History VideoGame / Rebuild

* CanadaEh: The default city names are all Canadian, though you can choose your own at the start and throughout the game.
** In Rebuild 3, the story begins in Washington State, but the protagonists drift as far east as Spokane before heading north into Canada and then back west to Vancouver.

* CommanderContrarian: All factions in each and every city display this. The way the gameplay mechanics are set up, you can't perform "meet with" missions with factions until you build a city hall and establish yourself as a government. Then when you ''do'' just that, the factions become annoyed with you and will claim you're trying to muscle in on their turf in an event not long after. Your options are either "Apologize", "Ignore them", or "[[KickTheSonOfABitch Tell them to go to hell]]".

* DropTheHammer: A sledgehammer gives attack and building skills.

Rebuild is a TurnBasedStrategy Flash game by Northway Games in which a group of survivors must take back and [[TitleDrop rebuild]] various cities after a ZombieApocalypse.

Can be played [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/562116 here]] ([[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/581493 here]] for the remake, which has some improved features and is available on iOS and Android).

A Kickstarter was run and funded in order to develop a third game titled ''Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville''. This game spent some time in Steam Early Access before having its 1.0 release in May 29th, 2015.

* AlmightyJanitor: [[spoiler:Jesse, the [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot zombie cowboy.]]]] [[spoiler:He'll reveal that he used to sell vacuum cleaners before the apocalypse if you successfully cure him.]]

* AntiVillain: The Pig Farmers are this. [[spoiler:[[ImAHumanitarian Cannibals]] who kidnap people and eat them when they're not selling the meat. However, when there's any plot centered around them, they explain that they only capture and eat "bad people."]] [[spoiler:Choose not to believe them and kill them all to escape with your survivor? A week later, the other three people they had captive [[JerkassHasAPoint will all kill each other over something petty]].]] On the other hand, the backstories of several survivors contradict this, [[spoiler: Since many are implied to have narrowly escaped becoming dinner, despite being innocent.]] Also, [[spoiler: when they try to recruit one of you people ("anyone will do"), the reluctant recruit is also implied to become "pork".]]

* DevelopersForesight: [[SeeminglyHopelessBossFight Trail]] is meant to show players how to achieve the "biplane ending" for cities by ramping the danger levels up to eleven. You can still finish the city the normal way ([[NintendoHard albeit it's very difficult]]) and move on, however, and your PC will even say something different depending on how you do things.

* DirtyCoward / LovableCoward: There is, in fact, a "Coward"[[note]]-2 Leadership, but less likely to die on missions.[[/note]] perk in the game. And you can obtain it for your survivors through backstories.
** DirtyCoward: The Government is all too willing to keep fighting you in Vancouver [[spoiler:until you have the cure for their Omega-virus, which would completely foil their plans]], prompting Senator Davis to attempt a peace negotiation with you. [[HeelFaceDoorSlam You can keep fighting them anyway]].

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Exaggerated, to the point of GuideDangIt. See ViolationOfCommonSense in the first folder above.

* EliteZombie: This game introduces a faction called The Rotten, which is composed entirely of Zombie Persons. They can blend in with the other zombies, and the living are, naturally, afraid of them, so they hide in the subways to avoid contact with them.

* EnemyCivilWar: You have the option to start one by [[spoiler:revealing that Senator Davis was lying to her army about the Government actually being intact to maintain order. You then have the option to choose who you help when the conflict ensues.]] Can double as a HeelFaceTurn on the player's part [[spoiler:if they side with Senator Davis in the fighting]]. [[ShoutOut "What is war good for?" indeed]], PlayerCharacter.

* {{Expy}}: Tiff, the leader of the Pharmacists, shares a remarkable similarity to Chloe Price from ''VideoGame/LifeIsStrange'', given her punk aesthetic, complete with the black beanie and blue hair. This isn't even taking into account her anarchic world view and drug usage.

* TheHeart: Anyone with the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Friendly]] perk ends up becoming one of these.

* HeroicSacrifice: Survivors with the "Brave" perk[[note]]+1 Combat skill, but may suffer injuries or death for another survivor.[[/note]] will often perform these on missions. Although, since mechanically, it essentially prioritizes the Brave survivors over other survivors for injuries and sicknesses, [[ImpliedTrope it's never outright mentioned]].

* LeaveBehindAPistol: You can encounter a pair of survivors during a recruitment run, one of them being sick. A leader with high enough level can convince them to leave the sick one behind. When that happens, the explicitly mention this trope.

* TheLoad: Surprisingly averted in this game with normal survivors. There are a huge amount of negative perks[[note]]And even some [[UsefulUselessNonCombatAbilities less-useful-than-advertised]] ones.[[/note]] that survivors can have upon arrival, but they'll still try their damnedest to make themselves useful, even if that one sickly person is more likely to get sick and be a burden, they'll do whatever they can to help the fort when you have them assigned to work.

* LoopholeAbuse: In order to free [[spoiler:Chuklin' Chuck]] from The Government's custody in Spokane, you have to acquire [[spoiler:his]] identification and documents from [[spoiler:his]] house. This confirms [[spoiler:him]] as a U.S. citizen and therefore protected by U.N. law from being [[spoiler:detained for experimentation]].

* LuckBasedMission: Several:

* MagikarpPower: Children fall right into this. They arrive at/are born in your fort, and when they turn 14 in-game, they turn into adult survivors that can be sent out to do missions. More often than not, by the time they grow up they'll already be maxed out in their stats, and are even their own sub-class of survivor with backstories only they can access. Of course, depending on how young they are when they first come to your fort (''Especially'' if they were ''born'' between two of your survivors), they will take a very long time to reach the age of 14. Heck, the pregnancies alone take the actual 9 months a baby is born after!

* RebelliousSpirit: Survivors with the "Rebellious"[[note]]A negative perk that can cause the survivor to refuse to work[[/note]] perk are this.
** TheSlacker: Although, given the humorous nature of most occurrances in-game, and the way the events for this perk play out, this is more of the case.

** ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: This is one of the responses and what it amounts to with the situation above. If you're feeling particularly greedy and don't much care for that survivor anyway...
** ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: You can just confiscate the equipment item[[spoiler:, which causes said briber to [[WhatTheHellHero leave the fort]]]]. Although depending on what your rules on Private Property are, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation no rules are really being broken in this case]].

* ShipTease: Your PC seems to have this with [[HeKnowsAboutTimedHits Diane Moon]], if the PC's depiction of the DreamSequence is anything to go off of.

* UselessUsefulNonCombatAbilities: One word: '''Redecorator'''. What it's ''meant'' to do is give you a little extra help with your materials management by having the survivor with this perk take the initiative and scrap a building without you telling them to. The range of buildings that can be scrapped is basically anything tagged in the game's files as a "useless" building... which happens to also include buildings like the Warehouse[[note]]Which expands your food storage capacity by 50 rations, which was ''extremely'' helpful even before the food-related technologies were buffed to add this effect.[[/note]], and the 8-12 Mart[[note]]Which is necessary to get the Cricket Bat out of a specific once-per-city event.[[/note]]. If you're watching a playthrough, don't expect to see veteran players choose this perk very often, if at all.

* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: With a high enough leadership skill, the character you send to meet with a faction can resort to this to reach a happy conclusion when a faction demands that you swear loyalty to them. The other faction assumes you're being extra flowery and likes it, while your own people understand that it's all a joke and don't get upset.

* BareYourMidriff:
** The spike-lined leather clothing for both "bulky" and "obese" female survivors features this.
** Dara from the 1337cREw sports a shirt like this.

* BaitAndSwitch: The game implies that Lily's dad might not even be alive anymore when you encounter her, leading to uncertainty if you decide to give her medicine. [[spoiler:Turns out he is, and the medicine you give Lily (should you give it to her) saved his life!]]

* BareYourMidriff: The spike-lined leather clothing for both "bulky" and "obese" female survivors feature this.

* BewareTheSillyOnes: Nothing's stopping your soldiers from having the Eccentric perk.
** Hell, most of the ''factions'' can fall under this; give a faction enough time or aid and they'll max out their faction Strength, making them a force to be reckoned with. Particularly major examples include the Luddies, the [=L33tCrew=], the Pharmacists and the Rotten.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: The Last Judgement/Riffs conflict in Moses Lake. The Last Judgement Gang starts out with 25 respect, which is ''very'' low, meaning that they'll occasionally send raiding parties after your fort, and it's stated numerous times that they'd been going toe-to-toe with the Riffs since they arrived. [[spoiler:As it turns out, the Riffs were deliberately trying to keep absolute power over the city and gain a monopoly on all the resources in the city limits. The conflict only really started after the former Riffs' leader tried to attack Last Judgement. Not out of necessity, or malice, but [[DisproportionateRetribution because he took offense to]] [[HonorBeforeReason the Last Judgement Gang refusing to]] [[HumansAreBastards submit to]] [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority the Riffs' protection]]]].

** Andy's whip, described as 'more of a toy than anything' may be a reference to ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory''.

* MultipleEndings: Five of them in Rebuild 2: [[spoiler: Curing zombieism, creating a new nation by retaking the city hall and drafting a new constitution, fixing a helicopter in order to flee the city, defeating the Last Judgement gang, and everyone converting to the Church of the Chosen Ones. The mobile version of Rebuild 2 added a sixth where you hoard food and run away from everyone else.]]

** The Church of the Chosen Ones are, at first, advocates for friendship with zombies. Later, they become outright zombie-worshippers.

** If a survivor is equipped with a pet and is facing a rather tough horde of zeds the pet in question may try to sacrifice itself to save it's owner.

* BadassBookworm: It's possible for scientists to train in combat and construction from the second game onward. Turned UpToEleven with the [[MacGyvering MacGyver]] perk in ''Gangs of Deadsville''.

** Turned UpToEleven in the third game. The ''only'' way for you to [[EarnYourHappyEnding get the good ending]] is by making no less than ''four'' choices that you wouldn't normally do, in the span of a single city:

* DevelopersForesight: [[SeeminglyHopelessBossFight Trail]] is meant to show players how to achieve the "biplane ending" for cities by ramping the danger levels UpToEleven. You can still finish the city the normal way ([[NintendoHard albeit it's very difficult]]) and move on, however, and your PC will even say something different depending on how you do things.

* MagikarpPower: Children fall right into this. They arrive at/are born in your fort, and when they turn 14 in-game, they turn into adult survivors that can be sent out to do missions. More often than not, by the time they grow up they'll already be maxed out in their stats, and are even their own sub-class of survivor with backstories only they can access. Of course, depending on how young they are when they first come to your fort (''[[UpToEleven Especially]]'' if they were ''born'' between two of your survivors), they will take a very long time to reach the age of 14. Heck, the pregnancies alone take the actual 9 months a baby is born after!

* PrivateMilitaryContractor: If you're in good favor with Gustav, you may occasionally receive an offer for some of his mercenaries to clear out any unowned tile of zombies, in exchange for some rations. [[OneHitPolykill This can include massed zombies and even]] ''[[UpToEleven hordes.]]''

* SeeminglyHopelessBossFight: Trail. The normal goal of each city is to establish a constitution for the town and ally with/eliminate the factions in the area. With Trail, the zombies begin flooding en masse into town, ramping up the difficulty and danger levels UpToEleven. This is meant to encourage players to escape Trail via the biplane mission. Of course, you can still do it the normal way, and the player will even remark on how [[HopeSpot they feel as if what they did in Trail won't be a lasting peace]].

* IntrepidMerchant: Food caravans pop in and offer to trade from time to time. If you're out of food, they'll give you some.

* NoodleImplements: Just what did the Love Caravan do with all those turnips? Whatever it was, [[BrainBleach the poor witness was driven to wash his/her eyes out with soap]].

* ZombieAdvocate: The Church of the Chosen Ones are, at first, advocates for friendship with zombies. Later, they become outright zombie-worshippers.

* AntiHero: Dr. Bryukhonenko in R2 [[spoiler:aims to cure zombieism]], but a visit to his lab has the observers remark on the unethical experiments he conducts. Refuse to help him and he will [[spoiler:bomb the city before heading elsewhere]].

* CreatorCameo: In the second game, you can help a defector escape from the Last Judgement. Her name is always Northway.
** In fact, due to the Main/NewGamePlus, you can have an entire starting group of nobody but her!

* GreaterNeedThanMine: Sometimes a trade caravan shows up, but on seeing your supplies insists on giving you free food. Your food stockpile has to be very low or outright non-existent for this to happen. Otherwise he'll only want to trade.

* ReinventingTheWheel: You lose all your scientific upgrades after starting a NewGamePlus. Justified, as the infrastructure that let you use them is back in the first city.

*** The Helicopter ending [[spoiler:has the fort construct a helicopter to use as an escape in the event of the city becoming overrun.]]

* NewGamePlus: The good endings have you choose five people to go to a new city to rebuild. You can choose the difficulty and the items your envoys are equipped with. Choosing to continue the game after other endings also gives you a nice boost: the zombie cure keeps new zombies from appearing, a constitution makes everyone very happy, and defeating Last Judgement keeps them permanently out of your hair.

* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Laboratory upgrades range from zombie biology to electricity and electronics to agronomy. The items that increase science skill are equally disparate, from medkits to chemistry kits to science textbooks.

* VendorTrash: The biggest perk of the cure (ironically), next to automatically immunizing all your survivors to zombie bites upon researching it. Just researching it gives you 99 syringes for free, and you don't even have to spend them to give your survivors the Immune perk. They just get it. Each syringe is worth 20 barter points, and more can be made by converting 1 medicine in your workshops. Medicine is in turn, made of thin air, and a mid-tier tech, which means by the time you get the cure, you ''should'' have already researched medicine. With a NewGamePlus engineer, it's entirely possible to be selling the cure to other folks by mid-game.
** Lower-end equipment like sticks and megaphones are best used as this when you have access to better equipment. A lot of the lower-end equipment don't even come with a perk to make their minimal stats worth taking.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Tiff actually has electric blue hair. Cassandra and Dara both have purple hair. Andy, the Government's IT guy, has pink hair and that trait is mentioned several times.
** Also, a good portion of female survivor faces have unnatural hair colors..

* RealityEnsues: Leaving survivors to work any non-guard-duty job in a building that is at extreme risk of being overrun ''will'' result in people getting injured/dying if the zombies attack that building.
** Taking the initiative and claiming a territory next to a faction that you're not aligned with will ''not'' be tolerated by them, and they ''will'' complain about it.
** Unlike the first two installments, zombies no longer magically appear and congregate in tiles that are completely blocked off from the map's borders by forts, be they yours or someone else's. Any zombies you kill in that tile will stay dead.
** Thought you could feel safe while that zombie horde is either walled or exterminated by the faction that blocks them from you? ''Wrong''. Chances are they'll just mow right through the opposing faction towards your fort.
*** There's just as much of a chance they'll ''go around'' the faction [[SuperPersistentPredator to get to you]]!

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Mr. Clark suffered from this when he worked at [=McNoodles=]. He was manager of the month for 2 years in a row before the outbreak, and by the time you find his pictures with these, they're all defaced with penises and mustaches. That said, [[MeanBoss if how he acts now is any indicator]]...

* InfantImmortality: Averted. Children can die just as easily as adults can in this game. And ''boy'', does it take a toll on everyone's morale.

* AnyoneCanDie: The game is randomized, so expect some death of characters you may or may not like.

* {{Cult}} / ReligionOfEvil:
** The Church of the Chosen Ones, for whom zombies are destined to replace humanity.
** The Last Judgement motorcycle gang are rapists and pillagers dressed as Catholic priests going on about retribution.

* ReinventingtheWheel: You lose all your scientific upgrades after starting a NewGamePlus. Justified, as the infrastructure that let you use them is back in the first city.

* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas
* ZombieApocalypse

* ArtShift: Rebuild 1 had designs that would make WesternAnimation/SouthPark characters seem extremely detailed. This was changed in ''Rebuild 2'', which was ''way'' DarkerAndEdgier (and Gorier!) in appearance, as courtesy of the artist Evil Kris.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Mr. Clark suffered from this when he worked at McNoodles. He was manager of the month for 2 years in a row before the outbreak, and by the time you find his pictures with these, they're all defaced with penises and mustaches. That said, [[MeanBoss if how he acts now is any indicator]]...

* AscendedMeme: InUniverse for the Luddies; Owen, their leader, is touted as King Owen Ludd I, with accompanying fanfare. If you form an alliance with the Luddies, he'll admit that it started as a joke.

* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: [[spoiler:Played straight in the ZombieApocalypse ending for Campaign Mode, in regards to your PC and all others who have been given the fake cure.]]

** Hell, most of the ''factions'' can fall under this; give a faction enough time or aid and they'll max out their faction Strength, making them a force to be reckoned with. Particularly major examples include the Luddies, the L33tCrew, the Pharmacists and the Rotten.

* BlackComedy: This game's primary focus. Well, that and [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[AsYouKnow But the latter is prevalent in all installments. It has a section on the]] ''{{Trivia/Rebuild}} Trivia'' page, [[AsYouKnow after all. But we all knew that already.]]

* ConsummateProfessional: The male variant of Gustav's Love Caravan. You can attempt to talk to the men like you can with the women, but whereas the female love caravan opens up a questline involving a PlatonicProstitute, the men will more or less refuse to discuss their situation.

* DirtyCommunists: This is what many of your survivors will make you out to be if you choose to have the "Private Property"[[note]]Resource production vs. Happiness[[/note]] policy set to "People share all Resources." They'll be unhappy that the government is interfering with their own possessions.

* NoEmpathy: Your player background could be that of a Gang Member, which means that your fort won't lose happiness as a result of death or injury.

* OrphansOrdeal: Rufus, the leader of St. Michael's Gang, is an orphan whose father died during the outbreak. If you finish the Wenatchee questline, he can be adopted by the Luddie leader.

* RebelliousSpirit: Survivors with the "Rebellious"[[note]]A negative perk that can cause the survivor to refuse to work[[/note]] perk are this.
** TheSlacker: Although, given the humorous nature of most occurrances in-game, and the way the events for this perk play out, this is more of the case.
** The Pharmacists, being anarchists, 'will' resent you if you go for more authoritarian policies in your fort. They will protest against any policies you have that encourage regulation on how people use resources and are punished for wrongdoing.

** The humble stick's description references [[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles Donatello.]]

** There's a gun called the [[PlantsVsZombies Pea Shooter]] which is more powerful than a regular pistol and grants the Green Thumb perk.

** One of the possible first names is [[DwarfFortress Urist]]

** One of the named swords you can find is the [[KingdomOfLoathing Sword of Loathing]]

* TakeThat
** The Film/SawI description reads: "Man those were some bad movies."

--> Some people used to think there were "visual learners" and "audial learners," but I'm pretty sure that was a load of BS made up by psychologists to justify their paycheck. There are a lot of different ways to learn something, but ''the'' most effective way is by ''doing''.

--> All my friends came by to hang out at the corner store where I worked that summer. We talked about our favorite movies and stuff and basically nothing happened. Pretty much the plot to the movie ''[[Film/{{Clerks}} Clerks]]''

** If you send a survivor to a high-danger mission and they get injured, you'd expect them to be injured from the zombies, right? Wrong. Sometimes the journal entries reveal it was an angry raccoon defending it's territory, a yappy dog that makes you trip and twist your ankle, a rusted nail, and so on.

** Mr. Clark, an [[spoiler:EliteZombie]] and former [=McManager=], is this in ''Gangs of Deadville.'' Eventually you discover that [[spoiler: Senator Davis of the Government faction]] was [[BiggerBad manipulating him all along]].