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Video Game / Fable

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"For every choice, a consequence."
—Series Tagline

This page is for the whole series. For the first game in the series, please see Fable.

A video game series created by Peter Molyneux. The first game released by Lionhead Studios in 2004. It spent four years in production, and was thought to be Vaporware for a while, before it was released to extremely positive reviews. The video game itself is an Action RPG, with the player's decisions affecting the gameplay. Unfortunately, the differences in gameplay boiled down to people either flocking to you or running in fear depending on whether you were good or evil, and the Karma Meter ended up being purely aesthetic.

The game still received praise for being rather open-ended with both questing and character creation, and is regarded by some as a genuinely good game, just not what it could have been and it went on to be one of the top selling games on the original Xbox.

A sequel was released in 2008, and was also met with positive reviews. It improved the Karma Meter, adding Purity and Corruption alongside good and evil, and increased the role the character's actions played in the game's world. While one can still attack a town and kill everyone in it, doing so hurts the town's economy and make the villagers hate you, increasing prices at shops and lessening the quality of the items sold.

Fable III was released in 2010, set 50 years after the events of the last game. It heavily simplifies gameplay elements established in the first and second games, but introduces some new ones, such as weapons that morph in appearance, and to the ability to rule a kingdom half-way through the game.

The three games are mainly set in Albion (not that one), a land based on England during the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution respectively. In the first two games, the player takes on the role of an orphan who grows up to become an archetypal action hero determined to exact vengeance upon those who killed his loved ones when he was a child. The third game has you control a prince or princess, who quests to overthrow his or her brother, the corrupt king of Albion. In each game, depending on your playstyle, The Quest may take the backseat to Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay and Irrelevant Side Quests.

Peter Molyneux has stated a desire to continue the series even as far as a Fable 5, but only time will tell. If it does, he won't be a part of it, as he left Microsoft in Late 2012, leaving after finishing work on The Journey.

Fable: The Journey was released in October 2012. A companion Xbox Live Arcade game, Fable Heroes is a Castle Crashers-styled party game that will work in concert with The Journey and was released on May 2, 2012.

In February 2014, ten years after the original, a HD remastering of the first Fable was released on the Xbox 360 and PC, titled Fable Anniversary. It is largely graphical update of the The Lost Chapters version of the game with achievements added into the mix.

Another game titled Fable Legends was scheduled to be released on the Xbox One. Unlike the other games in the series, Legends plays like similar to dungeon crawler RPGs such as Diablo, and features five-person multiplayer, with four controlling heroes and one controlling a villain. The villain player essentially functions as a Game Master, and is able to control the nature of the quest the players are on. This includes setting where enemies spawn, positioning traps, summoning a boss to the field, and other things. It takes place 400 years before Fable I. The Heroes Guild hasn't been founded yet and the world of Albion has only begun to experience what it means to have heroes around. The plot revolves around an artifact referred to as "the moon on the stick", which is said to have granted the wishes of children.

However, on 7 March 2016 it was announced by Microsoft that they were cancelling the game and closing down Lionhead Studios.

In February 2018, Fable Fortune, a card collecting game in the likes of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, was unceremoniously dumped into the world. It would have remained obscure if a certain other game hadn't mentioned it.

During the Xbox Games Showcase on July 23, 2020 a teaser for a new Fable game was shown. This new installment of the series is being developed by Playground Games, who are known for the development of the Forza Horizon series.

If you're looking for the actual literary genre, see here.

Note: If you are putting down tropes that only pertain to a single game, please put them on the game's page.

The Fable series includes:

  • Fable Fortune (2018), a Collectible Card Game that was allegedly in development before Lionhead Studios was shut down, and then licensed out to a third party for polishing before finally being unceremoniously dumped into the world in 2018. It was shut down in 2020.
  • Fable (TBA), a new installment in the series that is being developed by Playground Games for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X.

Series-wide tropes include:

  • 100% Completion: There's an achievement for this.
  • Almost Lethal Weapons: Even some of the better weapons deal <100 damage. Without augments and skillranks, killing enemies will take quite awhile. In Fable 2, almost all legendary weapons are Badass. Get a master weapon (doesn't even matter which) with 4 augment slots and put different damaging augments on. You will slay thousands with 1-3 attacks each, MAXIMUM.
  • Altar the Speed:
    • Romancing someone enough to want to marry you takes about 5 minutes of flirting, and presenting a gift or 3.
    • Once you get your appearance and renown up, you can actually get people to fall in love with you by walking past them.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Hobbes, children that have had their souls devoured by an evil nymphs—Hobbes can do this to other children, and apparently suggestible males. Also Chesty, makes no real sense and apparently has been killing people for some time and has ultimate control over his insane dimension. "Do you like doggies? I love doggies! Let's play with doggies!"
  • Anachronism Stew: Not so much in the original Fable, but very apparent in Fable II and III.
    • Case in point, in Fable 2 your options for ranged weapons are firearms (pistols, rifles and blunderbusses) and crossbows, with the implication that bows and arrows are obsolete. In real life, at least in Europe, crossbows disappeared first in military use, with bows and arrows lingering on for a bit longer alongside guns.
  • And Your Reward Is Parenthood: Starting in Fable II, the Hero can have a child by sleeping with an opposite-sex spouse; Fable III adds the option to adopt. The Hero's spouse manages the day-to-day work of raising them, but children's personalities and Alignmentsinvoked are influenced by the Hero, and the Hero needs to maintain their relationship with them through dialogue and Sidequests. They're killed off in the Fable II main quest, but the player has a choice to revive them at the end.
  • Anti-Hero: The player character can be anywhere on there, and you encounter several of these over the course of the series, such as Garth, who is a snarky but goodhearted fellow, and Reaver, who would be a half step away from full-on villainy if he had a functioning moral sense.
  • Arcadia: Idyllic rural villages are a frequent setting of the series, and are often contrasts to the urban Bowerstone or one of Albion's many Lost Woods.
  • Arrows on Fire: Played straight.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In all three games, after you commit crimes in a town, a guard will run up to you and charge you with a list of all of them, offering you options of how to respond to the charges (pay a fine, run away, etc). In many cases, you've just finished rampaging through a town destroying everything and everyone in your path, and then a guard charges you with 30+ counts of murder and one count of vandalism from that door you kicked down.
  • Battle Trophy: You get a trophy for each boss you kill. You can hang them on the walls in your house.
  • Betting Mini-Game: Several in fact.
  • Black-and-White Morality: One of the game's most distinctive features is its morality system, whereby any issue the player decides the outcome of involves either mawkish virtue or extravagant malevolence with no middle ground. This is especially egregious around more complicated issues such as ones involving prohibition. Will you spend money your kingdom doesn't have renovating an orphanage... or destroy it and turn it into a brothel?
  • Boss-Arena Idiocy: In Jack of Blades second form during his boss fight he'll float in the center of the Chamber of Fate and spam projectiles at the player. In addition he gains a new attack where he lifts the sword of aeons in a blinding light which deals many extremely rapid hits to anything in Jack's line of sight. Inexplicably, the Chamber of Fate gains rock pillars for the player to hide behind specifically for this part of Jack's boss fight.
  • Butch Lesbian: One of the many many ways to shape your female character.
  • Camp Gay: You can make your character this in Fable II and III if you so desire.
  • Camp Straight: Your character can be created to be this.
  • Canon Identifier:
  • Charged Attack: Ranged attacks in the first game and melee flourishes in the second game can be held indefinitely, allowing the player to theoretically charge for minutes and then release a massively powerful attack. Ranged attacks in the second game, some spells in the first game, and all spells in the second game can be held for a finitely more powerful attack. Also, to a lesser extent, flourishes in the second game. All magic and flourishes with both weapons in the third game.
    • In Fable III, you can kill any creature quickly if you manage a charged melee attack, then quickly finish it by stabbing it (or crushing its head) while knocked to the ground.
  • City Guards: And then some. Arguably one of the most famous examples.
  • Clowncar Grave:
    • Lychfield Cemetery.
    • Bowerstone Cemetery.
    • The Tomb of Heroes.
    • Shelly Crypt.
    • Basically anywhere that in any way some people could conceivably have died in, in Fable III.
      • Justified with wisps in the second game. A wisp takes up far less space than an actual Hollow Man.
  • Collection Sidequest: Several, including:
    • Collecting Silver Keys
    • Opening Demon Doors
    • Collecting Hero Dolls
    • Destroying Gargoyles or Gnomes
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus/Satan: Avo and Skorm. Subverted in that according to the Oracle, both were made up by a trader who happened to find the locations rich with light and dark Will. However, what are those deep voices you hear?
  • Cutting Off the Branches: The Hero of Oakvale was canonically Lawful Goodinvoked, since his sister plays an important role in the sequels. The protagonists of the second and third games have both been made canonically male, much to the ire of many female fans, or anyone who simply preferred the female versions of the characters.
  • Dating Sim:
    • More present in the second game than the first. In the first all you can do is perform expressions, give gifts, and be generally attractive to make a person fall for you, and once you're married your wife will stay with you unless you go out of your way to abuse her regularly. In the second, one trait an NPC can have is a favorite place, and taking them there will make them more receptive to romance. There's even an achievement for taking someone on the perfect date. Also, in the second game wives have various demands that must be met or else their happiness goes down and you might come home to news that your family's leaving you. As mentioned above under Altar the Speed, in both games if you're very famous and/or very good looking, you can (somewhat realistically) walk through town and find yourself surrounded by women you haven't met begging to marry you.
    • Done much more realistically by comparison in III, you actually have to be friends first, and do some nice things, as well as hug them, tickle them, etc.
      • More realistically in terms of orders of magnitude: even in III, with your dog on your side boosting your social efforts at level 5, you can get someone who lives their lives in nothing less than abject fear of you (or abject fear of the rent you charge) to want to wed you by tickling them for about 15 seconds, running a fetch quest for them, dancing with them for 15 seconds, giving them a present, dancing with them again for 15 seconds, running another fetch quest for them, hugging them for 15 seconds, taking them to a secluded spot, kissing them, and then proposing on the spot. More effort than in II, but still ridiculously easy.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In the first game you could carry several resurrection phials, but if you ran out you were sent back to your most recent save. In Fable II, the developers consciously removed "death" from the game, both because they decided there was no good way to implement it (simply going back to a checkpoint isn't fun, and any significant negative consequences caused testers to turn off their X-boxes before the autosave to avoid them) and because they realized the game was supposed to be the epic tale of a famous hero, and in any other medium you'd never expect him to be killed by some random bandit. So in the second game, when your health drops to zero you simply fall to the ground momentarily, receive a scar, and lose any experience still on the ground. Ditto with III, but if you're even mildly proficient with any kind of combat ability, you will be fine.
  • Degraded Boss:
    • The Commandant. You meet Commandants whilst protecting Garth as he's doing his ritual, and a fair few more show up in Fable III.
    • After Saker is defeated in Fable III, a few hours later clones of him with enhanced Will Powers start showing up with his mercenary goons, with no explanation whatsoever. This after he personally pledges that they won't meddle in your affairs again, and since you've ruined his base of operations.
  • Dem Bones: Hollow Men.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Reaver is a straight up (ha) one. The player character can be one too, if they want.
  • Developer's Room: The headstones in the graveyard are mostly developer injokes.
  • Don't Try This at Home:
    • In Real Life unprotected sex is much safer than using a condom your dog dug up in the woods or a back alley.
    • Kicking into chickens is not a funny past time. It will almost certainly kill the poor bird and get you angry stares.
  • The Dreaded: Any sufficiently famous and evil hero will have this effect on townsfolk, except for those with the "brave" trait in II. Some may even run on sight. Enemies remain unaffected though. Which sucks, you'd think they would have learned.
  • Escort Mission:
    • The first game has some awful examples. Significantly easier in the sequel, as the escorts are now either affected by Gameplay Ally Immortality or their survival isn't actually required. One quest even gives you the option of looting your escort's hat off his body and wearing it to trick the quest giver into thinking you're him.
    • It's bad again in the third game. Important NPCs are invincible, but to go on a date with a regular NPC you have to take them somewhere they choose. Date locations can include places on the other side of Albion that you need to go through two caves to reach. And the regular NPCs are not invincible and defensless.
  • Evil Pays Better:
    • Several missions in the first two games have good and evil variants, and generally the evil ones pay more, though sometimes the evil option is just to have an evil option.
    • In the first game, you can only buy property once the owner is dead, meaning you can massacre a town and then get rich buying and renting out the empty houses.
      • The second game subverts this in that while killing someone will drop the price of their property, getting the owner to like you will have the same if not a greater effect. The second and third play it straight, though, with the option to be bad and hike up rent prices or be good and lower them.
    • This becomes the plot of Fable III after you become monarch and discover you need to raise an army to fight the Crawler. You can either screw your allies over and make loads of gold, or give everyone what they want and plunge the kingdom's treasury into negative numbers. Or you can take a third option and donate your own money to raise an army and fulfill the promises that you made to your allies.This, however, involves hours of Pie Making and Lute Hero.
  • Facial Markings: Toned down from the blue veins in the first two Fable games, using magic in Fable III will eventually cause you to get the equivalent of ornate tattoos around your eyes.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
    • Samarkand obviously has Asian characteristics, since it is the source of katanas in the game world. However, it's also Garth's homeland — and he's black.
    • Aurora in Fable III is a distinctly Arab city.
    • Albion in the original Fable seems to very typically parallel Great Britain during the High Middle Ages. Five centuries later in Fable II and III, it is heavily based on Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a lot of Steampunk tossed in.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Averted as guns are one of the new invention that appeared in the time between the first game and second game. Albion has a lot of dedicated alchemists who are always busy making new discoveries. The use of Will seems to have dramatically declined since the first game as guns have made magic much less impressive as a weapon and were crucial in the destruction of the Guild. In Fable II few practice magic with the exception of the Hero, a few key NPCs and hobbes (who seem to have their own kind of nature driven magic).
  • Fast-Forward Mechanic: Eating the Golden Carrot and the Moonfish will move the game time forward to morning and evening respectively.
  • Featureless Protagonist: That it averts this is one of the original's main criticisms. Fable (the first one) was supposed to have the option to play as a female character, but the feature was removed before the game was released. Actions the player chooses to make in the game (any of the games) affect the main character's physical appearance, including height, skin color, and body type.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Known in the game as Strength, Will and Skill respectively. Or you can just combine all three into you. The Thief also doubles as an Archer in the first game, and Gunner in the second and third.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Averted in the first two games, which had Fire and Lightning spells, but no Ice. The third game finally adds an Ice spell.
  • Garnishing the Story: There's chickens all over the place in the games. The later games also include a "chicken" action and a chicken costume. In the Quest 'The Game' you'll come across firebreathing demon chickens. It makes sense in context, of course.
  • Gasshole: Through the Expressions menu, you can fart and belch at will. Messing up the extended Fart expression will also mess up your breeches.
  • Gay Option:
    • All three games allow the main character to marry people of the same sex, though the first game doesn't provide the same benefits for a gay marriage as it does for a straight one.
    • Also true of the second game. You can't have any children (or, in a lesbian marriage, protected sex) in a gay marriage. Unless you find a certain potion...see below.
    • The simplified communication system in Fable III makes this almost mandatory when trying to haggle with a shopkeeper or convincing someone to like you. Friendly gestures? No, you either passionately dance together or you fart on their head.
      • Fable III has the ability to adopt a child, so it is possible for gay couples to finally have kids.
      • Technically it IS possible for a same-sex couple to have children in Fable 2, but it requires another Xbox Live player of the opposite sex to your character to join your game in co-op multiplayer, follow you and your spouse to your bedroom, and be present when you initiate the fade-to-black-with-naughty-sound-effects sex scene. Given that Fable 2 came out in 2008 the odds of actually finding someone else to join your game to do this now are next to nil, but it IS still technically possible for a same sex Fable 2 couple to become parents via this method. The creepy part of it is that it implies you and your spouse invited some stranger off the street for a threesome to get knocked up, which is a rather creepy YMMV moment.
  • Gender Bender: The Potion of Highly Surprising Transformation.
    • And in the Fable III downloadable content, if you are playing as a woman then Commander Milton transforms into the Queen.
  • Gentle Giant: Possibly the Hero. In Fable you grow taller and more muscular as you invest in Skill and Strength respectively; when they're maxed out, you stand head and shoulders over most NPCs. In Fable III you are always larger than 95% of the populace. In fact, people of the same height as the player actually shrink when interacting with them, including other player heroes visiting your world.
    • In Fable, local Jerkass Thunder has a moment of this when he's seen in Bowerstone, surrounded by happy children who don't even come up to his waist.
  • Girls With Mustaches: In Fable II and III, it is possible to give the female hero a beard and/or mustache by visiting a barbershop. NPCs will note how ridiculous this is.
  • Hammerspace:
    • Ranged weapons tend to disappear when sheathed (Fable 1 & pistols in 2). More of a glitch really, in Fable 2 sometimes you can see the pistol strapped to your chest, but VERY rarely.
    • Fable III averts this, at least with equipped weapons. You either strap the rifle to your back or put your pistol in a side holster. You can also see your melee weapon being sheathed.
  • Heroic Mime: In the second game the player character has no dialogue but interacts with others using gestures. The first game has a few words, although it more or less follows this trope as well. In the third game, the hero finally speaks, but still lets most of the other characters do all the talking 95% of the time.
  • Heroic Willpower: This is literally the explanation for how Death Is a Slap on the Wrist for you in Fable II — after you run out of health, you are knocked out, then you get up again with health replenished and enemies knocked back. Ditto with Fable III, but it probably helps that you're the strongest living conduit for magic remaining in the world.
  • Homage:
  • A Homeowner Is You: Houses are available for sale, and can generate income when rented out.
  • I Am a Humanitarian:
    • Hobbes.
    • Lesley.
      Lesley: Come back later and I'll have a peasant on the barbie for you!
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Shows up at least once in each game.
  • Immortality: The descendants of Black and the lineage of the Archons are The Ageless bolstered by exceptional strength, ability and cunning. Reaver is a Life Drinker who trades the youths of innocent victims to malignant spirits in return for his own eternal vigor. Scythe has Resurrective Immortality, implied to have lost his soul and thus is incapable of true death.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Another of the game's major criticisms. You can, however, hop over them in Fable II and III.
  • Interface Screw:
    • Intoxication Mechanic: It is possible to get quite inebriated in Fable's pubs, causing temporary visual distortion and sluggish control, vomiting makes it better though.
    • You know you're in serious trouble when this occurs in Fable III. Even your Sanctuary, (essentially, the pause screen you can walk around inside of) is not immune to the forces of The Corruption! Ewwww....
    • If you are poisoned by Poison Balverines, then you have to try and fight while suffering from the same effects of being drunk.
  • An Interior Designer Is You:
    • In Fable II and Fable III you can change the furniture in most homes that you own.
    • In Fable III after you become King or Queen, one of the decisions you are asked to make is about redecorating the interior of the castle. You have a choice of blue, which will give you good points, or red, which will give you evil points.
  • Karma Meter: Fairly bizarrely ranked, too.
    • Fable II also has Purity and Corruption, which represent how well you take care of your body and how people perceive you. These change depending on things such as whether you drink alcohol, give money to the poor or how much you charge people for renting your houses.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Averted. Katanas are decent weapons, but there are better ones. They are, however, better than their Longsword equivalents. The most powerful legendary melee weapon is a katana. If you want to blaze through combat, katanas can end fight in less than a minute.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • The Hero can do a few of these. But there's also a literal example of this, too. And Reaver does it all the time.
    • This trope was nearly quoted every time the developers discussed the dog in interviews. One of his main purposes is as an easy way to introduce a character - if someone shows up and kicks your dog you know they're a bastard, if they pet your dog you know they're friendly.
  • King of Thieves: Twinblade the Bandit King, who is fought as a boss during a quest in which your hero must infiltrate a bandit camp.
  • Left Stuck After Attack: Twinblade will sometimes perform a downward stab attack that leaves his blades stuck in the ground, giving the Hero a few seconds to get behind him and attack his back while he tries to pull them free.
  • Lipstick Lesbian: You can create your female character to be like this in Fable II and III.
  • Living Legend: The Hero of each game will become this by the end of his/her story.
  • Master of All: The player is almost certain to be this. While you CAN choose to specialize, the way the cost of upgrades scales means there's no reason to: the cost of going outside your specialty quickly becomes negligible meaning that there's no down side to ultimately becoming equally proficient in Strength, Skill, and Will.
  • Match Maker Quest:
    • In Fable II, Farmer Giles asks you to set up his son with a nice woman. Though it turns out he's more interested in men.
  • Medieval Stasis: Averted. As time passes (between games, anyway), Albion transforms from Stock European Fantasy in the first game, to a Gunpowder Fantasy in the second game, to a Gaslamp Fantasy in the third game.
  • The Minion Master: With the Raise Dead spell.
  • More Criminals Than Targets: There seems to be an endless supply of bandits and other troublemakers to deal with.
  • The Musketeer: The second and third games' main characters.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: There's a story that tells of a Hobbe living in a town and becoming the Village Idiot. Once he spoke, everyone knew what he was and killed him. Ouch.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
    • You, if you choose certain titles.
      "Crap it's Nobhead! Ahhh!!!"
    • Sybil Malificent?
  • No Canon for the Wicked: The heroes of all three games are confirmed to be canonically Lawful Goodinvoked, and Theresa, who only survives if you make a particular good choice in the first game, plays an important role in the sequels.
  • No Name Given: Though Fanon uses the name Sparrow (a childhood name used by Rose and Theresa) for the Fable II protagonist. In Fable III even in subtitles you are simply named by your title, and you only have three: Prince/Princess, Hero, and King/Queen. The previous Hero is referred to as the Hero King or Hero Queen or simply a variant of "the last Hero".
  • Non-Lethal K.O.: The second and third games. You can't die. If you run out of health and don't have any resurrection phials, you get a scar and lose any uncollected experience, or in the case of the third game, you just lose any experience to the next guild seal, be you five or ninety-five percent of the way there. This was also planned for the first game, but wasn't in the final product.
  • Only Six Faces: The villages across all three games tend to look somewhat similar to one another.
  • Our Nymphs Are Different: Nymphs are malevolent nature spirits that shift between small female bodies and intangible Spark Fairy forms. They come in Wood, Water, and Succubus varieties; have nature-themed magic; and are rumoured to transform lost children into goblins by eating their souls.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: They're called "Hollow Men"; they're corpses that have been possessed by restless, angry spirits called "Wisps" (which basically look like little blue balls of light), and all of the ones we see are just skeletons. We later see one that really is "zombie like" in Fable III — during "The Hollow Legion" quest, we are briefly told that a soldier named Lieutenant Simmons was killed the night before the player arrived. During the battle with the legion of Hollow Men, a rogue wisp flies into Simmons' grave and possesses his partially rotten corpse. Squick.
  • Pelvic Thrust: One of the expressions available throughout the series is Vulgar Thrust (pelvic thrusting), which is classified as evil or rude.
  • Playable Epilogue:
    • Averted in the original Fable, but one is included with the updated re-release.
    • In both Fable II and Fable III you can continue playing after the final boss; there are even sidequests that aren't available until you've completed the main storyline.
  • Precursors: The Old Kingdom, which left behind a variety of ruins and Artifacts Of Doom, most notably the Sword of Aeons and the Spire.
  • Religion of Evil: The Temple of Skorm in the first game, the Temple of Shadows in the second, and the Dark Sanctum in the third.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: Zigzagged across the series, with barrels in Fable revealing humble loot upon smashing, but their descendants in Fable II and III exuding no such treasures (Except catharsis, maybe).
  • Rule of Fun: Despite all of their flaws, the games can be genuinely entertaining.
  • Saintly Church:
    • The Cult of Avo in Fable.
    • The Temple of Light in Fable II.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Guards will force you to either pay a fine or do community service as punishment for your crimes. A player who has acquired a significant amount of the businesses in the game will have so much income that these fines become very trivial.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: All three games change the character's appearance in part based on their combat style (using their stats in the first two, and their actions in the third); this causes people who are going for a certain look to deliberately avoid using their character's full power, such as ignoring melee to avoid building muscle.
  • Series Mascot: Chickens.
  • Shoplift and Die:
    • In the original Fable you can get away with various crimes if you're not seen, but if you're caught in the act you'll be attacked by the guards. Once your guile level is high enough, you can attempt to steal items from shops. Getting caught sets the guards on you. This almost counts as a Useless Useful Skill: by the time you're leveled high enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the effort.
    • Fable II revamped the stealing skill: now, anyone can steal from anything at any time. All you have to do is hold A, which causes an "eye" meter to appear. If the eye is closed, no one can see you and you're safe from reprisal. If the eye meter is open, you can stop stealing and no one seems to care that you had your hand in the cash register but didn't take anything. Of course, there's a rare (but significant) bug where, if you steal something when no one can see you, then hang around that area long enough for the house owner or shopkeeper to notice that the item is missing, then everyone knows it was you.
    • Stealing in the original Fable was a great way to make a ton of cash early in the game. Head over to the weapon smiths, get him to follow you, get him drunk, leave him alone, go back and steal all the augments laying around, sell them back to him or to someone else and make tens of thousands of gold for a few minutes of work.
    • If you got caught stealing(or trespassing, etc.) then when the guards come to attack you, you could simply say "Sorry." If you were generally a nice guy, they'd simply let you go.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Stationary Enemy: Fable and Fable II, trolls are Elemental Embodiments who rise up from the ground to attack with their fists and various projectiles. They have legs but never move from the spot where they appear.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Hobbes are nasty, brutish, and short. note 
      • In a Genius Bonus vein, about Thomas Hobbes, Logan is acting in accordance with his ideas as set forth in "Leviathan".
    • Mourningwood.
  • Sword and Gun: Essentially mandatory in the third game, even more-so than its predecessor.
  • Time Skip:
    • 500 years pass between Fable and Fable II. III is set only fifty years after II.
    • To a lesser extent, there's one at the beginning of both games, both about 10 years or so, plus a second 10 year skip in Fable II, when you go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth.
  • Training Dummy: The tutorial dummies.
  • Transvestite: Some of the prostitutes in Fable II and III, and you can get an achievement for doing it too. Prepare for some amused remarks from the populace.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • Chicken Kickin'!
    • The game makes you care about your family, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a player from starting a vicious cycle of domestic violence.
    • There is even less stopping you from sacrificing your wife in Fable II. You gain 100 good points and some renown for marrying her, 50 good points for having a child and only 100 evil points for sacrificing her. A net gain of 50 good points and some renown for marrying, impregnating, and killing random women (in Fable I though it can be a very efficient source of money and renown).
    • Play some mind games with multiple wive/husbands,mostly to be a Jerkass. Just gather them together for some time alone and watch what goes down from. Always a laugh for an evil character.
    • Those are all only scratching the surface of what's possible. You can walk into a town and massacre everyone with your powers, ruin the economy by jacking up everyone's rent, sell people into slavery, curse a young girl to be turned into an old crone...there are some sick possibilities in Fable.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted. You getting stronger invariably means random Mooks will too, although you still get stronger at a far quicker rate than they do.
  • William Fakespeare: Philipth Morley, whose plays seem to have a Shakespearean flavor to them.
  • Writer on Board:
    • Killing your wife gets you 60 evil points. Divorcing her gets you 600. Of course, usually if your wife asks for a divorce, you've been a real physically abusive Jerkass up to that point. Or if you don't regularly visit him/her.
      • The game glitches with this, where you have to visit your spouse every 20 MINUTES or else she divorces you (unless you own the entire town and put the rent down by 25%, making the ENTIRE TOWN absolutely go apeshit over you)
    • And a vegetarian diet lets you max out Purity points...
      • The loading screens mention that you gain purity from eating vegetables, because unlike meat, no animals were harmed to make your dinner.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: You must find expression manuals in the world if you want to learn to do seemingly basic things like laughing, raising your middle finger, or plenty of other basics.

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