The Infinite Loops / Loops A To M

The Infinite Loops contains examples for the following tropes of setting from a number to N:

.hack//LOOPS

• Apocalypse How: Like any other universe, a Loop can be crashed whenever the requirements for doing so are met, which is unfortunately much easier to do to The World than it is to any other universe, with them having to do nothing more than damage The World to the point where nobody would be able to play it again.
• Baffled by Own Biology: Due to them repeatedly swapping species, many loopers will get shocked by the various things their bodies can now do, even once they've returned to normal.
• Double Take: Tsukasa's reaction to learning that Crim started Looping.
  "Crim? You're the evil mass murderer?"
  Tsukasa blinked. Then she blinked again.
  "Wait, Crim, you're Looping?"
• Flat "What": Never uttered, but essentially the reaction that Aura had to Pinkie Pie's shenanigans when she Looped into The World, as well as the fact that none of the administrators even bothered her when they are normally so heavy-handed on hackers.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: Aura pretty much decides that this is the case after fully processing just what she was seeing, and her amusement is only increased once she noticed that Macha was floating around Mac Anu in a silly party hat as well.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Even when Aura does her best to keep it from showing up, Cubia still has a tendency of popping up at the most inconvenient and random of times.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Aura doesn't even try to hide the fact that she's the Anchor. She just doesn't go out of her way to tell anybody, either.
  • Lost in a Crowd: What the other Loopers think is keeping them from realizing who the Anchor is.
• Identical Stranger: Due to being in an MMO, there are often characters that end up looking like other characters, leading to there being a lot of times where something of the sort is the case.
  • In one particular Loop, Kite rounded up the Looping versions of all his major doppelgängers in order to deal with Morganna. Naturally, he and the other one who named herself Kite find themselves a bit confused about who is being talked about in the roll call, leading to them deciding to just call her Sora for the Loop. Ironically, that is the name of another major character in the series who is not her.
• Imaginary Friend: Harvey the bunny rabbit, which Tsukasa pretended was an actual thing when she got really bored.
  • Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Aura decided to roll with the idea after Tsukasa acted it out in front of her, using the invisible bunny in order to fight against the Guardian that Morganna sent after them.
• Lethal Chef: Aura managed to make a wizard melt by doing nothing but giving him a cookie to eat.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The way Saraswati explained the Loops to Aura certainly qualifies, since it resulted in the Anchor taking her role as goddess of The World far too seriously for her own good.
• Papa Bear: Bear towards Tsukasa, to the point where he will punch Gendo Ikari in the face to get her out of being an Evangelion pilot, in the middle of a room full of people with guns on the latter guy's side.
• Playful Hacker: Tsukasa has picked up the skill due to Looping into what is often the most easy to deal with part of the timeline, thus leaving her with the most spare time to figure out how to do things that the others want to be able to do. Notably, it was her that managed to mix the in-game inventory with the Subspace Pocket.
  • Aura has achieved this role as well, hacking into the data of Sword Art Online despite the role she Looped into not actually having the power to do so, so that the people who die in the game will merely go into comas until the game is cleared. (Kayaba even decides he likes this change; it distracts the authorities, trying to figure out the comas rather than hack into the game, and adds a bit of fairy tale ending to the experience as well.)
• Resurrective Immortality: The ability that being the Epitaph User of Magus grants to Kuhn.
• Squishy Wizard: In a computerized world, Aura is quite possibly one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, due to sheer experience at being the goddess of The World. Outside of a computerized world, however, Aura is quite possibly one of the weakest beings in the multiverse, due to almost never having even a chance to partake in any physical activities in her own branch.
• Take a Third Option: Haseo has started to do this in regards to what guild he joins early into his career as a player, whenever he should Loop early enough to do so.
  • At one point, he Loops early enough that he even has the chance to choose a different character class. Unfortunately, his choice of Macabre Dancer leaves him dizzy so often that he has to keep a supply of barf bags next to his computer.

Attack on Titan Loops

• Abridged Series: They are variant loops for the Attack on Titan loops, and are not fun.
• Action Mom: Carla is a comparatively downplayed version. She's capable, but she's still the youngest looper in their universe.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ymir, when in a motherly variant loop, refers to Armin as Armie.
• Aloof Twin Brother: Hans has to play this angle when he loops into Log Horizon as Minori's twin brother, who is for this iteration, not awake.
• Always Someone Better: Bertolt rolls up, threatens Shiganshina like always... and then Ben Tennison shows up behind him in his Way Big form.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Played with. In loop 4.5, an Unawake Eren states that he's in love with an Awake Mikasa. Mikasa concurs, but clarifies that she loves Eren platonically, not romantically.
• Badass Army: During a glitched up loop, there were 49 Mikasas running around. They promptly overthrew the government all but single handily.
  • A Sasquatch army riding dragons armed with cannons appears one loop. In a later loop, the Sasquatch army returned with a aligned army of Werwolves, Sucucbus, and Yuki-Onna, with Jetpacks. To fight another badass set of armies: Angels and Vampires.
• Bears Are Bad News: Averted with the Spectacled Bear, and possibly the Brown and Black Bears that Sasha is hinted to have at one point eaten.
• Bed Trick: Played with. Mikasa wakes up in a loop where she's in a relationship with an unawake Eren (Mid-coitus it's implied). Rather then continue the fling, she breaks it off for Eren's sake.
• Body-Count Competition: A regular subject of side bets.
• Breather Episode: Eren, Mikasa, and Armin all having a nice picnic. It's just before Sasha's first loop.
  • The Bar loop in chapter nine.
• Butterfly of Doom: Literal example: a butterfly that is seen to cause bad things to happen to Rincewind.
• Cast Calculus: Due to the massive cast that the loop has, the Author has become fond of classifying the loopers into neat little groups. A few include:
  • Amazon Brigade: Mikasa, Sasha, Hange, Ymir, Historia.
  • Freudian Trio:
    • The Kirk: Eren, Mikasa, Ymir and Levi.
    • The Spock: Armin, Hans, Hange and Connie.
    • The McCoy: Jean, Sasha, Historia and Carla.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Marco & Jean, Connie & Sasha, Hanji & Levi, Historia & Ymir, Carla & Hans.
• Chainmail Bikini: One loop runs on the principle, with tube-tops, miniskirts, and bare arms for the ladies uniforms. Naturally, no one's happy.
• Chainsaw Good: There are, it seems, loops where the pairing blades are replaced with pairing chainsaws. Connie's reaction?
  Connie: "Chainsaw. Pairing. Blades. How are you not freaking out over this?"
• Continuity Drift: Even worse then normal. Because of the nature of Attack on Titan's still developing story line and expanding loops, coupled with it's spectacularly unlikely chain of events that occurs through out the story, and the fact that no one really knows what's happening behind all the scenes, everything from the contents of Grisha's basement to the spelling and pronunciation of names is basically a dice roll. The issues are Lampshaded by Jean, who considers the whole situation annoying.
• Contrived Coincidence: During a loop where non-baseline powers are sealed away, Eren literally stumbles upon a 3DMG refueling tank. The sheer oddity is lampshaded immediately.
• Cue the Sun: Discussed in chapter nine, where after over six chapters, the story finally advances to the point where the Loopers can see what happens after Eren is kidnapped by the Reiss family.
• Cult: To Eren and Mikasa's chagrin, Armin has a habit of starting these up, typically centered around Eren being some sort of savior. It's also remarked that there are situations where the Cult of the Rogue Titan emerges from whole cloth. It's also remarked that the cult idea never works.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Carla. It turns out that being the mother to two of the oldest beings in your universe can be quite disquieting, especially when you don't exactly bring anything new to the table.
• Doom Magnet: The loops seem to go out of their way to make their loopers these. While Mikasa, Armin and Eren seem to have dodged the curse, of the eight other loopers, Hannes, Sasha, Jean, Hanji and Levi died in their first or second loop, Connie tried and failed to save his home town, Historia's first fused loop lasted over three hundred years, and Ymir flat out couldn't loop normally, so Ganesha activated her Titan instead, which accidentally went on a rampage in it's first loop.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In an uncommon situation, most of the original loops can be accredited to the writer KrspaceT/Crossoverpairinglover of the Star Wars loops, who is not the compiler. This is somewhat mitigated as the writer continues to provide a sizable amount of AoT loops.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Yes, Reiner may be gay, and he may be the Armored Titan, but Sasha is strongly of the opinion that he is very, very hot.
• Exposition Dump: The first chapter is front loaded with a short one on the nature of the loops and Yggdrasil. The compiler created it to mitigate the difficulty of people just entering the series.
• False Friend: Eren loops into a variant where his pre-loop self was actually a time traveler, who caused the deaths of Armin's and Mikasa's parents to bring all three together as friends. The fact that it explains why three kids with Mikasa's skills, Armin's brains, and Eren's powers would befriend each other is just more horror for Eren.
• Friendly Sniper: Armin plays the role with an Anti-Tank rifle. In his own words "Nobody was going to die this loop".
• Funny Background Event: Eren managed to kill Bertolt on one occasion, and proceeds to butcher the Titan body and cook it. This occurs while Armin and Mikasa discuss Armin's fears that, one day, he could become another Sakura.
  • Another one involves Armin being elected president of the United States... while Eren and Mikasa are at Disney World.
• Gender Bender: Hanji/Hange. No one can remember what Hanji's original gender was, leading to continual bets pertaining to Hange's biological sex.
  • It's so ridiculous that Ranma, the original gender bending looper, replaced (singular) them on one occasion.
  • Surprisingly, when Hange did begin looping, the issue didn't bother hir. Hanji's non-binary and doesn't care what gender he or she is.
• Genre Savvy: Mikasa shows literal genre-savviness in her fight against Naruto. He's a standard anime protagonist, and by that logic, susceptible to a Tsundere Megaton Punch.
• Great Off Screen War: The Death Note War. Eren was apparently involved...
  • The Legendary Toucan War. Bar Jean dying, little is said about it.
• Healing Factor: During a loop that started particularly early, Eren was able to work alongside his father to develop a medicine that enabled humans to gain a Titan's regeneration powers. Too bad it didn't take well to Mikasa.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Sasha get's potato powers. Yeah...
  • Connie gets Giraffe Powers.
• Hermaphrodite: A variant shows up where Titan Shifting causes this. Apparently, Ymir ended up affected by this, and... er... used it to make Armin.
• Hemo Erotic: Discussed. Levi drank both Petra's and Isabel's blood, with their own consent, and considers it simple feeding. Hanji points out that it's much closer to sex than simple blood drinking, and though she has no issue with Levi drinking blood from willing sources, she does point out that since neither girl is looping, he's using his knowledge of them unfairly to coerce them into this. Levi counters that all he is doing is blood drinking, but does concede that it's immoral and agrees not to do it again.
• Heroic BSoD: Sasha's second loop started with one. She died in her first loop and thought she was in hell.
• Hypnotic Eyes: After his early stint into the Code Geass universe, Armin retains Lelouch's Geass Eye. He immediately puts it to use on Annie, willing her to kill herself.
• Hypocrite: Marco points out that Ymir's willingness to protect Historia, while also not being willing to kill Titans in any other situation, strays into this trope.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Used and abused. The spelling and pronunciation of names varies from loop to loop because of how damaged the loop is. The most glaring examples are Hans/Hannes, and Hange/Hanji, though Jean and Eren do suffer from this glitch.
• It Seemed Trivial: Flowers. Specifically, Sasha notices that Eren's partial Titan form, similar to the one that he first formed outside Trost to save Armin and Mikasa, has caused flowers to grow. This is actually a played trope: Eren thinks that it's trivial, and dismisses it as such, but the fact of the matter is that the meaning of the flowers is unknown even in canon.
  • Sasha later mentions the fact that Potatoes, which originated in the Incan Empire, yet somehow ending up in the Walls, as a major source of curiosity.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Mikasa's Van Black. Supposedly it's the seventy third most powerful blade in the multiverse, and was originally crafted by Naruto.
• Kick the Dog: Poor, poor Sasha... She had to live through an entire loop on a vegan diet.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Eren was quick to declare the Attack on Kangaroo loop this.
• Mama Bear: Hurt Armin at your own peril: he has two!
• Metalhead: Exposure to rock music will make turn a Titan into one.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Averted, as the Walls apparently have (at least at the start of the loops) no set location, constantly moving around between loops but mostly situating themselves in Europe or North America.
• My Brothers, Right or Wrong: Non-awake Mikasa's devotion to Eren is nearly fanatical, if tempered by her urge to protect him. In the loops, it's only grown, and extended to include Armin. It's so complete that the Sorting Hat is incapable of sorting her until Eren is sorted.
• No Longer with Us: Jean sees Marco's corpse. Marco starts whispering into his ear. Jean assumes he's gone mad. Spoiler: Marco's looping.
• Non Standard Loop Setting: Attack on Titan's Nebulous Anchor system is the exact inverse of the Legend of Zelda's proxy Anchor system. Mikasa, Armin and Eren all need to be Awake to cause a Loop iteration, since their survival to the end of their loop is unknown.
  • Of note is also the fact that the Anchors and most loopers experience an abnormally high volume of fused loops, due in part to the nature of the compilations (which focused on using Attack on Titan as a setting for fused loops in other compilations) and the traumatic nature of their loop necessitating regular excursions outside to relax and gain new powers.
• Noodle Incident: Sakura Haruno's fight with Link and the Shiganshina three, which is mentioned in passing (and has Mikasa's ire), but never elaborated on.
• Official Couple: Ymir and Historia, of course.
• Oh, Crap!: A minor one from Armin, when he realizes the extent of damage the Mikasa Glitch is causing.
• Ontological Mystery: A major issue with the loop. It's so pervasive and inconclusive, not even the Admins know exactly what the history of the loop is. It's ended up locking down Eren's control over the Coordinate and it's interfering with Ymir's looping code.
• Once an Episode: A standard for each of the compilations so far is to introduce a new character to the loops, starting with Hannes/Hans, then Jean, and then Sasha, with more to follow. This trend ended after Carla began looping.
• Other Me Annoys Me: In a rare case of a Subversion, Eren isn't exactly unhappy that he gave up Titan killing to answer the call to agriculture, the caveat being that at least Armin and Mikasa are happy.
• RailRoading: Eren can try all he wants, but he will never be able to activate the Coordinate outside of the very last few moments of the battle with Bertolt and Reiner.
• Reasoning with God: The Administrator for the Attack on Titan loops, Ganesha, is the Hindu god of writing, amongst other things, and as such, to talk with him, all the loopers need to do is write him a letter. These letters tend to be rare, and only come up when the loopers want something.
• Sanity Slippage: the Anchors. They show some signs of succumbing to Sakura Syndrome.
  • Ironically, Eren, while having the most issues Baseline, is developing his Sakura Syndrome the slowest. Has been justified in the Meta posts with the Baseline issues prompting people to keep an eye on him and give interventions, overlooking the more-stable-in-baseline Mikasa and Armin.
• She's a Man in Japan: ...sort of. Sasha came from a loop where Hange was a man.
  • Over all though, Zoe's gender is one of the great variables.
• Ship Sinking: Mikasa wastes little time informing Jean that, like it or not, they wouldn't work as a couple.
• Side Bet: Hange's/Hanji's gender tends to be the subject of these.
  • Battles between loopers and Titan's tends to garner these as well.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Relatively. Mikasa isn't too short, but when compared to a gun that's large enough to be mounted to Eren's Titan Form this trope comes into play a little.
• Spotting the Thread: Non-villainous example. Levi was able to determine that Hanji really had time traveled because of her sudden prowess against the Titans.
• Stealth Expert: Keith Shadis. Who knew that he would be looping?
• Tempting Fate: Eren mentions that Jean should never hear about the loop where he replaced Asuka. Jean later shows up having replaced Kaworu.
• The Family That Slays Together: Mikasa, plus Vergil, plus Nero, plus Trixie. Cue Titan slaughterhouse.
• The Power of Rock: Titan's it turns out, are susceptible to this. Especially to Guren no Yumiya.
• Tsundere: Mikasa manages to beat Naruto by weaponizing this.
• Trope Namer: The originator of the term for the Mikasa Glitch, due to one loop involving a small brigade of the woman. While it had previously existed, Armin was the one who studied in greater detail.
• Unexpected Character: Isabel and Farlan. They were Levi's friends before he joined the military, but they died not too long into his service. So imagine his surprise when they started showing up in the loops, alive and well.
  • Keith Shadis started looping, much to his own surprise. He assumes that it is due to his status as teacher of most of the loopers.
  • Carla Yeager as well. Ganesha specifically activated her to curb any possible Sanity Slippage from the Anchor's. Ironically, she nearly suffered from this due to her first fused loop as Sloth in Fullmetal Alchemist.
• Weirdness Magnet: Historia. Being connected to half (Actually, around 63%) of the conspiracies floating around the Walls does this to her.
• Weirdness Search and Rescue: Eren, Mikasa and Armin pull this off when it seems that Hannes has gone insane. Unsurprisingly though, he hasn't: he's become the first Awakened looper for their world.
• Wham Episode: 5.13 starts by showing how Hange's loops usually start, then goes forward to show Levi having some sort of aneurysm, and ends with Levi, having spouted fangs and turned his eyes red, literally begging for blood.
• Who Watches the Watchmen?: Mikasa assures Armin that, whatever happens, they will always protect and, in the event of one of them succumbing to Sakura syndrome, the other two will control and heal the afflicted.
• Xanatos Gambit: Shockingly, Connie pulls one of in his very first loop. He convinces Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie to follow him to Ragako village and capture the Beast titan. The way it's outlined, there are two outcomes: The Shifters either capture the Beast Titan, in which case no more Titans can be created ever again, or The Titan Shifters die and the Beast Titan flees, which dispenses of three spies. Furthermore, in either scenario, the commotion awakens Ragako Village, which causes everyone to flee. Connie just didn't expect that Reiner would knock him out with a rock.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Eren can learn all the medicine he wants, prepare for every contingency, and spends loops practicing, but he'll never save his mom from dying. It's not until Carla loops in as Trisha Elric (the anime version who became Sloth) that she survives a loop.

Battletech Loops

• Mythology Gag: The in-universe reason why the Battletech branch was brought online so late? Yggdrasil lost the designs for the Unseen 'Mechs as collateral damage from the event that necessitated the Loops, early Pre-Activation loops used designs that fit the specs it did have from neighboring universes, and the Admins couldn't even kickstart the loop into Activating until after those designs were recovered.

Cartoon Network Loops

• The Dreaded: Played with, as, while the The Black Hat Organization isn't looping yet and most loopers are no longer afraid of them because of it, them looping is a fear that pretty much every CN looper currently shares.
• Despair Event Horizon: Mandy falls down it in a single bound: she loops into Grim Tales From Down Below, sees and likes her children, and then the loop resets. She tries to ascend in anger.
• Eldritch Location: Elmore. How eldritch is it? It's an Anchor, and when Kyubey looped into it, it sent Kyubey to the Void.
• Exiled to the Couch: After she realizes that Kevin spared Argit during the Crisis, which led to him looping, Gwen banishes him to the couch for the next fifteen loops.
• Friendly Enemy: Being mostly PG and G rated, almost all of the villains in these loops tend to either reform or end up staying evil for the fun of it. Can occasionally become Go-Karting with Bowser.
• Genre Blind: Grim. He still bets on those rodents...
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Father's plan of turning everyone in the Kids Next Door into animals backfires once again. Instead of Tommy using the animalization field to turn Father into a panther, it somehow turns Numbuh 362^note who in canon was turned into a chimp into Sun Wukong (complete with powerset), leading to her kicking his ass.
• Karmic Death: In a fused loop between Kids Next Door and SCP Foundation, the Yule Man, a child kidnapping monster, was killed by the looping Kids Next Door operatives.
• Lethally Stupid: Billy's tendency to cause problems for other people via his sheer stupidity has drastically amplified consequences in a multiversal setting. He ends up getting classified as a Malevolent Looping Entity; not because he does anything evil on purpose, but because his actions constantly result in Loops crashing and he's incapable of recognizing the fact.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The first three loopers from Total Drama fall into this. You have the snarky but overall heroic Gwen (Nice), the Lovable Alpha Bitch Heather (Mean) and the rough around the edges Duncan (In-between)
• Oh, Crap!: Numbuh 1's very understandable reaction when he learns that the seemingly baseline loop that he's currently in is actually a fused loop with the Conversion Bureau.
• Rule of Fun: Why Jack Spicer is an Anchor. He's so entertaining.
• Ship Sinking: More than a few relationships have been permanently ended due to loopers learning some unsavory things about their partners.
  • Nigel permanently broke up with Lizzie after his baseline revealed she was a GKND operative who was only dating him to evaluate his loyalty to the KND. As terrible a boyfriend he was, at least his feelings for her were genuine.
  • Cree's crush/pseudo-relationship with Maurice died after she found out that he was a TND spy in baseline, and, as such, most likely never actually loved her.
  • Duncan's feelings for Courtney died after the way she treated him in baseline as well.
• Story-Breaker Team-Up: Not that this is uncommon in the loops, but putting Ben Tennyson in Animorphs was only ever going to end with him breaking the story in half in the opening scene, much to the annoyance of Tobias who had to witness the whole thing.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Hurricane Billy is the logical end result of having someone so monumentally stupid and illogical start looping. At least with someone like Mandy, there would have been some kind of method to whatever madness she cooked up. For Billy, he doesn't need to plan anything — he just acts and whatever he does will inevitably crash the loop.
  • Nigel waited until Rachel started looping to pursue a relationship with her, knowing it was inevitable with their baseline close friendship. Why? As Abby put it, it's so he wouldn't have to play out 50 First Dates with her.
• What You Are in the Dark: One loop sees Grim Waking up during the infamous limbo game with an Unawake Billy and Mandy. After freezing time, Grim contemplates taking the opportunity to end them both and have a relatively peaceful Loop, but finds he can't bring himself to do the deed.

DC Comics Loops

• Better as Friends: Per Word of God from the thread starter, none of DC's Big Three are interested in one another That Way.
• Crazy-Prepared: Who else but the God Damned Batman
• Disguised in Drag: One of Superman's Loop Attempts has him facing a Yandere Lex Luthor, who is in fact Lana Lang.
• The Dreaded: Everyone is scared of Amanda Waller. Batman is no exception.
• Fate Worse than Death: Batman doesn't get Eiken Loops. He gets The LEGO Movie Loops instead.
• Foregone Conclusion: The early chapters focus on whether the DC and Marvel Loops will even get going. Earlier-produced snips show that they will.
• Godzilla Threshold: DC apparently had several problems getting off the ground. According to Sleipnir in the MLP Loop on the Crash, it almost got set to read-only because of this.
• In the Style of: The earliest attempt to get the DC universe Looping are done in a similar style to the Mega Man Loops. And by "similar", we mean exactly alike.
• Mind Screw: One of Superman's attempts to reveal his identity to Lois results in her revealing she is also Superman.
• Mythology Gag: A lot of Superman's Loop attempts take from various parts of his history.
  • The second is based on the Silver Age, complete with nigh-suicidal Lois Lane and Lana Lang fighting over him.
  • In the third, he works at the Daily Star, as he did in the Golden Age (and again at the beginning of the New 52). And he's in fact Super-Demon, an alternate version of himself mixed with Etrigan, suggested by Grant Morrisson but never actually used.
  • The fifth has an appearance by Chloe Sullivan in the place of Lois Lane, and she's once again taken over by Brainiac. But it goes a little bit worse than last time...
  • One of Wonder Woman's failed Loops takes place in the world of Flashpoint, with the author's notes taking a sarcastic dig at DC's line-wide reboot that followed.
• Running Gag: Superman telling Lois his secret identity, and her variations of reaction, from demanding he marry her to exploding to revealing herself to be Batman in disguise.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Batman. Naturally.

Digimon Loops

• Crazy Enough to Work: Odin's suggestion to Takato about keeping Loop given abilities.
  Gallantmon: That idea sounds insane.
  Odin: Oh, does it? Then it must be good!
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Rika. Takato admits that the methods used to defrost her are unpleasant, and doesn't like doing it.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: In one Loop, Takato approaches Rika early and gets her to train him how to play card games. This is the result. Repeatedly.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Takato's reaction to a hypothetical fight with a Keramon is to simply run for it.
• Point of Divergence: Early on, Takato speculates that if he stops Hypnos getting to DarkLizardmon, they won't create Juggernaut, which won't rip open a massive hole between worlds, and won't summon the Deva.
• Save Scumming: Takato and Guilmon meet Odin in one Loop, disguised as a Jijimon, and he describes the Loops like this... only to quickly wind up being Metaphorgotten. It does at least convince Takato that he can't force the Loops to end, no matter how hard he tries.
• Unstoppable Rage: It takes a lot to get Takato angry, but when something like, say Leomon dying again happens...

Doctor Who Loops

• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The Harold Saxon Master, instead of listening to someone talking, thinks about the big questions, like whether it's possible to create his own Soup Dragon.
• Babysitter from Hell: In one loop, Daleks are nannies for time lords.
  GO TO SLEEP! GO TO SLEEP! GO TO SLEEEP LIT-TTLE TIME-LORD! GO TO SLEEP! AND WHEN YOU WAKE! YOU WILL BE A DA-LEK-SLAVE
• Baddie Flattery: The Mistress is impressed by David Xanatos, and his goatee.
• Bee-Bee Gun: In one Loop, the Moment is a Deadly Bee Weapon instead of a galaxy-destroying superweapon. When the Doctors decide to use it (as it's harmless to Time Lords), the resulting swarm of moon-sized bees manages to terrify the Dalek Emperor, whose kind shouldn't be able to feel fear.
• Break the Cutie: After Awakening, Clara got all the memories pertaining to Season 8 at once. From the moral dilemma of "Kill the Moon" to her boyfriend dying twice.
• Call-Back: The fact that the Daleks shot down the Valiant gets a mention in one snippet. The Master's upset about it.
• Die Laughing: The Doctor prepares to deal with the Cybermen while on the verge of dying and stuck at the South Pole. However, the Cybermen of the Loop are instead known as Cidermen, look like they're wearing straw hats, and combine their sing-song inflection with a West English country accent. The Doctor finds the juxtaposition so funny, he ends up regenerating while laughing.
• Evil Versus Evil: Daleks vs Zombies. The Doctor has no idea who to root for.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: The Doctor gets attacked by a bunch of Daleks who want to do this one loop.
• From Bad to Worse: What's worse than Dalek Manhunters?
  : NO IN-FER-IOR ENTITIES ESCAPE THE DA-LEK MONITOR!
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Using Pinkie Pie's program on the Cyberiad removes their desire to "upgrade" others. It also makes them dye themselves bright pink and want to throw everything in the universe a party.
  • A plan to prevent stars from dying somehow results in the first test coming to life and becoming a sun-sized imitation of Pinkie Pie.
• Group Hug: The Doctor finds himself at the end of this from a group of variant Daleks one loop.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: One series of variant loops has Daleks changing their catch phrase and purpose; one loop they all want to hug the Doctor, a second they want to tickle him and in a third loop they want to steal his blood.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The Doctor and Sarah Jane's reaction to a Loop where they wake up as Daleks is to seek out a pub. A problem with that plan quickly comes up.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Apparently Pikachu met an un-Awake version of the Doctor once. It involved Daleks and Tentacruel.
  • The crew of Serenity, given they recognised the Doctor.
  • The author's note for the Time Lord/Dalek Role Swap AU Loop reference an occasion where the Doctor Looped in as Davros and had to fight himself.
• Railroading: When the Doctor tries to get Sarah Jane to Croydon, the TARDIS takes them to Mexico, or Mars, or Pompeii on Volcano Day.
• Remember the New Guy?: Inverted. Due to his Loop being read-only for the longest time, many Loopers know the Doctor, yet the Doctor has no memory of them from this time.
• Role Swap AU: Loop 5.11 switches the roles of the Time Lords and Daleks, but otherwise has the same history leading up to the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS. Since in canon the Time Lords seeded the universe to make sure most sentient life looked like them, this results in most of the aliens in the Loop looking like Daleks... including the casings, which Sarah Jane comments should have been borderline impossible for any of them to make.
• Running Gag:
  • Loops where the Daleks have weird implements or otherwise behave strangely.
  • River Song's message on the Byzantium's home box being written by somebody else and saying something different.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Doctor's standard reaction to any Dalek vs zombies loops is to immediately leave for somewhere and somewhen else.
• Space Pirates: The Doctor was rather happy to meet Hondo Ohnaka during a fused loop.
• Unexpected Character: No one believed the the Timey-Wimey Ball-crazy Who Loops could ever Loop properly, so the idea of a Looping Doctor is a surprise to both the writers, and the in-universe characters.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Due to a glitch in Yggdrasil, the Doctor's eleventh regeneration (the Tenth Doctor) keeps dying unusually early regardless of what he does to try and prevent it. The usual cause is getting fatally zapped by a Dalek, but if there aren't any in the Loop something else will force him to regenerate.

Eyeshield 21 Loops

• Big Damn Heroes: Played With. Monta was first Awake during the Loop where Sena died to Freddy Fazbear. The next loop Monta was Awake he ran to Sena's aid... only to discover a girl there instead (it was a Rule 63 Loop for Sena, that time). It takes a while for Sena to explian. In addition, due to how the Loops work, ten Loops had already passed between Monta's Awakening, so Sena didn't really need the help anyway.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Suma/Sumiko goes "Ha?" "Ha?" "Haaaaa?" during Monta's attmept to 'save' him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Hiruma initially refuses for Sumiko^note Sena as a girl to join the team as a player because he doesn't want her to get hurt.
  • Then it's subverted because the real reason is that he doesn't want people to get blackmail material on him for letting a girl play football.
  • Then subverted again when Sumiko shows him just how fast she really is.
• Facepalm: During Kid Devil Bat Uprising, Sena has one when he realizes that the Ha Ha Brothers are replacing the Hewdraw.
• Head Desk: Whan Palutena mentions how the Three Sacred Treasures tend to break when used due to old age Sena suggests fixing them. This results in Palutena using the Power of Reflect so she can bang her head against it because she didn't think of it.
• Playing with Fire: Sena has a Burning Palm that he occasionally uses.
  • Also applies to Monta, who's first Fused Loop was as Ash's Chimchar. The fire powers seem to have stuck.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Loop 2.4. Sumiko (Sena after a Gender Bender) reaches for a beer after she explains her first death to Monta.
• Spit Take: When Monta realizes that Sena actually died once.

Gundam SEED Loops

• Polyamory: Kira, Lacus, and Flay, complete with Mindlink Mates thrown in for good measure.
  • Word of God states that this is intended at least partly as a Fix Fic to Flay's fate in canon, as she had gone through all this Character Development, and yet was killed before anything could come of it.
• Running Gag: The Anchor, Kira Yamato, generally tends to Loop into the place of artificial characters during Fused Loops. So far, this includes: Cell from Dragon Ball Z, Shadow from Sonic the Hedgehog, Jack from Bioshock, Guy Shishioh from GaoGaiGar, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid'', etc.

Indie Games Loops

• Heel–Face Turn: A lot of formerly villainous loopers have chilled out since the loops begin. Examples include:
  • The animatronics become more benevolent post-Activation and a much needed Heel Realization.
  • After getting terrorized by Shantae, Risky Boots has given up evil, only playing the villain for entertainment.
  • While calling her a villain is a stretch, Mustache Girl has dropped most of her unsavory behavior and behaves more like an actual hero would.
• Lighter and Softer: Zig-Zagged for the Five Nights At Freddy's Loops. While the Looping versions of the animatronics eventually stop being homicidal, none of them are guaranteed to be Awake because all of their Loops' Anchors are night guards. Consequently, any given Loop in their branch can have all the animatronics be hostile, friendly, or some combination of the two.
• Mythology Gag: Bonnie the Bunny changes gender much more often than other loopers because of the Five Nights at Freddy's fandom confusing him for a girl repeatedly. (Foxy also suffered from this, but to a lesser extent.)
• Mood Whiplash: Nothing is more apparent than in the Ace Attorney crossover and Ch. 4, where in the former, The Purple Man goes into a creepy Motive Rant and then becomes Springtrap, in the latter, Mike finds himself facing something horrific, something we don't see.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The loopers from Don't Starve rip on each other constantly, but are clearly friendly with one another.

Jurassic Loops

This folder covers Loops from all Dinosaur-based settings, including Jurassic Park, The Land Before Time, Dinotopia, Nanosaur, Primal Carnage, Prehistoric Park, A Dinosaur Named Minerva, and Godzilla.

• Heroic BSoD: Hammond, Muldoon, Roxy, Tim, Ian, Lex and Jess's response when Alan tells them about Isla Nublar being destroyed after Alan (who had this response himself) seeing it on TV.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • During one loop, when Owen and Claire realize them fixing the loop led to Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous looping with Ben as Anchor. Also, earlier when Claire sees the kids from Camp Cretaceous and realizes that they'd been left behind.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ian can't bring himself to say anything in the loop when Alan tells the JP loopers about Isla Nublar being destroyed.
• Running Gag: Ian Malcom's attempts to improve the Ping. Hilarity Ensues.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: A personal goal for all loopers present in the branch is to keep Jurassic Park (and by extension, Jurassic World) from falling apart or being sabotaged.

Log Horizon Loops

• An Adventurer Is You:
  • "Looper" is now as subclass, and so is "Anchor". Functionally, the abilities they provide are like New Game Plus because they enable access to all abilities from previous loops.
  • During a Friendship is Magic Fused Loop, the ponies create a "Equine Tail" racial category.
• All There in the Manual: By now, Yggdrasil has codified common problems and advice for loopers into a help menu. Loopers can access chapters that will tell them all about the Infinite Loops without waiting for a Fused Loop. "’Chapter 1: Is Your Life Too Repetitive? Looping and You".
• It Only Works Once: Shiroe's Looper Contract worked the first time he tried it because Elder Tales' code is more permeable than most worlds, but after it broke a loop, the admins modified the world's code so that it wouldn't work again.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Chapter six is an attempt at preventing this trope. "The Do Nots; How to Avoid Breaking the Universe". Nevertheless, Shiroe creates a Looper Contract which causes an error, breaks the loop, and kicks him into an Eiken loop with a strongly-worded letter from the local admin.
• Obvious Rule Patch: "No activating loopers on your own authority" was created in response to Shiroe doing so.
• Rule #1: Technically, it's number "whatever" but in any case it is "expect the unexpected".

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

• Ambiguous Ending: Did Nanoha kill Tsukishima? The author deliberately left it vague, allowing it to be decided later.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Nanoha's er, penchant for it in the fandom is lampshaded at one point, with Nanoha calling the joke old. However, it is somewhat darkly revived during the Tsukishima loop, with Fate, believing Nanoha to have gone crazy, attempted to snap her out of it the same way Nanoha had with her.
• Depending on the Writer: All loops have this, but in this case it's notable on the stance of Nanoha and Fate and their relationship. It is mitigated, though, as the sides are they are just friends and they may or many not be in a relationship and they keep it to themselves, so it does not lead to a Writer Revolt.
• Knight of Cerebus: Tsukishima.
• Love Redeems: Fate tries to save her mother from herself in her loops. It works.....most of the time.
• Noodle Incident: Nanoha and Fate's first encounter with Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, which led to the destruction of an entire Galactic fleet.
• Unexpected Character: A pre Admin Madoka makes an appearance and is hinted to make further ones.

Mass Effect Loops

• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Ares' punishment for the Did Not Think This Through moment below? He was set to get I Wanna Be The Guy looping. This requires the Kid to get through the game on the Impossible level, without dying (a potential anchor needs to survive a whole loop for the loop to initialize). Last time anyone checked, failed activation attempts were in the trillions.
• Did Not Think This Through:
  • Ares, former Admin, literally decided to let Sovereign Loop on a whim.
  • Sovereign, meanwhile, decided a few seconds after waking to try and kill Shepard. Instant Eiken Loop followed.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Due to the Mass Effect universe being badly damaged, Shepard's past, appearance and gender change with every Loop. It nearly caused him/her to go mad.

Monster Hunter Loops

• Deadpan Snarker: The Hunter seems to exhibit shades of this after his Admins explain to him what the Loops are.
  The Hunter: So, let me get this straight. Time is repeating indefinitely while you- the Admins- try to fix some sort of god-tree thing called Yggdrasil, but you don't know what's wrong with it. I'm an Anchor, which means that I'm the only one who will be Awake for 99.99% of my Loops, but eventually other, non-Anchor Loopers will activate to keep me company when they're Awake. My Loop has two Admins because Artemis Did A Thing She Wasn't Supposed To, and you, Ardwinna, have been assigned to almost completely take over for her. Normally you split the Loops you activate between yourselves, but neither of you wanted to give the other the Loop. Am I missing anything?
  Artemis: Identity.
  The Hunter: Right. Because Yggdrasil Did A Thing, literally everything about me is Loop-variable. Oh! And my Loop's apparently glitchy as hell for some reason, but it'll likely only result in three other copies of me running around with all of my memories and capabilities.