), according to the Fable Wiki, Chesty is, in fact, a girl.
* ScaryBlackMan: Thunder in Fable I. He's the biggest, burliest bastard in the whole of Albion, and he hates your guts no matter what you do[[spoiler:, even if you take mercy on his sister in the arena]].
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Guards will force you to either pay a fine or do community service as punishment for your crimes. A player who has aquired a significant amount of the businesses in the game will have so much income that these fines become very trivial.
* SelfImposedChallenge: The first game allows the player to make boasts before quests, where the player gambles money on being able to complete it [[FightInTheNude nude]], unarmed, or with some other added challenge. Also, all three games change the character's appearance in part based on their combat style (using their stats in the first two, and their actions in the third), causing people who are going for a certain look to deliberately not use the character's full power, such as ignoring melee to avoid building muscle.
* SequelHook: The See the Future Downloadable content, which sets up Fable 3 starring the child of Fable 2's main character as a monarch.
* SeriesMascot: Chickens
* ServileSnarker: Jasper, your butler, who is voiced by JohnCleese.
** Most definitely confirmed in the most recent [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amu6w5pc99c dev journal video]].
-->'''John Cleese''': ''(recording dialogue)'' Ah, a new mask! You'll be completely anonymous wearing this on your face! Wear it anywhere else on your person and I expect you will achieve exactly the opposite effect.
** Hobson is even more snarky. If you decide to lower taxes, it depletes the treasury, to which Hobson sarcastically says, "How very ''noble'' of you", using "noble" as a veiled insult.
* SexyWalk: When the Princess in ''Fable III'' walks normally, she swivels her hips quite a bit.
* ShopKeeper: They are everywhere in the series, they can even be killed if you wish.
* ShopliftAndDie: In the original Fable, you can get away with various crimes if you're not seen, but if you're caught in the act you'll be attacked by the guards. Once your guile level is high enough, you can attempt to steal items from shops. Getting caught sets the guards on you. This almost counts as a [[UselessUsefulSpell Useless Useful Skill]]: by the time you're leveled high enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the effort.
** ''Fable 2'' revamped the stealing skill: now, anyone can steal from anything at any time. All you have to do is hold A, which causes an "eye" meter to appear. If the eye is closed, no one can see you and you're safe from reprisal. If the eye meter is open, you can stop stealing and no one seems to care that you had your hand in the cash register but didn't take anything. Of course, there's a rare (but significant) bug where, if you steal something when no one can see you, then hang around that area long enough for the house owner or shopkeeper to notice that the item is missing, then ''everyone'' knows it was you.
** Stealing in the original ''Fable'' was a great way to make a ton of cash early in the game. Head over to the weapon smiths, get him to follow you, get him drunk, leave him alone, go back and steal all the augments laying around, sell them back to him or to someone else and make tens of thousands of gold for a few minutes of work.
** Let's not forget that if you got caught stealing(or trespassing, etc.) then when the guards come to attack you, you could simply say "Sorry." if you were generally a nice guy. They simply let you go.
* ShoutOut:
** ''Fable 2'' endings are [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan "The Needs of the Many", "The Needs of the Few", and "The Needs of the One".]]
** Listen to the children as they play in Fable 2 and if you know your video games you'll be able to pick out shout outs to ''TheLegendOfZelda'', ''BioShock'', ''TheElderScrolls'' and many others. There's even a ''PlanescapeTorment'' joke in there.
** Speaking of BioShock shout-outs, Lucien at one point asks of the player, "Would you kindly step into the circle?" May also be a LampshadeHanging to the fact that there's no way to continue in the plot without doing this, even when you the player know what's going to happen because of it.
** Another shout out - an Achievement in Fable II is called The Black Knight, where you kill a hollow man in a specific and brutal way, where you shoot out their weapon, shoot off his head, and then finish him off. Without the right knowledge, this still makes sense since a black knight is usually brutal and not known for chivalry. But others may notice that the achievement description after you get it ends with: "Turns out it wasn't a [[MontyPython flesh wound]]."
** There's also the guards in the first Fable, who will shout out "Its just a flesh wound!" when they're running low on HP.
** In Fable 2, a minor NPC who gives several quests is named Giles. He has a son named [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Rupert.]] The first quest he gives you has you killing a bandit named Ripper. And his wife was named Jenny.
** The Tombstones in Bowerstone Cemetery make references to [[PiratesOfTheCaribbean Pirates Of The Caribbean]].
** A store in Bloodstone and a house in Old Town both are called the "Dark Mark", a likely reference to the [[HarryPotter Harry Potter]] series.
** Also [[SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Max and Sam]] Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get Sam and Max home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
** [[{{Halo}} Really? Hal's sword? Hal's rifle? Hal's armor? REALLY?]]
** The archaeologist who offers you some quests in Fable 2 is named Belle Rennock; shift some syllables around and this could easily be a reference to Rene Belloq, the evil archaeologist from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
** [[SonicTheHedgehog "You're too slow!"]]
** In ''Fable III'', one of the quests inside a pen-and-paper RPG, you are told to get [[OrderOfTheStick "Skymetal"]] to make a +5, er, +3 sword. (It's too early in the session for that high level a sword.)
*** The RPGers are named, [[DarthsAndDroids Ben and Jim.]]
** From Reaver's challenge:
--->'''Hatch:''' [[MontyPython That hobbe is dead. He is deceased. He has shuffled off this mortal coil!]]
** ''Fable III'': One Achievement is "[[{{Predator}} If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It]]"
*** And another one- "[[{{TheMatrix}} We need guns, lots of guns]]"
** One of the clothing options in ''Fable III'' is a rather... [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sharp-looking"]] [[{{Sharpe}} green military uniform]].
** Several shout outs to ''ShaunOfTheDead'' can be found when you meet Major Swift and Ben Finn. One obvious one is that they are defending themselves from waves of undead hollow men when you get there.
** A tombstone in the Mercenary camp contains the inscription.: [[MonkeyIsland Tried to hold his breath for ten minutes.]]
*** Another tombstone in Mourningwood reads "[[LegendOfZelda It's dangerous to go alone, take this.]]" Digging up the grave reveals a toy sword.
** Tons of Shout Outs to Bullfrog/Lionhead employees on cemetary graves, usually with an IncrediblyLamePun (Sam Van Tilburgh died of "diary-ea" - he also worked on ''BlackAndWhite''.)
** Speaking of Shout Outs and the Mourningwood Cemetary: "In loving memory of Arnold. [[{{Terminator}} He won't be back.]]
** In ''Fable III'', there's a man whose life's work is [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy to insult everyone in Albion. It's implied that he does it in alphabetical order too.]]
** HPLovecraft: [[TomeOfEldritchLore The Normanomicon]].
*** And a subtle one: Miska's Tonics.
** [[GuitarHero Lute Hero, one of the minigames in 3.]]
** In the Brightwall quest where you round up the chickens, after getting the chickens to follow you they cluck the ending credits tune from RobotChicken.
** [[{{Film/Arthur}} Hobson]], a ServileSnarker for a rich guy in ''Fable III''.
** If you wear the Mercenary Beard in ''Fable III'', Jasper will sometimes remark, "[[HalfLife That beard should be a real boon if you're seeking a job in the technology sector]]."
** In ''Fable III'', one of the cells in Ferret's Bowerstone Market hideout contains a hobb worshiping a [[CompanionCube box]] with a [[{{Portal}} pink heart]] on each side.
*** There's also [[TheCakeIsALie a white cake]] in a table near the cell.
** In the original ''Fable'', the [[{{Superman}} Kryndon]] tattoo.
--> The Kryndons are an old order of assassins who live normal lives by day.
* ShutUpHannibal: A by-the-book example at the end of Fable 2, with [[spoiler: either the PlayerCharacter or Reaver interrupting the BigBad's ramblings with a bullet]].
** And in ''Fable III'', where [[spoiler: Walter, being psychologically hounded by the Crawler, throws his torch at the thing, causing it to cry out in pain and disappear. The fact that it easily recovers and kidnaps Walter a few moments later should be ignored.]]
* SlouchOfVillainy: Logan [[http://images.wikia.com/fable/images/d/df/Loganthrone.jpg demonstrates]].
* SmugSnake: Reaver. He talks the talk, but the one time in game he gets a chance to pull a true MagnificentBastard move, the much more magnificent Lucien outdoes him handily.
** If you maxed out your Skill abilities before hand, you can even out-shoot Reaver [[spoiler:in the tunnels when Lucien's men are coming after you]], making his position as the Hero of Skill rather... dubious.
** Reaver becomes an ''insufferable'' Smug Snake in ''Fable III''. Part of the smugness comes from the fact [[spoiler: he never gets any sort of comeuppance. He can deflect bullets with just a thin cane, YOU try and kill him. [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney Other then that, he has a crapload of gold and runs a significant portion of Bowerstone]] ]]
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The Good/Evil choices in the ruling part of Fable 3 in regards to [[spoiler: preparing for the crawler]]. Do you turn a orphanage into a brothel for the extra money [[spoiler: therefore lessening the overall casualty rate]] or spend thousands turning it into a sanctuary to help the needy?
* [[BeardOfEvil Soul Patch Of Evil]]: Logan.
* SoundtrackDissonance: At the end of the second, [[spoiler:in the "Perfect World," you as a child pass through a burning, destroyed portion of the farm while a soothing music box plays in the background.]]
* SpoonyBard: Roland the Bard, who, after you complete a quest, sings of your glory at Bloodstone, and at The Sandgoose in Oakfield.
* StartOfDarkness:
** Lucien was a genuinely good and competent ruler before the deaths of his wife and sister. After that, his sanity very slowly begins to erode as his obsession with the Spire increases.
** Logan [[spoiler: lost an army to and was nearly killed by the Crawler, and then told it was coming for Albion.]]
** The beginning childhood sections of the first two games could also be this for the player, as the first hero's [[DoomedHometown village is massacred, his father among the victims.]] The BigBad Lucien of the second game shoots your sister shortly into the game's plot, and also shoots you, leaving you for dead.
* StealthPun: Hobbes are nasty, brutish, and short.
** In case you missed it, this is probably a reference to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".
*** In a GeniusBonus vein, about Thomas Hobbes, [[spoiler:Logan is acting in accordance with his ideas as set forth in "Leviathan".]]
** Mourningwood. Ha ha.
* SteamPunk: Very prevalent in the second and third games.
* StopHelpingMe: The Guild Master in the first Fable. "Try to get your combat multiplier ''even '''higher'''''!" "Your health is low. Do you have any potions? Or food?" "Check the guild for more quests."
** Parodied in one scene in ''The Lost Chapters'' where [[spoiler:Jack of Blades]] starts mocking these things. ''"Hero, there is an important quest card waiting for you at the bottom of a slime pit!"''
** Your Combat multiplier is atrocious!
** Apparently not just limited to players. In Fable 2, some of the loading screens mention a rumor that the Guild Master was eventually found dead with the words "Your health is low" carved into his forehead.
* StoutStrength: Hammer. She is a very big lady with a very big hammer that she uses very well.
* StraightGay: Another possible way to play your character.
* StylisticSuck: Phillipith Morreley's lost play "The Ham Sandwich"
* SuddenlyVoiced: Your hero in ''Fable III''.
** It doesnt really count when they are a new character.
* SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom
* SureWhyNot: So when Peter Molyneux heard that the humor of his games was comparable to that of MontyPython, guess how he reacted? He hired JohnCleese to be your butler in the third game!
** When demoing the co-op for Fable 2, a common question was "can you marry your henchman?" The developers responded that you couldn't because they simply hadn't thought of it. In Fable 3, there are achievements for marrying (You married another player! N.B. Marriage not binding in any real court of law.) and having a child (We all knew this day would come. Having children online is finally a reality.) with another player over Xbox Live.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Mercenaries for bandits.
* SweetPollyOliver: One early mission in III requires you to infiltrate a mercenary camp disguised as a male merc, regardless of your character's gender.
* SwordAndGun: Essentially mandatory in the third game, even more-so that it's predecessor.
* TakeThat: During the quest "The Game", which takes place inside a model D&D-esque setting, there is a switch that none of the gamers thought was their responsibility to rig, so it does nothing when pulled. One of the gamers suggests making [[TheElderScrollsFour a cloud of butterflies appear]]. His friend comments; [[DuelingGames "Worst. Game. Ever."]]
* TakeThatMe: There's a quest in Fable 3 where you enter a DungeonsAndDragons style game. You kill the villain in this game by hitting him once with a bane-sword. One of the Dungeon Masters says "What kind of rubbish game lets you kill the villain in one blow?" [[spoiler: In Fable 2, this is exactly how you kill the villain.]]
* TakingTheBullet: [[spoiler: Your dog near the end of II.]]
* TarotMotifs: Tarot cards become all-important in ''Fable II''.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: Millfields in ''Fable III'' is one of the most dangerous and aggravating areas of the game because it's utterly ''crawling'' with troops of bandits. This is very odd considering that it's the most elitist rich and upscale area of the game, where many of Albion's nobles and wealthiest citizens live, and logically it should be one of the most heavily guarded places in the kingdom. Mind you, there ''are'' guards there, but there are so ridiculously few of them patrolling the area that their presence is totally ineffective. The bandits attack other NPC's just the same as they do to the player, which often leads to random citizens being slaughtered left and right. If there happens to be a guard nearby, he will try to fight them off, but unless the player helps out, he will usually die fairly quickly due to being severely outnumbered (on top of that, most guards are rather weak in combat).
* TheObiWan: Sir Walter Beck in the third game. Sometimes he edges by TheDumbledore territory.
* TheQuietOne: The hero in Fable 3. His/her dialogue is fully voiced, and this trope is well averted during the prologue, but for some reason the player character goes all quiet after that and very, very rarely ever speaks for the rest of the game.
* TheVamp: Elvira ("Lady") Grey, the seductive and villainous mayor of Bowerstone in ''Fable''. Though she does fall genuninely in love with the Hero of Oakvale.
* ThoseTwoGuys: Sam and Max in ''Fable II'' and ''III''. How bad are they? Their mother's grave says: "Here lies Elizabeth Spade, at peace. ADDENDUM: Now her sons have joined her, the above inscription is no longer accurate."
-->'''Sam's Grave:''' This is all Max's fault.
-->'''Max's Grave:''' I had it all under control, then Sam cocked it up.
* TimeSkip: Of 500 years between I and II. ''III'' is set only fifty years after ''II''.
** To a lesser extent, there's one at the beginning of both games, both about 10 years or so, plus a ''second'' 10 year skip in Fable II, when you go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth.
* ToiletHumour: So much of it in Fable II.
* TooDumbToLive: Mercenaries will charge the ruler of Albion. Even if the king or queen couldn't cast a spell to make flaming swords appear to kill them with one stab, it's still less than intelligent to attack a person commanding armies and [[spoiler: is the only thing standing between them and utter genocide.]]
* TrailersAlwaysLie: The trailers of Fable III say ''nothing'' about [[spoiler: The Crawler]], just explaining the first half of the plot, deposing your brother.
* TrainingDummy: The tutorial dummies.
* TransparentCloset: Averted during the "Blind Date" quest in Fable II, the father doesn't know his son is gay.
* {{Transvestite}}: Some of the prostitutes in Fable II and III.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Lady Grey doesn't care about your appearance.
* UncleSamWantsYou: The "Albion Needs YOU" posters.
* UnexpectedGenreChange: Oh sure, there are scary moments in all three games. But the in the third game, when you visit Aurora, the game's tone shifts abruptly from, admittedly, somewhat dark fantasy straight into full-blown horror. And very well done at that.
* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Oh, where do we start? The first game is rife with these, with the most famous being the sandgoose and the Singing Sword, as well as the Dragon Cliff, the music box, and a host of other things.
* UselessUsefulStealth: Required to get past one section of the first game, pretty useless everywhere else.
* VideoGameCaringPotential: Especially in Fable II, where the game tries to make you love your dog and your family. Which gives the player [[spoiler: real motivation to kill the game's BigBad because he [[PlayerPunch ''murders'' your spouse AND children near the end of the game.]] And if that wasn't enough, he [[ShootTheDog shoots your dog]] because said dog [[TakingTheBullet takes the bullet for you.]]]]
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: ''Chicken Kickin'''!
** The game makes you care about your family, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a player from starting a vicious cycle of domestic violence.
** There is even less stopping you from sacrificing your wife in Fable 2. You gain 100 good points and some renown for marrying her, 50 good points for having a child and only 100 evil points for sacrificing her. A net gain of 50 good points and some renown for marrying and killing random women (in fable 1 though it can be a very efficent source of money and renown).
** Play some mind games with multiple wive/husbands,mostly to be a JerkAss. Just gather them together for some time alone and watch what goes down from. Always a laugh for an evil character.
** Those are all only scratching the ''surface'' of what's possible. You can walk into a town and massacre everyone with your powers, ruin the economy by jacking up everyone's rent, sell people into slavery, curse a young girl to be turned into an old crone...there are some sick possibilities in Fable.
* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: Averted. You getting stronger invariably means random {{Mooks}} will too, although you still get stronger at a far quicker rate than they do.
* VillainousBreakdown: Lucien has one at the end of ''Fable II''
* VillainousCrossdresser: In Fable III, a couple of portraits in Reaver's mansion indicate that he is one.
* VolcanicVeins
* WearingAFlagOnYourHead: Or on your underpants.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Lucien starts out as this, although he gets corrupted and more insane as he continues his quest.
** [[spoiler:Played straight by Logan in the third game.]] When he says "This is my Albion. Its city will bow to my law , or they will burn. Its mountains will bend to my will , or they will fall. This is my Albion. Its people will do as I say or they will die. Its future will be as I decree, or it will end. I have seen what must be done, and nothing will stand in my way. We will be greater and we will be stronger, no matter what sacrifices we must make. This is my Albion... and I will see it destroyed before I surrender it.", he's not going on a Caligula rant, but an actual statement of ''fact''.
* [[WhatMeasureIsAMook What Measure Is A Civilian]]: In ''Fable III'', apparently each life can be saved for 1gp.
* WhyWontYouDie: Humorously lampshaded by Major Swift and Ben Finn. (Fable 3)
-->'''Swift:''' ''Lieutenant Simmons! I specifically instructed you to remain buried!''
-->'''Finn:''' Oh, doesn't anyone follow orders anymore?!
* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: In Fable 2, you will come to rely on potions if you don't want to [[ScarsAreForever "die".]] Food is also cheap and effective way to heal yourself while in town, and can do wonders for your appearance and alignment.
* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: [[spoiler: Whisper admitting you've always been the better Hero, (assuming you spare her).]]
* WriterOnBoard: Killing your wife gets you 60 evil points. Divorcing her gets you ''600.''
** Of course, usually if your wife asks for a divorce, you've been a real physically abusive JerkAss up to that point.
*** Or if you don't regularly visit him/her.
**** The game glitches with this, where you have to visit your spouse every 20 MINUTES or else she divorces you (unless you own the entire town and put the rent down by 25%, making the ENTIRE TOWN absolutely go apeshit over you)
** And a vegetarian diet lets you max out Purity points...
*** Unless you eat Crunchy Chicks, which are ''live baby chickens''.
*** And ''delicious.''
*** It's also a bit of a SesameStreet food lesson, as healthier food tends to give you positive purity (and in the case of tofu, morality) to reflect your self-discipline. Meat, as in many real philosophies, is considered an indulgence.
*** The loading screens mention that you gain purity from eating vegetables, because unlike meat, no animals were harmed to make your dinner.
* [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes Why Did It Have To Be Caves]]: Poor Walter keeps running into them. It's funny at first. [[spoiler: [[FunnyAneurysmMoment Then you learn]] [[IronWoobie why he's afraid of them.]]]]
** If you're wondering exactly why, [[spoiler: during the war, he and his unit sought shelter in a cave to hide from the enemy's army. The enemy did not follow them, instead they blasted the entrance, leaving him and his two surviving men trapped in the absolute darkness of the cave for three days]].
* XanatosGambit / XanatosRoulette: It's heavily implied that Theresa was manipulating both Lucien and the Hero and was responsible for much of ''Fable II'''s plot.
** In ''Fable III'', Reaver's company profits whether or not you decide in his favor.
* XMeetsY: The developers have described Fable II as "A MontyPython sketch directed by TimBurton. It's a dark fairy tale with a light-hearted English twist."
* YaoiFangirl: The dead author of the in-game book "The Pangs of Sunset" in Fable 3, a book that [[HoYay ships]] Reaver and Garth from the second game. She's mentioned to have also written a SlashFic between Lucien (bad guy from Fable 2) and Jack of Blades (bad guy from the first Fable). She ships Theresa and Hammer, too.
** If you look well, the cover of said book is mysteriously stained with blood. [[TheNosebleed Maybe one of the readers got too "excited"...]]
* YouALLLookFamiliar: Lampshaded in a loading screen in the second game, with something along the lines of, "After many years of research, we have come to the conclusion that many of Albion's citizens sound ''exactly'' the same!"
* YouAreNumberSix: 'You are number 273. That number is not randomly assigned. It is because I have broken 272 guards already. And I will break you.'
* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: You must find expression manuals in the world if you want to learn to do seemingly basic things like laughing, raising your middle finger, or plenty of other basics.
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* YouKeepUsingThatWord: The "Revolution" in Fable 3 is more of a coup, a revolution is the overthrowing of a government, not a change in just the seats of office. Likely done deliberately because it just sounds better.
** If one is a good King, it could be seen as the equivalent of going from an Absolute Monarchy to a Constitutional Monarchy, which would qualify as a revolution.
*** Not really. There is nothing resembling a parliament, congress or constitution that could trammel your authority no matter what you do, just your court (which existed under Logan's rule as well, he just didn't listen to them) while your power remains absolute. Even when you're a good king the best way to describe the change is from a total despot to a philosopher king.
** If one is a good King, it could be seen as the equivalent of going from an Absolute Monarchy to a Constitutional Monarchy, which would qualify as a revolution.
*** Not really. There is nothing resembling a parliament, congress or constitution that could trammel your authority no matter what you do, just your court (which existed under Logan's rule as well, he just didn't listen to them) while your power remains absolute. Even when you're a good king the best way to describe the change is from a total despot to a philosopher king.
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* BadassBack: If you block an enemy's attack from behind in ''Fable I'', you parry without even turning around.
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** Actually, she is voiced by [[HarryPotter Madam Hooch]]
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** Actually, she is voiced by [[HarryPotter [[Film/HarryPotter Madam Hooch]]
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Just having big breasts is not enough to qualify as Buxom Is Better.
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* BuxomIsBetter: The Princess in ''Fable III'' has a ''very'' ample chest.
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*** There's also [[TheCakeIsALie a white cake]] in a table near the cell.
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* ItIsBeyondSaving: Lucian, the villain of ''Fable 2'', plans to use The Spire to wipe most of the world out and start fresh, creating a world where death and despair won't exist.
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* DesignatedHero: Played with in Fable 2. Since you're TheChosenOne, pretty much all of your "moral lapses" are forgiven, simply because it would be far worse to punish you and put you off your destiny. Same with 3, [[spoiler: if you are not the ruler of Albion when darkness incarnate hits, everyone loses.]]
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* BritishAccents Of many flavors, though mostly of the OopNorth variety.
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** Also [[SamAndMax Max and Sam]] Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get SamAndMax home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
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** Also [[SamAndMax [[SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Max and Sam]] Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get SamAndMax Sam and Max home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
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* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In ''Fable III'' the Bowerstone Sewers are surprisingly roomy, and apparently so clean your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there!
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* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In ''Fable III'' the Bowerstone Sewers are surprisingly roomy, and apparently so clean your dog can sniff out a wedding ring somebody dropped down there!there! Justified because Bowerstone is based off an old-style European city
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--> The Kryndons are an old order of assassins who live normal lives by day.
