Video Game / LEGO The Lord of the Rings

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LEGO The Lord of the Rings is a LEGO Adaptation Game based on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

It was followed by LEGO The Hobbit, based on the first two films of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy.^note The game was released in advance of the third film, with the intention that levels based on the third film would be made available later as Downloadable Content; however, this did not eventuate.

These games contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion:
  • In the scene where Elrond first appears to Frodo at Rivendell, a man that looks like Agent Smith can be seen in the background.
  • In LEGO The Hobbit, if the Boss Disguises red brick is switched on, Smaug wears a deerstalker
  • In LEGO The Hobbit, the "Goblin-in-law" hub-world quest is a redo of the Great Goblin's bossfight, but with his mother-in-law. The titular goblin-in-law is styled to look like Dame Edna.
• Adapted Out:
  • The entire Minas Tirith plotline with Denethor and Faramir is dropped. You still get to play the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but it focuses on Éowyn's and Aragorn's involvement instead.
  • LEGO The Hobbit has the biggest case in all the LEGO adaptations through the fact Battle of the Five Armies is completely absent after the planned DLC was abandoned, leaving players with an unfinished story.
• Adorable Evil Minions: Pretty much anything evil (besides the still unnerving Nazgul) automatically becomes cuter, or at least Laughably Evil, when turned LEGO. Uruk-hai and other orcs especially showcase this with their humorous quests and Butt-Monkey statuses.
• Affectionate Parody: Any serious moments from the series they were taken from are changed to light-hearted comedy.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The loot mechanic for The Hobbit can be a pain at times because unless you're constantly breaking everything for stuff it can be difficult gathering enough loot for sidequests and craft builds, especially those using the Commonplace Rare bread, so there also exists a "Loot Dispenser" near the entrance of Erebor where you can instead spend studs to just buy as much of everything as you need or want, which given how easier studs are to come by, especially with multipliers, is very helpful. The mini-quest for the Bree Peasant that requires 500 carrots was very likely designed to only be feasible using this feature, given how a thorough area clearing only gives about 30 carrots at a time.
• Anachronism Stew: As part of the Rule of Funny, many modern-day items pop up here and there despite the story being a medieval fantasy, such as an orc pulling out a dial-up phone or washing machines appearing for throwing from catapults.
• Ascended Meme:
  • When you set foot into Mordor, you get the achievement "One does not simply...: Walk into Mordor". The accompanying icon even has Boromir in the infamous pose.
  • You also get the "Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" achievement by reaching Isengard with every playable Hobbit (See both icons here).
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the first level, which is based on the Distant Prologue of the first film, the player fights Sauron, who for some reason (most likely so he can actually wear the ring like an actual ring) is roughly five times the average character's height. Naturally, when Sauron's battle armour form is unlocked as playable, it's the standard size. So it's possible in Free Play to play as normal-Sauron scampering around giant-Sauron's feet.
• Badass Adorable: The world of Middle-Earth is essentially a World of Badass, while turning that world into LEGO makes those badasses quite cute, especially the Hobbits as they face against Sauron's forces.
• Beam-O-War: The Gandalf vs. Saruman battle is a Wizard Duel where each phase starts with Gandalf being held in the air by Saruman's wand beams that need to be fought back to free himself..
• Big Head Mode:
  • In The Lord of the Rings, this can be accomplished by hitting someone with the Ent-Draught.
  • In The Hobbit, attacking a character while wearing the Bee Gloves will swell their head. It wears off.
• The Blacksmith: Both games have the Bree Blacksmith who, in exchange for Mithril Bricks (and other loot in The Hobbit), will take one of the Blacksmith Designs you've collected and forge you a Mithril Item that not only provides its inherent abilities to any character that wields/wears it, but also is used to acquire a Red Brick from a special Fetch Quest.
• Block Puzzle: Alongside the regular block-pushing puzzles common to the series, The Hobbit also has the Frictionless Ice version based on using hammers to smack heavy objects to make them slide continuously until they hit a wall, necessitating figuring out how to maneuver the objects where they're needed. Some of those puzzles include gaps leading into pits that cause a reset, meaning you also need to figure out the required order for moving each object on the floor.
• Bloodless Carnage: In full effect — whilst characters are dismembered, the characters are still plastic Lego pieces.
• Boss Rush: A late-game sidequest in The Hobbit involves challenging the "Memory Arena", where you face off against almost every previously-beaten sidequest-related boss in a non-stop gauntlet, including Azog's mother, a Dual Boss against the Speeder and Spider Queen, then the Great Goblin's mother-in-law.
• Bowdlerization: Instead of Gollum biting off Frodo's finger, he removes Frodo's hand... only for Frodo to just put it back in afterward.
• Call-Forward: In The Hobbit, there's a quest-giver in a cave near Bree who asks the player to forge her a Mithril Mushroom Crown to turn into an heirloom for her future descendants, which is a reference to a quest giver in The Lord of the Rings located in the exact same Bree-adjacent cave who asks the player to find his Mushroom Crown heirloom that he lost.
• Captain Obvious: Legolas' infamous "A diversion!" line is hilariously lampshaded when he pops onto the screen with his arm in the air declaratively just to say it.
• Character Exaggeration: Many character traits are emphasized for comedy, such as Gimli's occasional Manly Tears being elevated to him sobbing uncontrollably every time something sad happens.
• Cliffhanger: Due to The Hobbit only adapting the first two movies (and the The Battle of The Five Armies DLC getting cancelled), the game ends with Gandalf at the mercy of Sauron, Smaug flying towards the Lake-town, intending to burn it to the ground, and Bilbo terrified of what he and the dwarves had done...
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The games use visual shorthand so you know what you can do. Silver objects have to be blown up with explosives ("mithril fireworks"), red and black ones can only be destroyed by the holy sword Narsil/Anduril, and so on.
• The Colored Cross: After Frodo gets stabbed with a Morgul blade, Merry and Pippin are suddenly carrying a stretcher, wearing surgical masks, and carrying cases with red crosses on them, all for Rule of Funny.
• Colossus Climb:
  • The Lord of the Rings has the frequently faced Oliphaunts, where just like when Legolas faced one in The Return of the King, part of beating them (at least those without Morgul bracers) involves climbing up to the top, beating up the enemy riders along the way, then shooting them in the head to drive them off.
  • The Hobbit has the Stone-giant battle, where level progress involves climbing up the body of the giant.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Half the fun is going around beating up NPCs and destroying random objects.
• Commonplace Rare: In The Hobbit loot is generally as common or rare as expectable, metal and gemstones from ore and objects containing or built from them, building materials from thematically relevant objects, meat carried by orcs, carrots in gardens, and fish near water. But bread is absurdly difficult to acquire large amounts of despite being an incredibly commonly eaten food, with you averaging about 6-10 loaves in a single entire area compared to getting around 20-30 of everything else just from a casual stroll, not helped by needing 50 of them for one of the sidequests. You're better off waiting to unlock the Loot Dispensor at Erebor and just buying it in bulk than trying to scrounge it up
• Company Cameo: In the mission "Barrels out of Bond" from LEGO The Hobbit's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug story, one of the obtainable items is the Traveller's Tool, which is in the shape of game developer Traveller's Tales' logo. It awards more loot when mining with it.
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Being made of LEGO bricks is a sign that it can be destroyed or interacted with.
• Cut Short: LEGO The Hobbit was originally designed to adapt the first two movies, with the third being added as DLC. Then said DLC got cancelled, leaving the story on a Cliffhanger/No Ending note.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The timed button-pressing mini-games in these games go differently than most other LEGO games, where instead of requiring you to Press X to Not Die, they act like rhythm games where you have a long period to press them but pressing just before it breaks, signified by the prompt glowing differently, grants a major stud bonus. As such, it's easy to go for immediately pressing and getting a small stud bonus due to thinking it works like the others.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • While the funny is present as usual, consider that the first two levels of the first game feature an epic war against the ultimate evil, an almost Survival Horror-esque sequence featuring four unarmed and unprepared hobbits against the black rider, and an intense battle between two wizards, all played completely straight. That's just the tip of the iceberg by the way, especially when it comes to the cutscenes, which use actual movie dialogue that's still completely serious, and even the cartoony visuals can only do so much to lighten things up.
  • The Shelob sequence in "The Secret Stairs" deserves a special mention. Despite the odd funny joke in the cutscenes, the level itself is remarkably serious, with minimal dialogue, constant darkness, and the only light available coming from Frodo's phial, which will almost always reveal a cluster of spiders right under his feet, plus brief glimpses of Shelob before any actual reveal occurs... it's surprisingly effective for a children's game.
• Death from Above: When Sauron is defeated in the prologue and his body explodes, his head crushes an unlucky Orc standing around.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: As usual, dying results in you respawning in the last safe spot of ground with only the loss of some LEGO studs as consequence.
• Dem Bones: Dancing skeletons are a Running Gag.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In the first-game prologue, you can actually jump into the fires of Mount Doom as Isildur while holding the ring. Of course as Death Is Cheap in these games, you just respawn. However the devs were clearly aware of the fact that if Isildur had managed to destroy the ring there would have been no story, and give you an achievement for trying this.
  • In the overworld for both games, there are orcs and goblins that give you fetching quests. If you play as either Frodo or Bilbo post-"Troll Hoard", their shared sword, Sting, will glow bright blue just like when facing those races as enemies.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Destroying all (and we mean all) the level furniture is not only possible and enjoyable but also distinctly necessary, and generally one of the game series' trademarks.
• Enemy Mine: Done in a few places to make sure there's always a second player character available.
  • In The Lord of the Rings, Sam has to join up with Shagrat the Black Uruk-hai to fight Shelob while Frodo is incapacitated. Shagrat can even wield Sting and Galadriel's phial!
  • In The Hobbit, Bilbo teams up with a goblin while they are both trapped in Gollum's cave. This is most likely based on the goblin who, in the film, falls down with Bilbo and subsequently gets killed by Gollum. At least with this example it's somewhat justified, as the goblin has been stunned from a bump on the head and thinks Bilbo is a fellow goblin.
• Flawless Victory: If you complete the little rhythm game at the end of "An Unexpected Party" in The Hobbit without ever breaking the combo, you get a bonus purple (10,000) stud. If you also get the "perfect timing" bonus for every prompt, you get two purple studs.
• Follow the Money: In the large hub/world map, you get a trail of ghostly studs to guide you to your destination. Of course, since they're not real, they're not actually worth any money — unless you activate a cheat. The normal version with real studs is also used.
• Game-Breaking Bug: There are clipping issues on a number of the places where you're climbing the walls as Gollum, making it easy to get trapped behind the wall and stuck. Not entirely gamebreaking, as you can return to the main map, but very frustrating if said wall is a ways into a mission.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The Battle of Helm's Deep repeats Gimli's "You'll have to toss me — don't tell the elf." bit from the movie, even though dwarf-tossing is a gameplay mechanic and Legolas will have probably have tossed Gimli himself by that point.
  • In the hub world, good characters attack bad ones on sight and vice versa, but this does not apply in story levels, where enemies attack the player characters no matter who they are. This is obviously so that the levels are still challenging no matter what character you use. Also, quest givers don't react to your side at all. Want to give that Rohirrim her Mithril Top Hat while playing as Wormtongue? Go ahead.
  • All player characters have Super Drowning Skills. This includes Gollum, who obviously can swim and is even shown rising up from the water in cutscenes!
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: A unique feature of this LEGO sub-franchise is the existence of the Treasure Trove, where throughout the levels there are Treasure Items and forge-able Blacksmith Designs to collect, some of the latter also found in Middle-Earth, which not only provide either cosmetic changes or abilities not normally possessed by a character, the Mithril items especially providing the latter, but also are used for their version of the Fetch Quest system, with Red Bricks here specifically requiring the forging of a Mithril item for a quest-giver.
• Groin Attack:
  • At the end of the "Warg Attack" level, the mortally wounded Warg captain's disembodied LEGO legs deal a low blow to Aragorn and knock him off the cliff into the river below.
  • Though the impact is offscreen, Gimli gets it too in the battle against the Watcher In The Water. The Watcher sends his axe flying back at him towards his legs, we hear a thunk, and Gimli slumps onto Legolas.
• Harmless Freezing: Characters with ice powers or gear (such as Mithril Ice weapons) encase opponents in blocks of ice, which can be broken out of by moving around really quickly. While frozen, however, enemies can be killed with a single hit.
• Hub Level: Both games naturally feature the entirety of Middle-Earth as their "hub", or at least all the areas that were mentioned in each story, both movie-wise and book-wise, such as the lands south of Lothlórien being absent from The Hobbit and the lands east of Rivendell being absent from The Lord of the Rings. Both versions have the various hub functions spread across them, such as Rivendell holding the Minikit viewer and Bree holding The Blacksmith for Mithril items, and of course both have a plethora of puzzle-granted collectables and sidequests spread throughout.
• Idle Animation: Everyone has them, and there's actually quite a bit of variation. Characters will scratch their head, point their weapon, or twirl around.
• I Fell for Hours:
  • Gandalf's battle versus the Balrog within the "Mines of Moria" level lasts for as long as it takes to defeat it.
  • The Hobbit has the final portion of the "Goblin Town" level as the platform with the Dwarves on it falls down a chasm, though in this case it just involves stretching what movie-wise lasts a few seconds into a few minutes you need to wait out.
• Item-Drop Mechanic: The Hobbit provides a somewhat unique example in its Loot Item mechanic due to the franchise's Rewarding Vandalism aspect. While some of the enemies drop loot upon death, most of the truly necessary items for crafting plates and the blacksmith are gotten by demolishing LEGO objects, which in addition to the usual studs also provide thematically relevant loot.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the games, despite being Lighter and Softer than the films and the books, weren't lacking in dark moments, Smaug is an exceptional case, as he is portrayed as a straight-on threat with not a single comedic trait in every scene he appears in, something Azog or even Saruman can't boast.
• Left Hanging: Lego The Hobbit ends with the second movie's cliffhanger ending. There were plans to adapt The Battle Of The Five Armies as DLC, however plans for that fell through and we're left with a Lego game with an incomplete trilogy.
• Literally Shattered Lives: This being LEGO, every character falls to pieces upon defeat. Also, when a character or enemy is frozen into a block of ice, they can be killed in one hit when the ice is broken.
• Literal Metaphor: When King Theoden says "My body is broken," the scene cuts to a Rohirrim holding Theoden's legs. Once the top half of Theoden dies, the Rohirrim actually throws the legs aside!
• Loads and Loads of Loading:
  • On the Wii version of The Lord of the Rings, you're constantly going from a map, to a load screen, to a cut scene, to another load screen, to the main game, etc. Most of the time, it's faster to walk across the overworld than to try and map travel. Also, switching to a character not currently on the screen can take a while.
  • The PSP version of the game can fall into this.
  • Oddly enough, the 3DS version of the game falls into this as well. Considering that 3DS games are cartridge-based, unlike the Wii or PSP, the fact that this game has loading times nearly as long as those of LEGO Island 2 is rather perplexing, especially when compared to other games on the system such as Ocarina of Time 3D or Super Mario 3D Land, which have very short loading times. Worse, not only are these loading times long, but they are also very frequent, meaning a lot of time playing LEGO Lord of the Rings on 3DS will be spent staring at the One Ring spinning in front of the same piece of artwork over and over and over again.
• Messy Pig: Pigs appear in The Hobbit, and you have to have a tug-of-war with one for kingsfoil in Lake-town.
• Mind Screw: The Hobbit has a Carnival mode which turns on spinning disco-lights everywhere and plays a dubstep song with quotes from the movies.
• Mobile Shrubbery: Frodo's elven cloak and the Mithril Camouflage Tome disguise the characters using them as area-relevant scenery, including bushes for the swamp and crates for Cirith Ungol.
• The Music Meister:
  • In The Lord of the Rings, equipping a treasure called the "Disco Phial" allows you to see in the dark, while causing everyone in the immediate area to dance uncontrollably — which can be a pain if you're in multiplayer mode and your partner does this.
  • The Hobbit has the Mithril Rhythm Stick, which plays a dubstep remix and causes players to dance. Using this and the Dazzle Wig and Mithril Dance Boots treasures together will give you the "Lord of the Prance" achievement.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Tom Bombadil and Radagast the Brown appear as playable characters who didn't appear in the Lord of the Rings movies (though Radagast was later added to the Hobbit films), but were in the books.
  • In The Hobbit, you can get a Mithril Brick in Lake Town by answering a box riddle ^note  Alive without breath, as cold as death; never thirsty, ever drinking, all in mail never clinking. , which just so happens to be one of the riddles Gollum asks Bilbo in the books that was cut in the movies ^note  Answer: Fish .
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Subverted with Sam and Frodo's escape from Cirith Ungol; they dress up in orc armor that looks fairly legit.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Parts are sometimes changed from the original material to allow two players in what were originally one-man scenes. For instance, Shagrat teams up with Sam in the battle against Shelob, and Bilbo teams up with a goblin in Gollum's cavern.
• Press X to Not Die: Quick time events include struggling not to put on the ring when the Nazgul is nearby. In the Nintendo DS version, these events also appear in sword-locked duels, evading the nazgul when caught by its illuminated vision beam, and other appropriate situations.
• Product Placement: All the games have been based on pre-existing building sets, naturally. In addition, Lord of the Rings was released within a couple months of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and The Hobbit accompanies the Desolation of Smaug DVD.
• Quote Mine: All of the voicework in cutscenes is clipped straight from the movies. Many lines are used in the same context as the films — but some aren't (for instance, an orc proclaiming "Looks like meat's back on the menu!" was originally a reference to cannibalism; in the LEGO game it's a response to getting a pizza delivery).
• R-Rated Opening: Lord of the Rings opens with the Prologue which is essentially the battle between Isildur and Sauron, and the first venture into Mount Doom.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Red and black Morgul objects can't be manipulated by most characters and need to be destroyed with the holy sword Narsil/Anduril, which only Elendil, Isildur and Aragorn wield.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Smashing anything plastic-y and/or in LEGO form provides Lego studs to collect.
• Rule of Funny: The cutscenes in general are all about taking movie scenes and adding extra humor.
• Rule of Three: The scene of Gandalf running into ceiling lamps leaving Bag-End is extended to three times, with the third near the door having him smash it aside out of anger.
• Running Gag: The Hobbit features several sidequests involving the mothers of villains, including a three-part questline of Mrs. Troll grieving over the troll brother trio turning to stone, the Great Goblin's mother-in-law seeking vengeance for his death, and Azog's mom being the target of another orc with a grudge. Part of the gag for them is that they take Strong Family Resemblance to the extreme, being Palette Swaps with only some Tertiary Sexual Characteristics to set them apart.
• Scenery Porn: Middle-Earth doesn't lose any of its beauty in either of the games, and there are plenty of spots where you can stand high above some impressively expansive views.
• Stealth-Based Mission:
  • On occasion, there will be part of a level where the characters are trying to sneak around a threat, during which not only is the ability to jump disabled, meaning you'll need to create ways to get over heights you could do easily in normal gameplay, but you'll have to avoid being either seen or heard by said threat. Death Is a Slap on the Wrist being in effect means being found isn't a game-over, but it does still halt your progress until you work your way past the current danger.
  • In the "Cirith Ungol" level of the first game, one minikit puzzle involves going through a Metal Gear-inspired stealth mission, needing to use Frodo's elven cloak to disguise himself as a crate (similar to the iconic cardboard boxes but more thematically appropriate to a fantasy story) for sneaking past guard towers, being seen causing an Alertness Blink and triggering the spawning of extra guards, and some of the guard towers needing to be taken down to create openings for moving and jumping without the box.
• Stepping-Stone Sword: Arrows are the designated weapon in these games for creating extra poles to reach higher places.
• Stock Footage: The games use stock voice clips from the movies for cutscenes and other story-appropriate sections.
• Super Drowning Skills: Everyone drowns unless you tap A. Goes even further with the Dead Marshes swamp water, where they'll automatically drown.
• Tennis Boss: Saruman plays differently in the Nintendo DS version. He will launch a few straight projectiles, then launches a fireball that should be reflected. The timing is rather lenient as it can be reflected when it's still close to Saruman, although he could still require you to reflect it once again. In case the player doesn't know the boss involves tennis, a hint will appear after a few fireballs.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The Hobbit includes an assortment of game-original female monster bosses and quest NPCs to balance out how there are only male monsters shown in the movies, and it maintains their monstrosity by simply tacking on blatant feminine design details to body-molds near-identical to the males, including hair to contrast the male's being bald, pink clothing or body-coloration, and differentiating the Spider Queen from her brood by just putting a pink bow on her "head".
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Almost completely averted, thanks to the Treasure Trove: Gollum's exclusive wall-climbing ability can be duplicated by any character wearing Mithril Climbing Boots, and the Berserker's explosives can be replaced by equipping Mithril Fireworks...except for a single blocked-up tunnel mouth that simply refuses to blow.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: While some earlier games had invincible NPC civilians, LEGO The Hobbit allows you to kill anyone you meet, even a hobbit sleeping on a bridge, who will die when pushed into water. The NPCs respawn, though.
• Voice Clip Song: Both games have a Treasure Trove item, the Disco Phial in The Lord of the Rings and Rhythm Stick in The Hobbit, that changes the background music to an upbeat techno song overlaid with quotes from their adapted films..
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Middle-Earth is as expansive in both games as you'd expect, with many places to explore outside the designated story paths.
• With Catlike Tread: Expect this to pop up in stories where the heroes are supposed to be stealthy. In Laketown and Erebor the characters are supposed to be be super-stealthy, but the only way to advance is to smash everything in sight so you have the parts to build what you need.

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