History VideoGame / PapersPlease

** Exploited trope at one point. [[spoiler: On day 17, EZIC will try to sabotage border talks between Kolechia and Arstotzka by asking you to take the actual diplomat's passport and have their agent pass themselves off as the person.]] It's implied by the following day's news that their obnoxious and bizarre behavior ruined the negotiations.

** Sometimes foreigners (who, after day 3, need a document explaining purpose of trip and duration of stay) will give you answers that don't match up with the document. One possible lie is "In transit until I die." They will ''always'' correct themselves if you call them out on it.

* BodyguardingABadass: After the player gets access to the tranquilizer gun, the guards, particularly Sergiu, will start relying on the inspector to keep them safe, despite their superior armament and Sergiu's promise to protect him. Saving Sergiu in the first attack causes him to admit to being part of a RedshirtArmy afterwards. This trope is also played with if the inspector fails to destroy the motorcycle that a terrorist is [[CarFu trying to crash into the inspector's booth]] on day 28, because one of the guards will shoot and destroy the motorcycle before it can hit the booth.

* BombThrowingAnarchists: The Kolechians who throw bombs at the guards. [[spoiler:On day 31, if you haven't helped EZIC, one of their agents will also throw an explosive into your booth if you don't shoot them in time.]]

** On day 6 and day 12, scripted suicide bombers pass through the checkpoint and kill the guards. There is no way to avoid this: if you've memorized which entrants they are (both are the ninth on their respective days), the day will continue until they come along, so you can't just hold the line at the eighth entrants. Since they have their paperwork in order, you can't deny them without a citation, and all following entrants also carry explosives, so denying them is pointless. No matter what you do, those bombers will be allowed entry.

** On day 28, [[spoiler:a terrorist on a motorcycle attempts to crash into the inspector's booth.]]
** On day 31, [[spoiler:EZIC agents arrive to bomb the wall and run over one of the guards in their car.]]

* CriticalStaffingShortage: On day 16, there is a newspaper article about the ministries' shortage of qualified guards. You're given access to a tranquilizer gun because many of the guards at the checkpoint have been moved away from the checkpoint.

** On day 29, Jorji will come and will suggest moving to Obristan since "things getting little crazy in Arstotzka". He mentions that the forger will need real Obristan passports to make them look authentic. At this point, you would approve his passport and he would give it to you, but you can confiscate it before giving it back to him:

** The guy who hands over ''two'' passports (in different names and places of issue) on day 14. You can even detain him immediately, no need for a check.

--->'''You:''' ''[when the current person fails to display their passport]'' Hand over passport.\\

* GodzillaThreshold: The man in red who appears on day 23 reportedly has so much intel on EZIC that the organization outright instructs you to risk execution by outright killing him because they consider him to be just that much of a threat to their cause. [[spoiler:The trope is ultimately subverted. Not only is the man in red not dangerous enough to warrant such extreme measures (which another agent clues you in on a few days prior), but doing what EZIC wants actually backfires on them when an inspector who's not nearly as cooperative replaces you and forces them to halt their plans entirely.]]

** [[spoiler:EZIC and the Arstotzkan government are not very different. The Arstotzkan government is a corrupt totalitarian bureaucracy, but it is willing to cede parts of East Grestin to Kolechia in order to secure peace with Kolechia according to the day 27 EZIC note and is the player character's best chance of keeping a stable job and providing a better life for his family. EZIC wants to topple the current corrupt regime and is willing to grant the inspector's family a much better life than what Arstotzka offers, but it does not want Arstotzka to cede any part of East Grestin to Kolechia according to the day 27 EZIC note. If you help them topple the government, it's not clear from the ending whether that's for the better or if New Arstotzka will just [[FullCircleRevolution turn out the same way as Arstotzka]].]]

* IdenticalStranger: On day 17, EZIC will task you to confiscate a Kolechian diplomat's passport and then give it to one of their agents. Said agent will look very similar to the diplomat, which he uses to his advantage by posing as the diplomat to sabotage the talks over the border dispute.

* KarmicJackpot: On day 26, [[spoiler:if you let Elisa in and manage to keep Sergiu alive, they'll repay your kindness by dropping off 100 credits at your home the next day.]]

* MedalOfDishonor: If you've received any citations, the plaques you receive read like this. For 1-20 citations, the plaque reads "Recognition for Sufficience," and for more than 20, the plaque reads "Recognition for Presence." An entrant on day 12 mentions that all of the plaques look cheap and will tell you "[[SarcasmMode Way to go]]" if they see that you're recognized for your presence.

* NervesOfSteel: The inspector retains his usual [[TheStoic stoicism]] during [[spoiler:the bomb scare on day 15]], and Calensk is outright flippant.

* ThePerfectCrime: You can use the poison on day 20 to kill any entrant after the EZIC messenger who gives it to you, even innocent civilians. Whoever you use it on, provided it's not Khaled Istom, the kill will not get traced back to you, not even by [[spoiler:M. Vonel during your December 24 audit]]. As far as everyone else is concerned, it's a mysterious "security incident."

** On the sixth day, a woman gives you a note saying she fears Dari Ludum will force her and her sister to work at his brothel. If you show the note to Ludum when he appears, he becomes enraged and says he will "break her in two." If you deny/allow him entry without exposing him, he evidently finds out about it anyway because the next day's news says some dancers at a club were found dead.

* {{Retraux}}: The game's graphical style resembles an EGA game from the early '90s, though the animation is a little too smooth for it.

* ToBeLawfulOrGood: The Antegrian couple arrive at one point. When it turns out the wife's documentation had her name spelled differently ("Robynsky" versus "Robinsky"), the Inspector is prepared to deny her entry... but Elisa's locket gives him a painful reminder of what happened earlier, so he breaks protocol and lets the immigrant through along with a reminder to bring correct documentation next time.

After a shortened version of the game served as a beta for several months, the full game was released worldwide on 8 August 2013. A port for the UsefulNotes/{{PlayStation Vita}} was formally announced in August 2014 and released on December 12, 2017, while an iPad port was released on December 14, 2014. However, a misunderstanding with Apple caused a censored version to be uploaded to the app store; the game was reuploaded uncensored a day later.

* InterfaceScrew:
** Once entrants start requiring multiple forms of identification, it becomes painfully clear that your tiny desk doesn't have enough room to accommodate all the documents in any sensible manner. Along with possible citations, the daily bulletin, the guidebook and audio transcript you'll need to cross-reference, and the other odds and ends various entrants may leave at your desk, you'll inevitably find yourself shuffling things about in an awkward clutter.

* AnAesop:
** Power breeds corruption, but so does desperation. Put a man in ''both'', and you have the story of ''Papers, Please''. This aesop is elaborated on in [[https://youtu.be/6RHH7M4siPM?t=305 this video]].
** [[ToBeLawfulOrGood Sometimes the morally right choice is legally wrong, and vice versa.]] You encounter many situations where you have to decide whether [[JustFollowingOrders your record]] (and by extension, your income) or [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight your conscience]] (as you encounter entrants who are desperate to be admitted but don't have the correct paperwork) come first.

---> '''Jorji:''' Hey what the hell? You take my passport! You can see it was expensive!\\

-->'''You:''' ''[when the current person fails to display their passport]'' Hand over passport.
-->'''Immigrant:''' What is passport?

* StaticRoleExchangeableCharacter: If he survived and was denied previously, the Man in Red will be Khaled Instrom, but if Khaled was poisoned or let through the border, the Man in Red will be an unknown person.

* TheEighties: The game is set in late 1982 (or, if you complete Endless Mode, 1983) and incorporates elements from UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars of the 1990s (namely the ultranationalism and violent sectarianism among individual Eastern European nations). While the setting is fictional, the nations have an oppressive Soviet Bloc government feel to them.

* StupidityIsTheOnlyOption: On Day 29, [[spoiler:Jorji advertises a counterfeit passport service to you, on the off-chance you want to escape to Obristan. Regardless of whether you're interested or not, you're forced to accept one of his counterfeit passports, triggering a citation for unauthorized passport seizure. This is the only completely unavoidable citation in the game.]]

* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Players can decide to violate protocol and let people in anyway despite papers that don't add up or exist. Doesn't stop the player from getting infractions from the state, but oddly enough their good deeds themselves aren't overturned. [[spoiler:These actions usually get you Tokens, which are connected to Achievements.]]

** Certain discrepancies, such as the weight of the applicant not matching up with the weight given on their papers or their being from an area flagged for special security measures, require the player to strip search said applicant. The reason given is that "You have been selected for a random search." This does not apply when the strip search is triggered due to an apparent sex discrepancy, in which the inspector will instead ask if the entrant is a man or a woman.