The comic begins in the real world. Enter Heinrich Augsburg, a young, suicidal and currently rather dying Nazi soldier on the Eastern Front facing the Soviet Army. Within about two or three pages of his introduction, he gets shot in the head. Exit Heinrich.
Only not, because our 'hero' is transported to Résurrection and promptly gets set upon by a gang of looting zombies. He blows them away with an impaling gun and earns the gratitude of the weapon's owner, Otto von Todt, who identifies Heinrich as a person guilty of terrible crimes and therefore now a member of the ruling class of this world (as is Otto himself): a vampire. And from there, it only gets better.
For some.
Because everything is inverted on Résurrection. Where the sea was on Earth there is now land, and likewise for the oceans. Instead of growing older, people regress in age, until they turn into foetuses and are then entirely forgotten. Technology from Earth, when discovered, is promptly buried or hidden away. And most important of all, the more cruel a person was in life, the better they are rewarded in their reincarnation, while the innocent are outcasts at best and food or entertainment at worst. As such, morality and good feeling towards others is pretty much out the window - which is something of a problem for Heinrich, now known as Requiem, since for some reason he still possesses a conscience, a sense of honour and a disinterest in ripping little girls apart for kicks.
And because of that pesky conscience, he's pretty interested in finding out what happened to a certain love of his former life, name of Rebecca...
See also Sha for another Mills/Ledroit collaboration.
Has no connection with the manga Vampire Knight.
Tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo:
- A Vampire Knight's standard firearm shoots stakes and goes TEPESSS when fired.
- The seraphic missile (a missile with an angel in the warhead) is described as being equivalent to an anti-matter explosion on Résurrection.
- Anti-Hero: While Requiem has morals and is desperate to find Rebecca again, to get to where he presently is he was obviously more than a bit of a bastard in his previous lives as Heinrich and Thurim and Heinrich Barbarossa.
- Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Otto is killed as an old Nazi hiding in Argentina by Rebecca's sister Sarah, sending him to Résurection. Specifically, Tierra del Fuego, where he likes to hunt. He even knew that several Jewish Nazi Hunters were on his tail in advance but stayed for the opportunity to kill them.
- As You Know: In the fourth volume, the Arch-Hierophante displays a world map showing all nations with a bone to pick with Dracula, to Sabbat of all people, someone already well-aware of this. Though the purpose was clearly to provide exposition to the reader, its justified by the fact the Hierophante is both senile and tends to ramble a lot.
- Ass Shove: Any male vampire found wandering inside the Convent of Blood trying to get busy with Dracula's brides will be punished by the nuns with something called "rectal ravisher".
- At Least I Admit It: The vampires' worldview on their crimes and why they consider themselves superior to everyone else in Hell. Ghouls are despised for being well intentioned extremists and Dracula mocks the Archeologists for not have used their intelligence for the greater evil.
- The Atoner: Heinrich wishes he was this, but the business of simply surviving being a vampire with a conscience prevents him from doing much atoning.
- The Beautiful Elite:
- Surprisingly averted with the vampires. While they are the ruling caste of Ressurrection, a lot of them, if not the majority, are butt-ugly. Those who are not have tattoos carved into their face to make them uglier. Of course, since everything is inverted on Résurrection, including the system of values...
- The Vampire Queen Bathory fits the trope to a T, though, as do Dame Holodomor and Claudia. The female vampires tend to be more beautiful than males. Hmmmm...
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played with. Beautiful/sexy creatures in Résurrection are just as likely to get their heads bitten in half or being brutally ripped apart as the others. With all that said, some exceptions that play it straight happen:
- Rebecca looked like a concentration camp victim at the time of her death, even losing her ebony curls at that point, but she is restored back to her old appearance after reincarnatig on Résurrection.
- Claudia died by the way of spontaneous combustion, but she ends up looking very beautiful in Résurrection rather than a burn victim, as the scars that caused death are permanent - its the reason why Requiem has a bullet hole in his brow and Otto has a slash across his eye.
- Been There, Shaped History: After being displaced through time and space in Volume 11, Requiem attacks Mary Shelley in her youth during the dream she had that served as inspiration for writing Frankenstein.
- Bestiality Is Depraved:
- Black Sabbath (formerly one Aleister Crowley), whose girlfriend is a male mandrill most of the time, as he finds it more exciting. However, she turns back into her normal female form to seduce Thurim.
- Claudia later has sex with Torquemada in his werewolf form, with Sean tied in front of them to humiliate him.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The ghouls have a yeti as the ship's quartermaster.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Given the Evil vs. Evil nature of the story, several characters are running for the Big Bad position: Dracula seemingly is this to the whole setting, being the Evil Overlord of Résurrection and its heavily hinted that he may have bigger plans to return and conquer Earth, but other candidates include Mother Mitra, Queen Perfidia and the Hellfire Club conspirators lead by Aiwass, the last of which wants to specifically dethrone him and install a new vampire ruler in his place.
- Bigot with a Crush: Zigzagged Trope. Heinrich is a Nazi soldier during World War II who discovers that his girlfriend Rebecca is Jewish. This leaves him angry and conflicted at first as he still passionately loves her, but once they both ascend to the hellworld Resurection after their deaths on Earth, they rekindle their romance. Heinrich has also pretty much abandoned his Nazi beliefs after becoming a vampire, although his "friend" Otto (a former SS officer who killed Rebecca on Earth) most certainly hasn't and tries to kill both of them again for being "degenerates".
- Bilingual Bonus: Dame Holodomor. "Holodomor" means "extermination by hunger" in Russian, refer to this page
of Wikipedia. - Bizarro World: As stated above, almost everything in Résurrection is backwards from the real world.
- Blessed with Suck: Thurim's gift regeneration turns against him when he is sentenced to be drawn and quartered forever.
- Blood Magic: Elizabeth Báthory pretty much exemplifies this as she uses it to easily overpower and slaughter Mitra.
- Body Horror: The Hierophants, highest ranking of the Archaeologists, spend most of their time in sarcophagus-like tanks since they have no skin. When they do feel the need to stretch their legs, their servants promptly flay someone alive so that they have a skin to wear.
- Brain Food: Zombies eat brains, as do ghouls.
- Brainless Beauty: The Brides of Dracula. Rather than being vampires, they are simply victims that were not yet claimed by other vampires. They are breath-taking beautiful, but also extremely very ditzy, but given they live in a harem away from the outside world...
- Card-Carrying Villain: Pretty much anybody who's somebody in Resurrection's screwed-up social order, with the ghouls being the only exception as they were well-intentioned extremists and feel like they don't deserve being sentenced to Hell for their actions. Vampires in particular are notable for this, the requirements for becoming a vampire seem to be A) being perfectly aware that you're a monster and B) being proud of your horrific actions in life. Requiem is a rare example of a vampire who checks the first box but not the second, but Thurim, his original self, happily checks both and may be part of the reason why he ended up as a vampire again.
- Cat Girl: Or Leopard Women. Portrayed somewhat more accurately than is the norm for the female furry, since they have four breasts apiece.
- Chainsaw Good: The weapon of choice of ghoul pirates is a sort of rapier-chainsaw.
- The Chew Toy: Poor Igor can't catch a break...
- Chicken Walker: Mitra's walking mecha tank.
- The Collector: Mortis collects cursed weapons (the gun that shot JFK, the knife that stabbed Murat), Otto collects weapons from all ages, and begs Rebecca to avoid damaging them during their fight.
- Combat Hand Fan: Claudia uses a poison-tipped steel fan that can also be used as a Precision-Guided Boomerang
- Cool Airship: Most high-ranked races have them. Vampires have gigantic flying warships decorated with skulls and skulls and more skulls (not to mention smaller skull-shaped ships in the shape of skulls). Ghouls have war-zeppelins (a whole city made of them). Dystopians have dragons to fill this role.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The whole of Résurrection is essentially Hell/Purgatory. Ironically, those who have committed minor sins suffer the worst, and some complete innocents get trapped there as well.
- Cool Shades / Sunglasses at Night: Sabre.
- Cool Sword: A vampire's sword can apparently serve as a crystal ball, speak, and remain loyal to its owner (at least, Requiem's does).
- Cool vs. Awesome:
- Vampires on werewolves vs ghosts on centaurs, for starters.
- In the future, London becomes the site of a battle between patriotic animal-bots and mutants (one of them an unkillable King Kong (1933) Shout-Out).
- Combat by Champion with leonine dragon King Arthur vs Dracula.
- Corrupt Church: The Dystopians have an transdimensional "papal pipeline" that allows them to sell holy water to all the warring factions. Unfortunately, as it comes from the same church responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Borgias and the whole Pedophile Priest scandal and following coverup, it needs to be substantially purified to be of any use.
- Costume Porn: The artist pays a lot of attention to details.
- Crapsack World: Man oh man, is Résurrection one of these...
- Creepy Crossdresser: J. Edgar Hoover, before he became Mitra.
- Cute Monster Girl: Really prevalent in the setting: female lamias such as Rebecca, Bizette and Sophia are Cute Ghost Girls, while some female vampires are quite Fanservice-y and Leopard Women are often found in harems. Queen Perfidia would arguably qualify too, even though she is more scary than attractive, she is a fairly human-looking snake woman in contrast to her subjects, who are all Lizard Folk.
- Cycle of Revenge: Of a sort. See, Otto killed Rebecca for falling in love with Heinrich (both Otto and Heinrich were Nazis, while Rebecca was a Jew), but then Rebecca's twin sister Sarah tracked him down after the war and killed him in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. So now Rebecca keeps inciting Requiem to kill Otto because she wants to escape Résurrection, and Otto wants to go on tormenting Rebecca in their afterlives because dying hasn't really changed his opinion of her.
- Deader than Dead: If someone gets killed in Hell, or rather gets "expired", they merely reincarnate again on Earth as seen with Requiem, whose original incarnation was a Satanist that also became a vampire and expired before he was born as Heinrich. If they rejuvenate too far in Hell, they will turn from babies to fetuses until they are erased from existence altogether.
- Decadent Court: But of course.
- Deadly Training Area: The training for vampire knights is carried out in Hell. Not only that, but in a specifically malevolent branch of Hell. Most of the apprentices don't get out with their deaths.
- Deadpan Snarker: Black Sabbat has his moments. On one character exclaiming that he has a seraphic warhead in his throne room, he tells them "Oh yes, I was wondering what the large object containing an explosive angel was".
- Death by De-aging: On the hellish afterworld of Requiem, people (or at least vampires) age backwards. Hence, especially long-lived characters such as Lord Cryptos look like babies, and it is inferred he will continue de-aging until he truly dies.
- Depraved Bisexual: Claudia, not like readers are complaining...
- Depraved Homosexual / Sissy Villain: Taken to ridiculous levels with Nero, Dracula's right hand man. Looking like the bastard offspring of Frank-N-Furter and Gene Simmons, he struts around in lingerie and high-heeled shoes, makes constant and blatant overtures to other men, is sexually aroused by torture and bloodshed, and goes to the masquerade ball in a Pimped-Out Dress.
- According to Torquemada, the Dystopians are all this.
- Devil, but No God: Since many good people also end up in Résurrection, it could be interpreted that there is either no God, or at least no Heaven. Though, the trope gets played with quite a bit. To begin with, there is no discernable Devil either. Black Sabbath makes mention of Lucifer (the original owner of the hammer Thurim), but he is nowhere to be found, and the top dogs of Résurrection seem to be competing Eldritch Abominations. In addition, angels do exist, and by extension heaven must as well... but horrifyingly enough, since Saint's heads and holy water are used as ammunition, horribly desecrated saints as shields, and a Seraph used as a weapon of mass destruction is shown, it appears that the forces of Hell have access into Heaven.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Requiem routinely defeats opponents that should have by all means destroyed him, such as Charnel the Demonic. Justified because he was Thurim in his previous life.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The evilest people become vampires, rapists become centaurs, religious lunatics become werewolves, infanticidal mothers become harpies, and the suicidal become... trees?
- Quite probably inspired by Dante's Inferno. My question is, what the hell did the poets do?
- Most likely spread thought, poetry and imagination around, and we can't have that in a Crapsack World, now can we?
- But the worse off by far are the lemures. Pitiable, weak ghost-things (although they can be dangerous when numerous enough, or against the specific target of their torment) whose biggest transgression was... dying due to another's evil. Death as one of those SUCK.
- Divine Date: The vampire Black Sabbat and the goddess Aiwass are in a relationship. It's one of the few couplings that are portrayed as pretty amicable, but since both prefer her to assume the form of a male mandrill baboon, there's a healthy dose of Fan Disservice to go along with it.
- Dracula: Ruler of the vampires, of course. And married to the Blood Countess Elizabeth Báthory.
- Dragon Rider: Sir Smegma of the Dystopians rides one, though he's defeated by Claudia riding her werewolf (not like that, for once).
- Droit du Seigneur: Any blood virgin (victims who haven't been fed on by a vampire yet) in Draconia has to be taken to the Sisters of Blood first to be prepared for the vampire ruler, as King Dracula is supposed to have right of first blood of any virgins in his domain.
- Eldritch Abomination: Dracula and his vampires serve/worship a group of those, who periodically war with another abomination faction using demons and dragons as shock troops.
- Emasculated Cuckold: Claudia Demona sacrificed her male lover Sean back on Earth after revealing that she was a satanic serial killer. On Résurection, she becomes a vampire and he becomes a lamia, two factions that are at war with each other. After capturing him, she decides to get rammed through by a werewolf while forcing him to watch in an attempt to further humiliate him.
- Empathic Weapon: Requiem's sword, when ordered by Claudia to act against him, tells her to get screwed.
- Enemy Mine: Otto catches up with Requiem during the ghoul raid, but spares him as he needs every available vampire to fight.
- Dragon and Requiem take a break from watching their respective masters fight each other to change, feed and burp them.
- Evil Brit: The Dystopians are dishonest, money-grubbing reptiles, including Elizabeth I (snake woman) and King Arthur (dragon).
- Arthur later reveals that he inspired every British conqueror in their dreams to get them to follow the maxim of "enough is never enough".
- Evil Tastes Good: Literal case. As one character explains to Requiem in the first issue, the blood of innocents is rather bland, compared to that of sinners, which seems to be more potent.
- Eviler than Thou: Attila is at one point afraid that Requiem's 'goodness' is going to contaminate him. Black Sabbat reassures him that, as the Scourge of God, he is absolutely irredeemable.
- Evil Versus Evil: The whole conflict is like this. The Lemures are the closest thing to a "white" faction, Requiem himself is a spot of "grey", and the rest of it is just different kinds of "black". The Masters of Infinity are opposed to the Lords of Limbo, but nobody is sure which of them are nicer. Ghouls, vampires, dystopians, archaeologists, all of the important factions in Résurrection are all evil in their own way. Vampires are sometimes considered as the most evil, but really the only difference between them and ghouls, for instance, is that that ghouls are also hypocrites who fooled themselves into thinking they're doing good deeds.
- Explosive Leash: Dracula's berserkers are gigantic armored soldiers who kill everything in sight once woken up. As they're impossible to get back under control, each is fitted with a dynamite collar that's detonated once all enemies are dead.
- Fan Disservice: More often than not, disgusting and wretched figures are generally depicted in a very sexual manner, such as Mitra, a morbidly-obese ghoul with her boobs hanging out being the primary example. They are generally background characters with not much relevance to the plot, with that said, the following trope makes up for it.
- Fanservice: Lots of it. Nude and semi-nude women appear in every issue, and the comic doesn't shy away from full-frontal male nudity either. Then there's the bondage themes, S/M overtones, girl-on-girl action etc...
- Fantasy Counterpart Map: Volume 4 provides a map for Résurrection, which is basically our world with landmasses and seas reversed, with entire nations positioned where the Atlantic Ocean would be in our world.
- Fat Bastard: Mitra, oh my god, Mitra.
- Fate Worse than Death: Seeing as death takes you to the world of Resurrection, and given what a Crapsack World it is...
- Famous, Famous, Fictional: Dracula keeps the heads-in-a-jar of Julius Caesar, Napoléon Bonaparte, Saladin, Alexander the Great and a Martian conqueror as tactical advisors.
- Fantastic Caste System: As mentioned above, what kind of evil you did in life determines your place on Resurrection's social ladder.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Dystopians appear to be Elizabethan-era, if England was populated by snake people. They are just the most prominent example in the comic though, as a equivalents to the United States of America, the Caribbean, Scandinavia and Egypt, though they were not yet seen.
- Faux Affably Evil: Otto von Todt is so jovial and friendly at times (primarily around Heinrich) that you almost forget that in life he was a sadistic Nazi concentration camp guard. Notably, he gets a lot more openly nasty when Heinrich hooks up with his Jewish girlfriend Rebecca again in Résurrection.
- Forever War: In Claudia, we see one between politicians and the people they lied to. However, the politicians have an intrinsic advantage, being more aggressive and more willing to do anything to get their side to win, so the proles are backed up by gigantic war machines. The tide has yet to significantly turn one way or another.
- Fur Against Fang: The vampires and werewolves are hostile towards each other, but that's because ALL supernatural races are in Resurection. They're just as likely (probably even moreso) to punch in the face of a zombie or ghoul. Interestingly, vampires are the reincarnation of people who knowingly committed acts of evil for their own gratification. Werewolves are the reincarnation of people who did evil in the name of good. Claudia Demona even uses a mind-controlled Torquemada (the biggest werewolf on the planet) as a sex toy.
- Gendercide: Mother Venus was the 23rd century president of that planet. When cloning technology allowed for the viability of a One-Gender Race, she had every single male killed.
- Ghostly Goals: Weaponized by Dracula: since the Lemures are bound to Résurrection until their killer is expired as well, he eliminates a huge chunk of them by killing the man responsible for their suffering in life. A man with a very distinct mustache.
- Ghost Pirate: The Pirate Guild in Requiem is comprised of ghouls and skeletons who go around in flying ships.
- Good Is Bad And Bad Is Good: Since being an evil asshole in life tends to get you a better and better form the worse you were, pretty much all the more powerful groups are like that. In fact, Requiem is considered a degenerate by Attila because of his qualities of honor and chivalry.
- Good Is Dumb: Tolecnal appears to be the closest thing to a good character on the entire Dystopian side. Naturally, he has difficulty with treachery and still upholds the knightly ideals. He is also rather Literal-Minded as well.
- Good Is Impotent: The lamias are the closest thing to a genuinely heroic faction in Hell, since they are innocent spirits that had the misfortune of being murdered by someone evil that became a monster there. Unfortunately, they are also among the weakest creatures such as zombies and kobolds and they are used as slave stock by vampires and other beings. They are only capable of spooking their tormentors and use mind-control devices on centaurs and werewolves to be more effective and it takes literally millions of lamias' combined to be considered an outright threat. Still, the vampires surpass them on almost every way, such as individual strength or technology level.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Subverted with Thurim, who had the ability to regenerate, and so was sentenced to being drawn and quartered. Forever.
- Gorgeous Gorgon: Queen Perfidia of Dystopia reveals a swarming nest of snakes for hair when she gets really angry. She's more "gorgon" and less "gorgeous", though...
- Gorn: well, this is a very dark comic about vampires, so there are quite a few scenes of mangling of young naked girls and other such material.
- Government Drug Enforcement: Many of the vampires are addicted to Black Opium which helps them to forget their past sins and generally sleep at night; it also makes it easier for Dracula to control them. A fair chunk of the story is about the trouble that occurs when the Opium supply is blocked.
- Gratuitous German: Unavoidable in a story where several of the characters are Those Wacky Nazis. "Mein gott!" is particularly popular.
- Gratuitous Russian: Contrarily to what he says, neither Sabre nor Eretica seems to mean "vampire" in Russian. The word would be "vampir" or "vurdalak."
- Groin Attack: The Sisters of Blood merely wish to prevent Sabre's urges by removing their source.
- Happiness in Slavery: Vampires feed by keeping personal slaves, and it helps if they cooperate. This trope sometimes applies, but not always. (One character explains the benefits of this to Requiem in the first issue, and also mentions a few vampires who are disliked by others because, among other things, their slaves tend to die rather quickly.)
- Healing Factor: All vampires that gained Dracula's Dark Kiss gain one in addition of becoming The Ageless. It can backfire horribly though; when Thurim rebelled, Dracula put it to good use by having him drawn and quartered- forever.
- Hell Is War: Resurrection is in a constant state of war between Dracula's faction and another. Not much is known about the other, although they worship a group of Eldritch Abominations who oppose the ones Dracula worships, and is populated at least partially by dragons and demons.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Averted. Yes, Requiem wields a sword (if one can even call him a hero), but all vampire knights wield runeblades, and pretty much all of them are evil. The closest thing vampires had to a "hero" of their kind (Thurim) wielded a warhammer instead.
- Historical Domain Superperson: Elizabeth I of England, Nero, Caligula, Aleister Crowley, and several others are transformed into hideous undead creatures in Hell.
- Dracula's wife is the infamous Blood Countess, Elizabeth Báthory, a vampire with Blood Magic.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: This being Hell, you'd expect quite a lot of notorious people to end up here, and you'd be right. Understandably the vampires get most of the shout outs, but famous people do appear in the other camps from time to time:
- In the Vampire corner, we have Dracula and Countess Elizabeth Báthory (although they've already had an upgrade in real life, so they don't really count), Caligula, Nero, Aleister Crowley, Maximilien Robespierre, Atilla the Hun, possibly Rasputin and, of course, Adolf Hitler, who is possibly too evil to be a vampire and is a literal Person of Mass Destruction.
- The strongest of the werewolves is Tomás de Torquemada.
- It's stated that the Arch-Hierophant, the leader of the Archaeologists, was infamous for his specialty in performing human vivisection, and was possibly a Nazi scientist (Mengele comes to mind).
- So far none of the ghouls we've seen are based on real people, but one of them does mention Blackbeard and having 'expired' him.
- Mother Terror, one of the leaders of the ghouls' pirate fleet, is strongly hinted to have been Mother Teresa, reflecting various real-life controversies surrounding her, such as the poor care given in her hospitals and misappropriation of the donations she received.
- Also, the identity of the queen of the ghouls, Mitra, was revealed recently. She's actually J. Edgar Hoover.
- The Dystopian Queen, Perfidia, resembles Elizabeth I, and her entire race resembles England during the Golden Age. Oh, and during life they committed evil in the name of empire.
- More of a Legendary Villain Upgrade, but King Arthur is the Dystopian king, and at least some of his knights are also Dystopians. And they all have Sdrawkcab Names for some reason.
- One of the ghouls' elite fighters is revealed to be... Oppenheimer, Truman and the pilot who dropped the A-bomb, all fused into a single monstrous abomination. Their being reborn as a three-faced ghoul is explained by each putting the blame for dropping the atomic bomb on the others.
- Hollywood History: Thurim caused the Teutonic Knights to lose the Battle of the Ice by activating his hammer and cracking the ice under their feet. Except of course, it's generally believed the idea of the ice cracking under the Knights' weight dates back to the 1938 movie Alexander Nevsky (and even then, the ice cracks after the battle, not during the charge).
- Hollywood Satanism: Several of the people who ended up becoming vampires in Resurection were satanists in their human lives, including Claudia Demona and Thurim. Of course, they loved Human Sacrifice.
- Holy Burns Evil: Which is why holy water imported straight from the Vatican is such a lucrative commodity. Unfortunately, see Corrupt Church above. The Dystopians have made a specialty of selling holy relics to various factions. But most of them are fake, though it remains to be seen if the canister containing a seraphim is indeed the equivalent of an antimatter nuke.
- Honor Among Thieves: Mentioned in regards to Dystopians, known for being a Proud Merchant Race with a case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Somehow they've manage to sustain themselves as a country, meaning they do have some sense of unity under Queen Perfidia.
- Humongous Mecha: The Archi-Hierophant's "sarcophagus" looks a lot like one at least, though it has yet to be used in combat.
- Hypocrite: Ghouls, in life, did as much harm as vampires but believed (or pretended) they were doing good.
- The Igor: Igor is actually a kobold, but otherwise fits the description perfectly.
- Doctor Dippel's assistant, Vermicelli, fits perfectly too.
- Immortality Inducer: People in Résurrection still age, but they turn into babies rather than turning into old people, before eventually fading from existence. Black opium, on top of helping them forget their crimes, also staves off this process to limited success - as Lord Cryptos notes he has been using it to prolong his existence. Only Dracula's dark kiss can prevent this process, by turning those that received it into The Ageless and gaining a extremely powerful Healing Factor.
- Immortal Ruler: Dracula will rule over the kingdom of Draconia until the end of time, although forces within his inner circle are also plotting to overthrow him. As a general rule, the vampires in this setting are not immortal, they just age backwards. Dracula is unique among them because his bloodline produces The Ageless.
- Immunity Disability: Thurim had a Healing Factor gifted to him by Dracula. When Thurim rebelled, Dracula took advantage of Thurim's unkillability by having him drawn and quartered for eternity.
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: Shows up occasionally.
- The Nuns of Blood are particularly fond of ludicrously overcomplicated weapons/instruments of torture, up to and including nunchakus (an already extremely impractical weapon) adorned with spikes and spiky chains.
- Vampires get rapid-fire stake-guns. That go TEPESSSSS! when fired.
- Info Dump: Dictionary, the handy talking shoulder pterodactyl who knows everything about everyone's sins and will tell you about them at great length! Especially if you don't want him to!
- In the Hood: The first time we meet Torquemada, he's wearing a hooded monk's robe that shows only his Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- Instant Runes: The series is huge on diverse magical symbols, so it's no big surprise those appear in the air every time vampire knights cast spells. They also appear for diverse other occasions and even in the margins, just for decoration.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Claudia and Requiem try to get busy in Volume 2, but they are interrupted so many times (first by an poisoning attempt and later by frickin' demon summoned to assassinate him) that Claudia eventually tires of waiting and decides to find comfort in Elizabeth's arms...
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Requiem is perfectly willing to let Rebecca Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, leaving himself trapped on Résurrection. Such a noble sacrifice only causes disgust in Otto. But then Requiem / Thurim notes that with Rebecca gone, so is his Morality Pet, allowing him to truly become a vampire knight.
- Karma Houdini: Oh, where to begin with this one...
- Averted with, of all people, Adolf Hitler. He gets a grand total of four panels, one of which consists of getting his neck snapped and the remaining two showing us who he was.
- King Arthur: is an evil, leonine dragon with a Sdrawkcab Name.
- Knight in Shining Armor: Subverted; while Tolecnal still believes that truth and justice are what the Knights of the Round Table fight for, Ruhtra corrects him and says their motivations are more along the lines of Rape, Pillage, and Burn.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Hellboy briefly pops up as a castle groundskeeper in Résurrection.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Due to Captain Salem's power. Sabre leaves his three victims disappointed, but when Requiem kills Salem:"Oh, Sabre! What an enormous improvement!"
- Love Redeems:
- Presumably, it's the vestiges of Heinrich's love for Rebecca that let him keep his conscience. Now he clings desperately to them.
- However, ultimately he claims that by releasing her from this world, he will at last be freed from this last remnant of humanity, and truly become a vampire.
- Subverted in Claudia, where Claudia's love for Elizabeth is the result of Red Opium poisoning.
- Made of Explodium: Dippel's oil is watered-down nitroglycerine, use extensively in his remote-controlled giant zombie.
- Mad Scientist: All Archeologists were those back in the real world, but Doctor Dippel is the most notable as of now.
- Magic Hair: Lich's hair is steel chains and doubles as Prehensile Hair.
- Medieval Stasis: The Archeologists exist to prevent advanced technology from falling into the hands of the lower classes, upsetting the vampires' dominion.
- Merlin Sickness:
- The people of Résurrection age in reverse. Instead of growing older, they grow younger, and if they aren't killed on the battlefield or some other way, they eventually turn into infants and disappear. Then everyone forgets they existed at all. (Maybe the ultimate reward for evil isn't quite so good after all...) Dracula's Dark Kiss can prevent it from happening, but he doesn't do that often and with good reason since one vampire he gave named Thurim turned against Dracula and was nearly impossible to put down afterwards.
- Merlin himself appears. As an egg. Wearing a wizard hat.
- Mini-Mecha:
- Mother Superior of the Sisters of Blood is a foetus (meaning she is extremely old by vampire standards) who rides in a spiked mecha with grappling claws in its breasts. It's not a Humongous Mecha though, it's barely taller than a human being.
- Mitra also uses a walking mech.
- Monster Mash: Classical monsters such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, mummies reside in Hell and all of them were humans that were sentenced for their crimes.
- Monster Knight: The titular vampire knights. The Dystopian dragon knights also qualify.
- Motor Mouth: Dictionary and Tengu.
- Mummy: The Archaeologists - scientists who created weapons of mass destruction or violated scientific ethics - are rather wizened and have no skin, so the lower ranking ones spend most of their time wrapped up in Egyptianesque robes or bandages. The higher ranking ones...have other methods.
- Mutants: A bunch of them, who rebelled against the humans who'd created them and took over Future!London before being nuked, suddenly pop on Resurrection. Dracula's forces gleefully mount a massive slave raid/blitzkrieg to crush them.
- Nazi Hunter: Rebecca's sister Sarah. She kills Otto (an old Nazi hiding in Argentina at that point) in revenge for killing Rebecca in a concentration camp, sending him to Résurrection.
- Nazi Protagonist: Heinrich Augsberg, a.k.a. Requiem, who in life was a Nazi soldier who committed many atrocities, but who in the Crapsack World of Resurrection has been reborn as one of the few vampires who still retain some kind of conscience.
- Near-Rape Experience: When Thurim takes control of Requiem's body to kill the Sisters of Blood, he stops and tries to rape one of them. Requiem refuses to let his body be used for this and wrestles control from it.
- The Necrocracy: Given that all Résurrection denizens are dead to begin with, their government is naturally like this. While Count Dracula is the most powerful ruler in the setting, he is not the only one as other nations have their own undead rulers.
- Never My Fault: What mostly separates ghouls from vampires is the fact that ghouls were all Well Intentioned Extremists who refused to admit the fact that their actions wreaked more harm than good: nuns who ran orphanages where children were mistreated, a Straw Feminist who had all men killed in the name of her ideals, etc. They see vampires as monsters for being openly evil, while vampires look down upon ghouls for being deluded instead of owning up to their evil deeds.
- Never Say "Die": A surprising use of the trope in a mature comic. Usually the words "death" and "die" are replaced with "expiration", "expire" and similar equivalents, though the reason for that is the fact that everyone on Résurrection is already dead.
- Nun Too Holy: Pretty much all the Sisters of Blood. The ghouls also count many former nuns in their ranks, and their former leader - Mother Terror - is implied to have been Mother Teresa in life.
- Nuns Are Spooky: The Sisters of Blood. Even though they wear fetish-errific outfits, they are more creepy than sexy: the lowly workers that work producing blood tend to be fat old hags and the guards slaughter intruders with extreme prejudice. They do follow a strict code of vows and seek to preserve virginity (both in terms of sex and vampire bites), their own and that of the victims under their "care".
- Old Master: Cryptus to Requiem and Tengu to Dragon. Because of the way people in Resurrection age, both look (and often even behave) like toddlers.
- Otaku: More like the literal translation of the word "otaku" (outcast) rather than a actual anime fan. There's one who got reincarnated as a vampire samurai and was a Japanese officer who participated in the killing competitions during the Rape of Nanking. He's referred to as an "outcast" because he's turned on his former allies, the vampires.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: They're the reincarnations of rapists, used as cavalry against the vampires' werewolves.
- Our Demons Are Different: And more gruesome. The original thing about them is that they DO NOT inhabit Resurrection / Hell, but are creatures from a different plane.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: For one thing they're called Lamias, and are the victims of the various evil-doers who mistreated, tortured, raped, killed etc. them. The only way to escape their rather crummy existence is to 'expirate' whoever is responsible for their presence on Résurrection (whether the 'expiration' is at their own hands or someone else's; in the meantime they also torment their killers in their sleep, like Furies). However, its possible for vampires to control them by drinking their blood and turning them into their blood slaves. They're called Lemures in the original French, which follows the myths a lot closer.
- Our Ghouls Are Different: People who resurrect as ghouls are those who committed evil while pretending they were doing good; they have grey skin, often no hair or apparent noses, sharp teeth and crave brains. They live in a flying city called Aerophagia, and the higher ranking ones are captains of pirate airships; basically it's undead steampunk.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Harpies were mothers who knowingly caused the death of their children. It's not revealed what crimes kobolds did, but they usually show up as much-abused lower class service personnel (servants, peddlers, innkeepers...)
- Our Vampires Are Different: As per usual they're aristocratic, pale (mostly), beautiful (sometimes), proud, vulnerable to silver and just plain evil. As per unusual, they're often addicted to drugs to help them forget their past sins, and they're not immortal but are as susceptible to regression as anyone else in Résurrection; only receiving Dracula's Dark Kiss makes you immune to rejuvenation, and that's pretty hard to come by. Rebirth as a vampire in Résurrection is reserved for the very worst of the worst among humans.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Résurrection's werewolves are religious fanatics who persecuted innocents of other faiths; they can transform at will or if they're being threatened, and also, oddly enough, by remote control used and controlled by the rebelling Lamias.
- Our Zombies Are Different: On Résurrection zombies form the lower classes. They either end up serving the vampires, being served to the vampires or scavenging the wastelands and forming deadly welcoming committees for any newly resurrected. The comic features an interesting subversion of zombies as they are capable of intelligence and even coherent speech, however they are usually simple-minded, and are hinted to be people who committed crimes out of ignorance and mindless obedience, which
explains why there are so many of them... - Out with a Bang: Claudia was first dragged to Résurrection when one of the elderly participants in a ritual got a little overexcited and died, screwing up the ritual.
- Overly-Long Tongue: At least one Sister of Blood has an extremely long tongue with blades on it; whether all Sisters have such a weapon or only her is unclear.
- Mitra's entire throat can be deployed as a toothed tentacle to catch prey that she then devours alive.
- Personality Powers: Dracula's family manifests superpowers as side effect of his dark kiss, that are related to their crimes on Earth. Nero, who was infamous for burning Rome gained pyrokinesis, while Elizabeth Báthory, who bathed in the blood of hundreds of virgins to preserve her youth, gained Blood Magic.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Remember that extreme youth on Résurrection is equivalent to extremely old age and therefore experience. Tengu can perfectly wield a pair of razor-clawed gauntlets of which every blade is attached onto a whip chain. Only slightly less awesome is Cryptus, whose little infantile hands apparently pack an impressive punch and who wields a pair of short swords with enough skill to be an even match to the aforementioned Tengu.
- Pragmatic Villainy:
- The use of Adolf Hitler as a Weapon of Mass Destruction sure is the more time and cost efficient way to blow up a whole cloud of lemures. Not to mention the trouble he could have caused as a trained vampire knight, seeing how there seems to be a clear connection to the extent of evil during life and the capacity for evil during death.
- Atilla comes this close to murdering Requiem for the heinous crime of being honorable and chivalrous, but he is stopped by Black Sabbat who points out that they can't afford to waste any precious vampire knights with the war against their enemies going badly, so he tells him to look the other way for his "degenerancy" this time. Of course, Sabbat had more sinister reasons to spare Requiem too...
- Protagonist Title: "Requiem the Vampire Knight" is Heinrich's nom de plume.
- Punny Name: The (French) names for the pirate leaders are all words starting with Mère (mother): Mercurochrome, etc.
- Really 700 Years Old: Enforce. Given that vampires age in reverse, the younger a vampire looks, the older they actually are. Notable is Lord Cryptos, who looks and often behaves like a baby, which doesn't make him any less disturbing than the rest of the cast (and arguably even more). What makes him even creepier is that he mentions that due to his age he can no longer feed on blood, and therefore feeds on pure pain and terror. Doesn't stop him from enjoying some blood on occasion, too.
- Tengu is a similarly ancient vampire who is just as tiny and skilled as Cryptos.
- Mother Superior of the Blood Convent trumps them all. She is so ancient that she has outright reverted into a fetus. She is no longer capable of fighting with her natural capacities, so she drives a Mini-Mecha instead.
- Religious Vampire: The Masters of Infinity's worship is a rather twisted version on Christianity, since it features cathedrals that hold mass, a monastic order of nuns, lots of black crosses and their own "crusaders" formed from the Vampire Knights. It's what differs them from the Lords of Limbo, who are thematically closer to an pagan cult than an religion.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Torquemada gives one to the Dystopians.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Everything, including the scenery.
- Reincarnation Romance: Heinrich and Rebecca, who were a German Nazi and a German Jew in love with each other on Earth, become lovers once again on the hellworld of Résurrection when the former is reincarnated as a vampire and the latter as a lamia.
- Religion of Evil: The aforementioned Masters of Infinity and the Lords of Limbo serve as the two main faiths in Résurrecion. While both are extremely evil and impossible to tell which one is worse, they can be distinguished: the Masters of Infinity worship resembles a twisted form of Christianity with masses on churches and prayers, while the Lords of Limbo are venerated in form of ritualistic satanistic cults. There is also the fact Thurim is a Devil worshiper, but its hard to say where it fits into the two religions although he is associated with the Hellfire Club, who worships the Lords of Limbo.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent/Reptilian Conspiracy: The Dystopians, who represent evil committed in the name of dominion and empire. Also mostly British.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Needless to say, the most feared weapons on Resurrection are holy relics, starting from holy water weapons, to angel tears weapons, to priest's head and saint's head ammunition, to a gigantic missile with a ''seraph'' inside which Mitra calls the equivalent of an anti-matter bomb.
- Royal Harem: Dracula's personal harem of brides is made up of lamias that were not bitten by any vampire. They live secluded in a convent guarded by vampire nuns that will severely retaliate against anyone that tries to sneak in. Besides them, some occasional noble courts are accompanied by feline concubines.
- Satan: He hasn't shown up yet, but it's clear that Lucifer exists somewhere, since his Dark Hammer is the divine weapon that Thurim was after.
- Scars Are Forever: Both Requiem and Sean have red marks on their foreheads left from the shots that killed them. Otto has a knife scar over his eye cause from his face being cleaved with a knife, though his eye is fine.
- Scary Impractical Armor: As Señor Torquemada demonstrates. Some are even worse.
- Scavengers Are Scum: It starts with the hero running into a bunch of zombies (the lowest order of undead, who scrounge what food they can) for who a newly-arrived vampire is a feast before being rescued by Otto.
- Scenery Gorn / Scenery Porn: both are quite abundant.
- Scenery Porn: Every single page. The artist puts quite a bit of effort into it, to say the least.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the Archaeologists is very enthusiastic about using photon torpedos.
- Anthrax, the mutant's secret weapon, is a regenerating monster who ends up climbing a skyscraper to strike at air forces before plummeting to the ground.
- In one battle a number of winged baboon men are captured and cause Claudia some 'distress'.
- Red-armored berserkers who lash out at everything they see? Where have we seen that before...
- Cryptos's design bears some resemblance to another vampire...
- The annoying pterodactyl thing's name is The Devil's Dictionary.
- Thurim's world in Limbo is an obvious shout-out to Hieronymus Bosch.
- There is a shout-out to The Exorcist in one comic, where a vampire possessed by a demon yells out, "Your mother sucks cocks in hell!" Though it doesn't provoke the reaction he hoped in the target.
- Triad, a three-faced ghoul, announces "Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." Because he's actually Oppenheimer, who designed the atom bomb, Truman, who ordered it launched, and Tibbets, the pilot who dropped it. All in one, since none of them agreed to take the blame for it.
- Dragon pushes Tengu around in a little cart.
- An Establishing Character Moment for Dracula is when an Archeologist refuses to remove his mask in Dracula's presence, so he has it nailed to the man's head, mirroring his treatment of Turkish diplomats (and their turbans) in Real Life.
- Shown Their Work: At least when it comes to Dracula: it takes the historical Vlad Tepes's preference for impaling as a punishment and all but elopes with it. He decorates his ship the 'Satanik' with stakes covered with the bodies of the victims; and an impaling gun has the sound effect of 'Tepes!' whenever it's fired, a reference to his real name. He also has the mask of the High Priest of the Archaeologists nailed to his face, because the priest hadn't removed it as a sign of respect (and also because Dracula really doesn't like the Archaeologists): this pretty much echoes what Vlad allegedly did to a Turkish messenger who refused to remove his turban.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Cryptus proudly proclaims that the vast majority of vampire knights he trains don't survive the training, and by the sound of what they go through, he's probably saying the truth. It's likely that Tengu is also this, though not explicitly stated.
- Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Particularly noticeable concerning the ghouls; there are quite a lot of nuns amongst their ranks (who pimped out other nuns to priests), to say nothing of Venus the trigger happy twenty-third century feminist, but apparently not that many high ranking males at all. What, so the most evil hypocrites are all women? On the vampires' side only Claudia gets a prominent speaking role at least until Aiwass comes along - what, so only men can be pure evil? And let's not even begin to consider the gender ratios of the werewolves and the archaeologists...
- Well, historically in Real Life most proactive religious fanatics (i.e. werewolves) and scientists, ethical or not (i.e. archaeologists) were men. Doesn't quite explain vampires or ghouls though.
- Actually, this also makes sense, since most of the prominent evil figures in history were men, if only because men historically had more influence. Besides, there are female vampires (the Sisters of Blood and Countess Bathory, for instance). It's just that there probably are not a lot of female vampire knights, which makes sense when you consider that Résurrection has mostly a medieval-level society and therefore women are most likely rarely allowed into the military, barring special cases like the incredibly cruel Claudia.
- Another aspect of this is that it is revealed that some characters, like Mother Mitra, and quite possibly the heavy metal ghouls, are gender-flipped from their gender in life. Exactly how prevalent this is is unclear however.
- Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: While these vampires are firmly on the unfriendly end of the scale, being the reincarnations of the worst of the worst among humanity, though they are all over the place in the requirements:
- Blood requirement: They do need it, but fortunately for them there is plenty of blood around. Blood is used as currency among them.
- Conversion: Normally, one has to be reincarnated in Hell after being an unrepentant bastard in other to become a vampire. However, humans can be turned into vampires after being bitten just once (as seen on Volume 11), while other Hell residents such as lamias become their slaves, but not vampires themselves.
- Morality shifts: Vampires usually stay the same as they are when they reincarnate in Hell. Their victims turn into monsters pretty quickly.
- Super powers: The average vampire has super-human strength, speed, is harder to kill than most beings in Resurrection, are able to perform some magic tricks and so forth. Most of them are not immortal however, they age backwards like most beings in this setting. Dracula and his family are the only true immortals and each one of them possess special powers linked to their personality and deeds.
- Weaknesses: Because the sun doesn't shine in Résurrection and holy artifacts are non-existent, they are very hard to kill. It seems sufficient trauma does the trick, but Dracula's family are a whole new story: because they are truly immortal and their healing factors are very powerful, it takes ten times the effort to kill a vampire. (For example, when Thurim went rogue it was extremely hard to expire him afterwards because of his regenerative powers).
- Appearances: All vampires have red eyes and chalk-white skin, and most are white haired too. There are some exceptions such as Claudia, Nero and Dracula having dark hair and Baron Samedi being black (albeit two faced). Many of them possess body markings in their bodies that makes them very fearsome to look at.
- Smoking Is Cool: Requiem and Dragon light up while their respective masters are dueling, for absolutely no reason other than to look badass.
- So Bad, It's Good: Invoked: Various metal fans in Resurrection learn of the "Relics of Rock" including the one that gave rise to nu-metal (good and bad are reversed on Résurrection)...
- Sound-Only Death: Usually ignored, but thankfully employed when the Hierophants are having new suits made, possibly because there's really no way to show everything inside someone's skin getting sucked out of them in one picture.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted. Hitler appears and is killed off in three panels early in the series, while the likes of Nero, Robespierre and Aleister Crowley are still running around.
- Spin-Off: Claudia Chevalier Vampire, which goes into Claudia's backstory.
- Spiteful Spit: Its something of a Running Gag in this comic, as each time volume (except Vol. 3) opening with a flashback featuring a character dying and their murderer spitting on their corpse.
- Starcrossed Lovers: Heinrich and Rebecca: on Earth they were a Nazi and a Jew, respectively. In the afterlife they're part of different supernatural castes, with Heinrich being a vampire and Rebecca a lamia.
- Straw Feminist: Mother Venus was the leader of 23rd century Venus; having succesfully found a way to reproduce without men, she then purged her planet of all males. Speaks in permanent politically correct: ("Rectify their intestinal transit!" and "Proteic-fluid containers")
- Straw Hypocrite: Thurim was a medieval warlord who fought for the Catholic Christian Church in both the crusades in the Holy Land and the teutonic crusades in the Baltics. However, he was secretly a hell-worshipper who was after Lucifer's hammer all along.
- Stripperiffic: Pretty much all the women dress provocatively, but Mother Venus is the only one who gets called out on it by one of her minions, as she's also a gendercidal Straw Feminist. She argues that she dresses like a prostitute to punish men.
- Suicide Attack: Weaponized by Dracula. Since killing an evildoer in Resurrection causes all of their lemure victims to be freed from the realm, he stores on his ship several people (known as Scourges) whose crimes are so disproportionate that killing just one of them is guaranteed to instantly wipe millions of lemures from existence, potentially turning the tide of a losing battle. One of them is all but stated to be Adolf Hitler.
- Super-Soldier: Dracula's Berserkers are massive engines of destruction designed to utterly demolish enemy forces. Unfortunately, for all their immense power, they are unable to tell friend from foe, kill indiscriminately and once unleashed, they will never get under control, so they are all fitted with explosive collars to detonate once they have no further use.
- Sword and Gun: Ghouls wield guns and chainswords.
- Tattooed Crook: Almost all the vampires have cross tattos on their faces, and the knights have more tattos all over their bodies as a mark of their training; Attila and Black Sabbat have upside down pentacles. About the only vampires who don't have any markings are Dracula and Bathory.
- Talking Sword: Though Requiems' only line so far has been to tell Claudia to get screwed.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: How Resurrection time works. There's characters from Ancient Rome, Medieval England, WW2 soldiers and politicians, 23rd century war machines and rulers, etc. all living at the same time. Dracula, a 15th century noble, was apparently the very first vampire to arrive on Resurrection. If time was strictly reversed compared to our world, then one would think that a vampire from the far far future would be the oldest (or youngest, according to their terms) vampire on the plane, and if it ran parallel to our world then Nero, Dracula's adoptive son, would pre-date Dracula.
- On top of this, J. Edgar Hoover reveals that apparently there was a vampire plot of invading our world somewhere in the 1960's. Don't try to think too much about it...
- Those Wacky Nazis: Some of the vampires were Nazis in life, including Requiem himself, his friend Otto Von Todt, and Hitler, who's expired shortly after his first appearance.
- The Teutonic Knights: Thurim used to be a member of the knights and accidentally caused their defeat at the Battle of the Ice by using an overpowered artifact, which resulted in the ice breaking.
- Token Good Teammate:
- Requiem for the vampires.
- Tolecnal for the Dystopian dragons.
- Too Kinky to Torture:
- Claudia. One of her ex-victims tries to strangle her with chains, she just gets off on it. She also isn't addicted to black opium like most vampires because she doesn't need it; other vampires use it to forget their sins and to prevent their victim lemures from tormenting them, but not only does she enjoy remembering her sordid past, her lemures eventually quit tormenting her because she got off on that too.
- Nero qualifies as well, as he announces that shall abuse and torture himself in the same vein as "I'll Be in My Bunk".
- Tortured Monster: Anthrax is a humongous mutant who's essentially unkillable as he regenerates all wounds. However, when Requiem uses a spell on him that reveals his deepest desires, he proceeds to jump off from a skyscraper to his death.
- Training from Hell: Quite literally in order to become a vampire knight:"Scream twice if you can still hear me."
- Unholy Holy Sword: Thurim, though it's a hammer.
- Unholy Matrimony: Dracula and Bathory, though its a rather loose relationship: he still keeps an harem of brides, while she takes some paramours from time to time.
- Unusual Euphemism: Venus the ghoul is probably the reigning Empress of this trope. Even being a politician and a feminist does not justify the concentration of euphemisms she employs. She doesn't merely use euphemisms, she speaks in them, each euphemism more unusual then the other. She has euphemisms for sensitive subjects, less sensitive subjects, and completely trivial subjects (such as the word "Mother".)
- "Proteic fluid containers" for "tits" comes to mind.
- Vampires Are Sex Gods: Played with, as vampires are just as likely to be ugly as they are beautiful, even ones that aren't butt-ugly have a very fearsome appearance due to their tattoos. That doesn't stop them from being heavily sexualized on the other hand.
- Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Requiem sleeps in a coffin in his private quarters on Resurrection. He also uses it for sex when he is reunited with Rebecca.
- Weird Currency: Blood is used as currency in Draconia, even non-vampires tend to gather as much blood as they can because of its value. Its not the only currency available, as gold is still precious to Dystopians.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: All the ghouls are people who, in life, wreaked evil in a misguided attempt to do good.
- The Worm That Walks: Vermicelli, the assistant of Doctor Dippel, is full of maggots that move his otherwise inanimate carcass. Unfortunately, he needs to be recharged every so often.
- Written Sound Effect: The Impaler, the cool-as-hell stake gun that Heinrich uses to save Otto's life, goes "TEPES!" when it's fired.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Dr. Dippel finishes the creation of his titanic Frankenstein's Monster, the Arch-Hierophant commands said monster to brutally slaughter its creator. His "justification" is that if worst comes to worst, he can blame the creation of the monster entirely on Dippel (being expired, the doctor couldn't really say anything in his defense) and pretend he never had anything at all to do with the attempt to overthrow Dracula.
- You Fight Like a Cow: Tengu, Tengu, Tengu. And Cryptus. So when they fight each other...
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In "Le Couvent des soeurs de sang", Requiem has to sneak into said convent to rescue Rebecca... Only to find out from its residents, she was taken elsewhere.
