The WALL•E forum Role Play was a roleplay hosted on the now defunct WALL•E forum. The plot picks up where WALL•E left off; the Colony is being run, various minor adventures occur, and some new characters crop up. The role-play is remarkable for its cohesiveness; over more then a hundred different topics, various characters will remark on past events with very clear reference, and the past and future of many characters are intertwined to a remarkable degree.
This Role-play provides examples of:
- Above Good and Evil: Good and evil are just labels. Ghertivel considers himself above such futile concepts as labels. He considers himself a genius.
- And A.R.G.O was never programmed to tell good apart from evil, so he has no qualms writing both concepts off as insignificant.
- Mr. Pax only sees shades of grey, because after all, knowledge is neutral, the application is dangerous.
- The Abridged Series: The "Just For Fun" section of the forum.
- Absent Aliens: Played straight for a while, then averted with the introduction of Gauntlet. Before long, the galaxy was teeming with life.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The sword of House Milweather, master forged and perfect in almost every respect.
- Laser blades in general are this.
- Accidental Kiss: Auto and BRIDGET's First Kiss, when all the robots had been turned in humans, was pretty much an accident where BRIDGET tripped, Auto caught her in his arms before she fell, and they kissed on impulse. At the time, they both tried to persuade themselves that it was due to their being trapped in humans bodies, since feelings and emotions were humans defects. However, they couldn't stop thinking about it...
- Action Duo: WALL•E has saved EVE at times, and EVE has saved him at other times, and they have saved each other at other times yet. But they're (almost) always together in all missions, or fighting to be reunited.
- A straighter example would be Blacklight and Marina. Blacklight for being the head of a military intent on defeating the most powerful faction out there, and Marina for her regenerative ability and loyalty to him. They even have a kid...
- Actual Pacifist: You just can't get SCUBA to believe that robots can do things to other robots. Even when Blacklight held him hostage, his feelings were more of pity for what the box had done to Blacklight (thusly causing him to behave in such a un-robot way), than of resentment.
- The Ahnold: If he could travel back in time, Domenico would want to be Schwarzenegger's stuntman (when off duty, that is).
- Finnegan Rollo is another of these.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The insane A.R.G.O. Enough said.
- Air-Vent Passageway: A variation of this was seen when Remy and Rosa spied the Hurricane's prisons from an air vent, thusly finding out that Blacklight had altered EVE, Pilot and BRIDGET's memories.
- The ventilation and maintenance systems on the Forthright are by the GDA for transport and escape.
- All a Part of the Job: Though he sometimes gets at wits end with some of his crewmates, Domenico can push personal rivalries aside and work effortlessly with them because he knows that together they're a great squad.
- The All-Seeing A.I.: You can't see A.R.G.O. But you know that he can always see you.
- So can his insane twin.
- There's also the Internet, which apparently has gained sapience.
- The P'tol Constructs again, more specifically Voka.
- Always Someone Better: The insane A.R.G.O spent 700 years of non-existence as the backup unit of an A.I clever enough to make his own endless backups. Not needed for so long, yet desperately wishing to be of use, it eventually drove him mad with murderous intentions. And he's only waiting to make his twin and his creator pay for his torment.
- And I Must Scream: The insane A.R.G.O. was deactivated- but still conscious- for over seven centuries. It's the main reason why he's crazy.
- Also, when the Blacklight Autopilot was defeated for the first time, he was ripped apart, and his CPU was thrown away- while still conscious. It's one of the reasons he hates Sergey, as he was the one who did it.
- Jeromios was stripped apart and painfully tortured. And all he could do was watch.
- Voka stayed powered down for seven million years in the heart of the crashed Array on Gauntlet, keeping an eye on things.
- Animal Jingoism: common for robots who look like animals.
- Cat-bots are Evil, and eat REM-Es with their cornflakes. Dog-bots are a REM-E's best friends. (Remy)
- Dog-bots rule and cat-bots drool. (Houdini)
- Even though they are sometimes very colorful. (Spectrum)
- Another Dimension: Negaverse certainly applies.
- The portal universe may also be this.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Grim and the Creatures in general, who pretty much ARE Death - when you think that they consume the temporal energy of their victims until the latters become, quite litterally, ash.
- Anxiety Dreams: Shortly(as in, minutes) before the doomed meeting of the GDA in Unmasked, Korinna has a nightmare of the people she'd bonded with during her time undercover and the fates she'd doomed them to with her betrayal.
- Arm Cannon: many examples of this. EVE probes, AND-I and BRIDGET units, Marina...
- The Atoner: Stavro Carter, one of the most famed scientists of White Enterprises, became a rebel informant and has secretly sabotaged many experiments and framed others for it (they are not innocent; if you ask him, no White Enterprises citizen can be really called innocent). However, he doesn't think he can really ever clear his name or make up for the hundreds he has killed (although he arguably spared them a Fate Worse than Death if he had not). That's why he doesn't want other Vantage members to know that he's really on their side - he deserves their hatred.
- Attention Deficit Ooh Colorful: The aptly named Spectrum. FAIR-E also has some elements of this.
- Author Avatar: Several creators have created roleplay counterparts of themselves:
- CAPT-N—Nabilla
- Dementor—Sergey
- Cri 86—Cristina di Ventimiglia
- Due to Cristina(or "Other Cri/OCri" as some call her) going increasingly insane and Off the Rails in the Blended JFF canon, Cri 86 disowned her as an Author Avatar and selected Korinna Doom as her new one. The designation is set to remain in the Reboot.
- treehugger0123—Catherine
- .RK—Erik
- Grudir—Exeter
- AUTO2011—Carsten
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: BULL-E, literally.
- The war on Gauntlet managed to wake up Voka, which in turn kicked off the Rim Collective.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Catherine gets one in The Colony:Day One when she's marked as Captain.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Adaptoids can determine the complete specs of any robot after a quick scan. This is necessary to allow them to accurately shapeshift into them.
- Baby Talk: Chiara, Reyn and Carla practice it. Other kids will too, most likely.
- Backstory: several backstories have been explored in depth.
- From A.R.G.O's creation to the Pangea Project, secretly in development stage at the time of Shelby Forthright, down to his rivalry with Icarus White's ancestor, everything Ghertivel does today was begun before he decided to go in suspended animation and trick time itself.
- If the insane A.R.G.O's past had gone differently, he would be an evil A.I at Ghertivel's orders. As of it, he's an insane A.I, and with a vendetta to settle.
- The backstory of humanity and robotkind on the original five-year cruise was explored as well. As was the backstory of Bn L and several Riptide and Colony characters before that.
- Badass Longcoat: Traditional trench coat/greatcoat of the Lady's Shield. Always black, all the time.
- Also Captain Neo Hikato of the Nexus.
- Band of Brothers: The Riptide might qualify.
- Also, in their way, the Undersite people.
- Arguably the Flintstrike (formerly mercenaries) counts.
- Barrier Warrior: you'd be hard pressed to find HAN-D in battle without her shield active unless it's been damaged in some way.
- Batman Gambit: Icarus White pulls one on Cri. While it looks like he is merely taking her in, he is actually undermine her trust toward the colony, the Blacklight military, and the GDA. And, it is also a way to find out the names of the GDA members.
- Ghertivel tries one on Yuri to win him over. He could then make the Riptide look bad, causing everyone else to turn to him as well. He could then convince everyone that his project would work.
- Bedlam House: The Chamoix, oh so very very much.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The insane ARGO - or rather a mix between And I Must Scream and this trope. All his life, he's really only wanted to be useful, only to be abandoned in limbo with the knowledge that he would never get the chance to exist. Little wonder it drove him a bit bat-crap insane.
- Too bad that it actually it drove him bat-crap insane with murderous intentions...
- Beware the Nice Ones: Of all the Riptide crew, Sybille might seem the less threatening. Blacklight made the mistake to push her past the edge when he took over the Serigala and held her friends captive. Even he was surprised by her forceful, cool-blooded reaction.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Inferno loves to cook, dance, sing, dress up, and her Sergeywergey. If you shoot her in the back, she's down, and if she sees Sergey, she forgets everything else. But she has claws and is literally holding back an army of Eldritch Abominations with her insanity alone.
- BFG: Various ones seen, but the most impressive have to be the cannons mounted on starships. They range from being the size of a person to the size of buildings.
- Special mention goes to the supercannon, which is a half mile in length. Though it may not be the only one.
- It isn't. The P'tol introduced the magnetic accelerator cannon to the Rim Collective, and it arguably one of the most powerful weapons in the 'verse.
- Special mention goes to the supercannon, which is a half mile in length. Though it may not be the only one.
- Big, Bulky Bomb: Aryl uses one to blow up the underground, and the colonists inside, in Return.
- Birds of a Feather: Like Auto, BRIDGET outwardly dispassionate and abhors any display of emotions, even after she (somewhat grudgingly) came to accept her own feelings for the Autopilot. Neither is big on public displays of affection, they're often impatient, and look forward to carrying out their directives at best of their capacities.
- Domenico found kindred spirits in the Quasar crew, leading him to question (even if just for a time) his own loyalty to the Riptide.
- Meeting the same-minded Blacklight gave the insane A.R.G.O a purpose for the first time in his life, and even more tools to carry out his revenge.
- Bored with Insanity: Inferno knows she's insane, but she's recently had a change of heart.
- Inferno: I have only killed TWENTY FREAKING SEVEN, and you know how I know, I KEPT COUNT! And every one of them knew it was me, and every one of them had a fair chance. I NEVER made it unfair to them. And then the Chicken came, and I got put in charge of this army that wants me dead, and I KNOW exactly what happened on every ship because they talk about it—LISTEN TO ME! There is no reason to kill a sick woman! There never was! I WANT TO SAVE HER! I want to be the good guy again! I want to be lovable again!
- Born Winner. A.R.G.O is not a winner. He's just programmed that way.
- Brains and Brawn: Domenico and Terenzio.
- Brainwashed: Blacklight successfully replaced EVE's memories for a time, making her believe in his humans-are-evil propaganda. He did allow her to remember her love for WALL•E, though. As much as she fought against it, BRIDGET also had her memories replaced in the same occasion. Her devotion to Auto still lingered in her circuits though, but she couldn't make a reason of it.
- Zorro was also reset by White Enterprises, losing his self-consciousness and personality and becoming, in fact, just a heartless, emotionless machine.
- But even so, seeing Soulless again confused him greatly. He didn't recognize her, but also unwittingly singled her out from the other Blacklight's soldiers he was battling, as if something in him did not want to fight her.
- Pilot, though, got blown up. She got better.
- Mollie managed to erase a single memory from the entire crew of the Quasar. And she was able to do it under three days, and the crew suspects nothing.
- Zorro was also reset by White Enterprises, losing his self-consciousness and personality and becoming, in fact, just a heartless, emotionless machine.
- Break the Haughty: Finding out that she had been created by Blacklight severely mined BRIDGET's self-confidence, making her see herself as tainted and potentially dangerous to Auto - er, to the Axiom.
- Breeding Cult: Steven Alabaster is considered an Omnissiah by the Quintinians cult due to being born to the descendants of sworn rivals - Scorpius White and James Alabaster.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Played with a variation by Clark, the movie star, who had his speech synthesizer adapted so that he can talk with just about any accent.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: Domenico.
- Finegan Rollo. Loves his family and playing the guitar; the bounty hunting is a side job.
- However, as of the introduction of his younger sister Sabrina, Nick also counts.
- The Butcher: Give Domenico a gun and say that it's open season, and you're guaranteed to make this soldier's day.
- Bosker Milweather genuinely enjoys close combat more than is reasonably healthy.
- The Shielders call Finnegan 'Godkiller', a title which he dislikes.
- Kirra'hie does what he has to do
- A.R.G.O loves destroying intruders and seeing them suffer.
- Buy Them Off: Ghertivel has been trying for a while to buy the Colony off, not for scruples, but because it'd be so much easier to conduct his Pangea Project to a grandiose finale if all these mediocre minded fools stopped being such annoying stones in his shoes.
- Call to Agriculture: There's nothing EVE would love more than a long peaceful life with her WALL•E. And Captain McCrea is not a warmonger. He was happy with his rural life after the Axiom landed. He does not seek troubles. Troubles seek him.
- Camera Spoofing: Played with a variation by the insane A.R.G.O, who showed Sergey and Ian snippets of security footage where it looked like the other members of the Riptide had failed their tests and died (whilst they had actually survived), in order to break their spirit.
- Can't Stand Them, Can't Live Without Them: Somehow subverted with Clark and Marilyn, who can't really stand each other, but have formed a filmmaking company of their own (Clarlyn Pictures) and appear as affable partners-in-business to the eyes of the media.
- The Captain: McCrea's title is not just honorific.
- Not to mention Captain Cooper, Captain Nabilla, Captain Toraldo... there's a lot.
- Captain Catherine Juniper subverts it; she calls herself Captain and is a member of the Council of Captains, but she's technically an Admiral, as she's the head of the entire Ecoship fleet as opposed to a solo ship.
- Cargo Cult: The Imperium of Light's vast empire is built on this trope.
- Carrying the Antidote: Buddy played this trope straight once and twice with a variation.
- The antidote to his first virus was found in the computers of the old BnL labs after he had to leave them in a hurry.
- Later, he boasted to be able to produce an antidote to the Black Plague, but only after his terms of the ransom were met (Sergey, however, managed to program a cure just as well).
- Same goes with his latest virus creation he knows he could make an antidote should the virus accidentally come to infect White Enterprises robots, but he's not developing the antidote or actually keeping it in his computer until there's need for it.
- Catchphrase: Quite a few...
- SCUBA: "Bubbles! My bubbles!" and "Robots aren't meant to live in a box, it does things to them."
- A.R.G.O (both): * evil chuckle*
- The entirety of the Chamoix: "Cheesecake."
- Terenzio: Hey, Comante! * to Icarus White*
- Cats Are Mean: in Remy's case, no comment.
- Domenico, on the other hand, likes cats.
- Cat Scare: Literally, every time Remy sees a cat-bot.
- The Chains of Commanding:
- Leadership can be no easy thing when Captain McCrea has to deal with a inter-galaxy war between a fleet of robots who want him and his people dead and a fleet of human who wants him and his people enslaved. Not to mention the everyday nuisance like such stubborn robots as Auto and BRIDGET, whom he sometimes feel are defying his authority (not so much lately, though).
- After Catherine opens the doors of the Ecoship fleet for the GDA to find asylum after Unmasked, she finds out pretty soon that every Ecoship Autopilot that isn't MN(who was the only one to gain sentience due to having the more complex programming needed to manage the other ships as well as her own) is, to put it bluntly, a moron. While she could forgive them being unprepared to deal with unfamiliar unit types and passengers that weren't crew, there was also the fact that they seemed to be incapable of remembering solutions to problems that already arose. This wouldn't be so bad if each ship had it's own captain, but Catherine found herself dealing with the repeated needs of dozens of ships almost non-stop. She eventually gets so stressed and burned out that she considers asking Mekkano to find somewhere else to house the GDA, only to fall victim to Oblivious Guilt Slinging (see below). Fortunately, she then gets the idea to ask Mekkano if she could patch the other Autopilots to have the memory and critical thinking needed to manage the new passengers on their own without having to constantly come to her for guidance, which Mekkano manages in short order.
- Character Development: BRIDGET went from being Auto's shadow to an adoring right-hand in perpetual denial of her feelings for him, and from that to being his quiet but devoted partner.
- Characterization Marches On: Anybody remember when Blacklight was an insane omnicidal Autopilot instead of a stern but noble Knight Templar? Me neither.
- Some believe that He Who Fights Monsters applied until Blacklight fell in love and reexamined himself.
- On the other hand, Colony members threw around concepts like reprogramming and scrapping robots quite casually back in the day. It took the combined forces of Cri, Vanessa, and White Enterprises to make them see how wrong that was.
- Tempest was created with little characterization beyond "Hates ARGO and wants to see him suffer". Then one RPer suggested to treehugger0123 that Tempest's AI be made of the bits and pieces of programming that ARGO failed to retrieve when he started searching for them after 700 years of nonexistence (long story). She decided to go with that, and Tempest's backstory developed from there.
- The Charmer: Terenzio, The Dandy.
- Chef of Iron: When she's not helping her crewmembers save the Colony from some threat, or running analysis in her lab, Sybille can be found in the kitchens, indulging her passion for cooking.
- Chekhov's Skill: You don't get to be an effective Mole without being a very good actor and being good at on-the-spot fabrications, both of which came in handy for mole-turned-traitor Korinna when she and Craig were rescuing Catherine after the latter was captured and brainwashed; since Catherine still had enough of herself left to recognize Korinna, Korinna decided to put on a "Laurie" facade and convince Catherine that she and Craig were with WE to get her to follow them without resistance.
- Child Soldier: The CATH-E units are a combination of this and Powered by a Forsaken Child. CATH-E units were originally children, but were given heavy cybernetic augmentation. Also, a mind control chip was put into their brains to make them completely loyal to the corporation. They can be freed by disabling the chip, but very few- if any- ever manage to fully recover from the trauma.
- Calim Gelki has been a soldier since he was fourteen.
- Chronic Villainy: Even after he spent a year in jail, Buddy still thinks he is right and the Colony is wrong.
- Ghertivel was elderly already when A113 was issued. He spent 700 years in suspended animation. But weed does not die, as does not this man's subtle villainy.
- A.R.G.O just revels in being a villain. Why should he change?
- And so does the insane A.R.G.O
- Clone Angst: Inverted with HARLEY and QUIN, who think being clones is cool and have been known to swap names whenever they feel like it.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: SCUBA sees the world in matters of boxes, robots, fishes and cleaning. And he's perfectly happy with it.
- On the other hand, Inferno Optic wants to make everybody a cloud cuckoo lander.
- Collapsing Lair: A variation. Ghertivel's house was almost completely destroyed by Blacklight. But more than the house which he kept for covert reason, the underground secret lab is the true lair where he dwells. A hologram as the house as it used to look like now stands in the place of the rubbles and the remains, as a mocking warning to Blacklight.
- Comfort Food: Deconstructed late in White Storm; after Catherine gets back to the Ecoship Prime, still reeling from her transformation, she tries indulging in some dark chocolate cheesecake to calm herself down, only to find herself unable to swallow it and nearly choking as she tries. Turns out CATH-Es are stripped of their ability to eat, and the moment only served to emphasize how inhuman she now was on top of robbing her of a source of respite.
- Cool Spaceship: The Axiom, the Riptide, the Haiku, the Hurricane... too many to count.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Icarus White, head of White Enterprises- a massive criminal organization built from the remains of Bn L.
- Don't forget Scorpius White, his ancestor.
- And of course, Shelby Forthright.
- Cowardly Lion: Cats frighten Remy. So do loud noises. But more than once this little REM-E has stood by his humans and robots friends, and even risked his life, against much greater foes.
- Creator In-Joke: In the 2nd Anniversary RP, Cri mistakenly calls the Shadow Sector the Dark Sector. Seconds later, she sneezes Outtake Flu
- Why are all K-9s programmed to hate the piano song Chopsticks? One of CAPT-N's old music teachers hated the piece, and CAPT-N and her classmates would often play it just to annoy him.
- Creepy Monotone: One of the characteristics of robots without personalities. Auto is the most obvious example.
- Crossover: Two, actually. The movie Up is revealed to be actual history in the backstory. Furthermore, a small group is transported to another world and eventually make it back with a passenger in tow...
- There's a whole(Now dead yet incomplete) sub-board of Roleplays that combine the normal RPverse with various Pixar Films(And Bolt).
- Curiosity Causes Conversion: Cri might be this, if you consider that she got involved with what would become the head of the Ground Dweller Army at the age of eight because she was curious about the way those kid always stuck together and talked to each other as if they had some big secret.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Deb, litterally.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Played with. Vida Moretti had her brain damaged whilst being transferred to her cybernetic body, and is consequently emotionless and cold. Her younger sister, Vanessa, didn't suffer anything, though, so she's still herself (but in a new body).
- The Swarm, though, is a weaponized variation of this trope. Victims have their minds downloaded into small robots with weapons. Consequently, they act and speak childishly and view murder as a game. Vanessa has even called the Swarm the stuff of nightmares...
- Most of White Enterprises cyborgs are intentional versions of this, as they have mind control implants in their brains. It's averted when the implants are removed, however- they're perfectly normal.
- A variation with the Abomination; a closer description would be that cybernetics ate its mind.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Many, many characters.
- Darker and Edgier: The forum RP began as a simple, light-hearted story, a bit of fun for the forum members. Then FREDD-E came up with Blacklight, and there was no looking back after that.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Blacklight. YMMV, though...
- Dead Partner: Played with. Soulless knew that the Zorro she loved was dead after White Enterprises reset his memories, but she couldn't bring herself to attack him or even just let Blacklight kill him when she was confronted with him in Caught In The Web.
- Marlin also lost his beloved Coral when White Enterprise attacked Earth.
- A God Am I: God does not exist and, even if he did, Ghertivel would be way more Almighty than him. In his veeeery humble opinion.
- Adrian Roman, who's far more experienced and powerful, subverts this trope by styling himself as a wizard.
- Inferno Optic knows full well she's a god. She also knows she's not the only one...
- Azog - literally when you think about it.
- So much that he is actually worshiped by the Pandora Society. Yeah.
- The P'tol Constructs; the survivors of a dead civilization, who by their very nature, nullify the powers of extradimensional creatures.
- The Imperium of Light are this trope taken up to eleven.
- Deconstructed Trope: With so many canonical romantic relationships(no surprise, considering the movie that started all this was a romance story), it's refreshing to have at least two relationships—the Old!Verse Catherine+Carsten and the Blended!Verse Roscuro+Cristina—that aren't all lovehearts and rainbows and ultimately turn out unhealthy. The former ends with Catherine having enough and dumping Carsten, but Roscuro can't bring himself to do the same with Cristina.
- Defiant to the End: When finally faced with having the control implant put in, Catherine doesn't stop struggling even though the battle is clearly lost and rescue isn't coming. When questioned as to why she couldn't at least have some dignity in her final moments as herself, she replied that she found no dignity in giving up. They ultimately have to tranquilize her to make sure the implant goes in without her being lobotomized.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Korinna/Laurie. She thinks she's just doing her job, but she's slowly coming around due and beginning to question her orders, her sentimental life and her morals due to the influence of two people in her life - Bruce, for whom she actually came to care, and Catherine, whom she took under her wing. She refuses to acknowledge it, though, even to herself.
- Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Ghertivel attempted this when he gave modified weapons to the Riptide crew in "Ice Plague". Little did he know that Blacklight was way ahead of him, due to InGRiD's flawless espionage work.
- Designer Babies: Alissa and Jasmine.
- Determinator: Blacklight. CPU ripped out of body? Has a new one built. Ship destroyed? He turns the wreckage into a shuttle, flies into space, and rebuilds the first shipwreck he can find into a battlecruiser. He. Never. Gives. Up.
- Deus ex Nukina: Ghertivel's Project Pangea, in his mind the only possible - and lasting! -solution to the trash problem.
- Do Androids Dream?: This is a little complicated. It's implied that all machines of sufficient complexity could and often do develop personalities over time, but looming over them all is the threat of being "reset" to factory standards (i.e. mindless automata). Add to that the existence of two cyborgs, one mad scientist, the entirety of White Enterprises.... It's more likely androids have nightmares.
- Do-Anything Robot: Adaptoids. Current form can't do the job? Transform into one that can.
- Does Not Understand Sarcasm: Generally, Domenico takes sarcasm way too literally.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!:Played with; Catherine is pitied by KATANA for "being denied a chance to die an honorable death and forced to live among ronins", which couldn't be further from how Catherine really feels about her situation.
- Also, Korinna wants to prove that she doesn't need to be backed up by Adam to be someone in her own right.
- Dragon with an Agenda: When Icarus White's ED-Is got him out of jail with an offer of freedom and a business proposal, Buddy was only too ready to rise to the bait. However, he does not think White really has any claim on the society that was started by his many-times great-great-great-uncle Shelby Forthright. While, he's Forthright's last living descendant.But why kill the golden egg laying goose before it's time, when it pays the bill, gives him a roof above his head, and opportunity for revenge? So he waits.
- Durable Deathtrap: All of the insane A.R.G.O's factory, outwardly decaying but lethally efficient inside.
- Dysfunction Junction: GDA members, aside from fighting a war in which they're outmatched, outgunned, and outnumbered, generally fall into one of four groups:
- Robots, all in constant fear of being reset and some having only been barely saved from that fate,
- Humans, either former White citizens or children kidnapped before they could be indoctrinated,
- Lab subjects, horrifically experimented upon,
- or 828 agents, special operations soldiers with their own problems.
- It got so bad that the leader and co founder of the GDA went temporarily insane at one point.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: When you go back and find Buddy's first virus was defeated using pies to the face, you begin to wonder what people were thinking....
- Eating Machine: Every survey animal-bot on the Ecoships is one; it's not a strict requirement for them(unless they're part of the emergency reproduction line), but they're able to consume and analyze the normal diet of the species they mimic in order to determine if it's still safe for the normal animals to eat, and alert the Autopilot if it isn't.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Chamoix ran into a hyperspace distortion and was consequently infected with these.
- Not to mention the Infinite Entity, an elemental force of evil born out of the very creation of the universe. It is implied to be the inspiration for every 'evil god' in every myth or legend in the whole of existence.
- Electric Torture: A.R.G.O has been known to enjoy attacking intruders to the network with high voltage electric charges, until either the intruders leave of their own accord or (preferably) the neural shock kills them.
- So does the insane A.R.G.O with his 'experimental subjects'
- Tempest is equally capable of this, but prefers to just turn it on the insane A.R.G.O. One of her favorite tricks before A.R.G.O. wised up about trying to shock her was to reflect his shocks right back at him.
- Emotionless Girl: Erin the EVE probe is a variation- she is the youngest of the EVE probes, having been built as a replacement for Lara, and so has not had the chance to develop emotions to the same extent as the other probes.
- In fact, most sentient robots go through a phase of either being this or The Spock before developing true sentience. Some stay that way when they get there.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: If you ask Claudio, even Sybille telling him off.
- Evil Counterpart: Victor/Adam, for Sergey.
- Evil Former Friend: Zorro for the GDA. He's not exactly in himself, though.
- Evil Genius: Played with one difference in Ghertivel's case - he works alone.
- Evil Twin: A.R.G.O has an even eviller twin.
- Erin also has a psychotic twin in the form of Lara.
- Evil Virtues: The insane A.R.G.O is a heartless all-mighty monster, but he was ready to sacrifice himself for the safety of a thousand many robots and did his best to bring Paul the VN-GO back to life. And he also plays music.
- On the other hand, if you're an enemy of Blacklight Military... basically, scream.
- Failsafe Failure: The SCUBA line, perhaps.
- And definitely the insane A.R.G.O.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: For what essentially amounts to one big Pixar fanfic, the fight scenes are incredibly graphic.
- The Fashionista: Marylin, the robot diva.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: All the starships have played this trope at least once. It's hand-waved by them going through hyperspace.
- Fate Worse than Death: Argueably what happens to Jeromios. He tries to right a wrong. What happens? He is stripped apart, has electricty passed through his nervous system (which is very painful), and has a necklace made out of his remains. And he is forced to watch. Cue the And I Must Scream.
- Also, more generally, being reset. You die, but your body works on, running on factory standard personality. It's comparable to zombification.
- Life - a biological - goes through an interesting variation of this. His body is brought back, but his mind/personality isn't there, so in a way it was like he was reset. This is later subverted.
- Also, more generally, being reset. You die, but your body works on, running on factory standard personality. It's comparable to zombification.
- Fearless Fool: BRIDGET contracted a near fatal virus in order to find a cure for Auto once, and got her internal circuits ripped apart by Blacklight for attempting to trap him alone.
- Domenico has also been known to do fool things like nearly getting himself killed to push his Captain out of the way of an explosion. If you ask him, that's what they trained him for in the Military Academy.
- Soulless was nearly destroyed by White Enterprises because she remained behind to fight even when all her GDA comrades had retreated.
- By his very nature, Finnegan Rollo takes on suicidal odds, because that's what he does.
- Find the Cure!: So far this has been played five times in the RP. Thrice by Buddy, first by attempting to kill Auto (and as many other robots as would likely be infected, since they were expendable to his cause) and then by blackmailing the Colony to have Auto scrapped; once by Blacklight, who wanted to wipe mankind off Earth to rescue the robots; and once when the remains of the Black Plague virus actually became sentient.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The Chicken.
- Foil:
- Once a horrific biking accident requires Sandro to undergo Project Upgrade in order to survive, he becomes one to Catherine; they were both augmented to be immortal cyborgs while unconscious and unable to protest, but while Catherine's transformation was for malevolent purposes, Sandro's was done with good intentions to allow him to survive. They both initially tried to cope by isolating themselves from those they would outlive, but while this involved isolating himself from pre-existing close family in Sandro's case, for Catherine it was just a matter of leaving behind more distant colonists and captains that she figured would assume she'd return to stasis and forget about her. Sandro left Earth behind completely to wander between space stations, making no effort to contact his old friends and family, while Catherine remained in the asteroid belt and continued to supervise Earth's restoration behind the scenes via her Autopilot. Sandro tried to leave his humanity behind and believe himself to just be a robot, while Catherine tried to continue to live her life as a human(neither strategy had much success). Finally, Catherine returned to Earth in a matter of months but needed someone else to convince her to do so, while Sandro returned decades later but on his own.
- In the reboot and blended canons, Candice and Anton are set to be Foils; they're both Supreme Chefs who take great pride in their work, but on top of the obvious of Candice specializing in desserts while Anton's better with meals, Anton is pretentious and boastful, believing his opinion is always right. Meanwhile, Candice is more down-to-earth and open to criticism. Also, while Anton focuses on high-society, Candice wishes to make as many people happy with her creations as possible, regardless of class(and in fact her main target demographic is children, which tend to not be very wealthy on their own).
- Foreign-Language Tirade: When Domenico's anger gets the better of himself, he rants in Italian. A lot.
- Friends All Along: A variation was the reunion of Domenico and Terenzio. Domenico recognized the shuttle of Terenzio before it even landed, went in a rage and tried to beat the crap out of Terenzio, the entire Colony had to separate them before he could actually break his neck, and only after all that it was revealed that the two were really brothers. Hilarity Ensued.
- From Nobody to Nightmare. Buddy was just one of the Axiom's many passengers: fat, lazy, strapped to his hoverchair. Too bad that he also happened to be Shelby Forthright's descendant, and saw it as his duty to punish the Autopilot for not following Directive A113 to the very end. His hatred to Auto has now extended to the whole Colony, and he's now been given the money and means to carry it out.
- Gambit Roulette - Aryl has one in the works. However, she has something that might subvert this.
- The Gambler: Terenzio Bareggi, a charming gambler and shuttle racer. Cards, casino games, sports betting - you name one clandestine gamble and he's sure to have staked on it. He also always wins. Or at least reasonably often.
- God Couple: Marina and Blacklight. Blacklight was able to move war on White Enterprises, and reach a stalemate, with his determination, cunning and military value; Marina is virtually indestructible.
- Going to Give It More Energy: A variation of this is possibly the "sane" A.R.G.O, who had his own energy charges turned against him by Blacklight, was damaged fatally - and took down the whole network with him, including Blacklight himself (he had disconneted in time, though). Howevere, A.R.G.O had already stored safely out of reach a backup copy of himself which reactivated the network immediately afterwards and took back the patrolling as if nothing had happened.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Subverted and played straight simultaneously by Inferno Optic. She was already insane before the revelation; it just made her even crazier.
- Played straight with anybody who reads her programming.
- Good Is Not Nice: Domenico is an honest fellow, and deep down at earth, a good person. But he also happens to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, jerk on earth.
- Kirra'hie also lied about Maddi being the Queen of Blades, because it wasn't important for the Colony to know.
- Got Volunteered: Word of God is that this is why Anton and Stretch, of all people, were tasked with informing Catherine of Korinna's capture in the prologue of Unmasked: When Catherine asked why she hadn't heard from her after so long, Mekkano, knowing full well how close they were and that Catherine would not take the news well, sent out a mass message asking who wanted to be the one to inform her, and Stretch and Anton happened to be the last ones to reply along the lines of "Not it!"
- Greater Need Than Mine:
- BRIDGET, each and every time that Auto was damaged (often at the risk of her own life).
- Also Doc, who wanted Melba, Blackflame and WALL•E to be treated first, even though he himself had contracted the same virus.
- Later in Unmasked, Korinna refuses aid for her wounds in favor of the other wounded GDA members being tended to first. When Catherine returns from her service errand to find that Korinna's wounds have been left untreated the whole time, she's less than pleased.
- When Catherine, following her capture, brainwashing, and rescue that left her a Shell-Shocked Veteran, wakes up from a nightmare that resulted in her cannons activating in the waking world, she becomes too worried to fall asleep again despite her exhaustion. Wallaby, who woke her up from said nightmare, insists on staying awake to keep an eye on her and make sure it doesn't happen again. When Catherine protests, Wallaby basically sites this trope.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Strangely enough, we have a mixture of White-and-Grey Morality, Black-and-Grey Morality, and Blue-and-Orange Morality... Yeah.
- Grudging "Thank You": Domenico, who had broken a leg, grudgingly thanked Vanessa for administering him a painkiller in Doppelganger.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: BRIDGET units practically have this as their hat.
- Heel–Face Turn: A variation with Blacklight. He recognized that the humans of the Colony treated robots as equals, and formed a truce with them. From his point of view, it's the Colony which has done the Heel Face Turn, not him.
- Heel Realization: Stavro had begun to glimpse the truth behind White Enterprises, but chose to keep his head down, until the desperate plea of a dying woman to know what had been of her son opened his eyes, like a slap in the face.
- Helicopter Parents: Somewhat played with. Marlin isn't so much worried as to who Nemo hangs around with, but that talking with just about anyone who has been in space might get ideas in his head to leave the safety of the Colony. Because space is evil,and already claimed the life of Nemo's mom.
- Henpecked Husband: Skinflint Demetrio Di Ventimiglia and his spenthrift wife, Astoria.
- Heroic BSoD: During Caught In the Web, Mekkano fades out for a while. Then she orders the GDA to perform a plan that's universally considered EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND STUPID. And then she starts fighting White cronies... while quoting The Lord of the Rings!
- It's also a general consideration that Blacklight's Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the colony was a form of this, due to Character Development no longer making him so set in his ways.
- Meta-example: When it was announced in early February that the WALL-E Forum was going down—and again when the forum actually went down at the beginning of March—all the RPers experienced this to varying degrees.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Korinna allowed herself to be taken in Unmasked in hopes that making herself an easy target would buy the rest of the GDA time to escape. It worked for most of them, but unfortunately, the one person she was most worried about saving(apart from Bruce) wasn't gonna take that lying down.
- Catherine gets to return the favor with interest in a scene late in Skeletons; when one raid goes very sour, she finds the bulk of the patrol robots after her team standing between her and said team. When she tries to shoot them down, they all turn towards her as she's now the bigger threat. Rather than try and rejoin everyone and risk them being caught in the crossfire, she runs elsewhere, leaving her teammates safe but ensuring her own capture. She does it again later when she's asked to spill where the GDA now resides in exchange for her freedom, outright refusing to do so even if it meant she'd inevitably be left Brainwashed and Crazy.
- Heroic Safe Mode: After Korinna is taken from her in the middle of the GDA rescue in Unmasked, Catherine lapses into the berserker variant.
- High-Heel–Face Turn: Cri.
- Also, Laurie has her own High-Heel–Face Turn moment planned...
- Buddy's third and most terrible virus in Caught In The Web might also apply...
- Hobos: The Undersite people might apply. However, while seemingly shabby and lazy, they work a lot to keep their underground abode comfortable (by their standards, that is). Subverted by Dr. Grifton, which you wouldn't call a hobo at all.
- Holding Hands: WALL•E and EVE? Did someone say WALL•E and EVE?
- Honor Before Reason: KATANA, the Samurai Autopilot. She follows the 'way of the warrior', and is often openly hostile to anyone who doesn't.
- Hope Sprouts Eternal: Because it all began with a plant in a boot.
- Humans Are Special: Played with. Most species have a defining trait which make them special in some way, though it's never universal.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Most of the Blacklight Military thinks this. Subverted in-universe, however- people like Icarus White represent a tiny proportion of mankind.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Some parts of Hyperspace, anyway. The rest of it is completely safe.
- The dangerous areas, however, are so dangerous they have the nickname of 'Hell'.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Played with. KATANA used to call Blacklight and his soldiers ronins, before she eventually saw the light and changed her mind. When CAESAR tried to insult them, she said that he was a subversive ronin and dumped him.
- I Am Spartacus: Cri, who insisted that she was also part of the BIS when InGriD's covert was blown up, demanding that if her comrade was arrested or banished from the Colony so would she. Actually, not only she wasn't a BIS agent but she had only found out that InGRiD was one like, minutes before.
- Vanessa ...Cristina, I'm afraid you're not fooling me. I appreciate that you might be helping to protect Petra- InGRiD - but-Cri: But what? Do I need to go fetch my BIS badge to prove that—
- I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Possibly Buddy during the course of his alliance with White Enterprises. He had his own agenda, though.
- And definitely Adam Mood.
- I Kiss Your Hand: Clark, often and to every robot, cyborg or human ladies who stays still long enough for him to kiss her hand.
- Amir would do it too.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: KATANA, when she was too late to save Life from being thrown in the Sun, and then thought she herself might have accidentally killed Bell.
- Later, in Beware The Weeping Angel, she thought the Angels had killed Yuri and, once more, she hadn't been there to help.
- I Want Grandkids: Rebecca Alabaster. Also Judith White-Gluz to some extent.
- Imagined Innuendo: Clark thinks that all female robots can't take their eyes off him.
- Improbable Age:
- Cri was about seventeen when she first joined the Ground Dweller's Army.
- And if that seems an improbable age to become a rebel fighter, just think that most other GDA members had begun rebelling against the enslavement of robots when they were only eight.
- Catherine was (biologically, at least, due to being in suspended animation for 700 years) in her mid-teens when she became captain of the entire fleet of Ecoships
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Adaptoid programming is as complex, flexible, and adaptive as their chassis, to better accommodate the different forms they can take and allow them to determine what form would fit the current need. As a result, self-awareness—with sentience following close behind—is more a matter of "when?" than of "if?"
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: In Ghertivel's case, self-isolation, since he's as antisocial as they come and considers himself way too superior to those mediocre-minded simpletons to live among them. He has his projects and experiments to work on, for science's sake! Common mortals just complain about everything. And say a lot of nonsense. And don't really understand anything that you tell them anyway.
- Invisibility Cloak: All InGRiD units can turn completely invisible (Silence, InGRiD, Ming...)
- I Owe You My Life: Cri was rescued from the Chamoix SOS by the Blueshift's crew, nearly at the cost of their own lives. She told them that if she ever got the chance to return the favor, she'd do so. Later, when Buddy's virus was unleashed on Blacklight Military and threatened to kill all of its robots, she wished she had never said such a thing, because the implication of her words (which she hadn't considered then) were that the crew's life would be at stake too.
- Also, Zorro, who was captured to give Cri, Houdini and Spectrum time to escape. It was because of his and the Blueshift's lives being held at stake that she actually did something very stupid in Caught In The Web.
- Craig Flagstarr joined the GDA out of gratitude after they rescued him from the Forthright's labs. Little did he know that his "rescuers" were led by none other than his daughter Ariana.
- Paul, the VN-GO, also joined Blacklight's Military out of gratitude for saving his life.
- But remembers nothing of it after having been killed by the virus, and later reprogrammed by ARGO.
- Terenzio would have been killed by a Weeping Angel had it not been for Eumi. In the process, she lost an arm, for which both he and his brother Domenico feel responsible.
- Somewhat subverted with Soulless, who owed her life to Blacklight's Military, but joined them because they had a common enemy rather than out of gratitude, since she didn't care about her life so terribly much at that point.
- It's Not You, It's Me: A variation was when BRIDGET found out that she was really Blacklight's creation all along. Upon being rescued and returning to the Axiom, she pleaded Auto to turn her off and possibly scrap her, because she feared that she might be actually dangerous for him. Although they were both in denial of their feelings at the time, it was her love for him that made her so desperate.Auto eventually refused, but BRIDGET had had it personal against Blacklight ever since.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: A variation was played with Soulless, who'd rather let Zorro live on the Forthright rather than bring herself to kill him, even though he was her enemy and no longer the K-9 she had fallen in love with.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: When Catherine encounters Adam during her search for Korinna in Unmasked, she pins him to the wall with her Arm Cannon and demands that he tell her where Korinna is being held. How well this works is Zig-Zagged. note
- Jet Pack: When not in a shuttle, Soulless and Marina both move on foot and need jetpacks to be able to fly.
- Just a Machine: The entirety of the propaganda of White Enterprises. A few non-White people think so too.
- Just a Stupid Accent: Esteban, the shabby leader of the Undersite, speaks in a thickly Portoguese-accented English.
- Kissing In A Tree: Melody and Houdini, Rainbow and Spectrum, and in JFF, Marina and Blacklight, BRIDGET and Auto... the list is long.
- Knight Templar: Blacklight is fighting for robot freedom by any means necessary. Including reprogramming robots who have "succumbed" to human propaganda.
- Kuudere: Blondi, the K-9.
- Lampshade Hanging: During Return, Aryl is revealed to be Oakhurst's sister. A similar reveal was done with Domenico and Terenzio during Anniversaries, an earlier RP. Aldrasio, having been there, is not surprised by the reveal, further backed up by Charlie.
- Laser Blade: Laser swords- and laser katanas- are used most notably by Bella, Captain Cooper, JAXA and KATANA.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: From Platform One (After seeing Jersey slice through a shuttle like butter):
- Macky: It's like something out of some gawky teenager's role play.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: EVE has a plasma gun and is not afraid to use it. Captain McCrea is a force to be reckoned with when his ship, his passengers, his robots or Earth are held at stake.
- Just because HAN-D doesn't like fighting doesn't mean she can't.
- Light Is Not Good: White Enterprises appears to be a happy, healthy civilization, although it thinks robots are appliances. Then you go downstairs and find the city-wide experimentation chambers...
- Invoked by Inferno Optic:
- Cri: Please, if there's anything you know that could help throw some light on this matter...
- JAXA is silvery and shiny, but don't let his white armor fool ya.
- Invoked by Inferno Optic:
- The Little Detecto: Ghertivel has created a scanning beam that detects the specifications of robot hardware.
- Little Miss Badass: Mekkano was saving robots at the age of eight. Given White Enterprises, that's saying a heck of a lot.
- Long-Distance Relationship: KATANA and CAESAR. She lives on Earth, he's stuck on the bridge of a starship orbiting in the galaxy.
- Jasmine and Daniel. She lives at the Forthright, he's on Earth. note
- Love at First Sight: Blackflame and Alpha, litterally.
- Somehow subversed with Brad and Paul, who hit him with an Unsettling Gender-Reveal at first sight.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: Sweet music, for A.R.G.O.
- For the insane A.R.G.O, too.
- Love Triangle: Soulless and Zorro loved each other. Very much so. Then Zorro was captured by White Enterprises, reset, and assigned to work with another K-9, Blondie, who later fell for him. She also hopes that he never realizes and reciprocate, since she knows that developing feelings or a personality would put him in danger on the Forthright. So it's a rather messed-up love triangle between those three..
- Also, technically both Victor and Stefan vie for their captain, Alinna. However, Stefan hasn't fully realized it yet, and Victor has his own agenda.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Blacklight revealing to BRIDGET that he had been responsible for the upgrade of SCUBA units into BRIDGET units to begin with, and thus, therefore, her own creator.
- The Mad Hatter: Inferno Optic, Netcop of the Bong, not only chose to be insane, but sabotaged half the bridge on her starship which consequently caused major problems in the repair ward. This directly lead to the truly insane robots wandering the ship, and from there the insanity spread rapidly. Let me reiterate: She directly caused the insanity of the entire ship.
- Mad Scientist: Ghertivel believes the only concrete way to get rid once and definitely of the trash problem is to cause a massive explosion in the solar system that will literally bring it back to factory new setting (read: just as it looked like after the Big Bang), so as to give humans another 2100 years to do what they please with the planet before it has to be reset again. And again. And again at will. God's complex, anyone?
- Also, Vida Moretti, who was heavily inspired by GLaDOS, does horrible, sick experiments for no reason other than For Science!.
- Magic from Technology: Adrian roman exploits a Stable Time Loop to give a Pompeii dwelling version of himself twenty-second century technology, alongside a few recorded hints. His past self successfully grasps the principles and manages to upgrade himself into a robotic body, continuing to work on his technological prowess for over two millennia. By the "current" time, he's able to run circles around the resident Evil Genius simply because of his head start.
- Make Up or Break Up: A variation of this was played with KATANA and CAESAR. When CAESAR refused to acknowledge Blacklight's authority, and failed to protect Bell due to his not being upgraded with an AAWF form (and thusly stuck on the Quasar's bridge), KATANA decided that he was really a ronin and dumped him. However, they can't live without each other, and settle on contacting each other in secret when their respective crews are away and/or asleep, so that KATANA can still see her sweetheart without dishonoring herself to the eyes of her crew (who couldn't really care less). And all this because of her insane samurai logic.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Arguably Inferno, although her target is not lonely, brooding, or unemotional.]
- Manipulative Bastard: Gregory Saxon.
- Mr. Pax.
- Azog was trying to make Katana and Bell, and maybe perhaps Yuri kill themselves.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Mr. Pax and Gregor Eisenhorn.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Defied; When Sandro, who had a Precocious Crush on Catherine for a while, reaches the age where a relationship could be viable, Catherine, despite beginning to reciprocate, still rejects his advances because she knows she'll outlive him and doesn't think she'll be able to handle that. (On top of the fact that, once he surpassed her age, a grown man in a relationship with an early-mid teen girl would be more than a little problematic.)
- Meaningful Name: Life. He dies, and is later brought back from the dead.
- Queen of Blades: the possible reincarnation of the Quorl's primogenitor.
- Medieval Stasis: Certain areas of technology haven't advanced very far in 700 years. Partially justified; a lot of communities are severely out of touch with the rest of humanity, BnL built and perfected technologies which literally last for centuries and work fine, and a lot of the technology is actually sentient and would object to being replaced and/or modified.
- Medium Awareness: Inferno, possibly. The entire "Not Serious" subforum also counts.
- Mental Picture Projector: a trope often played whenever a robot's memories must be shown or taken in examination.
- Most common example of this trope is generally found when EVE's memories are projected to recap the events surrounding the Axiom's landing for robots or humans who really only just arrived on Earth.
- Miles Gloriosus: Clark. The mutiny of the Blacklight? He has fought there. Wars? He was the hero of Space Wars, baby! Hell? Been there, done that in Lord Of The Bots. Too bad that he actually resigned from military service (before even embarking on the ship to which he had been assigned) to become a famous actor.
- The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Mostly played straight, though the Cirranians are said to be from Andromeda.
- The Mole: All InGRiD (Intelligence Gathering Robotic Droid) units are this.
- Also, the humans Adam De Spair and his girlfriend Laurie Antrax are spies of White Enterprises Intelligence, and moles the Resistance (Adam) and the Ground Dweller's Army (Laurie).
- Mollie does this to the Quasar for the Pandora Society. [[supersecretspoiler: Dom Cobb would approve.]]
- Terenzio, who lets White Enterprises believe he's working for them, while in fact he's been on the Colony's side from day one.
- Mook–Face Turn: Cri to the turrets. That's right, Portal turrets. Instead of trying to get past them, she tried to make friends with them, and even brought one home with her. Hadn't it been for the G-Men, she would have probably talked Gordon Freeman into helping her get all of them out.
- Morality Chain: Mother Nature for Brad; Despite his temper, he is much calmer when she's around. Make him mad when she's not around, however.....
- Morality Pet: Catherine for Korinna
- Pan and Persephone to a lesser extent; Less than five minutes of knowing they exist and less than a minute of talking to them are enough to convince Korinna once and for all that sentient robots are not to be feared.
- More than Meets the Eye: Captain McCrea may seem just a quiet country man. His passengers and his friends know better
- Morphic Resonance: No matter what form an adaptoid takes, it maintains it's color scheme.
- Most Writers Are Male: A rare female version; for a while, Treehugger 0123 created only female OCsnote In fact, the only reason she made the Ecoship Prime's BRIDGET male was to finally avert this.
- The Mourning After:
- Soulless, who still mourns Zorro.
- Also, the death of his beloved Coral made Marlin overprotective of their little son, Nemo.
- Non-Romantic variant: In the prologue of Unmasked, once Catherine heard the news that Korinna had been captured, mere days after the latter admitted that she saw Catherine as a sister, Catherine lapses into an emotional state similar to the one immediately following her transformation, and stays like that until Korinna intercepts her and her crew on their way to the GDA meeting.
- The Münchausen: CAESAR, Autopilot of the Quasar. Woe betide the eardrums of anyone who asks him a question about his military accomplishments.
- His girlfriend KATANA does not seem to mind, though.
- Even if according to his Captain, what CAESAR says should be taken with a grain of salt.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Cri was haunted by remorse after she made a deal with Icarus White, begging him to resuscitate Life and promising that in return the technology or scientific discovery behind the process would remain of White Enterprises property to use as they saw fit in the war against Blacklight Military (thusly, more or less giving White Enterprises the key to immortality, although it didn't work so well). Although she knew that it was for a good cause, she knew perfectly that it was no excuse for what it would imply on the outcome of the war.
- Once the initial pride from having sowed the seeds for the GDA's fall wore off, this was all Korinna(Laurie to WE) could think as she realizes the fate she abandoned Bruce and Catherine to.
- While trying to escape from the CATH-Es pursuing her after a mission went sour, Catherine fled into the broken down maintenance tunnels and decided to try and force the CATH-Es to stop by shooting down a broken part of the ceiling and banking on that creating a roadblock between her and her pursuers. Unfortunately, the CATH-Es don't even break stride, and end up crushed underneath the falling rubble. Considering Catherine had gone out of her way to avoid taking sentient lives the entire time she was enrolled, and the victims had zero say in the matter due to being brainwashed, the realization of what her plan did ends up stunning Catherine into being unable to keep running, leaving her a sitting duck.
- In Reboot, Candice reacts this way upon learning her choice to exile Lotso after his failed mutiny, rather than let Tiramolla execute him, allowed him to go on to take over the daycare ship The Sunnyside. This resulted in most of it's children, many of whom were regular patrons of Candice's own ship The Wonka, being turned into CATH-Es.
- My Ship Hates Me: For some reason, the Ecoship Prime's thrusters decided that the perfect time to stop working was during White's attack on earth
- Mysterious Informant: Stavro Carter became one for Vantage, after his Heel Realization.
- Mr. Pax knows the move you're going to make before you make it.
- Nanomachines: This trope is Buddy Forthright's forte (SPAWN-E, Reaper...)
- Ghertivel, on the other hand, think that complex wiring requires physical space the way complex programming requires disk space, and that Buddy's obsession with nanobots is partially the cause of his repeated failures (the other being, of course, that he's a mediocre minded incompetent.)
- Nice Guy: Stefan Faraday, xenobiologist and second in command of the Destrious.
- Terenzio is also somewhat of a mix between this trope, The Charmer and the Loveable Rogue.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
- Catherine's initial reaction to White Enterprises attacking Earth in White Storm was to round up her crew and try and have the Ecoship Prime take off and hyperjump away. The ship failed to launch and she ended up getting turned into a killer cyborg and barely escaped getting the mind control implant. See Spanner in the Works below for how that ended for White Enterprises.
- While whether it's this or Nice Job Breaking It, Hero depends on how you view Laurie/Korinna at the time, but she had made several attempts to try and drive Catherine to quit the GDA without blowing her covert, only for them to give Catherine more reason to stay. The biggest example of this is probably in "Hundreds"; Korinna encouraged Catherine to reveal her survival to McCrea(who, contrary to Catherine thinking everyone assumed she'd returned to stasis, had actually assumed she'd died in the attack), in hopes that getting more involved with the Council again would give Catherine less reason to rely on the GDA. Instead, since McCrea's only exposure to the GDA was Cristina(who's fanaticism made him think convincing Catherine to quit the same organization after so long was a lost cause, as he assumed that's what the GDA was generally like), asked if Catherine would basically be the Council's official ambassador to the GDA. Between wanting to have a role in the council despite her young age and wanting to make up for leaving everyone in sorrow for so long, Catherine jumped at it, giving her less reason to want to quit.
- No Biochemical Barriers: Every variant of this is set to be at least Downplayed for Wyvermutes in the Reboot.
- Alien Food Is Edible: While Wyvermutes could safely sample earth foods if they wished, wildly different nutrient requirements render human food dangerous for Wyvermutes to try to subsist on. The same is true for humans eating Wyvermute food. What's more, Wyvermutes are more attracted to savory foods than sweet ones.
- Cross-Species Disease: Viruses and (likely)bacteria will be unable to jump between Wyvermutes and humans due to different DNA structures, and parasites and fungi won't survive due to nutrient differences.
- All Atmospheres Are Equal: Wyvermutes can technically survive in Earth's atmosphere, but would be greatly hampered—Cressolun's atmosphere is thicker and contains a greater percentage of oxygen compared to other gasses, making a Wyvermute breathing Earth air equivalent to a human at much higher altitudes. Not only would a Wyvermute have difficulty breathing, but they'd be rendered unable to fly. And that's before taking into account the pollutants that might still be lingering in Earth's atmosphere.
- No Water Proofing In The Future: not all robots are known to be waterproof. For example, K-9 units are vulnerable to water.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Inferno ''might'' qualify...
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Catherine winds up on both ends of this trope at separate points.
- She's on the receiving end in "Hundreds of these Anniversaries"; when McCrea's commemoration speech includes an in memoriam to those lost in the past, and he glances at the spot among the captains where she'd be standing and chokes up, she(hiding behind her CATH-E helmet so no-one knows who she is yet) realizes that they actually think her to be dead, rather than in stasis like she'd assumed.
- She instigates this trope in the prologue of "Unmasked"; Shortly before "Korinna" is set to be captured so she can spill the beans on an upcoming GDA meeting to WEIA, Catherine visits her and gives her a trinket designed after the Twin Jet Nebula as a belated Christmas gift. When Korinna asks why she felt the need to do this, Catherine talks about how she joined the GDA because she was tired of feeling so isolated, and only snapped out of it enough to do so because Korinna came to visit her. Bonus points for the fact that Catherine joining the GDA was the last thing Korinna wanted because she still planned on bringing it down and didn't want who she saw as an innocent child to be caught further in the crossfire, as well as the fact that this comes after they started calling each other sisters(and Catherine keeps referring to her as "sis" throughout the conversation).
- She becomes a victim of it again in "Skeletons in the Closet"; when the demands of her other Autopilots, who prove incapable of managing the new passengers in the form of the refugee GDA members without her constant guidance and answers, become too much for Catherine to bear any longer, she approaches Mekkano with the intent to ask if she can find another place for the GDA to live. However, Mekkano talks first and, in a rare show of emotion towards another GDA member, genuinely thanks Catherine for allowing the GDA to stay on the Ecoships, which had proven a more advantageous home than the old maintenance tunnelsnote , leaving Catherine unable to go through with her request.
- Official Couple: The Colony would never have been founded was it not for WALL•E and EVE's love.
- The RPs are full of this. Blacklight+Marina, Spectrum+Rainbow, BRIDGET+AUTO, Brad+Mother Nature, Sergey+Ellen, Daniel+Jasmine, TRON+Tempestnote
- Older Than They Look: The humans lifespan has increased in 700 years. But all those 700 years the Riptide crew spent in suspended animation.
- So did Ghertivel.
- Jose Kleiner and Demal Maccarin are both tech priests, who are sustainned by augmentic implants.
- May apply to the White-Gluz sisters, as well as other White clan representatives: they age slower due to LEGO Genetics.
- One-Gender Race: Subverted with BRIDGET units, which were likely supposed to be female-only (complete with a male-only counterpart—AND-I units—that so far plays it straight), then treehugger0123 came up with Brad.
- One-Steve Limit: Played straight most of the time, but averted several times:
- Kelvin, a K-9 unit and a human;
- Carsten Rennert, European Council member, and Carsten Carter, Noble Team Captain;
- James Alabaster, inventor of K-9s, and James Boucher, journalist and pirate note ;
- Steven Miles, a roboticist, and Steven Alabaster, a planned baby;
- MATT the tank robot and Matt the Fleetfeet Thief;
- Jack Stevenson, Lieutenant and Captain, and Jack the Ripper, AUTO and BRIDGET's son.
- Only in It for the Money: Played with. Terenzio agreed to be sent on Earth as a spy because he had recognized his brother Domenico in the list of wanted criminals (not that he told White or Saxon that), but also because they were paying him to go.
- He made the mistake to let Domenico know, though.
- Terenzio: Listen here, I get to visit you all, celebrate this anniversary-thing, spend two weeks on Earth, return home to tell the comante that you and the robottone aren't planning anything, and Dom, think, they're even PAYING me for it!Domenico: Are you saying... are you saying that you return home for the first time in 700 years AND YOU ALSO WANT TO BE PAID FOR THAT?!!!
- He made the mistake to let Domenico know, though.
- Only One Name: Some robots who choose names for themselves. Others give themselves surnames too.
- Also Erik, who's surname hasn't been revealed. Subverted in that he will give a surname when asked, though he gives a different answer everytime.
- Opposites Attract: For all their differences, EVE and WALL•E are perfectly matched, completing each other to perfection.
- Orphaned Series: Now that the forum is down, the RPs aren't continuing anytime soon. Though it may ultimately be subverted if any of the users that got the archives from WALL-E Dragon manage to upload everything elsewhere.
- Outlaw Couple: Played with with Adam and Laurie, who are villains for the Colony, but as far as White Enterprises is concerned, are on the side of law. Then gets turned on it's head after Laurie embraces the "Korinna" she acted as during her covert and became an Official Couple with fellow GDA member Bruce, making them this trope in WE's eyes but not the Colony's.
- Persona Non Grata: Meta example. After treehugger0123 dumped AUTO2011, his behavior and views later got him kicked from the RPs, and eventually the forum, entirely. Consequently, treehugger0123's Author Avatar would eventually dump AUTO2011's sometime after the war with WE ended(for similar reasons according to Word of God), and none of AUTO2011's OCs will canonically appear in the Reboot.
- Person of Mass Destruction: The MATTs were an attempt at this, but the prototype decided he didn't want to hurt people, so the rest of them were made without personalities.
- Phlebotinum Breakdown: Played when an experiment on a new instant transport went wrong, sending WALL•E, EVE, Vanessa and several other members of the Colony (and not just of the Colony) straight into the past for not one but three times (respectively in 2100, in the childhood of a Riptide member, and at the time of the volcano day in ancient Pompeii).
- It's implied Adrian Roman had a hand in all three of these instances, though.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: Any CATH-Es that have their mind control implants disabled. (Or, in some rare cases, that are rescued before the chip is implanted.)
- Phrase Catcher: 'Go to Hell, Optic!' for Inferno.
- Pity the Kidnapper: A variation of this was played when White Enterprises tried to capture several robots from Earth. Not only it got the Riptide, Nexus and Heiku on a warpath to retrieve them - the robots themselves proved to be rather "turbulent" prisoners, going as far as to release all other experiments from Vida's lab. Not to mention even Ghertivel's A.R.G.O was unleashed against the mainframe. And Blacklight's Military also came to aid. So yeah... attacking Earth, in hind sight, was a very bad idea.
- The Plan: We have a Mad Scientist, a Knight Templar robot, a Corrupt Corporate Executive, and a madbot who wants everybody to be insane, amongst others. Of course we're going to have a few!
- Let's list them here, ya'll.
- Azog's kidnapping in Taken assumes that the ship crews will follow. Unfortunately, this means going to a place where they can't call for backup. And, even if they don't follow, he can torture Bell as much as he pleases.
- Also by Azog, his blackmail is to either have Bell killed or force her to come back to him (also meaning they can no longer help her since the colony must agree to it). Either way Bell is not going to have a grand old time soon.
- Terenzio is doing one against WE, he pretends to spy for them, but is actually spying ON them. And if he gets found out, he'll just move to Earth permanently.
- Argo when battling an intruder. If he isn't winning the fight itself, he will just let the network collapse, killing him and his opponent. But he has backups so he still survives.
- Planet of Hats: Humanity's hat is indomitable determination.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Domenico and his brother Terenzio. One a soldier, the other's a shuttle racer with a thing for clandestine gambles.
- Powered Armor: We got Shielders, but a more interesting variation is the armor that GDA members wear; it's usually based off an actual robot.
- The Kalindasian Shock Troopers utilize the heaviest power armor in universe, and are modified accordingly.
- The Power of Friendship: An example of this is the Chicago Colony itself.
- And most of the ships crew, really.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Normally, children transformed into CATH-Es are left awake for the process for extra cruelty points. However, when Catherine was transformed, it ultimately had to be done while she was still unconscious from being in stasis because she didn't wake up before the en masse rescue was underway. Later on, when she's about to have the control implant put in, she won't stop struggling and ultimately has to be tranquilized, since inadvertently lobotomizing her would dampen her efficiency as an assassin.
- Precocious Crush: treehugger0123's captains seem to be good at attracting these in the blended canon.
- Sandro had one on Catherine in his earlier years, though since Catherine's age was frozen at 14, he eventually catches up to her and his crush ceases to qualify.
- Reyn, one of OCri's kids, is implied to have one for Candice.
- Puny Earthlings: Played with. Humans are, physically, one of the smallest and weakest sentient species. However, their inventiveness, adaptability and sheer determination more than make up for it.
- Ray Gun: Pretty much every ranged weapon is a version of this.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- An in-universe example with the Reshyla show, an amazingly popular anime produced by White Enterprises and therefore entirely propaganda.
- A straighter example occurs with the deterioration of Catherine and Carsten's relationship, which happened in-universe for similar reasons as it happened with their respective creators.
- Really 700 Years Old: Aryl is six-thousand years old
- Adrian is really three-thousand years old
- Rescue Romance:
- In Life and Bell's backstory, Life went comatose after saving Bell from a collapsing building. Needless to say, something started that day.
- What happened with Terenzio may also apply, though it is yet to be seen if this will hold out.
- If Unmasked had ever gotten off the ground, this was planned to happen between Catherine and Carsten, though one-sided at first. It ultimately winds up Deconstructed, as it's only after the war ends and Catherine and Carsten are no longer saving each other's lives in GDA raids that Catherine begins to realize that Carsten isn't a good partner after all.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Most robots develop personalities, and many modify themselves to become even more human.
- Rōnin: Used gratuitously as an insult by KATANA toward all those that she did not feel were following the Way of the Warrior or had turned against their Daimyos, thusly disgracing themselves.
- Then again, JAXA sort of embodies the belief of the disgraced samurai without a master who has become a bandit, so KATANA was on to something about him...
- Sacrificial Lamb: Paul, the VN-GO, was originally meant to be one. However, Cri 86 didn't have the heart to leave him dead, so she chickened out and had the insane ARGO attempt to reprogram him. It only worked partially, as in that he's now an amnesiac artist who doesn't remember a thing about his past, his old personality (barely developing, but still...) and the reasons that brought him on the Hurricane.
- Amusingly, the insane ARGO himself was thought for a long time to have been a Sacrificial Lamb by the rest of Blacklight's Military. Internet and Blacklight, though, wanted to believe.
- Samurai: KATANA, the Japanese Autopilot.
- JAXA, another Japanese Auto, [was also one - until he mutined against his Captain.
- And he has since become The Starscream to his new Commander, Blacklight, too.
- JAXA, another Japanese Auto, [was also one - until he mutined against his Captain.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: An in-universe example. People who hear about Ghertivel's Project Pangea instantly know he's completely insane, because anyone with a sense of scale knows it's impossible.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: A mysterious entity that came out of the first experimental hyperspace portals was sealed on the almost legendary starship Infinite.
- Also Blacklight, who was trapped as a processor for a few months.
- Self-Deprecation: Everybody keeps telling Cri (the user) that she's awesome, but she won't believe it!
- Serial Romeo: Terenzio might apply. He flirted with Sybille, Eumi, and tried to flirt with at least Hortencia and Cri (and probably had some girlfriends on the Forthright too). But although he's somewhat wary of committing himself to just one woman, one gets the feeling that if the girls reciprocated his interest (and so far only Eumi does) he would actually care for each of them. Polyamorous? No, just a Serial Romeo.
- Shapeshifter: Adaptoids (such as HAN-D) are designed to adapt to different directives by modifying their structure into different forms.
- The P'tol Contructs occasionally use this ability, since they are a mass of nano bots.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: If you breach HAN-D's force field and damage her bad enough (not that hard; a big enough dent in her chassis will do it), she won't be able to shapeshift again until she's repaired. Woe be unto you if you do this while she's in a form that can still fight back, however.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Subverted by Terenzio, who always dresses in the most casual and informal way (even when talking with the CEO), and still makes women swoon.
- She's Not My Girlfriend: Played with Houdini and Melody, who constantly teased Rainbow and Spectrum on their crush for each other, to the point that Rainbow and Spectrum eventually decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. Hilarity Ensues, all the time.
- Shoot the Dog: Cri asked Icarus White to revive Life, promising that in return White Enterprises could exploit the technology and/or scientific finds behind the resuscitation for their advantage, even though she knew that would nullify many of Blacklight's military triumphs and tip the balance of the war in favor of White Enterprises. Cue My God, What Have I Done?.
- Thankfully the machine uses too much power (in fact during testing it drained most of the ship of power) for it to be used regularly.
- But since she didn't know (and still doesn't), they were in a way both true to their word.
- Kirra'hie's decisions concerning the Queen of Blades/ Maddi.
- Thankfully the machine uses too much power (in fact during testing it drained most of the ship of power) for it to be used regularly.
- Shout-Out: Many examples here.
- SCUBA's most frequent lines ("Bubbles! My bubbles!" which he screams for no apparent reason, and "Robots aren't meant to live in a box, it does things to them") come respectively from Bubbles and Gill in "Finding Nemo".
- And the song "Just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning..." that he hums to himself whilst working is also a pun on Dory's more famous "Just keep swimming" in the same film.
- Buddy's full name (Buddy P. N. Forthright), as well as his color scheme (orange-red hair, blue eyes, fair skin) is a shout out to Buddy Pine aka Syndrome, from "The Incredibles".
- One of Sybille's ancestors on her father's side owned a bistro in France, which she claims is where she takes her love for cooking for. Though she never mentions a name, long-time Pixar fans will recognize her ancestor as Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille which, in turn, would make her a descendant of Auguste Gusteau as well.
- And Remy's name and his being pet and assistant to a French cook is where the shout out to Ratatouille is most obvious.
- Domenico being the son of an Italian florist, and his appearance, are also a nudge to a certain more skinny explosive expert in "Atlantis"
- Leonard Ghertivel is an Affectionate Parody to Leonard Vertighel in the comic series PKNA
- So are both A.R.G.O to the Ducklair Tower's informatic protocol of the same name and to the A.I.s Uno and Due.
- And ARGO's deactivation code (used so far only in JFF), "Sublog Syntex Vat Exec Ext Ctr Reset @@@ Exec X Dir: EDKey Exec CII A.R.G.O. # RD EHMET/ERASE! RUN!" is the same that Everett Ducklair used to deactivate Due, the A.I on which the insane ARGO is based.
- Again from PKNA are Adam De Spair/Victor Doom and Laurie Antrax/Korinna Doom/Nebula. Adam gets his name and looks from the New Zealand hacker Adam Mood, whose last name is also an anagram of his last name as "Victor Doom". His last name of De Spair was inspired by Belgravian terrorist Oberon De Spair in the same series, as was the Tyrannic, the ship Adam was born in (named after the submarine Tyrannic). Laurie's name comes from that of soap actress Laurie Bricks, her false alias of Korinna from Korinna Ducklair, her codename of Nebula from ufologist Nebula Faraday, and her last name Antrax from that of corrupt businessman Roover Antrax.
- And, of course, Pretty Todd is a living PR-T-shaped shout out to Sweeney Todd.
- As for HARLEY and QUIN, their being identical twins and prankster is an obvious reference to Fred and George Weasley from the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. Their names come from both the Italian mask Arlecchino and Agatha Christie's detective Harley Quin.
- Conversely, JAXA was named after the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
- Icarus White was based on Nikolei Drevin from Alex Rider.
- SAMU-L is a parody of Swindle from Transformers, and Wasp is based off of Waspinator from the same series.
- The concept and name of the Ground Dwellers Army (or GDA) is also a shout out to Dumbledore's Army in the Harry Potter books.
- Firenze the modified ED-I also has his name from Harry Potter - after an outcast Centaur.
- Most of FREDD-E's starships are named after ships from Doctor Who novels or episodes.
- The markings of Zorro, Soulless, Blondie and Kevin are based on those of the wolves Alexander, Dulia, Maki and Sandah from the anime Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli.
- And Kevin (a K-9 female) is an obvious shoutout to Up.
- While her sister Tsinga is named after the wolf seer in the book "The Sight".
- And Pascal after the villain in the book "Felidae", just because this troper thought it was a cool name.
- And BOLT the K-9 is more than obvious shout-out to Bolt.
- Buzz the CLEAN unit, from the Lightyear line, with his green and purple coloring is a shoutout to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story.
- Also, Lt. Ellen Weaver is based on Ellen Ripley from Alien.
- And, of course, there's Anton the EGO unit.
- Brad the male BRIDGET is a shout out to Francis the male ladybug, complete with at least one instance of being mistaken for a girl.
- Also, Terenzio is a shout out to the kind of character that italian actor Terence Hill played in many movies in his younger years.
- Not coincidentially, at one points he hums to himself "Dune Buggy", which is perhaps the best known tune from all the Bud Spencer/Terence Hill movies.
- Also the conflictual relationship with his brother Domenico mirrors that of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill in many of their movies, in which the two (sometimes portrayed as siblings) are forced to work together - much to Bud's vehement protests. Terenzio's story is especially a shout out to couple's film "Odds and Even", where Terence steals the truck of his half-brother Bud, driving him in a murderous fury. Admittedly, Domenico took the theft of his old fighter shuttle even worse.
- Clark Fairbanks and Marilyn Hayworth, the greatest robot movie stars of their age, are shout outs to many movie stars, including, but not limited to Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Rodolfo Valentino, Mary Pickford, Elizabeth Taylor... there are many.
- Paul the VN-GO was named after Paul Gauguin.
- Wallaby and his unit number(42) are a shout out to Finding Nemo(P. Sherman 42 Wallaby way Sidney).
- Catherine Juniper's last name(and that of her precursor, Rachel Juniper) came from the fifth generation's Pokémon professor.
- White-Gluz sisters are a clear shout out to Canadian musicians of the same names.
- Candice von Bon Bon gets her last name from a Cuphead boss.
- SCUBA's most frequent lines ("Bubbles! My bubbles!" which he screams for no apparent reason, and "Robots aren't meant to live in a box, it does things to them") come respectively from Bubbles and Gill in "Finding Nemo".
- Shown Their Work: In part because of the forum "Science of WALL•E" section, in part because of the participant's enthusiasm, and in part due to sheer boredom, the plot is cohesive and accurate in many details.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: Victor for the Destrious, although he's not been found out to be really a spy. And possibly Korinna for the GDA. However...
- Slobs Versus Snobs: Played with. White is dressed to the nines and talking and behaving like the picture perfect politician, Terenzio is in jeans and rolled-up shirtsleeves and puts his feet on desks. Need this troper say that Hilarity Ensued?
- Smarter Than You Look: Buddy seems a pretty ridiculous threat, right? What could you aspect from a painfully obese man strapped in a hovechair and unable even to walk properly? What can he do? Actually, his brain has come up with two computer viruses one more deadly than the other, two virus spreaders who should have been at his orders (admittedly, that part did not work so well) and several engineering enhancement to the weapons of White Enterprises.
- Spanner in the Works: Catherine, with a bit of Hoist by His Own Petard as she's only such because White Enterprises turned her into a CATH-E. Korinna didn't give much of a second thought to CATH-E's and other shady secrets of the corporation until she met Catherine after the latter was rescued, as she was the first one Korinna met that was fresh out of the conversion chambers, and she saw the initial effects for the first time. Even then, she might have been more or less "Out of sight, out of mind" had she stuck with her initial refusal to join the GDA, but was only willing and able to join because Korinna visited her, snapped her out of her long-standing Heroic BSoD and gave Catherine her comlink number so she could call her if she ever needed someone else to talk to again. (Instead, she called Korinna and asked her to hand the phone to Mekkano.note ) Fast forward to Unmasked. Her guilt over dooming Catherine(and Bruce, but even their relationship might not have developed as much as it did had Catherine not managed to unlock her heart of gold) ends up being what solidifies Korinna's Heel–Face Turn.
- Spell My Name with a "The": A variation with the Our Armoured Lady. The Our is part of the name, and its soldiers get noticeably annoyed when the Our is dropped.
- Spy Satellites: Ghertivel controls a lot of these, allowing him to know what goes on not just on Earth, but in the space as well.
- The Starscream: Blacklight was once this to Captain Magnus (until he killed him), and now JAXA is quickly becoming this for him.
- Similarly, Scorpius White was this for Shelby Forthright, and now his descendant (Icarus White) has one in the form of Buddy Forthright.
- Straw Feminist: Hortencia epitomizes this trope, very much so.
- Super-Senses:
- One of Craig's eyes was replaced by an artificial optic which, among the other things, allows him to see in the dark.
- Being designed as robotic assassins, CATH-Es have greatly enhanced hearing and sight.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Reversed with Ghertivel who, after a failed attempt for his life at Blacklight's hand, programmed the security of his lab so that no unauthorized guest can break in. If they get to break in anyway it's because they are walking straight into a trap and are not guaranteed to come out with their life, if at all.
- Tears of Remorse: Cri, at the Anniversary Celebration, after Sergey had given Blacklight back his old wheel body, and Blacklight had shot it to bits to truly leave the past behind them. Having just made a Deal with the Devil herself, it just struck her that the Colonists really were better people, even though in the past she had sometimes judged them too harshly.
- Techno Babble: Ghertivel learned to technobabble before he learned to speak, some believe.
- Others say that he learned to technobabble, but never to speak plainly.
- FREDD-E (one of the creators) is extremely fond of technobabble. Icaron Accelerator, anyone?
- Don't get Exeter started.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Male BRIDGETs have rectangular eyes◊ while females have slanted eyes.◊ Males also have thicker limbs, but this is harder for the untrained eye to notice.
- Thank the Maker: Some robots sometimes speak about the "designer" or "creator" as a god-like being. Robots a little more in the know about their creators don't do this.
- The entirety of the Ciult Mechanicus believe in a supernatural creator of all machines, who is responsible for artificial sapience.
- Subverted with Yuri is he does say creator as a term for a deity. And then you learn he's of Life's religion, who actually refers to the deity as the creator.
- That Man Is Dead: An interesting case as the one saying it (or rather, implying it) isn't referring to themselves; When Catherine is interrogating Adam in Unmasked, Adam continues to call Korinna "Laurie"(her original name—Korinna was a covert name). Catherine's responses include her emphasizing Korinna's name, as if trying to tell him she's not Laurie anymore.
- They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: The name is Professor Ghertivel. Not Leo, not Ghertivel, not Ghertie. P-r-o-f-e-s-s-o-r G-h-e-r-t-i-v-e-l (or even just Professor will do), for common mortals. Most of them are too dumb to understand this, if you ask him.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Played straight when Azog kidnapped Bell and stole Life's arm, driving KATANA to shed her Tranquil Fury and embrace a personal warpath against him.
- This Means War!:
- Played when White Enterprises killed Zorro, driving his mate Soulless on a warpath.
- After Korinna is kidnapped while rescuing the human GDA members, Catherine proceeds to tear through the reinforcements sent to stop them and chase after her captors once she breaks through.note
- Tranquil Fury: Ghertivel, most of the times.
- Also, Ming * is* this trope.
- Mother Nature is this on the rare occasion she gets mad
- Translator Microbes: Kinda inverted. Characters of different ancestry than English will sometimes express themselves in their original language: Sybille will greet people in French, Domenico (and sometimes Cri) will swear in Italian, Sergey sometimes exclaims Russian interjections (as well as swearwords), Hortencia speaks strict Spanish when angry, Jasmine, having Dutch grandfather and mother, sometimes gets Dutch words in edgeways, KATANA and JAXA - just to name two - address pretty much everyone with Japanese honorifics, and Diane and Luis often use Portuguese and Spanish expressions. note
- Played straight with the "telepathic translator field" used to speak with alien races.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: A variation is the insane A.R.G.O. His programming was split and scattered in various computers because too complex to be contained in just one machine. And some parts of himself he has not been able to track. Certain protocols he does not remember. Neither does he know where his creator and his twin live, much to his scorn.
- True Companions: EVE sees her fellow EVE probes as her sisters, and is loyal to them beyond words. SCUBA, seeing Diver as his only surviving brother, is determined-well determined-to talk him out of his foolish idea to live in a box (read: submarine), of all places.
- Variation: Pilot and Lily (Both AIs created by Sergey) see Sergey as a father figure.
- SCUBA also considers WALL•E and FREDD-E his cousins, since they were both part of Operation Cleanup, and Sergey Dementiev as his Daddy.
- Not to mention the Riptide crew. And most other starship crews.
- The Chamoix might qualify. Then again...
- The RPers themselves fall under this.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Played straight with the Blacklight army and the GDA, but averted in the colony, where robots are viewed as equals.
- SPAWN-E and Nick also turned against Buddy, and therefore ended up in his black list.
- The Lady's Shield turned om White Enterprises due to the P'tol.
- And of course the insane A.R.G.O.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Buddy got out of an alternate reality experiment due to the combined efforts of robots and humans from the Colony. How did he thank them? By threatening to call White Enterprises all along,and ultimately pouring even more effort in the creation of weapons for his very own alignment.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: During the 2nd anniversary RP, Brad is mistaken for a female by Paul the VN-GO. Hilarity Ensues. Bonus points for Brad's unit type actually being called BRIDGETnote .
- Uterine Replicator: The Ecoships have a line of survey bots intended for "emergency reproduction" in case a disaster, such as a disease or an outside attack, wipes out enough of an animal species that the resulting population bottleneck would risk extinction from a lack of genetic diversity. The bots are capable of carrying the fetal version(or egg, depending on species), formed using stored reproductive cells, of their animal to term, and are also programmed to be able to raise the young as needed. The catch is that, unlike normal survey bots, they have to consume food in order to provide the necessary mass for the infant to grow.
- Weird Aside: Inferno Optic and her bizarre dialogue. It's implied this is purposeful on her part.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Blacklight wants to save robotkind from slavery, and he'll stop at nothing to achieve it. Even if it means killing every human in existence.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?:
- Auto and BRIDGET, for a long time. And all along they were falling for each other.
- Also, Blondie probably qualifies.
- Having been augmented when she was in the earliest stages of puberty, Catherine initially didn't see her feelings for Carsten as anything more than typical teen infatuation, on top of initially believing that she was only feeling that way because he was the first male CATH-E she'd met, and erroneously assumed she'd be over the crush in short order. She wasn't, but later wished that she was.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Cri's rallying cry.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "A Timeless Birthday" is one to "Frozen Fever", minus the original short's b-plot.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- Somewhat played with. Although Paul the VN-GO is an artist and not a warrior, he lives on the Hurricane - you'd think he had been through more than one dangerous battle, right? But as of Anniversaries, his number one bane that he'd run away screaming if he ever ran into in a dark alleyway is nothing more dangerous than Brad the BRIDGET. Considering that he has done an Unsettling Gender-Reveal once, he has his reasons.
- In a similar vein, after Catherine ambushed him and grilled him at gunpoint about Korinna's whereabouts in Unmasked, Adam is left terrified of CATH-Es.
- After an encounter with Inferno cost her her voice, Korinna is left thoroughly intimidated of robots, particularly sentient ones. Since she works with a resistance group that's fighting for sentient robots and has several of them among their ranks, this is a problem. She loses the phobia upon meeting Pan and Persephone, as them acting like human children, on top of the fact that Brad and MN would have had no reason to want kids if they were still running on their base programming, convinced her that there was little real difference between sentient robots and sentient humans.
- Her second capture left Catherine, a public authority figure, with a fear of crowds. It's a bit easier if she's outside of the crowd, but she's more fearful the closer she is to it.
- Will They or Won't They?: Sergey is sure they won't. Inferno thinks they already have.
- Alissa and Jamie. Their crewmates even have a bet about this.
- With Friends Like These...: Inverted with Ghertivel and the late Scorpius White. They pretended to work well together and have the highest esteem of each other. Actually, they were trying to backstab each other all along.
- World Half Full: Given the incredibly powerful White Enterprises, the powerful Pandora Society, plus a whole lot of space-dwelling monstrosities, you would expect the role play to be completely depressing... except that there are many, many factions working to better the galaxy, and there are plenty of happy fun places!
- Yandere: Inferno and Sergey are married (in her imagination), and anybody who denies it to Inferno's face is liable to get cut. Up to and including Sergey himself.
- You Are Not Alone: The Undersite people will stick their necks out of each other whenever one of them has troubles.
- Ironically, the "You Are Not Alone" line was delivered to Vladimir in the first (fanfic) installation in which the characters originally appeared, before they were brought over into the Roleplay.
- A huge part of Catherine's Character Development after her transformation is her learning this, since she felt very out-of-place and isolated in her new form that she saw as a "limbo" between humans and robots.
The WALL•E Forum Roleplay is widely populated and it's only reasonable to have one of these. So, organizing these people by ships and planets, here's a list of characters and their tropes.
The Earth
Hey, it's the home planet. Despite the bad conditions, various entities have erked out a living on the planet during the seven century exile.Explorations
Ghertivel's Lab
The Six Pack
The Runners
The Axiom
The first ship to return to earth, the Axiom hosts a plethora of important characters.The Riptide
The Riptide is a research and military vessel, and a central part of the RP. Its Captain is Ian Cooper.Its crew have examples of:
- The Captain: Ian Cooper, of course. Ricky also has his moments as second-in-command.
- The Sixth Ranger: The arrival of Bellatrix Thorn, space pirate.
- The Lancer: Ricky Raider, the second-in-command.
- The Smart Guy: Sergey and Sybille.
- The Big Guy: Domenico, the soldier.
- Tagalong Kid: Lily, the EVE probe, who is very childish.
- Team Pet: Several. Two REM-Es, a K-9, and a techno-organic Phoenix.
- Multinational Team: Most of the crew members are from different countries.
- Human Popsicle: Most of the crew (except Bellatrix) were alive in the 2100s, and went into suspended animation.
The Quasar
The Quasar is a military starship. After being contacted by the Colony, the crew found out that they could not really blend with Earth lifestyle anymore (also due to the unfortunate framing of the Riptide crew for a crime they never committed) and decided to take off in space again. They're still in contact with the Colony, though.The Chamoix
This Bedlam House of an Eldritch Location is filled with crazies, and There Are No Therapists for them.Inferno Optic, Netcop of the Bong, has deigned to be an example of:
- The Mad Hatter: And wants everybody else to be one too.
The Heiku
The Heiku is a Japanese auxiliary ship that never took off in the exodus due to engine malfunctioning, hence its crew and passengers were shepherded off to the Tsunami, a fellow auxiliary ship. The Heiku therefore spent 700 years stranded on Earth under the caring but wistful control of the Autopilot KATANA.The Ecoship Prime
The Ecoship Prime is the lead ship of the Ecoship fleet. Like the other Ecoships, the Ecoship Prime was built as a large nature reserve. Unlike the others, however, it doesn't specialize in one particular habitat, instead acting as like a medical area to treat sick or injured animals until they can return to the wild, raise young animals that were orphaned for one reason or another, or permanently house them should they prove to be too sick/injured to return. It also holds small farms in order to feed the crew. The farms lost such use when the last human member of the crew was turned into a CATH-E, instead, the plants were transferred into earth farms. As of Unmasked, the Ecoships become the GDA's new home after they were discovered and forced to leave the Forthright.Its crew contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Because of the way the suppression aspect of the control implant workednote , Catherine retained a modicum of her old consciousness while she was brainwashed. This turned out to be a mixed bag after her rescue—while it made the overall experience more immediately traumatizing, she did manage to derive some long-term comfort out of the fact that WE failed to score a complete victory over her mind.
- Appropriated Appellation: Catherine was called "treehugger" throughout most of her childhood due to her outdoor-oriented views. Fast forward to her joining the GDA several centuries later, where she uses that as her codename.
- Arm Cannon: Catherine(post-White Storm) and Brad; par for the course for their unit types. Catherine gains a second arm cannon after she's brainwashed, but doesn't make much use of it after she's rescued, preferring to have them both disabled to prevent any accidental shootings due to her trauma.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: This was the main reason Catherine latched on to Korinna so tightly not even the events of Unmasked could shake her; Korinna, of her own volition and out of pure concern, came to check on Catherine when the latter was still locked in a Heroic BSoD almost a month after her transformation, and had isolated herself as a result—putting on a more content facade around her crew and not informing anyone on earth of her fate.
- Berserk Button:
- In addition to the above, insulting the GDA (or any other Anti-White group) or revealing that you're part of White Enterprises is a good way to make an enemy out of the crew.
- Post-Unmasked: Give Korinna grief over what she did with Catherine in earshot(which, considering her enhanced form, could be a larger radius than you think) and you will very likely get hurt. This goes double if Korinna isn't there to rein her in.
- This is ultimately what cost Carsten his relationship with her, see Little Sister Instinct below.
- Beware the Nice Ones: The entire crew could count.
- Mother Nature is the most calm, cool, and clear-headed member of the crew. She also has a large variety of weapons at her disposal, and if you harm said crew, especially if you're with White Enterprises...
- Brad stretches this a little; he's pretty nice, but it takes surprisingly little to set him off(not to mention he can hold one hell of a grudge)
- Catherine is a kind girl with a love of nature. Harm her crew, and she will break out the plasma cannon
- Wallaby is a rejected survey bot. The species he was once a surveyor for? Dingos. Considering where they're from and their reputation, that should give you a good idea of what he's capable of under the right conditions(namely, his owner being threatened).
- Birthday Hater: In Catherine's eyes, a birthday is supposed to be to celebrate getting a year older. As such, her own birthday was stripped of its meaning after she was transformed into an immortal, unaging cyborg. When Wallaby gets her a teddy bear for her next birthday, she's still somewhat appreciative, but subsequently informs him and the others that she doesn't want any more birthday celebrations in the future. Unfortunately(or not) for her, her big sis didn't get the memo; "A Timeless Birthday"—basically a Whole-Plot Reference to "Frozen Fever"—is dedicated to Korinna's attempt to defy this trope for Catherine.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Catherine was one for a lot of her childhood. Her parents, both typical BnL patrons, thought being locked outside with no technology would be a good punishment and being taken on a shopping spree would be a good reward. Because Catherine thought the exact inverse of those consequences, her parents unintentionally discouraged good behavior and encouraged bad behavior for years before they finally figured it out.
- The Captain: Catherine. note
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Brad the BRIDGET unit, which has resulted in at least one Unsettling Gender-Reveal
- First-Name Basis: Whereas most call a captain "Captain [last name]", Catherine initially calls herself "Captain Catherine" due to not wanting to give out her last name. Once she decides to take on the old captain's last name--Juniper--everyone starts calling her that.
- Friend to All Children: Catherine showed no fear of the robot-obsessed Russell, and quickly warmed up to Sandro when he was younger. When Korinna falls pregnant, Catherine is nothing short of ecstatic; moreso when she learns Korinna is bearing twins.
- I Am a Monster: Catherine's opinion of her chassis in a nutshell, seeing as it was built for combat and, to an extent, seemed to have a mind of it's own. note It takes the events of Unmasked, including a brief stint of Then Let Me Be Evil (or rather, Then Let Me Be Violent), for her to realize she has more control than she originally thought.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: No matter how useful her chassis proves, she will always wish it could be undone. It becomes downplayed more and more as time goes on, though, to the point where it essentially becomes "I just want the option to become normal", though she'll probably go right back to playing the trope straight when the war ends and her chassis ceases to be useful.
- Improbable Age: Catherine was technically in her mid-teens when she became captain. (she really only became captain because, when she was awakened from stasis, she was the only human left and also happened to be the former captain's successor.note )
- Insult Backfire: Regarding the Appropriated Appellation above; the first time she was called that as a child, her first reaction was to walk over to the nearest tree and actually hug it.
- The Insomniac: Thanks to so many nightmares following her second capture and brainwashing, Catherine ends up becoming this while trying to control her PTSD, as not only does what little sleep she can get end up heavily disturbed by said nightmares, but she begins to fear falling asleep as a consequence of those nightmares. It's a good thing her brain implants allow her to get by on less sleep than normal humans, as well as making her more resistant to the effects of sleep deprivation, otherwise the end results would be far worse.
- Little Sister Instinct: Hoo boy; considering the setting, Catherine could be in the running for the poster child.
- When Korinna is taken during the Forthright Rescue in Unmasked, Catherine barely hesitates in tearing through the wall of patrol bots to chase after her, all while chewing out the GDA members that were rejoicing that she was gone.
- In a later mission, when Korinna is thrown into the fray of a raid-turned-trap by a lingering grudgeholder, Catherine, unable to shoot at the robots threatening her sister without risking Korinna being collateral damage, charges at the patrol bots to knock them a safe distance away before shooting them. Unfortunately, this makes it easy for the remaining bots to cut Catherine off from the rest of the group, at which point, rather than try and return and risk the others getting caught in the crossfire, she decides to try and lead them away, knowing full well that she would seal her fate by doing this, in order to up the odds that Korinna would get out alive.
- When Craig and Korinna return later to rescue Catherine after the latter was brainwashed, the "Instinct" part ends up being almost literal; despite the memory suppression, Catherine still recognizes Korinna and has some lingering inherent trust of her, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. This makes it easy for Korinna to get Catherine to follow them.
- After returning home from being rescued and restored, Catherine is about to go to bed when she overhears Craig begging Korinna to help him find Mekkano, who left on an assassination mission while they were out. Once Korinna agrees, Catherine immediately desires to tag along. When Korinna's search attempt is traced to their shuttle and things go pear-shaped, Catherine's rescue attempt ends how you'd expect for someone with such fresh trauma.
- After the trauma of her capture and brainwashing cost Catherine her backbone, she put up with a lot of insensitive treatment from Carsten(who was proving to be a rather poor partner choice after Catherine stepped down from the GDA and they were no longer saving each other). Once WE collapses and whether or not WE refugees should be allowed into the colony becomes a hot-button topic, Carsten makes it clear he says no because he doesn't think they could be forgiven for what happened to him and Catherine, which Catherine bites her tongue about because, while she disagrees with Carsten's blanket statement, she can't exactly blame him. However, once he lets slip that he considers Korinna to be in the same category, Catherine immediately shows him the door.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Unmasked makes it all too blatant that Korinna serves this role for Catherine; she falls into a state similar to what she had been in immediately following her transformation when Korinna is "Lost in mission" at the beginning of Unmasked, and when she sees Korinna get taken from her again during the rescue(coupled with several of the GDA members they were rescuing expressing some degree of relief at this fact), she loses it.
- This attachment turns out to be strong enough to allow some resistance against a CATH-E's mind control implant, as Korinna and Craig's rescue of her after her second capture is greatly helped by the fact that Catherine still manages to recognize the former, and still has some inherent trust of her.
- Marshmallow Dream: An unfortunate consequence of having a Sweet Tooth but losing the ability to eat is that Catherine tends to have these a lot. Anton's constant talks about how much better non-synthesized food(which is all Catherine ever knew since the Ecoships grow their own food) is than the synthesized food he was forced to scan doesn't help. That said, for all she complained about them, enough nightmares following her second capture make her begin to miss them.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Catherine's main fear after her transformation in White Storm; she might have dodged the actual mind control implant, but that didn't mean she was in complete control of her chassis. This fear comes true the night after she's rescued from her brainwashing; she has such an intense nightmare from her trauma (and fails to wake up from it on her own due to her exhaustion over the ordeal, requiring outside assistance from Wallaby) that she awakens to find both of her cannons activated in her sleep from the adrenaline. This prompts her to have them disabled at first opportunity.
- Morality Chain:
- Mother Nature for Brad; Despite his temper, he is much calmer when she's around (at the very least, he won't hurt anyone). Make him mad when she's not around, however.....
- Korinna becomes a minor one for Catherine during Skeletons in the Closet, due to much of the GDA being annoyingly good at pressing Catherine's new Berserk Button (see above) and Catherine having much fewer reservations about fighting back—verbally or physically.
- Neutral No Longer: Catherine initially intended to just have the Ecoships flee to the edge of the galaxy and stay out of the conflict. note Being captured and CATH-E-fied gave her and her crew the motivation to fight back.
- Never Heard That One Before: Make a "Cathy the CATH-E" joke in front of Catherine at your own peril.
- Not Growing Up Sucks: Catherine's biggest issue with her chassis is her inability to age, though it's not that in and of itself that she resents so much as it is the fact that every human she cares about will eventually leave her from old age if nothing else. It's one more reason why she was hesitant to return to New Chicago after her transformation—all of her crewmates shared her immortality, and she didn't want to get any closer to the still mortal captains and colonists. Even when she joined the GDA, the initial goal was to be useful to the team as a whole rather than bond with any individual members in particular(since even robots could be lost at any point in that line of work), and coming to her at a very emotionally vulnerable time was the main reason Korinna managed to enter Catherine's heart despite all this—after her feelings of grief and isolation had been festering for a month under a Stepford Smiler facade, Catherine's immediate need for some kind of support was greater than her need to avoid the grief of a loss decades down the line.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Downplayed. While Catherine does support the GDA's cause, even saying that she was joining them to minimize how many others have to suffer what she had, that wasn't the main reason she joined. The main reason was also more sympathetic than the ulterior motives usually seen with this trope: she was tired of feeling so isolated because of her new form and wanted to feel accepted. Similarly, the primary reason the rest of her crew joined was to support their captain.
- No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Downplayed. Catherine never thinks that anyone is necessarily in the wrong for being upset at Korinna's betrayal, just for constantly holding it over her head and being broken records about it when it's clear that Korinna already understands the gravity of what she did. In Catherine's eyes, Korinna realized her mistake, fought tooth and nail to undo it as much as she could—even at the risk of her own life, and is still regretting it. Why make her repentance harder for her than it already is? Basically, she'll forgive someone quietly stewing over it, but not someone directly antagonizing Korinna about it.
- Opposites Attract: Brad and Mother Nature are at opposite ends of the temper spectrum, yet they can't live without each other.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Catherine rarely leverages her power as Captain over her small crew, so when she puts the foot down with one of them, you know she's upset.
- Past Experience Nightmare: The most prominent symptom of Catherine's PTSD following her brainwashing. After a particularly bad one note , she begins lamenting that she's even starting to miss the Marshmallow Dreams—at least she could peacefully sleep through those.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Pan and Persephone are named after the god of the wild and the goddess of vegetation, respectively.
- Reluctant Warrior: Catherine at first, due to being uncertain how far she could go before her implants took over and she lost control. She has fewer reservations post-Unmasked.
- Sense Loss Sadness: Variant; While her senses of taste and smell were unaltered by her transformation, Catherine laments her inability to eat or drink anything anymore.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: After Catherine managed to get through her initial capture and tranformation; several months of GDA service(with her fair share of witnessed losses); and the Forthright Rescue without any long-term trauma, being captured once again and actually brainwashed—presumably followed by no small amount of assassination missions during that timeframe—finally broke her.
- Shrinking Violet: Catherine hates being in the spotlight, full stop. This is why she adamantly refused to reveal her transformation to the colony at first, instead choosing to hide away under the mistaken belief that they'd assume she had returned to stasis. Even when her conscience mandated she reveal herself after she learned everyone actually thought her dead, she chose to tell McCrea alone because she still feared the uproar her reappearance would cause. This became worse after her second capture, which, among other issues, left her Demophobia—a fear of crowds—due to her having been surrounded while powerless multiple times before the actual brainwashing; she dreaded the collective reaction of both the colony and the GDA when they learned of her survival, even though there was little doubt that it would be nothing except positive.
- Stepford Smiler—>Becoming the Mask: Catherine's usual coping mechanism, which basically worked by convincing herself that whatever it was that upset her wasn't that bad, or at least wasn't the end of the world. It falls flat after she's augmented, which was a lot harder for her to ignore/overlook/work around long enough for this to work, and it's more or less abandoned at the end of Unmasked.
- Between not wanting to worry her sister and wanting to leave her capture and brainwashing behind once and for all, Catherine tries it again after she's rescued. The facade doesn't even last 12 hours before she finally breaks down hard, and at a rather inopportune time to boot.
- Supering in Your Sleep: Catherine's first sleep after she's rescued from her brainwashing ends in a horrific nightmare that results in her activating her canon arms in her sleep. Fortunately, she doesn't shoot anything or anyone, but the fact that she could have is enough to frighten her into not wanting to go back to sleep until she can get them deactivated for good.
- The Runaway: Catherine is of the second variant, having run away from her parents because they constantly tried to suppress anything that didn't entail consumerism, which was incompatible with being a Friend to All Living Things like she wanted. She was picked up by the original Ecoship Prime captain roughly a week before launch, leaving the captain with no choice but to either bring her along or abandon her on the dead Earth, as there was no time to arrange anything else (and Catherine naturally didn't cooperate when asked if she had any other family, claiming to be the fourth variant).
- The Tell:
- If Catherine suddenly turns away or puts her helmet up, she's either crying(usually the former) or embarrassed(usually the latter).
- If she's gripping her forearms, she's distressed.
- If she's toggling her cannon on and off repeatedly, she's anxious.
- If she puts both hands behind her back, she's furious.note
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Catherine adheres to this as strictly as her GDA work will allow, limiting her targets to non-sentient robots and letting the others take care of the human guards. Even after becoming comfortable enough with her chassis to allow herself to resort to physical force more frequently without fear of losing control, she still leans more towards Technical Pacifist.
- During her second capture, WE actually weaponized this aspect of her; when they realize they were getting nowhere with robots, they sent, not human guards, but other CATH-Es, knowing full well she wouldn't be able to kill those that she could empathize with on sight and that had basically no choice in the matter(humans she could at least try to tell herself knew what they were getting into to try to lessen the sting, if it truly came down to them or her). After getting over the initial shock, she tries to get around it by shooting out their limbs to render them non-threats while still leaving them alive, but WE responded to this by sending in a larger wave; since they were all identically-colored, it was impossible to shoot at the limbs of individual CATH-Es without risking potentially lethal collateral damage. When Catherine attempts to cut them off by running into the more broken-down maintenance tunnels and shooting at a weakened part of the ceiling, causing it to collapse, it backfires as her pursuers(who had kept their helmets down, under the logic that seeing human faces would make her hesitate further) don't stop like she'd anticipated and instead end up crushed. Once the reality of this sinks in, the resulting Heroic BSoD makes Catherine an easy target for the final wave.
- Token Human:
- After the last other human crew member passed away, Catherine(who would have still been in stasis when this happened) technically became this. Even after her transformation, she still downplayed it as the "Token Non-Robot" until Unmasked.
- Korinna as of the end of Unmasked, when she enrolls as First Mate of the Ecoship Prime.
- True Companions: When they do eventually learn of Catherine's decision to join the GDA, the rest of her crew don't hesitate to join her.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: When Brad gained sapience, he was aware of this possibility in the future and chose a pure-male name in an attempt to avoid this, thinking that any boy who fell for him would at least have the courtesy to ask his name first. It hasn't always worked.
- Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Well, built, but same deal. Pan and Persephone are introduced as Brad and Mother Nature's children at the end of Christmas RP 3. In the post-forum era, there were plans to eventually give Korinna and Bruce fraternal twins of their own.
The Melusine
The ship of the rebellious people who fight against White Enterprises/Omni and call themselves and act like Space Pirates.Its crew contains examples of:
- The Captain: Jack "Blackbeard". Rebel Leader.
- A Father to His Men: Jack, who tries to rule his crew not with fear but with care since they all are the victims of Omni.
- The Gambler: Brady. He often makes bets even with his own crewmates.
- Girly Bruiser: Alissa. She's strong, she's able to fight, she always wields her Ray Gun. Thou Shalt Not Kill, though.
- Intrepid Reporter: Jamie, who was a journalist before becoming the First Mate, and was arrested for his investigations.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Alissa sometimes wears her fancy dresses even during raids.
- Nerves of Steel: Jamie. No one has EVER heard him raising his voice.
- Ninja. Hidetoshi, literally.
- Number Two: Jamie, the Melusine's First Mate and sometimes Vice-Captain.
- Older Sidekick: Brady, who's become Jack's BFF and hangs out around him more often than even First Mate.
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Subverted by Alissa. She almost always wears dresses, but is willing (and able!) to kick anyone's ass if they stand in her way.
- Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Subverted by Alissa. Yes, she's blue-haired, but oh my stars not shy!
The Wonka
The Wonka is, as the name implies, a recreational candy factory ship, modeled after Wonka's factory, but more open to the public and far safer.The ship and it's crew contain examples of:
- Auntie Pennybags: Candice is almost universally adored by her younger patrons, and she loves them and seeing them happy in turn.
- Everyone Has Standards: For all her ship and career seems reliant on indulgence, Candice tries to encourage moderation by limiting how often patrons can visit in a certain amount of time. This also has the added bonus of ensuring her patrons never overindulge to the point of becoming tired of her products.
- Expy: Candice shares her appearance with Vanellope von Schweetz. She also has skills akin to Willy Wonka, but more grounded in reality. It was also considered to have the rest of her crew be based off of the remaining Sugar Rush racers, and give her a first mate based on Pinkie Pie.
- Friend to All Children: Captain Candice; her main reason for having a "chocolate room" on her ship, despite the fact that it costs her ship money(albeit not enough to kill the profits), is as an attempt to bring various kinds of children together through the one thing that most children tend to have in common: a love of sweets.
- Honest Corporate Executive: The Wonka produces most, if not all, of the confections sold on other ships during and after the exodus. Naturally, it's worth quite a bit. Despite this, Candice makes no attempt to weaponize her near-monopoly on candy and sweets via price inflation, wanting as many people, regardless of income, to be able to enjoy them as possible.
- Level Ate: Has it's own answer to Wonka's chocolate room.
- No OSHA Compliance: Defied compared to its inspiration. To give one example, the "chocolate room" has a chocolate river, but it's covered with glass and the patrons access it via a pump, and the pipes are far too small to fit even a child. In addition, since this room has far more than 10 patrons every day, Loompa-bots patrol the area and remove any partially-eaten treats to prevent the spread of germs caused by one kid biting into something that another kid didn't finish. Candice will also turn away or kick out any patron that appears sick.
- Sweet Tooth: Caters to these and has it as an unofficial job requirement; you wouldn't last long on the crew if you easily tired of sweets.
- Workaholic: Candice is one to an extent, which is a good thing because her products are in high demand from October to July across various holidays—if she didn't love what she did, she'd burn out very fast trying to manage the needed production.
Tempest
The reason she gets her own section is because she is unique in that she is a JFF only characternote (though she's set to appear in Spooktacular if the RPs ever get revived). She was initially only created to make ARGO's life a living hell, but overtime she gradually gained a backstory; In a nutshell, she's made from the fragmented files that the insane ARGO failed to retrieve, and was rescued and given an android body by a kindly alien race. Said aliens would later be attacked by White Enterprises, whom Tempest was invaluable in helping defeat. Later on, ARGO traced the rest of his memories there and attacked, taking control of most of the Adaptoids on the planet in order to fight for his files. Tempest almost defeated him, but as W.E. had seen this as an opportunity for another attack, Tempest tried to turn to fight them the first chance she got, only for ARGO to launch a sneak attack and knock her out. She later awoke to a ruined planet, memories intact (as ARGO had failed to separate them from her). As a result, she views ARGO as the one behind White's victory, hence her hatred of him.She is one of only two known survivors of the second attack, HAN-D being the other one, who was rescued before being reset.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: If her usefulness in the first attack is any indication, she might eventually fall into this.
- Doomed Hometown: Try Doomed Homeworld
- Foil: Arguably one to HAN-D: Adaptoids coming from the same planet, being the only known survivors of the second attack, HAN-D seeks only to help others for the sake of it(even putting herself at risk if need be), whereas Tempest focuses only on things that could help her quest for revenge.
- It's Personal: Hoo boy...
- Walking Techbane/Walking Techfix: Can be either/or, depending on what she intends to do with whatever computer she's working on.