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Castle Crashers is a Beat 'em Up available on the Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, PC, and Mac. Created by Tom Fulp of The Behemoth, creator of Newgrounds and Alien Hominid, it maintains the comedic style and artistic look you might find on his web site.

You (and up to three of your friends) are gallant knights, fighting off a barbarian horde, lava beasts, the undead and the like to rescue four beautiful princesses who have been abducted. That's the extent of the story for this game. It's all about playing an oldschool-style hack-and-slash on high-definition gaming technology, with cheesy (and at times disgusting) humor.

First released on Xbox in 2008. In 2015, the game was remastered for the Xbox One and PC. Then in 2019, the remaster was brought over to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.


Castle Crashers contains examples of:

    open/close all folders 
    A — F 
  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Each character maxes out at Level 99. One can beat the game at around Level 30 as long as you didn't neglect strength. Those extra levels come real handy in Insane Mode, however. The game has up to about 30 playable characters (unlockables and DLC included).
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: You'll need quite a few playthroughs in order to be able to afford all the weapons and Animal Orbs in the game, with the Insane Store having costs of up to 5500 gold. The Insane Store's costs were greatly toned down in the Remastered Version, however, the highest price being 1500 gold. A more specific example is that the Castle Keep shopkeeper still charges you to buy items, even though you just beat up a bunch of Barbarians that were threatening him.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: Several times, you are running away from a troll large enough that its eyes alone are the size of two players each. The first time it is encountered, you simply run. In a following sequence, this troll becomes a type A boss, which you will fight in a variant of the Minecart Madness level.
  • Agent Peacock: Pink Knight uses The Power of Love-based magic, and has a valentine motif. He kicks ass with the rest of the group.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Wizard's Castle has one hell of an odd background. It's all swirly and purple and black and... whoa.
  • Anachronism Stew: Despite being set in a medieval time period, there are things outside of that era in the game, though it's likely because of Rule of Funny:
    • Some of the weapons are clearly from outside the era, such as the Conehead's Light Saber, the Chainsaw, and the Cattle Prod.
    • Hidden in the background of an early phase of the Ninja Pirate battle is a giant squid fighting a robot.
    • The very existence of the Alien Ship, granted it's a reference to Alien Hominid.
    • The Painter boss is one giant case of this, with his room containing a TV screen, and how he's in overalls and has a toolbox for a head. Not to mention he speaks in a robotic voice.
    • While pianos and organs aren't really out of place, a prop-up keyboard akin to modern day ones can be seen in the ending sequence.
  • And I Must Scream: The Weapons Frog (just look at its eyes!), but it's untied for the ending sequence.
  • And Now You Must Marry Me: The leader of the Coneheads is attempting to forcibly marry the Green Princess against her will when you show up. The other princes may or may not be holding the other Princesses for marriage.
  • Annoying Arrows: Played straight for enemy arrows, and both subverted and played straight for players' arrows. Being that just about everyone is Made of Iron in this game, arrows seem to do very little damage to people, and if you're fighting a whole mess of Thieves, arrows are more than enough to drive someone mad. If a player increases their Agility during their level-ups, however, their arrows can do a decent amount of damage comparable to magic damage. In fact, some characters' "magic" is dropping a volley of arrows on their opponent's heads from on top of them, thus actually requiring magic increases to get stronger.
  • Apathetic Citizens: Used painfully straight in the beginning of the game, then subverted later in the swamp level, where the peasants, encouraged by your violent bravery, join you in fights — and even then, you have to lure the Corn Boss into attacking them to actually have them join you in fighting the monstrosity.
    • The Peasant, and his buddy The Civilian, can also be unlocked as playable characters.
  • Art Attacker: The Painter. Although he doesn't directly attack you with his brush.
  • Art Initiates Life: The Painter uses his brush to bring his artwork to life.
  • Art Shift: The Painter's creations are rendered in a less-refined, non-shaded style similar to many early 2000's animations.
  • Author Guest Spot: Many of the minds behind Newgrounds appear imprisoned in the alien's spaceship, floating in large tubes behind the level's starting point.
  • Avenging the Villain: The Conehead leader's death causes Cyclops to attack you... well, after he runs away with the Green Princess and you chase him down. Justified; the conehead leader is his son.
  • Badass Adorable: All of the characters are cute little guys, but special mention goes to the Pink Knight, who wears pink armor, smiles constantly, and uses rainbows and stuffed animals as his magic attacks.
  • Badass Normal: The Grey Knight and several of the other unlockable characters (most notably the civilian and peasant) have no magic, gadgets, or special high-tech equipment of any kind. They make do.
    • Empowered Badass Normal: They did, however, has access to mundane "magic" such as conjuring bombs, and also launch upwards to get on to the castle during the ascending castle climax.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: The first boss appears to be just a simple Giant Mook. Then, the door behind him that's three times his height (for reference: he's twice yours) breaks down, crushing him, and the real boss comes out. He barely fits through the giant door.
  • Bandit Mook:
    • The Thief can take away both the foods and gold laying on the ground.
    • In a few levels, Imps can steal bags of gold that are lying around if they don't get picked up quickly enough.
  • Bears Are Bad News:
    • The bear tribe you encounter shortly after Catfish.
    • Subverted early in the game. A bear gets ready to attack you from behind a bush, but quickly gets scared off by a much more threatening enemy.
    • The Bipolar Bear will attack anyone with low health. Yes, even its owner.
  • Bee-Bee Gun: The Beekeeper uses bees for magic attacks.
  • Big Bad: The Wizard is the one who steals the crystal from the King and sets the game in motion.
  • Bishōnen Line: The final battle. The Wizard fight has six stages! Also, the Necromancer, the Wizard's second-in-command and most powerful minion, is humanoid, whereas his two lesser underlings are monstrous.
  • Black Comedy: Sometimes, there are rather sadistic situations that are really hard not to laugh at.
  • Black Knight: The Necromancer. Averted with Stove Face and Conehead for being common mooks, though they at least look the part.
  • Blob Monster: Slimes can be found in a few cave-based levels.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Blue, Green, and Red Princesses, respectively.
  • Bonus Dungeon: Insane Mode fits the trope, even if it isn't a dungeon. Enemies have many times their normal HP, and do crazy amounts of damage. You, on the other hand, only get as strong as stat caps will let you.
  • Bookends: The game starts and ends with the characters partying in the Home Castle.
  • Boss Room: The Painter, the Necromancer, and Recyclops in the final castle. The Barbarian Boss applies here too.
  • Boss Rush: A set of brand-new fights right before the final battle.
  • Bowel-Breaking Bricks: Several animals in the Thieves' Forest.
  • Brick Joke: The deer being propelled by his Bowel-Breaking Bricks will later be seen flying into the sky in the Full Moon level.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: In the Thieves' Forest area, there are instances where an owl, a deer, and even a bear, soil themselves in fright at some creature stomping around the woods. In the Abandoned Mill immediately following, you see the huge creature firsthand, and have to ride one of the deer to safety. The deer may or may not have the runs as it runs.
  • The Brute: The Recyclops plays the muscle to the Necromancer.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: The swamp and Medusa's Lair are set in an area with murky green water that you'll sometimes have to traverse through.
  • Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The armless, dinosaur-like mount in one level is simply known as "Crocodile".
  • Campy Combat: The Pink Knight's magic has him hurling rainbows at enemies while posing in a very camp manner.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Most of the villains... as implied by their names.
  • Cats Are Mean: The Catfish. The Giant Troll looks a bit like a huge cat too.
  • Casting a Shadow: The Skeletons, Cult Minions, and the Necromancer all use Shadow Magic.
  • Chainsaw Good: A chainsaw happens to be an unlockable weapon after you beat the game. Better hope you've saved your Gold, though...
  • Character Level: As you level up, your character will learn new combos and gain 2 stat points until after Level 20, when it's reduced to one stat point.
  • Character Customization: Players can specialize in strength, magic, defense, agility, or any combination of them. Can result in characters becoming a Jack of All Stats, a Mighty Glacier, a Fragile Speedster, and more. With significant patience and leveling, characters can even reach Lightning Bruiser levels, which is usually what you get after spending enough time in Insane Mode rather than the normal mode.
  • Cherry Tapping: The Shovel can hit an enemy twice in one use, but it can be difficult to time, and it's often not that worth it. The Horn can send opponents flying in the same manner, but it's a bit easier to time.
  • Chest Monster: During the final boss fight, the usual treasure chest falls onto the boss the same way it did for every other boss; however, opening it releases a more powerful form of the boss!
  • Chromosome Casting: All playable characters and villains are male; this includes the Pink Knight. While there are princesses, their only purpose is to be saved, there's no other interaction with them, and one of them turns out to be Tricky the Clown.
  • Classical Cyclops: The Cyclops is one of the Evil Wizard's servants. He is the greyish-brown hulking humanoid wearing purplish armor, and he uses knives as a weapon. He has a close relationship with the Conehead Groom, helping him with the Arranged Marriage with the Green Princess, and when the heroes kill the Groom, Cyclops ends up mourning his death. Later, in Cyclops' Fortress, he tries to avenge the Conehead Groom by killing the heroes, only to fall into lava after defeat. He later gets brought Back from the Dead by the Necromancer in undead form. In this form, he fights the heroes in the Evil Wizard's castle, together with the undead version of the Conehead Groom, before he and the Groom are killed for good by heroes, after which their winged souls fly off.
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer: Red, blue, green, and orange knights in four-player action with many secret characters to unlock.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: In-Universe and out, some people can't help but laugh at some of the ways people die in this game. Even when players are fighting each other in the Arenas, sometimes the winner character will point and laugh at the dead loser. And they usually come back for the next level or match, of course. Even if they lost their head in the fight.
  • Continuing is Painful: Dying kicks you back to the world map so you can restock items and restart at the latest checkpoint. You don't need to kill all the bosses in the Wizard's Castle in a row, too. However, you must kill an end boss before you quit the game, or you'll be sent back to the beginning of the current level set when you come back.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: One of the greatest examples is the Cyclops boss: after his defeat, he falls into a pit of magma and is buried there. When the necromancer resurrects him as Recyclops, he doesn't look anywhere near as burned as he should be (his Glowing Eyelights of Undeath look molten, and that's about it).
  • Cowardly Boss:
    • The Industrial Prince runs away from you at every point up until the battle with his giant mechanical contraption. Then he runs again, but gets zapped by the wizard instead of getting a ride. You can smack him off the tower of his castle for some satisfying revenge. The moment can be even more hilarious depending on what means you smack him with. The shovel. The horn. Anything works. For maximum laughs, bring along Bipolar Bear.
    • The Painter, who uses his elevator to hide behind his hordes of enemies. When you deal enough damage to him, the elevator breaks, and the Painter runs around screaming "FOILED!", at which point his drawings start to die in one hit each.
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: If a teammate loses all his HP and has no potions left, you can revive him via CPR.
  • Crosshair Aware: Whenever sub-bosses use cannons, you'll see a glowy red cross on the floor. Makes no sense, because the cannons don't have crosshairs themselves.
  • Cycle of Hurting: In cases where enemies spawn en masse, they may stunlock you until your health runs dry. And even then, it may take them awhile to stop. Also, the Blue Knight has a certain melee combo (Light, Light, Light, Heavy) that (after striking an enemy three times in succession) freezes that enemy with a heavy blow; this combo deals absolutely massive amounts of damage and can be spammed repeatedly on a single enemy if you have the proper timing skills.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: While the Necromancer normally falls under Dark Is Evil, he is also available as a playable character via Downloadable Content, and attacks enemies and bosses instead of acting like one, therefore putting the trope into play.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The Grey Knight is one of the King's Red Shirts.
  • Death Mountain: Full Moon is set on a large, rocky brown mountain, with rolling rocks and tons of enemies to boot. The mountain's elevation is high enough that it transitions into the snow world at the top.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Defeating Pipistrello causes him to shrink down into the Bitey Bat Animal Orb.
    • A few Animal Orbs are gotten by defeating their original users (the Bear Boss for Rammy, and a Beefy Brute for Cardinal).
  • Degraded Boss: The big, squarish Troll from the early-game forest level appears later in normal fights a few times.
  • Dem Bones: Skeletons appear as mooks and a potential playable character. They take minor damage from magic. Oddly, they can become beefy even if they're, you know, skeletal.
  • Developer's Foresight: The Gray Knight's projectile magic lets him throw a bomb. Said bombs look like and can actually be used in place of the ones the player buys normally.
  • Disney Villain Death: The Industrial Prince, if you so desire.
  • Distressed Damsel: Four, one for each of the main characters' colors.
  • The Dragon: The Necromancer, the Painter, and Recyclops to the Wizard.
  • Elite Mook: There's a Conehead wearing a backpack to help him avoid getting juggled.
  • Enemy Mine: You can outfit your Player Character with enemy designs, each with their own unique magic attacks.
  • Escape Sequence: The first encounter with the giant Troll. This is the original reason for the poor deer's... uh... propulsion.
    • Also happens on the Alien Ship, which you must escape from before it blows up. Otherwise, you take heavy damage.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Conehead Groom and the Cyclops are real close.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Barbarians, thieves, trolls, sharks, fish, bears, demons, sandworms, slimes, and more.
    • And those are just the ones that make sense. One boss is a giant ear of corn who attacks rather viciously with his husk.
  • Excuse Plot: The Wizard invades the King's Castle to steal the large magical crystal off the throne and the four princesses. Wizard flies off on it, and the King yells at the Knights to bring them all back. That's your story, now go hit stuff.
  • Expressive Mask: The knights manage to be pretty expressive despite wearing cold steel helmets. Sometimes they even sprout mouths through the helmet.
  • The Faceless: The Orange Princess's face is never seen throughout the majority of the game. Even when you're fighting the first boss (where all four princesses are seen in the background), her face is obscured by lots of ropes.
    • Several other characters fit this, such as the Royal Guards, the Black Knights, the Wizard's Cultists, the Coneheads, the colored knights...
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Players can specialize in either melee, magic, or bow damage.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Three out of the four playable characters available from the start are an ice magic user blue knight, a fire magic user orange knight, and a lightning magic user red knight.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: When the Treasure Chest falls onto a boss, the boss does not see it coming due to either being dead or on the verge of death. The Wizard does a Wild Take at it because he's pretending the fight is over to take you off guard.
  • Flunky Boss: Several bosses, including the Barbarian Boss and Pipistrello, constantly summon regular mooks. The Necromancer deserves special mention, as he summons two waves of 10+ enemies each.
  • Floating Continent: The Wizard's Castle... which falls during the last two phases of the final battle.
  • Funny Background Event: See Brick Joke.

    G — M 
  • Gainax Ending: The ending seems normal enough as the warrior takes the orange princess back home, but... the princess turns out to be a clown in disguise. She dances around in a psychedelic background and then the game ends. How weird!
  • Gangplank Galleon: The ninja pirate ship level.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Evil Corn's battle becomes little more than an annoying game of Whack A Mole when it's low on health.
    • The Painter dodges you for the first half of his bar by only coming down from his spot to create more minions. Eventually, his elevator breaks and he runs around screaming for help.
    • The Frost King is also hard to catch, seeing as the battle arena's floor is completely made of slippery ice, and he also pops in and out similarly to The Evil Corn as his health runs out.
  • Giant Mook: Several enemies in the game are beefed up versions of the mooks.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The dragon at the end of Lava World. The Painter in the Wizard's Castle also fits, as does the big angry corn husk, and Tricky the Clown.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: At the end of the desert level, just after you slaughter dozens of Saracens, you play a friendly game of volley ball with some survivors. And even then, you can still beat each other senseless.
  • Good Wings, Evil Wings: The Necromancer, as if his power and his black armor was not enough to unambiguously label him as evil, also has a pair of bat wings.
  • Gorgeous Gorgon: Medusa fits this category quite nicely. Just don't get caught in her stare.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: Collecting all the animal orbs and weapons.
  • Hammer of the Holy: The church that the wedding-battle takes place in has hammers instead of crosses in its iconography, overlapping with the Bowdlerize trope.
  • Harmless Freezing: The Blue Knight and several other characters can freeze a good number of enemies, even the Icekimos. They'll thaw and come right back after you.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Pink Knight's magic consists of rainbows and plush penguins/weasels. The rainbows are the longest reaching splash attack in the game and, when hit, enemies make a peace sign for a split second. And it is awesome.
  • Heavy Mithril: The four knights are head banging and moshing when the story begins.
  • High-Altitude Battle: The fight against the Wizard happens as his castle crumbles around you all and the chunks of it begin to plummet back into the crater he left by pulling it from the ground.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Medusa is turned to stone after her defeat. The Ice King isn't luckier as he slowly turns to ice, screaming all the time. The Cyclops falling in the lava grave he dug for his friend/son may count.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism:
    • Food acts as recovery, especially the drumsticks.
    • Corned Beef sandwiches grand 10 seconds of Super Mode.
  • I Am Your Opponent: The Barbarian Boss makes his entrance like this in hilarious fashion: a typical Giant Mook Barbarian appears, and screams at you. The giant door he's standing in front of then gets knocked down, crushing him, and out comes a much, much larger barbarian to throw down with you.
  • Ice Palace: The Ice Prince's castle.
  • An Ice Person: The Ice King, the Blue Knight, and the Icekimoes.
  • I Have Many Names: Forest Knight / Swamp Trooper / Vine Knight / Medusa Minion / Medusa Knight / Tree Knight / Grass Knight / Druidic Knight / Snakey
  • Improbable Weapon User: Any player, really, given the variety of weapons that become available to you.
    • Let's see, a spoon, a fish, a lightsaber, a frozen chicken, a few different kinds of sticks, a lollipop, a carrot, a boomerang, a horn... you get the idea.
    • Some enemies aren't better: the first boss you face attacks you with a colossal spiked shield.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Small ones can show up in certain levels, and a huge one full of money drops after every boss that guards a princess. The chest the Evil Wizard drops, however, contains his more monstrous form.
  • Instrument of Murder: One boss plays a pipe organ with cannons for pipes.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: The theme for the Conehead Groom fight, called "Till Death Do I Impart", is a distorted version of "Here Comes The Bride".
  • Joke Item: A good amount of non-conventional weapons. Honestly, did you expect a fishing rod to do anything but lower your stats?
  • Kiai: Consuming a Sandwich causes the eater to emit a groaning scream as they become Beefy.
  • King Mook: The Barbarian Boss, the Conehead leader, the bear tribe mini-boss, and possibly Pipistrello.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Lampshaded, it's actually called "Lava World."
  • Literally Shattered Lives: Invoked with Medusa, as she turns to stone and must be hit and shattered to complete the level. Upon smashing her to bits, she drops a sword.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: The Wizard, whose castle gradually falls apart as you fight him. Justifiable, as he's going One-Winged Angel on you.
  • Made of Iron: Pretty much everyone. Getting shocked, set on fire, or sliced and diced is only a small injury that you can get back up from.
  • Magic Knight: All the characters can cast magic and beat stuff up, but you need to upgrade attack, defense, AND magic for this to be an extremely effective build.
  • Marathon Boss: On Insane Mode, all of the bosses get a huge health increase, although special mention goes to The Frost King, who can take about 30 minutes to beat alone.
  • Medieval European Fantasy: The whole game takes place in a medieval setting, although there's a factory and a spaceship in the mix as well.
  • Mineral Macguffin: The King's giant crystal.
  • Mini-Boss: Several, although they seem to disappear after you cross the ocean after the fight with the Alien Hominid ships.
  • Mini-Game: All You Can Quaff, a massive eating contest. Also, volleyball atop the Sand Castle. The Remastered patch adds Back-Off Barbarian, a survival game where you move by moving the control stick in changing directions as shown on the tiles.
  • Mirror Boss: The Bear miniboss, and the Necromancer. Both of which can become literal Mirror Bosses through unlocks.
  • Monster Arena: Several throughout the game. Beat them to be able to play as the enemies you fought. Well, except for the Peasant Arena, which unlocks the Villager.
  • Multi-Mook Melee: Pretty much every level. The Necromancer sends a few giant waves of mooks at you when you fight him, too.
    • During the Alien Ship level, you wind up fighting 50 enemies in one screen. They all die in one hit, but they also have ranged attacks.
  • Monster Clown: A doodle based on Tricky the Clown is something the Painter boss can summon. The Orange Princess turning out to have the same face is rather suspicious.
  • Mook: And some of them are unlockable characters.
  • Mook Chivalry: Mooks tend to try to melee you one or two at a time, with the rest staying out of your reach or peppering you from afar with occasional arrows or magic.
    • Averted in some of the arena fights. You will really appreciate your shield after it has defended you from a throng of 5 or 6 Iceskimoes all whaling on you with clubs.
  • Mooks Ate My Equipment: The Thief can eat both the foods and gold laying on the ground.
  • Mook Maker: The large, squarish Trolls constantly release hordes of smaller Trolls.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Transforming into your beefy self renders you unable to shoot arrows or cast magic... or do anything but smash stuff, jump, and block, really.

    N — S 
  • Nameless Narrative: No one is named.
  • Necromancer: The Necromancer, natch.
  • New Game Plus: Insane Mode unlocks after beating the main "story" levels, and allows you to play these same levels over again, only the enemies are harder to defeat this time around.
    • To an extent, starting the game as a new character also counts. You start at the beginning, but can use all the Animal Orbs, weapons (with proper leveling), and special items (except the horn) that were gotten in a previous playthrough.
  • Night of the Living Mooks: Skeletons.
  • Ninja Log: The pirate ninjas drop a wooden dummy version of themselves whenever they teleport.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: You fight ninjas. That have a pirate ship. Yes, really.
  • No Name Given: Barely any of the characters have actual names and are named for... well, what they are. The Evil Wizard is... an evil wizard, Necromancer is a necromancer, the (insert color here) Knights are knights with armor of a certain color... the list goes on.
  • No Hero Discount: A shopkeeper in the castle still charges you for his goods, even though you saved his life not two minutes before. Technically, there is a hero discount. The health potions he sells cost 1 GP less than health potions anywhere else. But it's still not much.
  • Odd Name Out: The boss lineup in the final level consists of a knight with bat wings and an awesome curved sword with magic capable of raising the dead, an undead cyclops swinging the coffin of his friend/son around as a weapon, a persistent and evil wizard with a powerful blade, and... a somewhat burly painter with a toolbox for a head, a robotic voice, and a disturbing imagination. One of these kids is not like the others.
  • Off with His Head!: One of the ways just about any character (including players when fighting each other) can die in this game. Mooks and bosses can't do this to players, though, because players (when in Co-Op mode) need to be able to be revived, and that's rather difficult to do if you're minus a head.
  • Oh, Crap!: The Evil Wizard has an epic one when the giant treasure chest is about to fall on him and squish him flat. Subverted when he comes out of it as a floating Giant Spider.
  • Old Save Bonus: You can unlock the main character of Alien Hominid on the Xbox 360 version if you've downloaded it from the Marketplace and have at least one achievement on it.
    • And, in a curious case of a retroactive Old Save Bonus, buying Battleblock Theater on Xbox Live Arcade or Steam and earning an achievement in that game unlocks Hatty Hattington as a playable character here.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: The Wizard's castle.
  • One-Hit Kill: Pipistrello's tongue attack on Insane difficulty deals 999 damage. It's possible to have more than 999 health, but that requires a specific setup, and even then, any scratch beforehand will likely put you below 999.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: If you don't upgrade your defense, you will die. If you do, the game becomes incredibly easier.
  • One-Winged Angel: The fourth stage in the Wizard fight. You kill the third stage and a chest drops down like any other defeated boss. Inside? A GIANT FLOATING LOVECRAFTIAN SPIDER-LIKE HORROR. He then properly subverts that by changing back into an orb, then changing back to his normal form and pulling out the Dragon Sword.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: The one in Lava World has a socket puppet on his left hand.
  • Pacifist Run: Played with. There is an achievement for clearing the game up to the first boss without attacking a single enemy, but you have to have at least one other person playing with you to kill the bad guys, or you're not going anywhere without busting some heads.
  • Papa Wolf: Given that the Conehead Groom was the Cyclops' son, the Cyclops is very much this, attacking you in a tearful rage.
  • People Jars: The Easter Egg on the Alien Hominid spaceship level features the dev team inside individual cryo tubes.note 
  • Player Mooks: Pretty much every character you can play as aside from the four starters and downloads.
  • Playing with Fire: The Orange Knight and the Fire Demons both use fire magic, and the Fire Demons are nigh-immune to fire.
  • Polar Bears and Penguins: Snow World contains penguins, Eskimos, and BiPolar Bear, a polar bear-like animal orb.
  • Power Up Mount: A total of four. The "crocodile", camel, and the king's horse all increase speed, enable standard attacks while moving, and have a different strong attack (a bite for the crocodile, spit for the camel, and regular strong attacks for the horse). The deer, meanwhile, is only useful for outrunning the Giant Troll in the Abandoned Mill.
  • Puzzle Boss: The Catfish has incredibly high defense when its teeth are clenched. To beat it, you have to protect the King's ship from its furballs so that he can fire a cannon at it, causing it to open its mouth temporarily so you can deal a lot of damage.
  • Qurac: The desert area. Filled with camels, the Saracens, and so on.
  • Rage Against the Author: The demo game posted on Newgrounds, Castle Crashing: The Beard, is a single boss game which requires defeating Tom Fulp.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: The King is a badass and stands in the front lines for a couple of levels. Shame he doesn't stick around for the latter half of the game.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: The Pink Knight.
  • Red Shirt Army: The Grey Knights, who die left and right. Subverted since they're actually pretty helpful (and competent) despite their short lifespans, and two of them are playable.
  • Remilitarized Zone: The first level takes place during a barbarian siege on the Home Castle. In the background, you can see massive armies clash (well, at one point; the rest of the level's background is parts of the armies rushing toward the battle), and broken equipment and bodies are everywhere.
  • Retired Badass: The Blacksmith informs you about basic combat. This is not only because he manages the weaponry you find, but because he is revered as a warrior of legend. And, assuming the player buys the DLC, he decides to step out of retirement.
  • The Reveal: The Orange Princess (see The Faceless) shows up after the credits, her face this time covered by an orange veil. As you move in to kiss her like all the other princesses, she finally reveals her face... and it's actually Tricky the Clown!
    • If you look carefully during the Painter boss, some of the pictures are of the orange princess with a sword through her, suggesting that either she was killed and replaced by Tricky or, as Castlepedia suggests, that, even though the Evil Wizard didn't kill her yet, he did have that intention.
  • Rock Beats Laser: When you encounter the aliens in the desert, they fall pathetically easy to medieval weaponry, and their own weapons can barely scratch the player. Even their big scary hovering ships go down after a few good smacks.
  • Rocket Jump: The characters can use the magic of their choice to drastically boost their jump height.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: The King is a downloadable playable character, but even if you aren't playing as him, he still shows up to help you defeat the Catfish.
  • Rule of Fun: The tons of unlockable characters each with unique abilities give the game a lot of replay value.
  • Rule of Funny: A lot of the stable Newgrounds humor comes across as this.
  • Savage Spiked Weapons: Barbarian and Demon enemies commonly wield spiky black maces to emphasize their violent and evil backgrounds.
  • Satiating Sandwich: They make you grow into a guy that can break heavy doors off their hinges and fight active volcanoes to the death, in fact.
  • Save the Princess: Four of them and a giant crystal, in fact.
  • Schizo Tech: The Industrialist and his mooks seem awfully ahead of the times in terms of tech.
  • Secret A.I. Moves: Enemy characters can perform an Unnecessary Combat Roll after being knocked down or when they're far away from player characters. They're completely invulnerable during the roll. They can also end a roll with a hop, and if a player character is nearby, the enemy will strike in midair. They're Immune to Flinching during the hop, so trying to swat them out of the air will result in your character being knocked flat on their back.
  • Sequential Boss: The three bosses right before the Wizard battle, then the six or so stages of said fight.
  • Shield Bash: It's tricky to pull off, knocks the enemy back without damaging them, and is a pretty useless ability all around. To shield bash, you have to use your shield after the enemy starts attacking, but before the attack hits you. The Necromancer uses this move very frequently, making him difficult to hit.
  • Shifting Sand Land: The desert and Sand Castle levels.
  • Sinister Scimitar: The Saracens and the Necromancer.
  • Shock and Awe: The Red Knight.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Obligatory Newgrounds cameos, especially during the fight against the Painter.
    • The Cyclops does the thumbs-up from Terminator 2: Judgment Day after being defeated the first time.
    • The opening sequence seems to have one to River City Ransom with lead designers Fulp & Paladin.
    • Also, the flying saucer level is one long shout-out to the game Alien Hominid, from the desert setting mimicing the final levels, the scorpions making the same noises, right down to the alien mooks' HP.
    • The end credits show the player character (and the orange princess) flying through all the past levels with corpses of previous foes everywhere, similarly to the first Metal Slug.
      • The final stage taking place taking place in space, which starts with the player characters flying after it, dodging meteors all the while, is exactly how the final stage in Metal Slug 3 starts.
  • Sixth Ranger: The Pink Knight.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Leaning very heavily towards the silliness side.
    • Unless you're talking about the soundtrack, which usually contrasts what's happening onscreen by being deadly serious and astronomically epic.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Lampshaded again, it's actually called "Snow World"... again.
  • Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: The Industrial Castle has a small section covered by spiked pistons that repeatedly attempt to smash you.
  • Smash Mook: Cyclops is a Smash Boss. All he does is either attempt to smash you or throw knives. He switches it up a bit when he returns as Recyclops, but he's still limited to about three attacks. Beefy characters could also apply here.
  • Smooch of Victory: Every princess gives one. To who depends on who can outfight the others for it.
  • Stationary Wings: The Fire Demons have wings, but they're purely for looks and never move (except for when they first crawl up from the abyss in the background and jump onto the field to engage you).
  • The Stinger: The orange princess at the end, who turns out to be Tricky the Clown.
  • Stylistic Suck: The Painter's drawings resemble early 2000's Newgrounds animations, before animation got better over the years.
  • Sugar Apocalypse: The heroes wind up causing one of these, as the victory cutscene makes quite clear.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: The Giant Troll apparently believes that Knights make an excellent meal, as he'll chase after them though a whole abandoned mill and later on the way to the Cyclops' fortress.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: A sign in the middle of Lava World claims the area has "No active volcanoes!" Guess what the mini boss is.

    T — Z 
  • Taken for Granite: Medusa. On both ends.
  • Technicolor Blade: The Dragon Sword.
  • Technicolor Toxin: In this case, we have Green poison.
  • Timed Mission:
    • After getting far enough into the Alien Ship, one of the aliens activates a self-destruct. You'll need to get to the escape pods (and grab an Animal Orb) before everything blows up, or you'll take a lot of damage.
    • The player has to chase after a Saracen in the desert chase level if they want the Zebra Animal Orb; take too long, and they'll both retreat into the sand castle.
  • Toilet Humour: There is a lot of humor around a lack of bowel control, especially in the Thieves' Forest level.
  • Torches and Pitchforks: You lead a handful of pitchfork-wielding peasants into battle with you in one level.
  • Tough Beetles: Scarabs encountered in the Desert level have strong, muscular builds, have a lot of health, and can dish out a lot of damage with their hand-to-hand fighting skills.
  • Trick Boss: The final boss. After smashing a few crystals and taking down a form that shifts between magic and melee vulnerability, the Wizard suddenly floats up off the ground and goes in circles, dropping magic bombs. After killing the pathetically weak form, the usual end-of-boss-fight giant treasure chest squishes him, except when you open it... well, see the One-Winged Angel entry.
  • Universal Poison: The Green Knight, Medusa, and the sandworms use poison that has a green color and does a little extra damage over time. Poisoned characters are green and emit bubbles.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Wizard's Castle. Well, a giant castle just flew off into the sky, the last princess is there, the villain we've been chasing the whole game is holed up there... couldn't get much more obvious.
  • Victory Pose: The characters dance or pose upon winning an Arena match.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Aside from the Visual Pun, there's also a literal sand castle you can destroy; the builder isn't there to cry about his loss, though.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Throughout the game's run, you will notice that the Necromancer summons several undead skeletons to fight you, and even resurrect a boss to fight you later in the game. When you actually fight the Necromancer himself, fighting his resurrected Mooks aside, his combat magic and strength are quite pathetic. At most, he is a Stone Wall, with a bit of running speed thrown in for good measure.
  • Violence is the Only Option: However, there are many different kinds of violence.
  • Visual Pun: The Sand Castle. It's a castle in the desert... made of sand. See also the Catfish boss, who's half cat, half fish. Seriously. And the Weapon Frog, who's been tied to the Blacksmith's anvil... by the tongue. So he's, you know, tongue-tied!
  • Weapons Kitchen Sink: Maces, swords, axes, tree branches, fish, lightsabers...
  • Wedding Smashers: Hell, the level is named "Wedding Crashers".
  • Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: This occurs with one of the late-game bosses (The undead Cyclops and Conehead Groom).
  • Womb Level: The Blacksmith stores your weapons inside of the Weapons Frog, a gigantic amphibian with antlers.
  • The Worf Effect: The original demo shown at presentations ended with the Barbarian camp being led by a Beefy Barbarian as the boss. In the public demo and full game, the Beefy Barbarian is immediately, offhandedly killed by the Barbarian Boss
  • World of Badass: Everyone can kill anything. Even a peasant can decapitate you. With a wooden spoon. Every character can also cast magic, ranging from an electrical shock to a rain of arrows to a wave of buzzsaws.
  • Worthy Opponent: The Necromancer fights like one after you've dealt with his waves of Zombie Mooks. He fights a lot like a moderately powerful coliseum opponent, and is bound by all the rules the player characters are bound by. However, since there's just one of him rather than a large mob like in the coliseums, he's vulnerable to being stun-locked by repeated stomps.
  • X-Ray Sparks: Happens to victims of the Red Knight's lightning attack. Strangely, electrocuted enemies are shown to have square skulls, despite enemy Skeletons having round skulls.
  • You ALL Look Familiar: Characters of the same faction all look exactly the same. Every Conehead is identical, every Thief is the same, etc.
  • You Killed My Father: Inverted with the Cyclops, as you kill his son. On his wedding day, no less.
  • Zerg Rush: The primary strategy of the Alien Hominids. They die in one hit, but there's so bloody many of them that it still feels like a challenge.

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