History VideoGame / Thief

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Averted with the undead, as you meet one [[spoiler: Brother Murus]] who is rather nice. Played straight with the Trickster's monsters and Kerras's robots.

* NoOntologicalInertia: There are several levels in the game which treat completing all the main objectives as an InstantWinCondition. As such, you have set off all the alarms and have five enemies after you, only for the level to abruptly end and Garrett to seemingly have [[DeusExMachina magically escaped.]] In some levels this can be handwaved by the final objective being to get out of the place your stealing from, meaning Garret could have just outrun all the people chasing him offscreen.

** Noticably, the guards fluctuate between absurd incompetence and absurd ''hyper''competence. Douse a torch five feet away from them? They won't suspect a thing. So much as brush past them in a pitch-black room? They'll instantly know it's an intruder and go straight to trying to murder you. They won't notice if every other guard on their patrol mysteriously disappears, or a door is mysteriously open that wasn't 5 minutes ago, but they'll sure as hell notice if you so much as ''breathe'' on a metal surface even if there's 3 other guards noisily clomping all over the metal floor in the same room.

** The Dark Engine (used in TDP and TMA) was first developed for an Arthurian-themed game which never saw the light of day because the swordplay was far too complex, so they gave the complex swordplay to a character who wasn't meant to be good at sword fighting. They made ''Thief'' and the rest is history. ''Thief: Deadly Shadows'' used the [[GameEngine Unreal Engine]], so they finally replaced the sword.

* GentlemanThief: Garrett is the ultimate subversion of this trope. He's a [[HiddenDepths gentleman]] [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold on the inside]], [[JerkassFacade with a rough and snarky outward shell]].

* GoodIsNotNice: Garrett usually acts ignorant or dismissive of the evils threatening his world, but his JerkassFacade hides a character with strict personal standards, who dislikes seeing pain inflicted upon those who were already given a bad hand by life.

* FractionalWinningCondition: On normal and lower difficulty settings, most games allow you to finish the level after pocketing just a portion of the total available loot (the hardest difficulties, on the other hand, require you to find and bag ''every'' valuable item on the level).

* DevilButNoGod: The Trickster is very much real and plays an active part in the goings on of the physical world (although he may possibly be just an exceptionally powerful nature spirit), while there is never any indication that the Builder is anything more than a religious construct.

** Also doubles as DyingMomentOfAwesome.

* LargeHam: The voicework for the shopkeepers in Deadly Shadows is either good or just okay, but all of them are appropriate-sounding. Except for one. [[MostAnnoyingSound You probably know]] ''[[MostAnnoyingSound exactly]]'' [[MostAnnoyingSound which one.]]

* CreateYourOwnHero: In the climax of first game [[spoiler: Constantine could have simply paid Garrett for the Eye, take someone else's eye to activate it, and proceed with his plan mostly unopposed. His decision to betray and mutilate Garrett spelled his own doom when Garrett turned vengefully on him]]. In the second game [[spoiler: Karras is from the very start after Garrett's hide for some reason, and what motivates Garrett to eventually find out about Karras's evil plan is the simple will to get him off his back (as he himself says at one point), even tho the thing assumes a decisively more personal slant when Viktoria decides to sacrifice herself to try and save the City]].

* DayInTheLife: Garrett starts both the first and the second game while being quite down on his luck and having to lift additional weights (like by helping friends in need or taking unappealing or dangerous jobs) to pay his rent. Then, the main story kicks in.

* DayInTheLife: Garrett starts both the first and the second game while being quite down on his luck and having to lift additional weights (like by helping friends in need or taking dangerous jobs) to pay his rent. Then, the main story kicks in.

* CreateYourOwnHero: In the climax of first game [[spoiler: Constantine could have simply paid Garrett for the Eye, take someone else's eye to activate it, and proceed with his plan mostly unopposed. His decision to betray and mutilate Garrett spelled his own doom when Garrett turned vengefully on him]]. In the second game [[spoiler: Karras is from the very start after Garrett's hide for some reason, and what motivates Garrett to eventually find out about Karras's evil plan is the simple will to get him off his back (as he himself say at one point), even tho the thing assumes a decisively more personal slant when Viktoria decides to sacrifice herself to try and save the City]].

* CreateYourOwnHero: In the climax of first game [[spoiler: Constantine could have simply paid Garrett for the Eye, take someone else's eye to activate it, and proceed with his plan mostly unopposed. His decision to betray and mutilate Garrett spelled his own doom when Garrett turned vengefully on him]]. In the second game [[spoiler: Karras is from the very start after Garrett's hide for some reason, and what motivates Garrett to eventually twarth his plans and cause his death is the simple will to return the favor, even tho the thing assumes a more personal slant when Viktoria decides to sacrifice herself to try and save the City]].

** Also, it's one thing to go after a Noisemaker arrow; another is to pretend the freaky crystal lying on the floor under a doused lamp is invisible.\

** Also, it's one thing to go after a Noisemaker arrow; another is to pretend the freaky crystal lying on the floor under a doused lamp is invisible.

* GrayEyes: Garrett for both tropes. His eyes are naturally gray (befitting a snarky, noir-esque loner) and [[spoiler:his mechanical eye is bright green, which also matches right up with his sneaky, untrustworthy nature, what with him being a professional criminal and all.]]

* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker The Pagans, as well as the various Trickster affiliated monsters capable of speech, all talk in a very strange dialect which involves (among other things) adding -sie to the end of random words, using the "word" "bes" in the place of "be" (pronounced just like "bees"), Fantastic Slurs such as "manfools" for "humans" [[BoomerangBigot(even when the speaker himself is human)]], and removing pronouns from the beginning of sentences while adding an s after the verb (e.g "You build your house" becomes "Builds your house".)

* KillItWithWater: The proper way to deal with Fire Elementals, and the Mechanist robots in the second game (that is, other than heavy firepower).

* GrayEyes ''and'' GreenEyes: Garrett for both tropes. His eyes are naturally gray (befitting a snarky, noir-esque loner) and [[spoiler:his mechanical eye is bright green, which also matches right up with his sneaky, untrustworthy nature, what with him being a professional criminal and all.]]