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Henry Stickmin Series Trope Examples
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    G 
  • Game-Breaking Bug: Invoked on three separate occasions:
    • In Diamond, if you choose the Pokéball/Goodball while on the "Epic" route, the ball releases Missingno and causes the game to "crash".
    • In Airship, if you choose the scratched-out disc on the "Thief" route, Wilson will activate G.A.B.E.N, a mountain sized construct which begins to open up, while accompanied by ominous music… only to then freeze the game, and crash it into a FAIL, due to a missing file.
      FAIL Screen: error: stack overflow
      System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not find file C:\Program Files\HL3\G.A.B.E.N..dll
      Dump cache;
    • In Mission, choosing the CorrupTick in the Thief/Allies route causes the game to go haywire and reset. The game throws up an error message once it finishes starting up and sends you back to the point where you left off, only for the game to start going bonkers again a few seconds in and cut to a broken FAIL screen.
      Fission Mailed
      I...uh...I think something went wrong.
    • Truer to the trope, the Collection series has an issue with crashing every so often if played in fullscreen mode. The developers were actually aware of this, as the game starts in windowed mode by default and you'll get a warning about potential crashes if you try to switch to fullscreen mode. The way the game is structured, however, the worst case is if it crashes in the middle of a longer cutscene after a selection, forcing you back to the previous choice. (God help you if it crashes after you've picked "Walkthrough" in the Executive/Dead route of Mission.) Workaround to the fullscreen mode exist by letting the game play on Windowed and by running Lossless Scaling alongside the game to scale the window to fullscreen.
  • Gang of Hats: The Toppat Clan, who appear in Airship onwards, are a literal example.
  • Gassy Gastronomy: In Infiltrating the Airship, one of the options that Henry is given when chasing after Reginald Copperbottom, who begins to activate doors to stop him, is a can of beans. Choosing this causes Henry to let out gas that rockets him past all the doors.
  • Gatling Good:
    • One of the options when trying to get past the vault doors in Airship is for Charles to use the helicopter's, well, Gatling gun. The result is Henry and a Mook lying dead on the floor — and the door is intact.
    • Also from Airship, The Right Hand Man uses a Gatling gun when Henry fights him.
    • At the end of the "Pardoned Pals" ending of Mission, Henry and Ellie use the miniguns on Charles' helicopter to shoot out the support beams for the rocket, causing it to crash onto its launchpad.
    • One of the Toppat Clan's train cars in Mission is a train-mounted Gatling gun.
    • One of the Toppat Clan's escort trucks (also from Mission) is armed with a Gatling gun that fires swords.
  • Genre Shift: The series by and large is a light-hearted set of heist and prison break stories, but the Executive/Betrayed route becomes a pastiche of Shōnen anime with a super powered cyborg Henry getting his revenge on the Toppat Clan that betrayed him and clashing with the similarly upgraded Right Hand Man.
  • Giant Equals Invincible: Diamond, growing to huge proportions using a Mega Mushroom also renders Henry bulletproof. Downplayed since a cannonball does manage to take him down.
  • Gilligan Cut: In Thief/Dead of Mission, Icepick goes over the plan for the rocket launch in way too much detail. Upon saying that nobody's going to be listening, the camera zooms into a masked person, Henry, who overhears all this.
    Icepick: Relax, mate, no one's gonna be listenin' in 'ere.
    (Zooms into Henry.)
  • Glass-Shattering Sound: Invoked and subverted. In Complex, Henry attempts to break a glass window in his cell using a Sonic Pulse blaster, but instead it just causes his head to go a-splode.
  • Golden Ending: Mission comes with six.
    • Triple Threat: Henry and Ellie are able to subdue Sven and reroute the Toppat Clan’s rocket to land on The Wall, presumably leading to the members of the clan onboard getting arrested. The mission ends off with Ellie stating that she and Henry are entirely willing to help Charles out with more missions as long as he makes sure to call them.
    • Pardoned Pals: After choosing to side with the government, Henry and Ellie shoot down the support beams to the Toppat Clan’s rocket, blowing up both the entire clan and the members of The Wall who were inside. Following the victory, the General pardons Henry and Ellie from their crimes out of gratitude for their help.
    • Master Bounty Hunter: Henry and Charles successfully capture Right Hand Man, which causes massive turmoil in the clan thanks to a lack of leadership and gives the Government the opportunity to arrest the majority of the clan, with the members left not posing much of a threat anymore. Charles comments that Henry would probably be really good at Bounty hunting, and Henry ultimately decides to follow his advice.
    • Stickmin Space Resort: Henry manages to get the rocket to space while now in command, converting it into a luxury resort with the members on board reforming and becoming staff, while the rest still on earth were all arrested.
    • Free Man: Henry enters the off-site Drop Pod and sets it to collision course with the station and to earth. The ramming ends up disabling the space station’s electricity, leaving the Toppat Clan stranded in space, and with both this and his previous pardon from the Government, Henry is able to live on his own as a Free Man without needing to face any repurcussions for his actions.
    • Toppat King: Out of all the outcomes from Executive route, this ending has the best one for Henry as not only he gains Reginald's loyalty for defending the Toppat's rocket launch and has the control of the clan in his earnest, but he also has Ellie as his Right Hand Lady on his side.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Chances are if a FAIL goes wrong, it's going to be successful… but not in the way that's best for Henry.
    • In Airship:
      • Choosing the "Disguise" option to get past the Toppat meeting during the Investigator route leads to Henry blending in... a little too well, as the guy the other Toppats mistake him for has a wife who's expecting a baby. Rather than blow his cover, Henry takes a nearby escape pod set to go to the hospital.
    • In Complex:
      • Making Henry distract the guards causes them to dance — including Ellie, who decides to join in the dancing.
      • If Henry and Ellie wear guard hats to get past guards during the prison riot, they succeed in doing so; however, they get attacked by a group of convicts who think they are guards.
      • Henry disguising himself as a box lets him be undetected by the guards. They use the box as a poker table.
    • In Mission:
      • Making Charles use a subsonic wave to stun the Toppats in the shuttle flattens the Toppats in the shuttle — including Henry.
      • Making Charles use a giant TV to distract the Toppats in the shuttle distracts them with a funny show — that Henry stops to watch.
      • Choosing the Right-Hand-Man to plow through the military blockade on the ramp makes the Right-Hand-Man plow through the guard — and the shuttle.
      • The CCC can contain chaos by freezing time completely (and stopping the whole world).
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Evil:
    • Henry and Ellie are Villain Protagonists whose allegiance can change depending on the player's choice. Otherwise, they're generally Wild Cards with some sympathetic moments.
    • The US Government is the most heroic and noble faction, as they are trying to apprehend criminals and uphold the law.
    • The Toppat Clan is a criminal organization consisting of mostly affable and honorable criminals, making them Anti Villains. This also applies to the Center of Chaos Containment, who are Well Intentioned Extremists with their methods of containing chaos.
    • The Wall is a prison complex run by a sinister warden who doesn't care about the severity or the innocence of the people he locks up, only wanting to uphold the reputation of his institution.
  • Good Guns, Bad Guns: Zigzagged.
    • The prison guards in Prison, police and museum watchmen in Diamond, and military in Airship and Mission, who are mostly Hero Antagonists unless Henry chooses to join up with them, use what look like Remington-type shotguns, Glock pistols (except for Kurt Dietrich who uses a Webley), and AR-type rifles. Charles is shown carrying a Glock pistol when he meets Henry again at the beginning of the Government/Dead route of Mission. Tellingly, when Henry does the "Wololo" on Kayn West, his AK-47 becomes an M16.
    • The Toppat Clan mainly uses AK-47 assault rifles; the zigzag comes in since they use Colt M1911 pistols.
    • The Wall, the main organization that Henry doesn't align with, uses AK-104 rifles and Makarov pistols.
  • Government Agency of Fiction: The Center for Chaos Containment, which appears in Diamond (when you go for the Epic Ending), Airship (when you have Henry start by entering the ship with the grappling hook), and Mission (in the Executive/Dead route).
  • Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: Played with in "Fleeing the Complex". During the "Ghost Inmate" pathway, there are three locations where Henry will jump down from a higher point, and the way he lands depends on the player; by default he will land flat on his face, unless the player clicks the landing point in time, which will have Henry land gracefully on his legs instead. Doing this for all three points earns you the "nailed it" achievement.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: To reenact the reference it's based on, the Spirit Forme choice in Mission's Revenged route has both Right-Hand Man & Reference (Henry's "Spirit") talking in Japanese during their battle. You can tell that it's gratuitous because sometimes the writers gave up and left some English words peppered throughout the script. Also, as any Japanese Let's Player of the game will tell you, the Japanese is horrifically broken.
    Right Hand Man (dub): 本当に fist が stop me?
  • Greed: Henry's primary trait across all series, starting with a failed attempt to rob a bank when he was arrested for doing so. And to a lesser extent, Ellie seems to have this as well in one particular route.
  • Grenade Launcher: A FAIL in the Bounty/Ghost route for Mission has Henry attempt to use an Underbarrel Grenade Launcher mounted on an AK-47, but he winds up blowing a hole in the hull and gets sucked into space.
  • Groin Attack:
    • Played with in Prison, the shooting range after using the teleporter shows that there is a lot of points if aiming for the groin in comparison to other parts (excluding the head).
    • Attempting to use the magic pencil in Airship will result in Henry creating a "Nutshot Crawler" that proceeds to make good on its name by hitting him in the nuts and then crawling away.
    • In Complex, picking the sandwich option causes Henry to turn into a hulking beast and then he knocks out two guards. He turns back to normal while trying to knock out a third guard who then pulls this on Henry.
    • In the Thief/Dead route of Mission, Henry can attempt to limbo under a security gate while he's driving his scooter at full speed. He'll hit the bar right in the crotch, and the impact will split him in half.
  • Guide Dang It!: Most of the game content, and with it the achievements, are rather straightforward: see the endings and FAILs, click characters for bios, and complete Collection Sidequests. But some of the achievements require doing some things that at best aren't easy to guess, at worst are outright convoluted. Stuff like figuring out you're supposed to click a sun or moon for the "I'MMA FIRIN' MA LAZOR" guy are obvious in hindsight for the meme-lovers the games are targeted to, but until you first get one you wouldn't know they're a thing in the first place, while stuff like the Biggol Sword sidequest have so many different easily missable steps that getting them in a blind playthrough is borderline impossible.

    H 
  • Half the Man He Used to Be:
    • In Stealing the Diamond, selecting the Laser Cutter causes the laser to slice Henry in half when he tries to steal the Diamond.
    • In Fleeing the Complex, selecting the Shadozer option will turn Henry into a shadow. However, when clouds begin blocking the moon, Henry hastily tries to return to form but the cloud covered his shadow halfway through.
    • In Completing the Mission, when Charles tries to use the Super Accurate Laser Shot to shoot at the hull of the space station to let Henry in, it causes Burt Curtis to activate the shields, which cut Henry in two.
  • Hammerspace: Except for moments where he uses his surroundings, no explanation is given to how Henry carries around the items he's using. Not that it matters, though.
  • Harmless Liquefaction: Subverted in Stealing the Diamond where one of the fails is using a device with the intention to turn into water and slip through the cracks. The device kills Henry by turning him into an inanimate puddle of such.
  • Have a Nice Death: Every game is full of these kind of scenarios. Each subsequent game has more "FAILs" than the last, leading up to 164 FAILs in Mission.
  • Headgear Headstone: In the "Valiant Hero" ending of Completing the Mission, chopper pilot Charles Calvin loses his life trying to help Henry Stickmin take down the Topphat's satellite base. The game ends with Henry coming to visit his gravestone, which has his iconic headset placed on top.
  • Helicopter Blender: Implied to have happened offscreen during a FAIL in Infiltrating the Airship if Henry chooses to wait too long to attack Handsome Harold.
    Charles: Oh man, a duck just flew right into the propeller; oh, what a mess...
  • Hero Antagonist:
    • This trope applies to pretty much all the police officers, security guards, and museum guards that oppose Henry during the games, since all of them are just people doing their job, namely preventing Henry from committing crimes.
    • Dmitri in Complex... though the "hero" part is questionable, considering his treatment of prisoners in general.
    • The Government also counts in the Executive/Dead and Executive/Allies, and Thief/Allies routes of Mission, in which Henry either became the Toppats' leader and is never betrayed by Reginald, or plans to join the clan.
  • Heroic Mime: Henry rarely speaks, aside from screams of pain or fright as something horrible happens to him. This is especially evident whenever Henry is paired with a more talkative partner, such as Ellie or Charles.
  • History Repeats: According to the bio description of Terrence Suave (the Toppat leader before Reginald) in the Collection, the Executive/Ghost route of Mission isn't the first time Reginald toppled a leader for their indignant behavior, which may partially be why he's genuinely furious at Henry in the intro.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Henry, too many times to count.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: The NrG drink from Prison eventually has this as a side effect, leading to a FAIL just when it seems that Henry successfully escaped.
  • Hollywood Magnetism: Played for laughs in a route in Complex, where Henry uses a magnet to launch him towards the Toppat airship, but instead he ends up pulling the entire airship towards him, crashing into the complex building. The FAIL message tries to justify this result before straight-up giving up halfway through.
  • Hollywood Glass Cutter: Henry attempts to use a laser cutter in Stealing the Diamond. It swings wildly and cuts him in half instead.
  • Hot Blade: The spacesuit that Henry uses in the Government/Dead route of Mission has a knife that's so hot that it can cut through anything. Unfortunately, Henry isn't able to grab it when he deploys it and it floats away into space.
  • Human Cannonball:
    • A FAIL in Diamond involves Henry trying to use a cannon to launch himself past a pair of guards. He falls out, tries to get back in, and winds up crashing into the door when it fires.
    • Henry can also try this in the Thief/Ghost route of Mission, to cross a gap. The cannon instead just blows him up.
    • In the Government/Allies route of Mission, Charles's helicopter has a cannon designed to fire humans, which Henry and Ellie use to get inside the rocket, being shot through the rocket cafeteria's window.
  • Hurricane of Puns:
    • One of the FAILs in Airship gives you four of them:
      "WATT are you doing?"
      "Why, I'd say that's quite SHOCKING!"
      "I'd rather not be in your CURRENT situation."
      "I bet you can't wait to go OHM."
      • And if you mouse over them...
        LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!
    • Another set of four pops up in one of the FAILs in the Bounty/Allies route of Mission:
      "What was the POINT of that?"
      "...Not the SHARPest idea."
      "Gonna PIN the blame on you for that one."
      "Did you really NEEDLE that money?"
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: In Airship, when Henry uses 'warp' while chasing Reginald down a hallway, the experience of traveling through warp space shatters Henry's mind. Upon emerging from it, he falls to the ground frozen.
  • Hypocritical Humor: In Thief/Dead of Mission, upon (wrongly) assuming no one is hearing his conversation, Icepick accuses someone else for being out of it for assuming someone would steal a rocket, only for this kind of thing to end up happening.

    I 
  • Iconic Sequel Character: While the series always revolved around the titular character, the other main characters (Charles, Reginald, the Right Hand Man, Dmitri and Ellie) didn't exist until late in the series, having debuted in Airship and Complex.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Verbing the Noun.
  • I Have No Idea What I'm Doing: Charles says this verbatim when he tries and fails to hack the Toppat base door open in Mission.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: In Prison, using the teleporter takes Henry to the middle of a live firing range, with predictably disastrous results.
  • Impaled Palm: In Mission during the Thief/Allies path, Ellie can use a grappling hook rifle to attempt to reel Henry in. Instead, she shoots him in the hand, pinning him to the launch tower.
  • Improbable Falling Save: Subverted. At one point during the "Pure Blooded Thief/Convict Allies" route of Completing the Mission, the bridge Henry is trying to cross collapses. One of the choices is to have Ellie try and catch him, but she just ends up getting pulled down with him.
    FAIL Screen: Fatso.
  • Improperly Placed Firearms: While The Wall is inspired by Russia, it's actually in Canada. The guards' standard rifle is not the usual AK-74M but the IWI Galil ACE in 7.62x39mm, which is neither used by Canadian or Russian police or military. However, they do use Browning M2HBs and Makarovs.
  • Improvised Weapon: Henry winds up using the cell bar he cut through as a staff in the "File" route in Prison.
  • Inconvenient Darkroom Illumination: In Airship, when Henry asks Charles to help him get past an electric trap by remotely rerouting the power, Charles reroutes the power to a darkroom, where a Toppat member is developing photos. The sudden increase in power causes the one lightbulb to go wild, ruining the photos. The man can be heard screaming in agony and frustration.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man:
    • Henry can do this in Diamond; however, choosing this option results in him getting eaten by a worm.
    • In the Government/Ghost pathway of Mission, Henry has to be shrunken by a computer to fit atop the Toppat's train as it goes through a tunnel, then is regrown after it reaches the launch site.
  • Informed Ability: Parodied in Undercover Agent (Wait For Transfer-Cafeteria [Toppat Clan]) FAIL in Complex. The FAIL screen claims that the undercover agent of the Toppat Clan has been working for three years, even though it's incredibly obvious in the previous scene that the agent clearly has no clue how to even act like one, considering that he publicly declares himself as an agent in front of numerous guards.
  • Injured Self-Drag: In the "Revenged" ending of Completing The Mission, Henry is unable to escape the doomed Toppat airship before it hits the ground and is mortally injured in the crash. All he can do at that point is pull himself out of the wreckage and slowly limp over to a nearby rock, upon which he collapses and dies.
  • Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: In Diamond, sending a mecha after the enlarged Henry is one of the four things the Center for Chaos Containment can do. It's this choice that allows the player to reach the "epic ending" of the game.
  • Instant Gravestone: If Henry explodes himself in front of the Right Hand Man, a gravestone appears at that spot as part of a Worms reference.
  • Intangibility: Prison features a device which makes Henry intangible. It works exactly as advertised, causing Henry to fall to the center of the Earth.
  • Interdimensional Travel Device: Parodied with the Transdimensionalizer in Airship. When Henry flips the switch, it transports him to the 1st Dimension (aka a single straight horizontal line in mathematics). And he can't return either since the switch flips up and down.
  • Interface Spoiler: An attentive eye will be able to make out a quick-time event choice by how the scenario reacts when the options appear. Normal events have everything go slightly darker and pause; QTE's have the colour remain and animations continue.
  • Invisibility: In Diamond, Henry takes a pill that turns him invisible, which makes him lose sight and fall off the building. In the Collection version, he simply disappears without anyone knowing where he went... including the game, which gives it a FAIL.
  • Irony: In the Executive/Ghost route, Henry, ousted from the Toppat clan because he betrayed a fellow prisoner, only ends up surviving by working together with his own prisoner, Dave the security Guard.
  • It Only Works Once: At the start of the Government/Ghost route of Mission, you can try the same trick from Bank to infiltrate the Toppats' cargo train (namely, hiding inside a fake storage box). Everything proceeds just as it did in Bank… until the Toppats who find Henry just shrug and walk away. Cue FAIL screen.

    J 
  • Jail Bake: At the start of Prison, Henry receives a cake that contains no less than six items, including a huge drill and a rocket launcher. Even better, one of the guards, Dave, was supposed to check the cake, but forgot — and when he realizes that he didn't, he lies to his fellow guard Rupert that he did.note  The Omega Ending of Mission reveals that the package was sent by a member of the Center for Chaos Containment as part of a "multiverse defragmentation" operation.
  • "Just Joking" Justification: Discussed in the Just Plain Epic route of Diamond, where a FAIL screen suggests to do this after Henry's failed attempt to use one of the guns in the museum on the guards.
    FAIL Screen: Quick! Pretend you were joking!
  • Just One More Level!: One FAIL in Airship has Henry booting up a Toppat computer to look for evidence, only to spend hours absorbed in Civilization V until a Toppat member catches him.
    FAIL Screen: ...Just one more turn?

    K 
  • Kaizo Trap: The S.S. Annie Option in Ghost involves Henry incapacitating the captain of the ship, and then using the ship to escape The Complex. Victory music plays until a crew member shows up from behind with a knife, cutting to the fail screen:
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: Henry ends up on the wrong end of this in the Executive/Ghost path of Mission. Of the Ghost paths, this is the only one where Henry's choice to leave Ellie behind comes back to bite him; as she follows him to the airship, discredits him in front of the Toppat Clan and gets him dethroned, and is implied to take over once Henry and his gang accidentally kills Reginald and the Right Hand Man in the process of escaping.
  • Killer Yo-Yo: Subverted. You can have Henry try bashing the Right Hand Man with the yo-yo in the EarthBound-style battle in Airship, but that results in him taking little damage and blasting Henry with a deadly shockwave.
  • Kill Sat:
    • The Center for Chaos Containment in Diamond has one of these at its disposal.
    • The Thief/Ghost route of Mission reveals that the Toppat's space station doubles as one, as it's equipped with a giant laser cannon named "Supreme Dominance".
  • Klatchian Coffee: The NrG drink in Prison. Grants the ability to just waltz through the place. Too bad it also gives him a heart attack as he exits through the front door…
  • Klingon Promotion: The Rapidly Promoted Executive ending in Airship features Henry becoming the new leader of the Toppat Clan, after he has disposed of the Right Hand Man and taken Reginald hostage.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The Wall's warden, Dmitri Johannes Petrov. He's the only main character who's not cartoonish or has humorous quirks.
  • Knockout Gas: For the last choice in the Government route in Airship, Charles can choose to use sleeping gas on the Toppats stopping Henry from escaping. Unfortunately because he's flying, the gas dissipates harmlessly in the wind and the Toppats shoot Henry.

    L 
  • Lampshade Hanging:
    • The FAIL screens do this a lot.
    • The loading screen in the flash version of Airship says that Henry "may be considered extremely lucky."
  • Laser-Guided Karma: If you choose to "Abandon" Reginald in the Executive/Allies route of Mission, a Toppat will almost immediately blow up the Government helicopter Henry pilots while he's trying to fly to the rocket's cockpit. The FAIL screen lampshades this consequence.
  • Last-Second Ending Choice:
    • Usually inverted — which ending you get usually depends on what route you pick at the very first choice.
    • Played straight in the "Cannon Ball" route of Airship, where Henry is offered the choice between bringing the captured Reginald to the government agents as he was originally tasked to, or accept Reginald's offer to become the new leader of the Clan.
    • Happens again in the Thief/Allies route of Mission. After struggling through the Wall's guards, the Government, and the Toppat Clan, Henry and Ellie are caught in the middle of a standoff between all three. At this point, they have to choose a side. Even not picking any side is an option.
  • Last Lousy Point: A lot of the three-star character bios are hard to obtain, because the corresponding character appears only for a few seconds or is hard to spot. Tony Franz from Bank is a good example, since he appears in the background for one scene and is almost immediately covered by a piece of rubble, which will prevent you from clicking on him.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Invoked in the Completing the Mission. The routes you combine are endings from the Airship and Complex, which are pretty spoilerific by nature. Though, The Betrayed stands out the most, as Henry is outright dead but combine with the Executive route from Airship was ultimately received as a cyborg. However, Mission is inaccessible without completing the previous two games.
  • Laugh Track: Played with in the "Epic" route of Diamond in the Collection. A lame pun from Corporal Bill Bullet is met with canned laughter that turns out to be coming from a TV someone's watching in the background.
    Bill Bullet: Hey, who's watching TV?! Get back to work!
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo:
    • Involving an actual lawyer, no less. The "Legal" ending of Prison is a clear parody of the Ace Attorney series, and in the original version Henry is represented by Phoenix Wright himself. Presumably due to copyright reasons, the remaster changes the name of Henry's lawyer to Felix White.
    • Every Shout-Out in the original game was able to get away with directly namedropping the items or characters in the franchise they were from due to the original nature of the series as Flash games. But in the remaster, which is available for purchase on Steam, many, many references had their sound effects altered or their names changed to avoid copyright, ranging from renaming Metroids in Diamond to "Aliens", to a direct voiceline of the Sniper being dubbed over by Puffballs in his own voice (which was originally a mobile-exclusive change).
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the Executive/Ghost route of Mission, after Ellie spills in front of the Toppat Clan that Henry abandoned her after she helped him escape, Reginald reacts with shock and calls Henry out for his lack of honor and dignity. However, when the two does this, the camera is positioned such that it looks like they're talking to you; which, considering you're the one that clicked the option, makes perfect sense.
  • Leitmotif: The series utilizes a few of these, especially in Mission.
  • Left Stuck After Attack: Mission has a FAIL where Henry tries to use a "Big Boy" sword; he cuts down The Bookie, but the sword gets stuck in the floor.
  • Left the Background Music On:
    • When Henry and Ellie distract the Toppat Clan with their dancing, which turns the entire cafeteria into one, big dance party, the background music can be heard through Charles' headset as he bobs his head to it.
    • Wallace Dagwood is able to detect Henry and Ellie approaching in their tank by hearing the background music accompanying it.
      Wallace: Oi, you hear that?
  • Letting the Air out of the Band:
    • Near the end of the "Undetected" route in Diamond, you're given a choice to jump with the diamond. What follows is slow-motion and dramatic music... only for Henry to fall down and the music falls flat.
    • Getting the "Lightning Quick Larcenist" ending in Airship has a triumphant, upbeat song… which slows to a halt once the contents of the safe are revealed: one teddy bear.
  • Literal Cliffhanger: Near the end of one route in Complex, the truck Henry is in comes to a stop at the edge of a ravine, just barely balancing on the edge. Dmitri threatens to push it over if Henry does not surrender. Letting him do so is actually the correct choice, and gets you the "Presumed Dead" ending.
  • The Load: Asking Charles the helicopter pilot directly for help usually results in him crashing his helicopter into Henry's enemy (and Henry himself).
  • Look Both Ways:
    • In the original version of Bank, Henry digs all the way into a subway tunnel. Once he gets his bearings, a train runs him over.
    • A FAIL in Prison has Henry use a grappling rope to get off the prison roof and lands safely on the ground... right in front of a money truck.
  • Loud of War: The "Special Brovert Ops" ending of Mission is reached when Charles uses a large horn to blow Sven's gun out of his hand, allowing Henry to punch Sven out.

    M 
  • Magic Misfire: In Airship, one of the options for opening a door is for Henry to use wizard magic. However, the spell fails and causes Henry to freeze instead.
    FAIL Screen: ...Rolled a 1...
  • MacGuffin: The Tunisian Diamond from Stealing the Diamond, the Romanian Ruby from Infiltrating the Airship and the Norwegian Emerald from Completing the Mission.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Too many to count, but someone put together a quick compilation.
  • Matchlight Danger Revelation: In the remastered version of Bank, the shovel FAIL involves Henry digging into something hard, then pulling out a lighter to reveal that he dug into a gas main. Cue explosion.
  • Mayor Pain: Mayor Fredrickson, who opened the Tunisian exhibit in Diamond, is revealed to have been an Evil All Along member of the Toppat Clan in Mission who was planning to steal the very diamond he presented.
  • Meaningful Echo: When Charles talks about his "Greatest Plan" in Complex, he talks about crashing his helicopter into Henry and a guard, which results in a fail. In Government/Dead, Charles does the same thing, only successfully. Later, he repeats this after successfully infiltrating the Toppat satellite, which would eventually explode. He also sacrificed himself, but he saved Henry.
    Charles: We did it, though, we got 'em. Pretty good plan... You could say it was the greatest— [plan]
  • Megaton Punch: When Henry is facing the government helicopter in the Executive/Allies path, he can perform an absurdly powerful Super Punch, which sends it careening into the sky. But he falls afterwards, making using it a FAIL.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The Thief/Allies path in Mission results in this. Dmitri is trying to recapture Henry and Ellie (and is willing to fight through the government and Toppats to do so), the government is trying to take down the Toppat Clan, and the Toppats are trying to escape with their ill-gotten gains. The player is actually forced to choose a faction at one point. The government and Toppat clan have actual endings: Dmitri just locks Henry and Ellie back up in the Wall, and choosing none of them results in them dying after a poorly thought-out plan.
  • Me's a Crowd: The Duplicatorange in the Executive/Dead route of Mission does what it's supposed to when eaten — it duplicates Henry, which he uses to pass by a guard. Unfortunately, the original Henry gets shot, and the game decides it's not going to follow a copy.
  • Morton's Fork: In the last set of options in the Executive/Betrayed route in Mission, none of them end well for Henry. "Airship" has Henry hold Reginald in place on the rocket as the Airship crashes into them (FAIL). "Drop" has Henry drop Reginald to his death the same way as in the "Betrayed" ending of Complex, but Reginald has a parachute in his hat and is able to call for backup, resulting in Henry getting gunned down (FAIL). "Staple" has Henry affix Reginald to the wall and attempt to escape, but Reginald shoots Henry with a gun hidden in his hat, ensuring that both of them die when the Airship crashes ("Revenged" Ending).
  • Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Complex has loads of Russian imagery, but actually takes place in Canada. It's safe to assume that Dmitri, Grigori, and some of the guards are Russian immigrants or are from Russian families living in Canada.
  • Motorcycle Jousting: In Diamond, during the Aggressive scenario, Henry can try this when rushing through the museum on his scooter. It fails because Henry loses his balance, so the lance strikes the ground and Henry is catapulted off his scooter. The FAIL screen even comments on this.
    Jousting. It's harder than it looks.
  • Multiple-Choice Past:
    • At the beginning of Airship, Henry is shown a file of his past crimes. The file is randomized, and it can show the events of different routes for his escape from prison (in Prison) and his museum heist (in Diamond).
    • Taken to the next and literal level in Mission where the Big First Choice is what endings Henry got in the previous two games. You can't select two Faction-Specific Endings that contradict each other, but otherwise, any combination goes.
  • Multiple Endings: Naturally, considering that it's a choose-your-own-adventure style game series. There are three in Prison, three in Diamond, four in Airship note , five in Complex, and sixteen in Mission. The Recap page provides summaries of all of them.
  • The Multiverse: The setting exists in one. In order to unlock the Multiverse Correction ending, you must find ALL the FAILs and other endings across all six games, so the multiverse will reach full capacity.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Henry's trusty scooter. Normally, a scooter would just be seen as a rather blasé recreational device with very little inherent value. However, just add a dinky little exhaust engine into it, and it's suddenly an insane getaway vehicle that pulls off the most extreme heists out there.
  • Mundane Solution: Sometimes the option that works is the least flashy one.
  • Musical Pastiche: The original Flash games outright used snippets of music and sound effects from their source material. The remastered versions available with Mission substitutes them with stuff that sounds similar, given that Mission is a paid downloadable game, thus necessicating removing any copyrighted material.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • In the Thief/Ghost route of Mission, Henry has to cross a gap. The choices available are the exact same ones from the series' predecessor, Crossing the Pit.note 
    • Among the Among Us crewmates that the player can collect in Mission, there is also a tan colored crewmate that doesn't count toward the collection. This is a reference to the tan color in Among Us that was removed from the game. (Until it was later re-added in the Airship Update.)

    N 
  • Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Toppat Clan from Airship onwards.
  • Neck Lift: The "Airship" option for Mission has the cybernetic Henry fly Reginald to the rocket and hold him by his throat so that the crashing Airship will smash into the rocket, killing them both.
  • Never My Fault: In the Thief/Faking the Dead route of Completing The Mission, Henry enters the Toppat base by asking the guard at the entrance to open the gate for him. Said guard then realizes what he just did and radio's in that Henry position, claiming that he was just too fast for him.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Zig-zagged, as the various deaths demonstrate. Just because Henry can use new powers, items, and abilities at a whim doesn't mean they're always appropriate for certain occasions. However, on a few occasions, seemingly inexplicable options like these do actually work, leaving it all the more surprising; besides, it's funnier that way.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted in Airship. During the battle between the Toppat gang, the military, and the Center for Chaos Containment, one of the CCC employees takes off his power armor so he can pee. Henry uses this opportunity to steal the armor and escape from the scene.
  • No Canon for the Wicked: Averted throughout the series.
    • Insofar as Henry is a Villain Protagonist, every game after Bank is a canon wicked ending.
    • In the more traditional sense of the term, Henry can join the Toppat Clan in Airship and Abandon Ellie in Complex with Mission treating both outcomes as equal likelihoods. Though Henry is more likely to get a bad ending with the Toppat clan, he can still come out ahead depending on the exact combination.
  • No Ending: The ending of Toppat Civil Warfare can be considered this. After Henry and his squad flee the airship, accidentally killing the two most important Toppat members, Ellie takes the throne of the clan, starting a battle against Henry. This can also be considered Bolivian Army Ending, since we never know or see the aftermath of how Henry or Ellie will win the fight.
  • No Fair Cheating: Played for laughs in Complex. If you pick the Tool Gun in the Charge Tackle route, Henry activates server cheats, followed by noclip, and flies through the roof. And then…
    Message Box: Connection Terminated. You have been kicked from Fleeing the Complex for cheating.
    FAIL Screen: Cheaters never prosper.
  • "No. Just… No" Reaction: The Dance Battle option in Mission. Every time it's selected, Henry gets immediately shot in the face or his face caved in. The FAIL screen just states "No" or "Stop." in an increasingly aggravated tone.
  • Non-Indicative Name: A new conversation added to Bank has the guards talk about how the titular location is more of a vault than a bank. (Likely Lampshading and Handwaving of there being a bank in the middle of the desert.)
  • Noodle Incident:
    • The contents of the file that Henry stole in the "Government-Supported Private Investigator" ending of Airship. All that can be gleaned is that it's enough to put the Toppat Clan away.
    • How and why did Dave Panpa end up in a cell of the Toppat Clan's Airship?
    • Why was Ellie locked up in The Wall?
    • Also, whatever events caused The Wall to house Frosty the Snowman, if the Costume fail in the PD route of Complex is of any indication.
    • According to the FAIL Screen for the Infini³, it was pre-owned and filled by the previous owner despite the object containing multiple pocket dimensions, one of the objects is a cruise ship for some reason.
    • Holey Cap has a hole in his top hat, caused by the "laser incident". What the laser incident was is never explained.
  • No One Could Survive That!: Henry pulls one in the "Presumed Dead" ending in Complex by climbing out of his truck and clinging to the cliff face before Dmitri pushes the truck off the cliff.
  • Nostalgia Level: One section of the Thief/Ghost route Mission is basically a remastered version of Crossing the Pit, the animation that effectively served as a prototype to the entire series.
  • Not What It Looks Like: In Prison, Henry's lawyer spins the random assorted evidence and the footage of Henry emerging from the money bag from Bank as this, claiming that he was the victim of an attempted murder by the money transporter, who stuffed his body in a money bag and disposed of it in the vault, only for Henry to "wake up" and trigger the alarm by accident.
  • Nuke 'em: In Diamond, this is one of the ways the Center for Chaos Containment can try to deal with the enlarged Henry. They can also deploy a nuke in Mission to stop the Big Boy, and the resultant FAIL screen lampshades how the CCC seem to have an impressive stockpile of nukes.

    O 
  • Obligatory Earpiece Touch: In Airship, this trope naturally happens to Henry when you go for the "Earpiece" route.
  • Off with His Head!: A FAIL in Mission consists of Henry pretending to be a mannequin; one of the Toppat members starts pretending he's a coat rack and sticks him out the window only for Henry to be decapitated by a low-hanging branch.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Henry has a massive one when Ellie appears on the Executive/Ghost route and reveals what he did in front of the entire Toppat Clan.
    • Mr. Macbeth and several Toppats show this in Bounty/Allies route when Henry's tank fires above the tunnel and obstructs it, causing the train crash.
  • Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: Villain Protagonist Henry is younger than both General Galeforce and Dmitri Petrov, though depending on the viewpoint, this can inverted in the latter's case.
  • Old Save Bonus: In the Henry Stickmin Collection, endings unlocked in Airship and Complex allow for more selections in Mission.
  • Omega Ending: In Mission, once the player gets every FAIL and unlocks every ending, and then goes to the Executive/Dead route, the Multiverse Correction ending will be unlocked. In it, the Center for Chaos Containment notices that the multiverse is at max capacity, and "defragments" it; in the process, they discover an anomaly. To fix it, an operative sends the package at the beginning of Prison right in front of Dave, setting the whole game in motion.
  • Once an Episode: Every game has the Teleporter featured as a choice at some point. It works out for Henry in Diamond and Mission; in every other game, it results in a FAIL.
  • Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: One of the options at the beginning of Prison is using a phone to call Henry's lawyer, named Felix White.
  • Overly Long Gag: Selecting the Walkthrough option in Mission makes Henry watch a guy who makes a walkthrough of the game, then picks the Walkthrough option resulting in him picking another Walkthrough option, and it keeps going, with him occasionally plugging social media or warning about spoilers. The game points out how long you've watched that scene, which will never actually end until you click out of it.

    P 
  • Paper-Thin Disguise:
    • The "disguise" that Henry can use in Airship consists solely of a hat, yet the criminals fall for it anyway. Similarly, wearing guards' hats is enough to fool guard and convict alike in Complexnote .
    • Choosing "Disguise Kit" in the Thief/Allies route in Mission has him put on the Spy's paper mask disguise. It doesn't work.
  • Paper Tiger: The Toppat Clan's airship looks intimidating, but it can be brought down with simple things like a magnet (though even the FAIL description admits that that particular instance was BS).
  • Pet the Dog: If the player chooses to free Dave, the trapped guard in Airship. It's particularly noteworthy since Henry doesn't benefit in any noticeable way from helping him escape. There's also the more obvious example of helping Ellie escape in Complex, instead of leaving her behind.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: If Henry uses the downgrader in Mission, he will become blue while Ellie will become pink.
  • Playing Sick: In Complex, Henry can try this to get the guards to open his cell. However, they instead tranquilize him and put him in quarantine with actually sick inmates. There's one guy whose arm falls off in front of Henry.
  • Point-and-Click Game: Playable entirely with your mouse, with two exceptions:
    • In Diamond, the aggressive route begins with three options: K to kick, R to ram, and spacebar to jump. This was changed to a more ubiquitous click-based choice in the remaster.
    • One FAIL screen in Mission that reads "Press F to pay respects". If you actually press F on your keyboard, you get an achievement; though clicking the F will get you the same result.
  • Point of Divergence: In Complex, the initial parts of the "Ghost" and "Allies" routes are the same, only differing in whether Ellie is with Henry or not. The routes diverge when Henry gets past a door in the main prison wing; on "Ghost", he continues unimpeded and slips out undetected, while on "Allies" he is forced to open the door to let Ellie through and accidentally opens the entire prison, triggering a riot.
  • Politeness Judo: The correct answer to the first choice in the Thief/Dead route in Mission is to just stop and nicely ask the Toppat guard to raise the barrier. He complies, and by the time he realizes what happened, Henry's long gone.
  • Poor Communication Kills: One FAIL in Complex involves Henry jumping off the building so Charles can catch him with the helicopter. Henry instead falls to his death because he forgot to tell Charles about his plan, so Charles isn't ready.
    Charles: Wait, was that the plan? Man, we really should have coordinated that better.
  • Powered Armor: Two examples in Airship. Henry can use one of these suits to escape the airship after stealing the Ruby, and later the troops of the Center for Chaos Containment use Powered Armour suits to fight both the Toppat gang and the organization that hired Henry. Specifically, the suit that Henry uses is the T-45d Power Armor of Fallout.
  • Power Trio: In the Government/Allies route of Mission, Henry forms this dynamic alongside Charles and Ellie by the ending.
  • Power-Up Food: Appears frequently as an option and the effectiveness is played with. For an example of each:
    • Straight: The Beans on the Bounty/Executive route of Airship propel Henry at super speed with his own flatulence.
    • Subverted: The Eat Me cookie in Complex causes Henry to grow, but the concrete around him doesn't give way, crushing him to death.
    • Averted: The Cheese in Diamond. It's just an ordinary piece of cheese that does nothing when eaten. The game doesn't know what to make of it.
    • Zigzaged: The Sandwich from Castle Crashers in Complex turns Henry into a hulking brute. He was able to beat up the guards but the power-up expires before he could beat up the third, resulting in him kicking Henry in the groins.
  • Precision F-Strike: If you wait too long in Diamond and allow the police sniper to headshot Henry, he quips, "Wave goodbye to your head, wanker!"
  • Press X to Die: In both Complex and Mission, Henry is at one point given the option to surrender to Dmitri and return to the complex. Naturally, doing so leads to a FAIL screen.
  • Press X to Not Die: At some points, you have to choose quickly or you fail. Complex introduces a timer system that shows how much time you have to choose.
    • Any route involving the high-speed scooter is filled with these, since Henry's charging in guns blazing and doesn't have much time to ponder before getting hit.
    • Subverted in the Cliffside Wreck scenario: all the options result in failures; you have to wait until the timer runs out to get the "Presumed Dead" ending.
  • Prison Riot: Henry and Ellie start one when they release multiple, if not all, prisoners during their escape by pure accident, leading to total chaos.
  • Private Profit Prison: The Wall is implied to be one, as it appears not to be under any government jurisdiction, along with it having a security staff with the size and equipment of a military. In the Thief/Allies route of Mission, the Government doesn't recognize the Wall's forces and even initially mistake them as working with the Toppats.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: The Freddy FAIL in Complex still retains "Habanera (Les Toreadors)" in the remake like the Flash game, just remixed with a creepy music box theme instead of using the same song from Five Nights At Freddy's as per the copyrighted content removal.
  • Pun: The Game Over messages are filled with them.
  • Punny Name: Some of the names (though many are only revealed in the bios), like Cuppa Joe, HazMatt, and Madd Ladd.

    R 
  • Rail-Car Separation: In one of the options in the Little Nest Egg route, "By Land," Henry detaches the passenger car filled with Toppat members so that he can make off with the train and a car filled with their stolen goods. However, because no one was driving the train (Henry killed the conductor, Mr. Macbeth), it keeps speeding up to the Toppat Launch Site until it crashes.
  • Ramming Always Works: Charles will attempt to ram a target to solve a problem, with the game stopping just before disaster. In the scenario where it's successful, it's despite the previous scene's failure having the ship destroyed by point-defense. The aftereffect shows that the ramming ship is either destroyed or disabled, while causing critical damage to the core - while Henry takes a direct hit while only having the spacesuit helmet shattered.
  • Reality-Breaking Paradox: In Diamond, one of the ways the Center for Chaos Containment tries to deal with the enlarged Henry involves sending him a pocket calculator that automatically calculates the equation "1337 / 0". Cue the universe destroying itself.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: An In-Universe example: Henry’s lawyer in Prison argues that Henry couldn’t possibly have tied the moneybag he was hiding in without someone else. We see in Bank that he does just that without much fanfare.
  • Recruiting the Criminal:
    • The government hires Henry to take the Toppat Clan down in Airship. In exchange, they promise to pardon him of his crimes if he is successful.
    • In the Government/Allies route of Mission, Ellie is recruited alongside Henry to help Charles with the Toppats again, as repayment for Charles picking them up after they escaped from the Wall.
    • One potential ending of the Thief/Allies route is for Charles to recruit Henry and Ellie on the fly to finish off the Toppats. The General pardons them both as thanks.
  • Recurring Character: Dave Panpa, a police officer who made a cameo in the credits of Bank and during the intro of Prison in which he forgot to inspect Henry's package; this results in him getting fired and becoming a security guard at the museum in Diamond. He returns once again in Airship as a prisoner Henry must free to complete a sidequest. As the sidequest is not officially acknowledged as an ending in Mission note , he is still in that prison if you choose the Executive/Ghost route, and Henry crashes into his cell and uses his help to free the two Toppat clan members who remained loyal to Henry in that story branch.
  • Red Herring: In Government/Rescue, one of the objects you can use to jam the Toppat rocket engines is an actual red herring. Subverted in that the herring is actually the correct choice.
  • Reduced to Dust: The Spiny Shell in the Thief/Dead route of Mission turns Henry into dust when it explodes on top of him.
  • Remaster: The Henry Stickmin Collection contains remastered versions of Prison, Diamond, Airship, and Complex, with updated backgrounds, character bios, and the Anti-Frustration Features from Complex. Bank, meanwhile, received a complete remake.
  • Reference Overdosed: There's a subpage for crying out loud!
  • Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Often done by whomever Henry is talking to on a phone, what with Henry being a Heroic Mime and all.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: In Mission, three of the four pathways that pick up from the "Presumed Dead" ending of Complex have at least one character express surprise at Henry still being alive, with the exception being the Thief route in which he remains mostly anonymous.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Many of the FAILs are a result of Henry lacking important secondary powers to the abilities he tries to use. It doesn't help, for example, for Henry to try using a device that turns him intangible to all objects because it means he can't stay on the surface of the planet.
  • Retcon: In the original version of Complex, the "Presumed Dead" ending shows an airplane taking off, presumably with Henry inside and leaving the country. The remaster instead has Henry stay in the snowy wasteland to serve as a setup for the routes in Mission following up on that specific ending.
  • Ret-Gone: A non-lethal example in Mission; in the Thief/Allies route, Henry goes back in time and gets two brothers kicked out of the army so they can't apprehend him and Ellie in the present.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The Executive/Betrayed route of Mission is this; as a cyborg, Henry takes revenge on the Toppat Clan for betraying him in Complex. By the time he's through with them, Reginald and the Right-Hand Man are both dead, and their rocket and airship are both destroyed.
  • Rocketless Reentry: After picking the Earth out of the options from the Escape Plan selection on the Bounty/Ghost route of Mission, Henry jumps off the solar panel part to reenter Earth, assuming the Nano-Suit would protect him, but his temperature sharply rises and turns him into ashes before he has a chance to land.
  • Running Gag: There are numerous fails that repeat through the series, several of them finally working in a pathway on ''Mission''.
    • The teleportation device appears in all games, but hardly ever works properly. The only time it works is in Diamond, but even then it's not perfect (in fact, in the Collection version it still leads to a hard landing). By Mission, Henry is so frustrated with it that he throws it on the ground and breaks it, only for it to actually work again.
    • All inventions that were reviewed by Gadget Gabe.
      • The Opacitator in Prison
        Gadget Gabe: You'll walk through walls!
      • The Liquidificator in Diamond
        Gadget Gabe: It's fantastically easy to use!
      • The Transdimentionalizer in Airship
        Gadget Gabe: It's super easy to use and gives awesome results!
      • The Shadozer in Complex
      • The Swapper on the Government/Rescue route in Mission is the successful choice.
        Gadget Gabe: I use this every day! It's great!
      • Mission gives you a choice of three in the Government/Ghost route: the Infini³, the Leafmöde, and the SuccPak. For once, one of themthe SuccPak — actually works.
        Gadget Gabe: (about the Infini³) You'll never run out of space with this bad boy!
        Gadget Gabe: (about the Leafmöde) Transport the biggest things with relative ease!
        Gadget Gabe: (about the SuccPak) It certainly does suck!
    • Every game from Prison onwards features at least one ending in which, if you click on the sun or the moon, it will turn into the "shoop da woop" face and fire its lazor at Henry, netting you an achievement (by Complex, the face simply coughs in exhaustion). It also appears in Diamond as one of the CCC's options for dealing with the situation.
    • Starting in Diamond, Henry getting the option to use one of Captain Falcon's memetic moves. He gets better each time.
      • The Falcon Punch in Diamond which barely makes a fire that goes out before the punch lands,
      • The Falcon Kick in Airship that gets a good fire going; perhaps too good, as Henry incinerates himself before he can do the kick.
      • The KNEE in Complex that Henry does successfully connect with, but not without team killing Ellie in the process.
      • Finally, the WOMBO COMBO (with Ellie's help) in Mission that goes off without a hitch, ending in his own variation with the Stickmin Punch.
    • Starting in Airship, Charles. This is a method you can choose to have Charles help Henry. It involves him ramming his helicopter into where Henry happens to be. It actually works in the Government/Dead route of Mission.
      Charles: I always wanted to do that…
    • Henry getting the option to Fortnite dance at every choice in the Bounty/Rescue route in Mission. He is immediately killed off every time, if not by annoyed bystanders, then by divine intervention.
    • Henry beginning the game waking up from being knocked out, starting from Airship onwards. Right Hand Man even lampshades it in the Bounty/Ghost route of ''Mission'.
      RHM: Heh, I bet you're tired of waking up like this.

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