The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt / Tropes I to R

This page covers tropes found in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to H | Tropes I To R | Tropes S to Z | Hearts Of Stone | Blood and Wine

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I

• I Call It "Vera": And not affectionately. The nickname at Kaer Morhen for the operating table used for administering the torturous Trial of the Grasses is "Sad Albert."
• Iconic Outfit: The Kaer Morhen armor that Geralt starts out with is what he's depicted as wearing in most of the game's official art and promotional material.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: "Just the Story!", "Story and Sword!", "Blood and Broken Bones!", and "Death March!"
• Idiot Ball: Dijkstra's betrayal of Roche, Ves, and Thaler relies on Geralt's supposed code of neutrality as a Witcher to not interfere. While Dijkstra actually believing this in the first place is rather dubious, considering Geralt just participated in a regicide, the true Idiot Ball moment here is Dijkstra choosing to reveal his betrayal with Geralt present. While Geralt is given the option to allow it to happen, Dijkstra was extremely foolish in allowing there to be a variable like Geralt present at all. If Dijkstra had simply waited for Geralt to leave the area, he could have eliminated the Temerians without any possibility of interference.
• I Know What You Fear: In the sidequest "Cave of Dreams," Geralt accompanies Blueboy Lugos and his crew, who take hallucinogens in order to confront their deepest fears. Geralt's fear is the final one they face, which is Eredin, the King of the Wild Hunt, who wants to take Ciri away for his own ends.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Gigolo, when Keira wants Geralt to act as her "prince" for the evening.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Scoia'tel's Gwent gimmick Agile allows their units to switch between Melee or Ranged mode, thus potentially dodging negative weather cards.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy:
  • Enemies are occasionally buffed to serve as a Beef Gate to high-end quests. This can result in absurdities such as a swarm of ghouls, usually considered bread-and-butter work for a Witcher, being roughly as powerful as a vampire or a stone golem.
  • "Fists of Fury" fighters at higher levels hit as hard as monsters and weapon-wielding mooks.
  • The expansions give massive level and toughness upgrades to otherwise mundane creatures. Wolves suddenly jump to level 35, higher than some bosses at the end of the main campaign, and packs of them can overwhelm Geralt even after he just averted the end of the world.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Said word-for-word by Ciri when one of her friends in Novigrad openly flirts with Geralt.
• I Never: Geralt, Eskel, and Lambert can engage in a round of "I Never" during their drunken night in. The "I Never"s are predictably saucy, including sleeping with a succubus and taking fisstech as one of Geralt's possible choices, to both of which Eskel drinks, prompting Lambert to quip that still waters run deep. If Geralt chooses the other possible dialogue option in the game, Lambert reveals himself as having slept with his best friend's wife.
• Insane Troll Logic: Appropriately enough, trolls are prone to... interesting leaps of logic, such as one making a fence out of boats he was asked to protect so that no one could steal them. He would have made a regular fence, but the boats were the only source of wood.
• Interface Screw:
  • There are certain enemies that have attacks that will obscure the screen and break lock-on. For example: if you get hit with a mud ball thrown by a Water Hag, then the screen will appropriately be splattered with mud.
  • Several quests require Geralt to get drunk, which makes the interface blurry and wavy. The witcher contract "The Oxenfurt Drunk" requires this immediately before fighting a tough monster as it only preys on the intoxicated.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • "Following the Thread" starts like a standard monster hunting contract before turning out to be longer and more complex than that after killing the ekimma target, once Geralt and Lambert got to the questgiver to get their reward and Lambert antagonizes then murders him. Checking the quests' journal immediately reveals "Following the Thread" isn't what it initially seemed, because the quest appears under "Side Quests - Multiple Regions" instead of "Contracts - Novigrad".
  • During "King's Gambit"'s Kaer Trolde massacre scene, the bears are quickly discovered to actually be "berserkers", which in the settings are human warriors able to turn into bears. If you play with the auto sword draw feature enabled, the reveal they weren't mundane bears isn't much of a surprise, because Geralt automatically drew the silver sword instead of the steel sword. Even if you don't play with this feature enabled, the supernatural nature of the "bears" is obvious because of their life meter's color.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: The Botchling is the spirit of a miscarried child who was abandoned without proper burial rites. It comes back from the dead to haunt the family that abandoned it, causing miscarriages and murdering infants and pregnant women.
• It Will Never Catch On: The Xenovox, which is essentially a magical version of a walkie-talkie. While Geralt brings up the possibility, the reason why it would never catch on is because according to Keira Metz a xenovox is very hard to build, rather than "I don't care for it" being the excuse.
• Invulnerable Horses: Zig-zagged. You'll find plenty of horse corpses scattered around the world, and a lot of horses get killed in the introduction, but no living horse can actually be harmed by you or the enemies.
• I Resemble That Remark!: When dwarven banker Vimme Vivaldi is asked if he plays Gwent by Geralt, he takes offense that Geralt automatically assumed that because he's a dwarf that he takes part in the favorite dwarven pastime. When Geralt asks again after the banker is done with his indignation, he candidly admits that he does.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: The vampire lady in the cinematic "A Night to Remember" trailer sings a low-key nursery tune that begins fairly normally, but ends with a witcher chopping up and eating the recipient of the song. From the context, it may actually be a scary nursery tune for vampire children.

K

• Karma Houdini:
  • The people responsible for the deaths of the Noonwraiths/Nightwraiths that Geralt has to hunt down in contracts are usually long gone without any consequences for their actions, particularly for the Devil by the Well and Jenny o' the Woods.
  • Depending on the decisions made during them, several quests can also end this way. Gray-and-Gray Morality quests will invariably end up with one person winning over the other, even if both can be considered bad people.
• Karmic Death:
  • In the course of the Novigrad storyline, Triss burns down the witch hunters' headquarters with many hunters still alive inside, giving them the same fate they meted on many innocent mages.
  • Margrit can suffer one at the end of the "Wild at Heart" sidequest, if you choose to let it happen.
  • Jonna, in one possible ending for "The Nithing" quest, is killed by the very curse she had inflicted on Lothar's son out of petty spite.
  • If you choose to participate in the assassination of King Radovid, he meets his end by the blade of Philippa Eilhart, the person most responsible for his hatred and resulting persecution of mages.
• King of the Homeless: The King of Beggars in Novigrad rules over an alleyway known as the Putrid Grove, the location of which is kept a careful secret from outsiders, and extorts "taxes" from the beggars and petty thieves of the city. He is also a man of vision, planning to one day rise to true power and turn the city into a haven of liberty. Meanwhile he's helping the city's dwindling mage population stay hidden from the witch hunters — amusingly ensuring that the city's beggars now have access to better health care than its rich and powerful.
• Kinky Role-Playing: Geralt can encounter a guard threatening a strumpet while wandering around Novigrad. Geralt can leave them alone and this will continue, or he can intervene by threatening the guard or using Axii on him. In any case, the strumpet angrily informs Geralt that this was intimate role-play purely to get them both in the mood, which Geralt has now thoroughly ruined.

L

• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The true nature of the Wild Hunt is presented as a mystery in the trailers, but the readers of the books and the people who paid close attention in the previous game already know who and what they are.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: One opinion about the Nilfgaardians from the peasant class. The other popular opinion is that they prefer Radovid because he is from the North.
• Les Collaborateurs: The Bloody Baron's army is made of deserters from the Temerian army who have taken to gathering supplies from the local villages for them and administrating in Nilfgaard's name. They're even worse to the peasantry than the Nilfgaardians are.
• Lighthouse Point:
  • One quest has Geralt look for a dwarf at a lighthouse on the Isle of Mists.
  • A witcher contract has Geralt investigate and resolve a haunting that has caused one of Skellige's lighthouses to become engulfed in fog.
• Look Behind You: Used a few times:
  • An early quest-giver tries to do this to Geralt when Geralt discovers that he's responsible for the death of the cart driver he sent Geralt to look for.
    Geralt: There's nothing behind me. I'm a Witcher, I'd have heard it. Just like I can hear your heart. Which is pounding... like a liar's.
  • Geralt can encounter a group of soldiers looting an abandoned quarry. The classic "Look behind you!" "I'm not falling for that old trick!" version, and of course there actually is a pack of alghouls behind the soldiers.
  • Dijkstra says this to Geralt (who doesn't believe him at first) if Triss decides to come back after all.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: Seems to happen to significant characters all the time.
  • The Bloody Baron came into ownership of Uma by winning him from a desperate merchant in Novigrad^note This “desperate merchant” may well have been Gaunter O’Dimm, based on his description and the Baron citing his own ‘devil’s luck’.
  • Zoltan lost his pet owl in a game of cards without ever realizing that it was Philippa the whole time.
  • Sigi Reuven won Bart the Rock Troll in a card game with a camel merchant from Zerrikania.

M

• Made of Plasticine: Some of the synced kill animations on humanoids look like this. Most make sense, dismembering across bone joints (elbows, knees, necks), but the most egregious case is slashing diagonally across the torso, across the entire rib cage like the victim's body was made of plasticine.
• Magi Babble: Oftentimes in the presence of certain sorceresses. One particular instance is the "Potestaquisitor", a doohickey that looks like a clockpunk dowsing rod/electrode that Yen has you use to find out what's screwing up her megascope.
• Magikarp Power: It really takes a while for an Alchemy-heavy skill build to begin paying off due to spending time hunting recipes and ingredients for various items, but between the vast bonuses given by potions, decoctions and oils, along with huge boosts to survivability, it's alarmingly potent and many Death March players swear by it. Potion of Clearance greatly assists the transition from a Disk One Nuke game to a Magikarp Power build.
• Male Gaze: The camera has a tendency to linger on female rears during cutscenes, like here.
• Meaningful Funeral:
  • The survivors of the Battle of Kaer Morhen hold one for Vesemir.
  • Upon arriving in Ard Skellig, Geralt bears witness to the Viking Funeral of King Bran, signaling that a Succession Crisis is about to unfold.
• Mercy Kill: If Síle de Tansarville was allowed to survive the end of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, she is found with some of her fellow sorceresses in a Novigrad prison in really bad shape. Geralt can offer her one final mercy.
• Mirror Match: Janne, a doppler a merchant puts a contract on, will transform into Geralt and will use his techniques, sign and all, at one point during his fight.
• Mistaken for Gay: Elihal, one of Dandelion's acquaintances, mostly due to his penchant for cross dressing. In fact, Dandelion once tried to hit on him when he was drunk, and writes about him with an intriguingly wistful fondness.
• Moment of Silence: When Geralt finally finds Ciri on the Isle of Mists, she appears dead, and Geralt breaks down in grief without a sound. Note that in a digitally generated medium, this isn't a case of removing sound but of deliberately adding none except for music.
• Monster Clown: Whoreson Junior's henchmen, one of the nastiest gangs in Novigrad, have clown costumes for uniforms.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The lighthearted quest of helping Dandelion start up a cabaret turns dark when his friend and first serious love interest Priscilla is brutally assaulted and forced to drink pure formaldehyde. Although she survives at the temporary cost of her voice, it turns out that the attacker is a serial killer who has brutally tortured and murdered a large number of people over the years, and it's up to Geralt to stop the killing spree. Made worse for the player by having Priscilla being a vivacious, engaging character in several previous quests, triggering Videogame Caring Potential in the player. This may be intentional as the mission to solve the attack has one of two endings, the lesser of which is triggered by Geralt/the player slaying the wrong suspect.
  • A standard treasure-quest side mission, "Black Pearl", sees Geralt helping a middle-aged man apparently try to save his love life by finding a rare pearl for his beloved. The mission ends when Geralt catches up to the man later, only for the man to sadly explain that the pearl gambit failed, due to his wife experiencing what the real world calls Alzheimer disease.
  • Due to the game's Wide-Open Sandbox nature, it's possible to go straight from a dark and serious quest to a comical one - or even interrupt one quest for the other.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Defied by Geralt, in keeping with his previous characterization. In the first game, when asked why he's missing his silver blade by Shani, who says that "One (is) for monsters and one (is) for humans", Geralt corrects her. Both are for monsters.
  • In the 'Killing Monsters' trailer, he beheads a supernatural beast for slaying the innocent for food, and then murders his human employers for trying to murder an innocent woman themselves.
  • Uncommonly presented in 'Carnal Sins' quest, which introduces a serial killer who commits elaborate murders to show people the errors of sinful life and make them accept the Eternal Fire. As it turns out, the killer is a vampire, a supernatural creature, whose mere existence is an abomination in the eyes of the Church of Eternal Fire.
  • One of the scavenger sidequests involves the aftermath of a group of knights who chased a Witcher around Skellige to make him answer for his crimes. During the course of their pursuit, they burn entire villages to the ground, kill anyone who gets in their way, and overall punish anyone who aided him in the slightest. The Witcher's crime? A duchess asked him to assassinate her father, and he politely refused.
  • Zigzagged by vampires. On more than one occasion, vampires flatly state they that they do not care for human suffering or lives, and ask if a human cares about the suffering of insects, rats or livestock. If Geralt or other human states that there's a difference, the vampire denies this. Regis and Dettlaff greatly abhor killing mortals themselves, but Regis admits they both had to learn how to come to this viewpoint. On the other hand, though, they consider the deaths or murder of their own kind to be heinous offenses. While they're typically just annoyed or amused if a mortal destroys a higher vampire, due to their Resurrective Immortality, they become furious when the death is permanent. Dettlaff admonishes Geralt for killing a bruxa he was friends with, and Regis is driven out of Toussaint if he permanently killed Dettlaff.
• Moral Sociopathy: When Geralt asks Regis how he feels about living in their world, Regis's answer sounds very much along the lines of this trope. Regis asks Geralt to think of the most uncomfortable (not painful or traumatic) experience he's ever had to do, and Geralt mentions banquets and formal occasions where he has to look and act like someone he's not. Regis nods and says that living in the world of humans is like that, except when you scratch your ass, burp, or otherwise act like yourself, people scream and call you a monster.
• Morton's Fork: In White Orchard you come across a woman that had been attacked by the griffin. She will die unless you give her a Swallow potion to give her a chance to live. Geralt explicitly says that she might die a slow painful death if he gives it to her and the journal says so as well. While she does live if you give her the potion, her mind was destroyed by it.
• Mundane Utility: Signs can have some non-combat uses. Aard can be used to batter down a flimsy door or boarded up passage, or snuff a candle. Igni can be used to torch a bee swarm to get at its hive, or set alight a corpse pile, or light a candle or brazier. Axii can be used to calm a spooked horse, or as a Jedi Mind Trick. You simply need to from a candle or brazier for Geralt to make the sign gesture without even expending stamina to cast to light or snuff it.
• Multiple Endings: There are three major endings which determine the shape of your final quest, Something Ends, Something Begins. The three major endings are as follows:
  • Ciri dies (as far as Geralt knows), causing Geralt to become a Death Seeker and go for one final quest to retrieve Ciri's wolf medallion, dying himself in the process (probably).
  • Ciri becomes the Empress of Nilfgaard, planning to change things for the better, but potentially never seeing Geralt again.
  • Or Ciri becomes a Witcher, finding happiness in walking the Witcher's Path. Geralt passes on every skill he knows and she becomes famous through the land.
  • Added to that, the ending differs based on your choices during major political questlines of the game. Variables include who rules over the North, whether Emhyr is alive, who reigns in Skellige, and whether Geralt settled down with Triss, Yennefer, or walked alone.
• Murder Into Malevolence:
  • One quest takes protagonist Geralt to a cursed and haunted island, where he finds the ghost of a young woman pleading to help her spirit leave the island. It turns out that she's a nobleman's daughter and, during a peasant uprising, her entire family was slaughtered and the invaders had planned to rape and murder her. Instead, she drank a sleeping potion which put her in a death-like state that fooled everyone... including her boyfriend, who ran away and wished that everyone would die. Eventually, everyone DID die and she was stuck in her fake death, unable to move as the rats in the tower ate her warm body alive. The combination of the boyfriend's curses, her Cruel and Unusual Death, and the plague the rats carried (which is a long story in itself) turned the young woman's spirit into a Pesta—a Plague Maiden that cursed the entire island.
  • A Baron and his wife were in an unhappy marriage where he beat her constantly and she found herself pregnant with a child she didn't want. The wife was eventually visited by three evil witch spirits who offered to get rid of the unborn child if the wife agreed to serve them for a year. She agreed, and not long afterwards, her husband beat her so badly that she miscarried. The wife and her other daughter decided to escape from the Baron that night and left the dead fetus on the bed. The Baron found his dead child and, in his grief, buried it in an unmarked grave without giving it a name. The dead child transformed into a Botchling—a malevolent and murderous spirit created from babies that died unwanted or unloved.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: In the quest "Wild at Heart", you learn that a hunter's wife, Hanna, was murdered by her own sister, who had been secretly in love with her brother-in-law. She did this by discovering said brother-in-law was a werewolf and leading Hanna into his lair. The sister swears that this was only meant to scare Hanna off so that she could take her husband, but the hunter doesn't care and will kill the sister if Geralt doesn't step in. To boot, even if it was an accident, the sister showed no remorse or mourning for her sister's death and had every intention of Romancing the Widower now that she had the chance.
• Mustache Vandalism: Yen does this to a painting of Avallac'h in his secret lab should you choose to trash the room with Ciri.
• My God, What Have I Done?: White Orchard's smith has one if you visit him after completing his quest in his favor. He realizes the villagers were distrustful of him before, but because of his open support of Nilfgaard and handing over one of them to be hanged they now despise him. Geralt advises him to leave with the Nilfgaardians if they depart.

N

• Navel-Deep Neckline: A number of female characters wear outfits with plunging necklines, such as Keira Metz and Corinne Tilly.
• Neck Lift: Imlerith does this to Vesemir during the Battle of Kaer Morhen before killing him with a Neck Snap.
• Nerf:
  • The Combat Ability "Whirl" causes Geralt to slash in every direction for as long as he has stamina and adrenaline. The Ekhidna decoction heals Geralt every time he uses up stamina. These 2 unfortunately don't work together.
  • The Alchemy skill "Acquired Tolerance" increases your toxicity by 1 for every known alchemical formula. For some reason, the devs saw fit to exclude dye formulas (12 in total) from being counted.
• Neutral No Longer: Averted. The game restores the option for Geralt to remain apolitical in the struggle between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms. Notably, Vesemir doesn't agree and is thoroughly Northern.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: In the aftermath of Radovid's murder when Roche, Ves, and Thaler reveal their secret agreement with Emhyr, after the fight is over you can loot the bodies of everyone who died in the brawl and everyone will be carrying a weapon of some kind. If you loot Dijkstra's corpse you'll see that the only thing in his pockets he could have used to defend himself with was a chicken leg. Even more egregious since he is the one that called the attack.
• New Game Plus: Which imports the player level (increased to 30 if it's below that), along with almost all the items accrued, the exceptions being Gwent cards, crafting diagrams (different from alchemy recipes, which ARE imported), quest items, books and trophies. Additionally, the levels of items and enemies are scaled according to the imported player level.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While berating Geralt about how disappointed he is in the witcher's performance, Emhyr slips a detail about how internal dissent in Nilfgaard is slowing down his offensive push into the North. Later, Geralt has the option to pass this information on to Dijkstra, which gives the former spymaster incentive to call off the arrangement he's made with the emperor and prolong the war against Nilfgaard. This leads to the eventual defeat of the empire and Emhyr's assassination.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Skjall saves a cute girl he found while fishing on his boat and later heroically tries to defend her from the Wild Hunt, and leads them away from his village. His reward? His clan believes he fled the battle and left his people to die, so he is dishonored, banished from his home, and stripped of his name, only refered to as "Craven" by everyone who knew him. Later, trying to clear his name, he ends up mauled by a werewolf and left to rot; he's found by Geralt and Yennefer, who proceed to use necromancy to get the full story of what happened out of him (causing him excruciating pain in the process). To add insult to injury, if you agree to Ciri's wish and visit his grave, you'll find that when the priestesses found his body in Freya's garden, they dumped it into a ditch with no proper burial. It's not until Ciri and Geralt set the record straight on what happened that he finally gets some respect back.
  • If, during King's Gambit, you help Cerys and expose Birna, she'll only be arrested because her son Svanrige realizes the truth and exposes her. But because of the dishonor Birna brought upon the family name, he'll either have to be killed or exiled.
  • If you choose to help Triss get all the mages to escape Novigrad, the witch hunters will target the non-humans to be burned at the stake instead.
  • In the Bloody Baron story arc, if you free the forest spirit, it will make sure the orphans get saved from the Crones. However, the Crones will transform Anna into a hideous monster. When Geralt tries to undo the curse, Anna will die whether or not he succeeds. The Baron is then Driven to Suicide afterwards. And on top of all of that, the village of Downwarren is wiped out to a person by the forest spirit, revealing the dead people around the tree weren't killed by accident at all. Conversely, not freeing the forest spirit dooms the orphans to be eaten by the Crones, but it will save Anna and also prevent the Baron from killing himself, although both leave the game world as a result. The village also gets spared.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Very few things have made Geralt snap. Seeing what Whoreson Junior had done to the whores that were brought to him, on top of roughing up his friend Dudu the doppler, and trying to kill Ciri, pushes him over the edge, and he makes the target of his rage feel it before calming down.
• Nostalgia Level: The Royal Palace of Vizima and Kaer Morhen appear almost exactly as they did in the first game.
• The Nothing After Death:
  • Several quests that deal with ghosts, corpses or spirits brought back to the living world indicate that this may be how death works. Several times, they express little or no knowledge of what transpires outside of their tombs or graves, and often refer to resurrection as "waking up". Aside from Ulle the Unlucky hearing cheers and voices calling to him as he fades away, no hints or details of any sort of afterlife are ever given.
  • Mind you, Yennefer believes this but also believes ghosts are merely echoes of the dead despite being obviously wrong.
• Notice This: Lootable objects can be highlighted using the witcher sense.
• Not in This for Your Revolution:
  • See Neutral No Longer. Geralt has numerous dialogue opportunities to express his indifference about whoever wins the war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms. This would be Out of Character if not for the thoroughly reprehensible behavior of the Northern monarchs during the second game. Can be Averted if Geralt aids either the Rebels or Nilfgaard. The latter, however, comes with heavy sarcasm. His helping of Dijkstra and the Temerian Resistance plot the assassination of Radovid comes down to the fact that Radovid's anti-magic campaign threatens Yennefer and Triss, people Geralt cares for immensely as Dijkstra flatly points out when laying out his plans. His optional abandonment of Vernon Roche's partisans to his fate, is also understandable because Geralt no longer has any stake in Temerian independence. Him sticking to that cause is solely to defend his friends, rather than fight for their cause.
  • If Keira is convinced to move to Kaer Morhen, she helps during the attack of the Wild Hunt, however when Geralt goes to thank her during Vesemir's funeral for her help she flat out states that she did it out of pure self preservation and some gratitude over Geralt's help in the past, but unlike everyone else there she never agreed to any of it and is leaving with Lambert as soon as he's ready for travel.
• Not Quite the Right Thing:
  • One scenario has Geralt offered a bribe by an arsonist not to turn him in. The arsonist committed the act while drunk out of the belief the dwarf was willingly aiding the Nifgaardians. If you turn down the bribe, the dwarf hands him over to the Nilfgaardians to be hanged and then says he'll be supporting them for real now.
  • It happens again when Geralt tries to rescue the White Orchard barkeep from having the crap beaten out of her. It ends up killing several of her neighbors and souring her view of him forever. As both of these events happen in the prologue/tutorial area, it serves to highlight how certain "heroic" decisions may seem easy, but carry unforeseen consequences.
  • Once again in White Orchard, a minor sidequest has you brewing a Swallow potion as a last-ditch attempt to heal a girl injured by the griffin. If you look at the journal afterwards you find out that she recovered physically, but the pain from the potion's toxins caused the girl to lose her mind. You even run into her beau in the Nilfgaard Base Camp in the southeastern-most point in Velen, who's unsure whether to thank Geralt for saving her life, or punch him for condemning her to a Fate Worse than Death.
  • When encountering a ghost, you hear a horrific tale about how she was Eaten Alive by rats while her lover was helpless to prevent her death. If you choose the option to reunite them by taking her bones to him, she kills him and goes to spread disease across the land.
  • Also somewhat downplayed in most of these cases. While the consequences of many quests can be bad, they arguably aren't really your problem, or even your fault. The barkeep's neighbors were out for your blood, so they dug their own graves. Both the arsonist and the injured girl are cases of you putting the more important choices in the hands of others, in this case the smith and the girl's physician. Many quests are like that with you enabling others to choose, but not making the actual choice yourself.
  • Inverted in one case of Skellige's crown plotline. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at An Craite's castle you get the choice between helping Hjalmar or helping Cerys. There is also the third obviously bad choice of not helping at all. Choosing the last one will result in Svanrige being crowned king. While at first it seems that he will be a puppet king under his mother, Birna Bran, and Nilfgaard; instead, in a single move, he unites all the clans under his leadership and casts aside his mother's own domineering aspirations becoming a capable ruler on his own terms. On the other hand he reforms Skellige into an absolute monarchy and both Cerys and Hjalmar die offscreen. So not quite as terrible as you were expecting but still pretty bad for all the named characters you met on Skellige.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Geralt is understandably disgusted when he learn that Orianna uses the orphanage as a farm to raise her favorite source of blood, but she points out that witchers are responsible for the deaths of more young boys than she is.

• Not So Stoic:
  • When embarking to hunt the griffin in White Orchard, Vesemir tweaks Geralt's nose about that one time they had to hunt a monster in a trash heap, and Geralt spent half the next day bathing.
  • In a much more serious example, when Geralt finds Ciri apparently dead, he completely breaks down and cradles her body.
  • And on the opposite side of the spectrum, even Geralt is caught flat-footed when he meets Elihal and all his accessories while searching for Dandelion.
  • Geralt's encounter with Whoreson Junior. Having pushed not one, but two of Geralt's Berserk Buttons: harming his friends, and murdering women Geralt relentlessly beats him within an inch of his life over the course of a minute long scene, while frantically pacing the room in between blows. Even after he's calmed down and begun his interrogation, Geralt can menacingly explain to him that one more lie will very well likely be the final straw to make Geralt really boil over. It's up to you to decide if he gets to walk out of the room alive or not.
• No Woman's Land: Everywhere to some degree or another.
  • Beyond the struggles present in any worn-torn hellhole, both the Baron's men and Nilfgaardian soldiers raid villages and are mentioned to take women. In the latter case, it is explicitly stated that they are sent to "serve" in taverns and possibly brothels. Those taken in Skelliger raids are implied to meet similar fates.
  • Double Subverted in regards to Skellige, which seems to be the most egalitarian society since women can be warriors and leaders (even though they've never had a female ruler before, there's nothing outright saying they can't rule, and any complaints raised against Cerys' bid for power are because she's Crach's daughter, not because she's a woman), but even they have a habit of raiding villages and taking women as slaves and comfort women.
  • Toussaint is an interesting compromise. With a female in power, women are far more respected than in Velen or Novigrad, but still their focus on chivalry as one of their main cultural tenets make women into something that can be earned via heroic deeds. Granted the lady in question does have some say in the matter, and they're not seen as property like they do in the North, but it's still a far cry from an egalitarian society.

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• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ciri facing down the White Frost and surviving occurs entirely offscreen, left to the player's imagination.
• Oh, Crap!: If you follow the "Reasons of State" storyline Radovid finds himself at the mercy of Roche and his men at the end. He bangs on a random door, demanding to be let in, when it suddenly opens — revealing Philippa Eilhart behind it. Radovid's expression looks like he's just lived his worst nightmare in the waking world, which probably isn't far from the truth.
• Older Than They Look:
  • Hubert Rejk, the Novigrad coroner, appears to be in his mid-thirties to early forties, but he's old enough to have taught a fifty-three year old man medicine twenty years ago. He credits the time he spends breathing in the chemicals used to preserve corpses with his youthful appearance. The real reason is that he's a vampire.
  • Pretty much all magic users qualify. Geralt and Yennefer both have about a century on them, just for starters.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: invoked
  • Yennefer still gives Geralt a bit of grief over the "incantation" he'd recited in "The Last Wish." "How was I to know it meant 'begone and go plough yourself'?"
  • Lambert is quite eager to make fun of Geralt for various things, including the "Killing Monsters" line from the announcement trailer after Geralt makes fun of the "tough guy act".
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted. There are two important characters who go by the name Anna: Anna Strenger, the Bloody Baron's wife, and Anna Henrietta, the Duchess of Toussaint.
  • A lesser example, since they aren't in the same piece of media, but Mikula the orphan shares her name with a blacksmith from Something Ends, Something Begins.
• Opening the Sandbox: After a tutorial in Geralt's dream, the player starts in White Orchard, which is open but still a relatively small map. The Lilac and Gooseberries quest and a short scene in the Vizima Royal Palace need to be completed before the player has access to the larger main areas that the bulk of the game is set in. Once White Orchard is complete, the player can take on any of the three main regions in any order, so long as they can get past the respective Beef Gates and Cash Gates.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Including the DLCs, Geralt can bed at least 15 women. Only Yennefer and Triss have any effect on the story, and you can even have one encounter with Yen without locking in her romance path.
• Orphaned Etymology: Geralt names the sword he finds at the end of Of Dairy and Darkness "Emmentaler", a cheese which, in Real Life, is named after Switzerland's Emme Valley.
• Out with a Bang:
  • The reason why Dudu, Geralt and Dandelion's Doppler friend, was able to break into Dijkstra's vault. He impersonated Margrave Henckel, who'd died in a brothel "clad in leather lingerie", meaning his family kept the funeral hush-hush so word of his death wasn't widely known.
  • Geralt encounters a situation where villagers accuse a local succubus of murdering an old man. He actually died in the act with her despite her recommendations against it because his old heart gave out. She gives the old man a proper burial.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions:
  • The Nilfgaardians have this attitude towards the gods aside from their own. They interpret it as a license to rape, pillage, and plunder temples as well as abbeys. Given the amount of supernatural weirdness going on around the Witcher world, it may qualify them as Hollywood Atheists as well, and they aren't alone. In Novigrad, the practice of any religion other than that of the Eternal Fire is banned on the pain of burning at the stake. And they're very eager to follow through on those threats.
  • The King of Beggars in Novigrad scoffs at religion, viewing it as just another way for the rich to control the poor. Considering that the city is in the middle of a witch-burning craze, he may have a point.
• Out-of-Character Moment: A minor one which would only be relevant to book readers. Geralt has the opportunity to turn down payment several times for slaying monsters. Being a hero who is 'poor in dollars, rich in sense', Geralt would never do this in the books. He even puts down the idea of it in the first game, saying only rich people can afford to slay monsters for free. However, sometimes refusing to take payment leads to a different reward altogether (something worth more than the monetary reward or a discount).
• Out of Focus: Given how much emphasis was placed on Geralt's relationship with Triss in the previous game, it can be a tad jarring to see her sidelined romantically even after rekindling things. Due to fan feedback, an update was announced to expand both Triss's and Yennefer's romance dialogue options.
• Old Save Bonus: Save games from Witcher 2 can be imported upon starting a new game, automatically applying all decisions made from that game that affect the story. However it's worth noting that while Witcher 2 can import from Witcher 1, nothing persists from Witcher 1 all the way to Witcher 3. For example, it is possible to fail to save Thaler in Witcher 1, but he will always be alive in Witcher 3.
• Overly Long Name:
  • Sir Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde of Rivia, a.k.a., White Wolf, Gwynbleidd, Butcher of Blaviken, and Ravix of Fourhorn.
  • Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge, Duchess of Sodden, heiress to Inis Ard Skellig and Inis An Skellig, and suzeraine of Attre and Abb Yarra, a.k.a. The Lady of Time and Space, Zireael, Lion Cub of Cintra, and Child of the Elder Blood. Ciri for short.
  • Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy.
  • Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, Lord of Metinna, Ebbing, and Gemmera, Sovereign of Nazair and Vicovaro, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd, The White Flame Dancing on the Graves of His Foes.
  • The Continent is lousy with them. Many also obviously cross over into Lotus Blossom territory.

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• Permanently Missable Content: Following Cerys' path during "King's Gambit" brings you in a tunnel under Kaer Trolde which contains a place of power, but the area is inaccessible otherwise. Following Hjalmar's path or refusing to do the quest will deprive you of a free ability point (not to mention "King's Gambit" is one of the many sidequests which are automatically failed past one of the points of no return).
• Playable Epilogue: Downplayed. After completing the Epilogue quest, you get dropped into a Free Roam version of the game world set before the final chapter where all of the storyline characters are despawned.
• Plot Tunnel: You're locked into the main story from when you enter the Isle of Mists until after defeating Imrelith, taking up a few hours of game time.
• Point of No Return: There are a few moments in the game where sidequests get marked as failed if you proceed with the main quest. Fortunately the game gives you a warning to create a manual save during moments where the player might risk failing the more important sidequests. Such a point is the return trip to Kaer Morhen where Geralt and the allies he's made up to that point organize for a final battle against the Wild Hunt.
• Post-Final Boss: If you get the bad ending, you'll end up fighting the Weavess and taking back the amulet she stole from Ciri. Pyrrhic "victory" though, since it's heavily implied by the cutscene that Geralt doesn't survive an onslaught by a giant swarm of monsters that proceeds to convene on his position in the wake of the fight.
• Power Echoes: Several supernatural entities. Most noticeably, the King of the Wild Hunt's voice has a creepy reverb effect caused by his headgear. He speaks normally whenever he removes the faceplate on his helm.
• The Power of Love: Downplayed but present at the game's end. Geralt's love gives Ciri the strength to stop the White Frost and survive - she remembers a number of major interactions with Geralt near the end of the game where he supports her or cheers her up.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Happens to multiple characters with powers, notably including both Ciri and Yen near the end of the main quest as they overexert.
• Prank Call: No, you don't need a telephone for this, megascopes (and a sufficient amount of alcohol) do the job just fine.
  "Lambert... you're a genius."
• Preferable Impersonator: If Geralt kills Whoreson Junior, Dudu (a doppleganger) will take over his identity. A depraved Serial Killer who has no concept of Honor Among Thieves, compared to Dudu who is a naturally non-violent and friendly individual, who disbands Wily's criminal empire and reinvests his assets in a legitimate trading company. Everyone benefits from this replacement, including his gang who now make more money thanks to Dudu's head for business.
• Previously on…: When continuing a saved game, you are given a brief rundown of what happened the last time you played, narrated by an elderly Dandelion. Unusually, it goes by where you are located when you last saved and can result in an "update" from many hours ago.
• Production Foreshadowing: The world where Ciri hid from Eredin is described thusly: "I saw houses of glass. People there had metal in their heads, waged war from a distance using things similar to megascopes. And there were no horses, everyone had their own flying ship instead." Where have we heard that before...?
• The Prophecy: Ithlinne's Prophecy plays a fairly significant part in the backstory of the game, especially when it comes to Ciri's role in the future of the world:
  The era of the sword and axe is nigh, the era of the wolf's blizzard. The Time of the White Frost and the White Light is nigh, the Time of Madness and the Time of Contempt: Tedd Deireádh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown. A seed which will not sprout but burst into flame!

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• Rainbow Pimp Gear: In full effect. There's no way to customize armor appearance (until the Blood and Wine DLC), and though armor part of the same set looks cohesive, it's fully possible to wear black plate mail as a top, with denim blue pants and brown shoes - making Geralt look like a Renaissance fair re-enactor who's only put on half his costume. More colorful and garish combinations are also possible, thanks to many of the light armor tops and trousers that tend to favor bright colors.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Averted for once with Geralt. While he can sleep with either Yennefer, Triss, or both (which isn't recommended) plus a couple of others, it's a far cry from previous games. Plus, both Yennefer and Triss are women he has long-standing relationships with. Played straight if you decide Geralt should indulge the services of Novigrad's brothels or if you agree to the multiple sidequests offered by other ladies from Geralt's past like Keira Metz and Shani.
  • Dandelion. You are sent on a quest which consists of interviewing his romantic conquests in the city. They include bards, a washerwoman (who he's slept with before), an elven tailor, housemaids, a school teacher, and a pair of Nilfgaard identical twins (neither slept with him). What's crazier? This is only half the list of his most recent girlfriends, and even then you'll find more. Granted he didn't sleep with all of them (at the very least he didn't sleep with the tailor) but he still easily racks up an incredible body count.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Seems to be a running theme among Nilfgaardian nobility.
  • One quest features a Nilfgaardian commander requisitioning food from the local alderman, who is overawed by the commander and essentially groveling instead of giving a straight answer. The commander stands up, points out the calluses on his hands, and demands they speak "peasant to peasant". The alderman replies there are 40 bushels; there would have been more, but Temerian forces had requisitioned some of it already. The commander only asks for 30 bushels out of the 40. This is intentionally played with, as the same commander, upon receiving the 30 bushels and finding some to be rotten, has the alderman whipped for giving the army defective goods. It is a running theme in the game how the same authority figures can be both magnanimous and tyrannical, depending on their personal standards, or even just their present mood, underlining how unchecked power is inherently arbitrary to those who live under it, whether well-intentioned or not.
  • A Nilfgaardian general who comes to order a special armor for himself quickly admonishes Fergus for allowing his subordinates to interject and argue, but when he gets proof that Yoana is the real master, he orders the forge to be transferred to her and grants her a large military commission without batting an eye.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: See Hellish Horse. Also, Fiends when performing hypnosis.
• Red Light District: Curiously for a city practically ruled by religious fundamentalists, Novigrad has a number of taverns, whorehouses, and gambling halls. Probably so they know which buildings to avoid.
• Red Herring: Reverend Nathaniel Pastodi during the quest Carnal Sins. As a sadistic torturer and a Priest of the Eternal Fire, Pastodi can immediately be suspected of committing the series of religiously-motivated killings around Novigrad, up to the point where Geralt finds him about to mutilate who he believes to be the next would-be victim. Yet if questioned, Nathaniel reveals that he's been framed by the real killer: the city's coroner, Hubert Rejik. Geralt can, of course, kill him anyway.
• Red Riding Hood Replica: Geralt can take a quest to protect a village from a bandit leader named Little Red, who wears a hood and transforms into a werewolf if Geralt chooses to fight her. It's worth noting she's named Little Red only in the English release and her hood isn't red, either - in the original Polish version, she's simply called Wilczyca, meaning a she-wolf, which makes a fitting nickname in Polish for a bandit leader, but not so much in English.
• The Remnant:
  • Geralt, Vesemir, Letho, and a handful of others are the only witchers left in the world. Most people are unaware of this fact and there may be even less left based on your decisions. One of the possible ending has Ciri finish her training to become the first new witcher in decades.
  • Similarly, with the destruction and outlawing of the Lodge of Sorceresses, the remnants seen in game number only a few more than the remaining witchers are actively hunted by every major power on the continent.
  • The bestiary category "Relicts" lists several monsters which are at risk of extinction, such Godlings and Dopplers. Additionally one Skellige quest involves slaying a frost giant; even Geralt was shocked to learn there was one still alive.
• La Résistance:
  • Subverted. It's definitely a case of The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized. With the death of Foltest, the Temerian forces were disorganized and ineffective. They were easy prey for Nilfgaard, which defeated them on the battlefield and scattered their ranks. While some continue the fight, most have turned to banditry, deserted, or joined the Bloody Baron's forces. Indeed, many of the deserters and bandits Geralt encounters yell "For Temeria" as if they were still in the army fighting Nilfgaard. Which is not uncommon with some "resistance" groups throughout history.
  • However, there is an actual Temerian resistance group, made up of actual remnants of the Temerian army... and commanded by none other than Vernon Roche. However, they subvert this trope too, since Roche is actually in league with Nilfgaard against Radovid.
• Revenge:
  • The griffin in White Orchard. While it did have a nest and otherwise acts like a regular griffin, its relations with the town weren't improved by the Nilfgaardian soldiers killing its mate, smashing its eggs, and burning its nest. The griffin is understandably pissed and a much greater threat than before.
  • Geralt can find his witcher comrade Lambert in the middle of a brutal manhunt for the people who assassinated his friend from the Cat School.
  • King Radovid hands Geralt the location for Whoreson Junior for a favor. Said favor? Bring him Phillipa alive so he can torture her to death.
  • Philippa, during "Reasons of State." She ambushes Radovid as he tries to escape the conspirators, blinds him, and stabs him in the back.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • You meet Lambert in the middle of one, hunting down and killing the members of a hit squad who killed his friend Aiden. Geralt can help him finish his vengeance, or persuade him to back out of it.
  • This is pretty much how King Radovid perceives his purge of mages.
  • Geralt discovers the aftermath of one when doing the "Beast of Honorton" contract. A witcher from the School of the Cat was betrayed by the clients who hired him, and after killing his attackers he proceeded to go through the entire town and kill everyone else, save for one little girl.
• R-Rated Opening: A double whammy. The game's opening sequence features Yennefer caught in a battle between two opposing armies, which forces her to employ a number of spells to escape, killing dozens of soldiers and horses in the process, with the goriest in particular involving sending a raven directly into one man's eye and out the other end of his skull. When that's over, the game moves on to a dream sequence, where Geralt is taking a bath, treating us to some very suggestive shots between his legs, and Yennefer is lounging around casually in the nude.
• Running Gag:
  • Ronvid of the Small Marsh is persistent in wanting to defend the honor of the Maid Bilberry, even though Geralt has never met either of them before in his life and has no interest to spare for the honor, or lack thereof, of anybody.
  • Gwent being treated as Serious Business whenever it comes up.
  • Geralt hates portals, and makes sure to mention it whenever the opportunity arises. Which is often.

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