Video Game / Minecraft: Story Mode

Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic Point-and-Click Game created by Telltale Games with help from Mojang. It is based on Mojang's game Minecraft.

The game puts you in the role of Jesse, a semi-customizable protagonist, as they set off on an adventure to save the world by reuniting the Order of the Stone, a group of legendary adventurers.

The game is divided in 8 episodes.

• Episode 1: The Order of the Stone (Released on October 13, 2015; trailer here)
• Episode 2: Assembly Required (Released on October 28, 2015)
• Episode 3: The Last Place You Look (Released on November 24, 2015)
• Episode 4: A Block and a Hard Place (Released on December 22, 2015)
• Episode 5: Order Up! (Released on March 29, 2016)
• Episode 6: A Portal To Mystery (Released on June 7, 2016)
• Episode 7: Access Denied (Released on July 26, 2016)
• Episode 8: A Journey's End? (Released on September 13, 2016)

The game was released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, OS X, IOS, Android, Wii U , PS Vita, and Nintendo Switch. A simplified version of the first five episodes was released on Netflix on November 27, 2018, reworking the series into a Gamebook-style narrative controlled by the viewer using their remote. It's notably one of the only two games by Telltale Games to turn a profit.

A second season was fully released with 5 episodes:

• Episode 1: Hero in Residence (Released on July 11, 2017)
• Episode 2: Giant Consequences (Released on August 15th, 2017)
• Episode 3: Jailhouse Block (Released on September 19th, 2017)
• Episode 4: Below the Bedrock (Released on November 7th, 2017)
• Episode 5: Above and Beyond (Released on December 19th 2017)

Due to the shutdown of Telltale Games, sales of Minecraft: Story Mode have been discontinued, and all official support for the game ended on June 25, 2019. The first five episodes were on Netflix (albeit with the non-FMV sections removed) until December 4th 2022.

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This game provides these tropes:

Season 1

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The enchanted weapon made for the final battle in Episode 4, able to slice Wither Storm tentacles with ease.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Gabriel isn't the first time one of Dave Fennoy's characters contracts a deadly infection because of a major antagonistic force, depending on your choices.
  • On that note, after exiting the snow-covered portal in Episode 6, Lukas (voiced by Scott Porter) will mutter a "brr, ice lakes" in reference to the fate of Porter's character Luke in The Walking Dead, also by Telltale Games.
    • In a strange and amusing Aversion, the near-identical names was also thought by some fans to be a The Walking Dead allusion, however lead writer Eric Stirpe confirmed it as just a coincidence.
  • Roger L. Jackson, in Episode 6, plays a murderer who wears all-black clothing aside from a white mask, with the voice being used to hide the identity of the person under the mask, similar to Ghostface.
  • In Episode 8,Hadrian uses the phrase "Ta Ta for now", reference to Jim Cummings role as Tigger.
  • While Petra was the first character voiced by Ashley Johnson to have a best friend named Jesse, she certainly wasn’t the last.
• Adaptational Badass: The Command Block is depicted as an extremely powerful artifact with properties that can greatly empower a Wither. Minecraft proper's use for them is to generally for scripting or convenience purposes in non-Creative Mode modes.
• Adapted Out: While almost every Mob has shown up in the game, Villagers are noticeably absent, although at least one citizen in Sky City has a head resembling a Villager, suggesting that they were just mixed with townsfolk similar to normal players. Villagers are also mentioned in passing in Episode 3 by Petra if you rescued her from the Wither Storm in Episode 1, implying that they still exist, just offscreen.
  • This is confirmed in "Hero in Residence", which features a prominent villager character named Nurm. Like his Minecraft counterparts, he doesn't actually talk, and needs someone to translate for him.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: PAMA in Episode 7, having been created for the benefit of a world, but eventually ending up taking over such world and all those who travel to it, including Petra and Lukas.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • A villainous one comes from Aiden near the end of Episode 5 after he's lost his sword during the Battle in the Rain with Jesse. His voice completely transitions from loud insane screaming to panicked pleading; with Jesse not so much as saying a word, he gives back the enchanted flint and steel he stole earlier and kneels before them. Making the right choices and dialogue options makes it clear that he's genuinely submitting himself.
  • Another villainous one can come from Hadrian near the end of episode 8. If you tell him "I'm gonna make you beg for another deal!" earlier, he'll scoff at the idea, but when he's surrounded by you and your friends on a narrow obsidian bridge above a crusher, he'll try to do just that. Jesse can even lampshade it.
• All in a Row: Usually averted, but gets invoked in The Last Place You Look. Jesse is the only person who won't get attacked by Endermen, so the others have to form a connected line behind them to travel past a haunting of them.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The fate of those caught by the Wither Storm.
  • Arguably, the fate of the White Pumpkin AKA, Cassie Rose. Trapped over a pit of hungry Endermites, with no resources to build a way out, and no ender pearls to teleport with. Can be worse if you deny her request to toss her best friend, her cat Winslow, to her; though you could argue that granting her request would subject the poor cat to this trope.
  • Getting chipped by PAMA. The chipped person loses any form of free will, being under the complete control of PAMA, and has their brain merged with thousands of other minds. After being unchipped, most people wake up incredibly fragile, both mentally and physically, and even thinking about what it was like gives them a headache. Harper, who lived in fear of being chipped for years, says that it was worse than she could have imagined. Petra/Lukas say that the only thing they could hear during the experience was PAMA's voice telling them what to do, and that they had just enough consciousness left to try and fight back, but never be able to.
• And the Adventure Continues: Episode 8 ultimately ends with The Order of The Stone returning to their home world. But just as they are about to head into town to see how things have changed they realize Ivor has stolen the Flint and Steel and the Atlas Guide to have more adventures. Jesse can pick whether to chase after him, going on another adventure, or just let him have it, confident that he will be back one day.
• Animal Gender-Bender: Cassie Rose has a pet cat Winslow, who is a male calico.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • The Griefers of Boom Town are essentially Ax-Crazy bomb junkies. They turn their explosive tendencies on each other (even when it would be more beneficial to work together), they take glee in destroying everything and everyone they come across, and they're absurdly selfish and greedy, with Magnus mentioning that the only reason he managed to stay alive and as King as long as he did was by not trusting any of them.
  • Monsters, naturally. They won't stop attempting to off any human nearby even when there are much bigger dangers to consider.
• Arc Words: "Nothing built can last forever."
• Arc Villain: The Wither Storm for the first four episodes, then it rotates to single episode antagonists afterwards with the Blaze Rods led by Aiden in Order Up!, the White Pumpkin/Cassie Rose in A Portal to Mystery, PAMA in Access Denied, & Hadrian & Mevia^note Two thirds of the Old Builder leaders in A Journey's End?.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted in Episode 3. Either Ellegard or Magnus can die depending on whose armor Jesse takes.
• Ascended Glitch: The Farlands, which were just the result of a glitch in Minecraft proper, are an actual location in this world.
• Ascended Extra: Aiden and the Ocelots (later called The Blaze Rods) go from mildly annoying bullies to the Big Bads of episode 5.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Entirely literal with Soren's "Formidi-bomb," which the heroes plan to use to destroy the Wither Storm. It works, but the Command Block brings it back, splitting the Wither Storm into three seperate entities.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Petra will lampshade the fact that a golden sword doesn't have a very long shelf life, but it looks cool so she's taking it anyway.
  • Soren mentions that he loves this sort of thing right before asking you to activate a switch that releases about a dozen Iron Golem security guards.
• Badass in Distress: In the first episode, both Petra and Gabriel get caught in a tractor beam and you are given the option to save one of them. Whoever you saved will later rejoin the group with an Incurable Cough of Death, and whoever you didn't will show up much later as an Amnesiac Hero.
• Battle in the Rain: How Jesse and Aiden face off at the end of Episode 5. Jesse can then arrest him, ignore him, or kick him off the platform.
• Big Damn Heroes: If Jesse allows Lukas to look for the rest of the Ocelots in episode 4, they return during the final confrontation against the Wither Storm to help fight it.
• Big Labyrinthine Building: Soren resides in a large temple with dozens of underground chambers connected by a series of staircases. No one is happy about this.
  Axel: I hope that someday I'll love something as much as Soren seems to love stairs.
• Book Ends:
  • Episode eight has Petra (determinant), Lukas, and Jesse all die and respawn without their armour and in their original clothes. Considering that this is the outfits the audience was introduced to them in and we haven't seen them wear them since episode three (for Jesse) and episode four (for Lukas and Petra), it creates a nice contrast for the final episode in the season.
  • Played for Laughs. The series begins with Jesse and Olivia conversing about what they'd prefer to fight; chickens the size of zombies, or zombies the size of chickens. The Stinger of Episode 8 ends with Hadrian and Mevia having played that game, and stuck in a world with either actual chickens the size of zombies, or actual zombies the size of chickens, depending on what you picked all the way back in episode 1. Incidentally, if you let the timer run out and didn't answer Olivia's question in episode 1, then the episode 8 stinger will default to the "chickens the size of zombies" choice.
• Brick Joke:
  • During episode one, you choose a name for a Secret Handshake, with the message "No one will remember that." In episode four, when Axel and the rest of the group split up, Axel calls for the handshake again "for the road". Guess someone did remember after all (even if it was never performed successfully before that point).
    • Becomes a "Boomerang Joke" of sorts in episode five; all of the name options for the handshake are now codenames of various battle maneuvers, which are still collectively referred to as "secret handshakes".
  • In Episode 1, you can create a Lever at the first Crafting Table. If you have it by Episode 4, it's used to open the secret door behind the fireplace in Ivor's lair.
  • The Stinger of the final episode features Hadrian and Mevia in a world of chickens the size of zombies, or zombies the size of chickens depending on what you picked in episode 1, after Jesse and Olivia had them play the game they played in the first episode.
  • In Episode 5, if you kept the cake from the temple and gave it to the Sky City citizen waiting in line to craft bread, when everyone's escaping later, he can be seen holding another cake.
  • Also in Episode 5, if you wind up in Build Club, you can choose to build an Iron Golem when tasked with building something. Later, after you and the Founder pillar back up to Sky City after being thrown off by Aiden, you can see that Iron Golem beating up some of the monsters in the first sweeping shot, and after you get back from beating Aiden it can be seen in the background at several points.
  • In episode five, Jesse can ask Reginald the guard if it's okay to call him "Reggie." Reginald will curtly tell you no. Later (if you choose to get arrested and taken into the palace), Aiden will tell the guard "get out of my face, Reggie", to which Reginald, annoyed, will tell him that it's Reginald.
  • The alektorophobic bouncer from Episode 1 reappears in Episode 8, having been mistakenly captured by Hadrian and Mevia due to sharing a name with Jesse's late pet pig, Reuben.
• Broken Pedestal: The Order of the Stone can be this when it's revealed they faked defeating the Ender Dragon. As with most of Jesse's reactions, you can react however you want to and be as angry as the options allow. You also have the choice of whether or not to reveal their secret to the world.
• But Thou Must!:
  • When you're trying to save Petra and Gabriel from the Wither Storm, you're given a prompt to aim your mouse and avoid getting hit, but even if you manage it in time, it will still hit you and throw you into the Nether Portal. You must also choose between them, as if you don't do anything, the Wither Storm will take you as well, leading to a game over.
  • Ivor fails to destroy his Wither because the potion that allows him to do so was stolen by either you or Axel and replaced with a dud. No matter what you say at the time of actually finding it, either you or Axel will steal it. You also can't simply choose to ignore the potion scenario, because the dud Axel replaces it with is blocking the switch needed to progress.
  • No matter what you say in Episode 7 to PAMA, he will conclude that you are from another world, that your group can be made more useful, and both Petra and Lukas will be enslaved by him.
  • Even if you manage to keep your stone sword (by threatening the butcher with it instead of trading it to him), it will break at the same time as the gold one would, despite gold swords being less durable and both of them being used the same number of times (unless you choose to fight the monsters on the bridge, but that wouldn't diminish the stone sword's durability enough to match the gold one's). If you crafted a bow and arrows for the second crafting puzzle (or got a bow and arrows from Boom Town or Lukas), you will be forced to use all of the arrows shortly after your sword breaks. This is so you have to enchant the diamond weapon you craft in Ivor's armory.
• The Caligula: Aiden wants to be this in Episode 5, by hurling spawn eggs everywhere and ordering people around. Jesse puts a rather prompt end to this charade.
• Call-Back: The game remembers every decision the player makes, even the joke ones. If you picked a particularly goofy dialogue option while talking to Lukas at Endercon, Jesse will repeat it while trying to cheer him up later on.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: In later episodes, as Jesse and his friends become better fighters, they occasionally carry on conversations in the middle of fights.
• Celebrity Casualty: Episode 6 features guest appearances of various YouTubers, and out of them, CaptainSparklez and either LDShadowLady or DanTDM end up biting the dust.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Episodes 3 and 4 are much more serious than the first two episodes, with both having a major character death, the scale and danger of the Wither Storm becoming even more apparent and world-threatening, dramatic reveals about the nature of the Order of the Stone, and being much more plot-heavy.
• Cessation of Existence: It turns out this is what happened to the Ender Dragon, as the Order relied on the Command Block's power to delete it rather than actually killing it.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The beacon-based contraption the Ocelots were building is what allowed Jesse and his friends to find their way back to Endercon if Jesse takes the "Saving Reuben" route.
  • At one point during the game, Axel can be seen watching an attraction involving chickens. Breaking the machine behind said attraction is a possible solution to get past the usher (due to him being afraid of them).
  • Soren's base being overrun with Endermen ends up becoming part of a plan to defeat the Wither Storm by using them to tear its body apart.
  • In Episode 1, you can accidentally make a lever while trying to create a sword. If you did this, Jesse will use the lever to open a secret passageway in episode 4.
  • At the start of Episode 5, when building a dirt bridge towards the Sky City, Ivor builds a skull with lava dropping from its eyes. Later, when Aiden throws Jesse off Sky City, they have to dodge that lava when falling.
  • Earlier in Episode 5, you grab a pumpkin as part of the treasure from the jungle temple Ivor pointed you and your friends towards. If you chose to go with Milo instead of helping Ivor—thereby ending up in Build Club—when you're tasked with building something, you can use that pumpkin alongside the iron blocks you're given to build an Iron Golem.
  • When trying to decide what to take from Soren's stash, Olivia eventually decides on a fishing rod. She later uses it to keep you from getting sucked into the Wither Storm with the Formidi-Bomb.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Aiden appeared in the first episode as a Jerkass opponent to contrast Nice Guy Lukas; he sabotages your build, and then later insults Jesse at Endercon, before disappearing. He optionally reappears at the end of episode 4 in a Big Damn Heroes moment with the other Ocelots, but this trope primarily comes into effect as he becomes the Big Bad of episode 5.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: In the tail end of Episode 3, whoever you didn't save from the Wither Storm in Episode 1 saves you from being sucked up by the command block after the Wither Storm was blown up. You learn shortly after that they have amnesia. They have no memory of who you are, nor do they remember what the Wither Storm or command block are or why they're a threat. They don't even remember who they are; all that happens is that they see someone in danger and immediately step in to help without a second thought.
• City of Gold: Sky City in Episode 5. Iron as well, but metal is not usually common enough to be a standard building material. Conversely, dirt and things grown from dirt are rare and precious in that town. One of the puzzles has you figuring out how to make stone, which is normally a readily mine-able substance. Justified, as the city gets its materials only from mob drops.
• Complexity Addiction: Justified in Episode 7 with Harper's lab. According to her, she makes the systems in her lab more complicated than necessary to confuse PAMA on the off chance he made it down there.
• Contrived Coincidence: In episode five, Jesse and Isa dig in a random plot of land and just happen to find the other half of the portal there.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The YouTubers from Episode 6 (save for TorqueDawg) seemed like nice and reasonable enough people that they might have let Cassie have the enchanted flint and steel had she just asked and explained her situation, instead of going to the lengths she did to try and get it.
• Cue the Sun: After Jesse finally slays the Wither Storm, the sun comes out. Justified as the Wither Storm was blotting it out.
• Deadly Game: Episode 8 revolves around one. No one is ever expected to win them, and dying is so common that the Builders invented respawning.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Jesse and Olivia will behave this way in a few cutscenes and dialogue branches.
    Axel: A good thief always covers his tracks.
    (he steals a glowing potion bottle, then replaces it with a completely ordinary one)
    Jesse: Oh yeah, the perfect crime.
  • Petra has her moments as well.
    Petra: If you need anything, you know where to find me.
    Olivia: None of us know where to find you.
    Petra: Exactly.
• Deconstruction: Several of the later episodes (most notably 5 and 8), feature dramatic deconstructions of Minecraft fan-favorite mini-games.
  • Episode 5 does this to the popular Skyblock-type challenge, showing what a society with extremely limited resources, and unable to leave a small area without falling to their deaths, would be like.
  • Episode 8 does this to the majority of other minigames as a whole, showing how people would actually deal with dying horrible deaths over and over again (with the added twinge of being sent to the quartz mines if you lose).
• Deconstructor Fleet: Apparently subverted despite being an adaptational game about Minecraft. Most mechanics in the original game are played straight, and storytelling tropes are played straight along with them.
• Deer in the Headlights:
  • Lukas is frozen in place during Petra/Gabriel's capture, which leads to Axel holding him accountable for the incident.
  • Similarly, Ellegaard freezes in shock when she sees the Wither Storm for the first time. Jesse and Olivia had already described it to her, but she hadn't fully understood how big the threat was until then, so all she can do is stare at it and stutter out a terrified apology to Jesse.
• Demolitions Expert: Magnus of the Order of the Stone. His demolition skill is why Axel suggests enlisting his help to fight the Wither Storm.
• Deus ex Machina: The Wither Storm's death instantly cures Petra's wither sickeness/amnesia.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Upon going to the first Crafting Table, you're supposed to create a sword. Due to the set of ingredients given to you, though, you can create a lever, which prompts a bemused reaction from Petra (and the upper left UI), who tells you to try again. Doing this nets you an achievement.
  • When you're asked to choose between Olivia and Axel's plans at the end of the first episode, they start listing reasons why you should go with their choice. If you stand around long enough they eventually fall silent and just wait for your decision, but if you wait even longer...
    Axel: Uh... goggles.
    Olivia: What?
    Axel: I'm running out of things to say.
  • While the second Crafting Table puzzle in the first episode gives you enough materials to build a bow and an arrow to deactivate a death trap, Jesse also has enough materials at this point to build a fishing rod, which also solves the puzzle.
  • In episode four, when Jesse is tasked to make a weapon to destroy the command block, they're given enough diamonds and sticks to make every diamond tool in the game — including a more unconventional weapon such as a shovel or hoe. In fact, if you do make a hoe, Rueben will laugh at you for picking such a strange weapon.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Either Ellegaard or Magnus will give you their armor before the confrontation with the Wither Storm and will end up being fatally wounded in the ensuing chaos. After the Wither Storm is defeated, you find Soren cradling his dying friend.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Ivor drops everything to save himself after his plan goes off the rails in The Order of the Stone. If you choose to have Jesse confront him about his selfish and cowardly behavior, he simply replies that cowardice keeps him alive.
  • Soren being one is hinted at in The Last Place You Look and comes to fruition in A Block and a Hard Place, where he abandons the group right before the final battle. You are even given the option to call him a coward as he flees.
• Do You Trust Me?: During one of the chase segments in Boom Town, Axel asks Jesse to let him carry the Order's amulet. If you choose to keep holding onto it, he's visibly hurt that you don't trust him.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In Episode 8, Nell has a wheat patch that she keeps secret from everyone else. This, along with her personality, makes it seem more like a marijuana patch.
• Double-Meaning Title: Episode five "Order Up!" It not only refers to how the Order of the Stone visits Sky City (i.e. the Order is literally going up), but it's a pun as "order up!" is something you might hear at a restaurant, and the Eversource produces its materials by laying them as spawn eggs.
  Aiden: Did somebody order eggs?
• Dramatic Unmask: Played with in 'A Portal to Mystery' when the White Pumpkin shoves their mask onto Lukas when everybody is about to open the door, making them think that Lukas was the White Pumpkin.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Wither Storm. Not only is everyone afraid of it, even hostile mobs flee from it. Endermen are the only things that aren't afraid of it.
  • Witches. Even Ivor's afraid of them.
• Easter Egg: John Cena's name can be spotted in the credits of some episodes. Really.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Wither Storm, made by substituting one of the soul sand for a command block. Its mere existence breaks the world. Starting as an average Wither, it goes One-Winged Angel, looking less like its original shape and more like something from H. P. Lovecraft, sprouting Combat Tentacles, growing to ten times its size and eventually becoming a distorted, black mass of destruction and death. It gets even worse in Episode 3, where it turns out to be an Asteroids Monster.
• Eldritch Location: The Farlands. Unlike Minecraft, where it was simply a glitch, here it's basically the literal edge of the world and an area of chaos incarnate.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • Jesse gets an enchanted Diamond Weapon and can choose to have a stronger suit of armor for the Final Battle with the Wither Storm.
  • In Episode 8, after Jesse respawns and loses all of her inventory and armor, their friends show up and give them several enchanted diamond weapons, a shield, and "Tim"'s armor
• The End of the World as We Know It: The Wither Storm is basically a walking version of this. If not stopped, it will likely reduce the world to bedrock.
• Enemy Mine: Jesse's Gang and Ivor in Episode 4. Also done between Jesse and Em in Episode 8.
• Expy: Endercon is this of Minecon.
• Eye Scream: During the boss fight with the Wither Storm, Jesse stabs one of the heads the Wither Storm manifests inside itself to defend it's heart right in the eye.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Ivor planned to show everyone that Gabriel was a loser by summoning a controllable Wither and making it fight him. Unfortunately for him, slapping a Command Block into a Wither assembly does not make a controllable Wither, but a Wither that can control the landscape around it and assimilate it into itself, giving birth to the Wither Storm.
• Failed a Spot Check: Despite Ivor's fancy potion and the one Axel replaces it with being similar colors, you'd think Ivor would notice that the one he's about to throw isn't glowing like the real potion does.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: While it revives afterwards, the Wither Storm being blown to bits by the Formidi-Bomb, complete with blood and visible bones.
• Fantastic Nuke: The Formidi-Bomb (AKA the "F-Bomb") is a powerful explosive developed by Soren considered the only thing capable of destroying the Wither Storm. While it's capable of severely damaging the Wither Storm and blowing it to pieces, the heroes fail to grab the command block in time, thus causing it to quickly reform.
• Feigning Healthiness: Petra, if she was rescued, refuses to admit she was infected by the Wither Storm, as she does not want to cause the others to panic.
• Fighting from the Inside: According to Petra and Lukas, while you're chipped by PAMA, you retain the minimal amount of consciousness left to try and fight back against PAMA, but never be able to.
• Fighting Your Friend: Petra and Lukas are both chipped and end up controlled by PAMA in episode 7. Jesse frees one of them relatively early, but has to fight the other in the climax.
• First-Episode Twist: Ivor, the (apparent) main villain is a member of The Order of the Stone. The legends have been distorted.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Leader / The Heart: Jesse.
  • The Lancer: Petra.
  • The Big Guy: Axel.
  • The Smart One: Olivia
  • The Heart: Lukas.
• Flat "What": In Episode 8, if Jesse chooses to bluntly tell Hadrian he's an idiot for kidnapping the wrong Reuben.
  Jesse: Hadrian, for an Old Builder, you're not that bright, you know that?
  Hadrian: What?
• Foreshadowing:
  • The prologue talks about how legends will eventually fade into myths and then lies. Immediately after that, it states that the "Legend of the Order of the Stone" will last forever. As it turns out, even the "Legend of the Order of the Stone" got distorted, as the Order didn't even fight the Ender Dragon, having instead used the Command Block to blink it out of existence.
  • Observing an empty display stand in the treefort will make Jesse comment that they hope to one day own a set of armor. You get to keep Magnus/Ellegaard's armor after one of them dies in The Last Place You Look and can also pick a suit of armor from Ivor's armory in A Block and a Hard Place.
  • In Episode 2, no matter which member of the Order of the Stone you pick to recruit, the Wither Storm comes in and destroys their surroundings. It turns out the Wither Storm is specifically programmed to follow the amulet of the Order of the Stone, which Jesse is holding.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The Arc Villain of "Access Denied", PAMA, has a Twitter account. After some people declined his offer to "join" him, he says that he's sure that him and the people who declined will be friends with him.
• Funny Background Event:
  • While the main group is building a bridge in the beginning of the fourth episode, Soren, being an architect, is building a decorative archway with redstone lamps at the start of the bridge rather than contributing to the actual important process. Particularly funny because this happens while the group is being chased by the Wither Storm.
  • Ivor creates a skull that cries lava flows while creating a bridge over to the Sky City in Episode 5.
  • The townsfolk of Sky City at the end of Episode 5. One is seen hugging a tree, one is going to town on a tree, and another is REALLY excited about building a wood hoe.
• Gender-Blender Name:
  • Jesse can be either male or female, but their name is spelled the same either way. This means that, technically, female Jesse has a masculine name as "Jessie" (usually short for Jessica) is the more common female version.
  • Benedict the chicken in Episode 5. We know she's not a rooster because her owner used the pronoun "her" a few lines before revealing her name,and she lays eggs after all.
• Grievous Harm Witha Body: While clearing out the mobs infesting Soren's stronghold, an Iron Golem uses a zombie as a baseball bat on a Spider thrown by another one.
• Griefer:
  • Being based on the player type, Axel enjoys messing with people and stealing stuff.
  • Boom Town is a town composed of nothing but these people. And the worst kind, too.
  • Magnus is identified as one when you first meet him, and it's made apparent by the way he intentionally annoys Ellegaard and Jesse.
• Growling Gut: When everyone's tired and hungry early on the way to the Far Lands in Episode 4, if you idle during one dialog choice after Ivor warns of the dangers of stopping in a swamp, there's a loud growl that everyone initially thinks is a monster, only for Soren to admit it was his stomach.
• Halfway Plot Switch: Despite being of the same season, the first four episodes and the last four (the Witherstorm arc and the Portal arc) have basically nothing to do with each other. It might as well be a different game.
• Heroic Mime: Downplayed throughout the game; Jesse will still say pre-scripted lines in cutscenes, so a true Heroic Mime playthrough is impossible, but in many cases where you have to choose an option, there will be a "..." option or you can just let the timer run out. Sometimes you'll be given a third or fourth option, sometimes it'll default to a certain choice, sometimes you'll get bemused dialogue from some of the characters before the scene continues, and sometimes there's no timer and the game will simply refuse to continue if you don't pick an option.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Episode 4, Reuben dies from a long fall after recovering Jesse's enchanted weapon so they can destroy the Command Block. He holds on just long enough for Jesse to say some final words.
• Hive Mind: P.A.M.A. has a large quantity of bodies at its disposal, who share one another and P.A.M.A.'s mind.
• Hope Spot: The apparent demise of the Wither Storm in Episode 3, kind of tainted by Interface Spoiler below.
• Housepet Pig: Jesse has a pet pig named Reuben, who noticeably much different looking from any other pigs seen and is much more expressive. Sadly, Reuben dies while helping Jesse destroy The Wither Storm, with his death greatly affecting Jesse.
• Hypothetical Fight Debate: Olivia presents a hypothetical "What would you rather fight: ____ or ____?" scenario to Jesse at the start of the game. She will also present one to Lukas but he only answers if Jesse prevented him from leaving the shelter in Episode 1.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Petra and Lukas are chipped, Jesse can tell both of them multiple times that they know they can hear him and that they need to fight it. It never works, however.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Inflicted upon whoever Jesse saved from the Wither Storm when they rejoin the group.
• I Fell for Hours: During the leap off the bridge at the beginning of the game, Jesse and Petra fall for a long time, even accounting for the fall being done in slow-mo. Eventually, you start wondering just when they're going to land. The fact that their fall doesn't injure them in the slightest doesn't help.
• Indy Ploy: While they always have a general idea of what they're trying to do, the unpredictable behavior of both Ivor and the Wither Storm keeps forcing Jesse and the rest of the team to improvise during emergencies. Lukas isn't too pleased about this.
  Lukas: We need a plan... and not the usual "we'll-come-up-with-a-plan-when-we-have-to-OH-WAIT-NOW-WE-HAVE-TO" kind of plan.
• Interface Spoiler: The image on the episode select screen for Episode 4 gives away the notion that in Episode 3, the Formidi-Bomb doesn't defeat the Wither Storm.
• Invented Individual: In Episode 8, "Tim", an individual who supposedly won the games and successfully went back home, was created by Hadrian to motivate people to participate in the gladiator games that they'll never be able to leave.
• Ironic Echo: At the start of episode seven, Jesse can tell Petra three statements regarding her frustration about the portal hopping, all of which will make her mad and cause her to storm off. Whatever Jesse says to her, PAMA will repeat back to them using Petra's voice while preparing to chip them.
• I Surrender, Suckers: In Episode 8, when Jesse gains the upper hand in a fight against Hadrian, the latter begs for a truce and attempts to tell his Start of Darkness story. Unfortunately, this was all a ruse to distract Jesse so Mevia could sneak up and kill them from behind.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Axel isn't the nicest person but he does genuinely care for his friends. When the others start joking around during the shelter segment, he scolds them for not being worried about Petra's safety.
  • For all his insults and jibes, Magnus is still a decent guy underneath it all.
• Jumping on a Grenade: If Jesse successfully befriends Slab during Episode 8, during the final fight he'll jump on a block of primed TNT to protect Jesse.
• Karma Houdini: Ivor created the Wither storm, got a lot of innocent people either killed or injured, wrecked every piece of civilized land in its path and nearly destroyed the world to boot. And yet by episode 5 he's walking around free, still causing no end of trouble for everyone around him with seemingly no punishment or true remorse what so ever.
• Kick the Dog: While trying to shut down PAMA, Jesse must fight one of their mind-controlled friends. They taunt them, claiming they will fail just like they failed to save Reuben.
• Legend Fades to Myth: The narrator briefly talks about how legends will eventually fade into myths, which in turn become half-truths or lies.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: One of the dialogue options in Episode One after Jesse and co. travel through the Nether in minecarts provides the page quote.
  Jesse: You know how you have those experiences you remember and reminisce about for the rest of your life?
  Axel: Yeah?
  Jesse: This isn't one of those. Let's never discuss this ever again.
• Liar's Paradox: In episode "Access Denied", Jesse and several others are captured by a supercomputer named PAMA. Jesse notices that PAMA stalls whenever processing so he uses a paradox to loop it. One of the options to choose from is a Liar's Paradox.
• Lighter and Softer: Probably the lightest fare from Telltale Games since Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. It's colorful and comedic, and the choices the player has to make aren't quite as morally complicated or difficult as the ones in The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us.
  • Played with in Episode 6, which is a Whodunnit Murder Mystery with an Axe Killer, only completely bloodless due to the medium of the universe it is set in.
  • Oddly enough, it also manages to be Darker and Edgier when compared to Minecraft itself, with such concepts as the Wither Storm, which when compared to the already Enemy to All Living Things version in-game is upgraded to a Person of Mass Destruction, acting like a living natural disaster and destroying entire cities merely by being present. As an extension of that, this game's version of Wither Sickness is an Incurable Cough of Death that literally causes a person to rot away to nothing.
  • Episode 5 is this relative to the rest of the series, except for the fact that Jesse is still grieving over the death of Rueben.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: In Season 1 Episode 6, the first murder plays off like this. TorqueDawg died.
• Line-of-Sight Name: One of the possible names Jesse can give to their team's Secret Handshake is "Griefer Grab". An announcer was giving the rules for the build-off at the time (which includes "No Griefing"), implying this trope.
• Living Is More than Surviving: One dialogue option in Episode 1 lets you call out Ivor's cowardice with a similar line, to which Ivor replies that there is no life without surviving.
• Logic Bomb: Jesse and Ivor use one in Episode 7 to stall out PAMA. It works long enough for your chipped friends to let you go, but PAMA catches on quickly and puts it on hold to continue his mission.
• Loophole Abuse: In Episode 4, after Soren finally confesses the truth about how the Order of the Stone faked defeating the Ender Dragon and Ivor says how the whole Order agreed to keep it a secret, Soren snaps at Ivor that he agreed to stay quiet about it when he left the Order too, in exchange for all of their treasures. Ivor is silent for a moment before stating that he technically never told anybody, since Jesse figured it out on their own.
• Man of Kryptonite: It turns out Endermen are this for the Wither Storm. They're immune to its tractor beams and can actually rip pieces of it off it. Because of this, the heroes decide to use an army of Endermen to kill it.
• Mirror Character: Magnus and Ellegaard, despite their dislike of each other, are both stubbornly proud of their achievements and difficult to get on the good side of. When they meet the Wither Storm, they both come to the same conclusions (the one you recruited realizes it's a threat they could never have imagined and decides to go at night, the one not recruited wants to wait til morning, and if you pick going out at night, the opposing party says that they're only going because you're a fan of the other).
• Motivational Lie: In Chapter 8, people are motivated to keep playing the Builder Games despite numerous losses via the legend of Tim. Naturally, you learn he's not real. Later on, when you're giving everyone a pep-talk to work together to win the games, you can choose whether to come clean or let them keep believing the lie.
• Morton's Fork: Once you recruit either Magnus or Ellegaard, and whoever you didn't choose was recruited by whoever you left behind, whoever you recruited will want to get moving to find Soren right away to avoid the Wither Storm catching up, while the other will want to wait until morning to avoid monsters. However, if you wait until morning, the Wither Storm will appear and block the sun, making it dark enough for monsters to spawn and forcing you to fight them anyway.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Once either Petra or Lukas is unchipped after the climax in episode seven, they'll be horrified that they tried to kill Jesse. However, as Jesse can assure them, that was PAMA, not them.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Order of the Stone's name comes from Minecraft's original title of "Minecraft: Order of the Stone". It was changed to avoid confusion/mixup with the webcomic The Order of the Stick.
  • Invoked in Episode 3, when Lukas struggles to figure out what to call a herd of Endermen, one of the dialogue options is to call them a "Haunting". Word of God says that the collective noun is a "Haunting".
  • References to the YouTubers' content have appeared in Episode 6, "A Portal to Mystery", such as Dan's literal diamond minecart, which can be seen in his painting and his inventory if he gets killed.
  • Unlike Minecraft, death is permanent and there is no respawning...until episode eight, that is. Respawning is used in Hadrian's games, and any players who die lose all their inventories, just like in regular Minecraft.
• Nice to the Waiter: In Episode 5, Aiden will treat the Founder concerning fool her into thinking he is her ally but his villainous intentions presents itself in his unnecessarily rude behaviour towards Reginald.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Mobs and animals vanish upon death and leave behind their drop the same way they do in Minecraft proper.
  • Subverted with Magnus/Ellegard, depending on whose armor Jesse takes in Episode 3), and the Wither Storm, as when it's finally killed in the end, its remains fall to the ground. It also leaves a unique black Nether Star behind.
  • Played straight in Episode 6, where multiple human characters poof upon dying, leaving behind their inventories.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Taken to the logical extreme: while there is hugging, no kissing is to be seen, no character is confirmed to be in love with anybody and nobody seems to have as little as relatives (although Jesse's line "I hear ya, brother" in Episode 1 indicates that the concept of family does exist in the game's universe).
• Non-Standard Character Design: Axel is the only main character who's bulky, a fact that is commented on several times throughout the game (sometimes by him). It's impossible to have that player shape within Minecraft without the use of mods.
• No OSHA Compliance: Played with; when you get back from your latest adventure at the beginning of Episode 5, you find that Ivor had built a house with a huge lavafall pouring out into the streets, and he seems to be the only one who doesn't see how dangerous this is. Whether or not Jesse sides with him is up to the player, but should Jesse choose to let Ivor keep it, Olivia will suggest smelting glass to surround the lavafall to make it safer, to which Axel replies "but not too safe."
• Not Himself: Lukas is uncharacteristically vitriolic during the first half of "The Last Place You Look" because he knows that Jesse is withholding information from the rest of the group.
  Jesse: What's up with Lukas?
  Axel: Well, as a long time observer of human behaviour–
  Olivia: We have no idea.
• "Not So Different" Remark: You can engage in a bit of this in Episode 8; When you're trying to rally the other teams to come together and win together, Emily points out that no-one has ever one the games. A member of the yellow team points out that Tim did...except you've recently learned that "Tim" never actually existed and was made up to motivate everyone to keep playing an unwinnable game. You have a choice as to whether to agree with him or spill the beans. If you choose the former, you're lying about Tim's existence for the same reason Hadrian did—to give everyone hope where there would otherwise be none.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Episode 6, Ivor stops being goofy and obviously evil and lends his wealth of knowledge to help Jesse and the gang catch a psychotic murderer in a mansion riddled with traps. He even acts relatively calmly and rationally compared to his usual Large Ham self.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Competent and suave Petra is easily the best fighter in town, yet she's not above befriending dorky Jesse. Their friendship is initially very lopsided — with the latter being overenthusiastic while Petra is mostly just embarrassed by the attention — but by the time Assembly Required rolls around, it's become very obvious that Petra considers Jesse her closest friend.
  • In Episodes 5-8, Jesse and Ivor, due to their age gap, but especially since the latter had since tried to kill Jesse on several separate occasions, but they not only become legitimately helpful, but even start to actively help.
• Offhand Backhand: At the beginning of Episode 5, a zombie approaches Jesse from behind. They just hit it with their sword without looking.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In the new Order of the Stone's treasure room, there's a Dragon Egg and two (normal) Nether Stars, indicating that not only did they go on to defeat the Ender Dragon, but summoned and defeated the Wither twice.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. In Episode 8, Hadrian and Mevia use the Portal Atlas to kidnap Jesse's friends to coerce Jesse into another deal. They go for Olivia, Axel, and Reuben...except Reuben died in Episode 4. Since they don't know this, they end up kidnapping Episode 1's bouncer, who also happens to be named Reuben.
• Only One Name: None of them have any surnames to speak of.
• Out of Focus: Axel and Olivia go on to do their own thing in Episode 5, and are absent for the rest of the episode and the next, with the episodes being primarily about Jesse, Petra, Lukas, and Ivor. They finally return in Episode 8, as Hadrian tries to goad Jesse into losing for their safety.
• Overly Literal Transcription: A sign in Sky City that details all the ways building is forbidden ends with "that's it, you can stop writing now."
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Whichever hero you didn't pursue at the end of The Order of the Stone will have a tense conversation with you in Assembly Required if you choose to head for Soren's hideout at nighttime. If Jesse doesn't try to defuse the tension, the conversation takes a passive aggressive turn.
• Possession Burnout: Everyone after they're saved from PAMA's mind control is physically and mentally exhausted from the ordeal.
• The Power of Friendship: After Jesse comments on losing/winning against Lukas, Petra suggests befriending him in case they need his help later on. Jesse can agree or disagree, but will always grumble about being lectured on "the power of collaboration".
• Press X to Not Die: A rather mild example compared to other Telltale games, perhaps because of the young target audience. Many (though not all) of the quick-time events can be failed without consequence.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When you're about to throw the Formidi-Bomb into the mouth of the Wither Storm, you're given a selection of these to choose from.
• Properly Paranoid: Magnus refuses to leave his tower because he thinks the Griefers will try to usurp him. Guess what happens when you become king?
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: If you choose to threaten the butcher who kidnapped Reuben.
  Jesse: Give. Me. Back. My. Pig.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The player may choose Jesse's gender at the start of the game. The story will not be affected by this decision and characters will treat both male and female Jesse the same way, aside from a couple of minor dialogue changes.
• Relationship Values:
  • This is a usual thing in Telltale Games, though this is especially noteworthy with Lukas, since it'll determine whether you can convince him to stay with Jesse's group in Episode 4 and whether or not he'll return to help you with the final battle against the Wither Storm.
  • If you chose to save Petra in this video, the resulting BTS video has her discuss how you choosing to save her has improved the relationship between you and her.
• The Reveal:
  • In the first episode, it's revealed that Ivor was an original member of the Order of The Stone but was removed from the records.
  • The third episode reveals that the person you failed to save in The Order of the Stone is still alive but is no longer aware of who they are.
  • Episode 4 reveals that the Wither Storm was following the pendant Gabriel gave Jesse the entire time. It also reveals the Order of the Stone never truly beat the Ender Dragon, they instead used the command block to erase it from existence, and come back as "Heroes". Ivor however, was unhappy with this, and was paid off to keep quiet, leaving the Order of the Stone.
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: The first half of season one tells a continuing story about an Eldritch Abomination terrorizing the world and giving people And I Must Scream fates. The second half is mostly unrelated, fun, goofy stories. It has a much chipper tone, to put it simply.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Upon realizing Ivor was a member of the Order of The Stone, you'll notice that the narrator of the intro cinematic puts emphasis on "FOUR" heroes, and why the legend is self-evident fact.
  • In Episode 3, if you realize that Lukas knows about Petra/Gabriel's illness, you can spot him looking away from them in panic in some scenes.
  • The Reveal that the Order's story is a fraud makes a lot of what happens take on a completely different meaning.
• Rousing Speech: Subverted. Jesse's epic speech to the other teams in Episode 8 doesn't immediately bring everyone else on board. Lukas himself describes the reactions as mixed.
• Running Gag:
  • The thunder and lightning that occurs any time someone says "murder" in Episode 6.
  • You can find a different book by Soren in every episode after 4, to Jesse's increasing bafflement.
  • The Old Builders hate being called "the Old Builders".
• Running Gag Stumbles:
  • The game continues the Telltale Games tradition of displaying a "X will remember that." message whenever the player makes an important decision. However, an unique warning will pop up after Jesse creates a secret handshake:
    No one will remember that.
  • Successfully crafting an item usually nets you a simple "You made a [item]." message, but if you somehow create a lever during a segment where you're supposed to make a sword, even the pop-up will be surprised.
    You made a lever?!?!
  • Of course, it also veers into tragedy territory with the death of a major character:
    Reuben will be remembered...
• Sadistic Choice:
  • At one point in the first episode, Aiden floods your Endercon booth with lava, which sets Reuben (Jesse's pet pig) on fire, but also puts your machine at risk of heat damage. Will you have your friends help you find Reuben, or have them stay and save the machine? Unlike most sadistic choices, this one has a correct answer, non-obvious though it may be, which is to have your friends stay behind. They don't actually help at all in the search for Reuben, but they do save the machine. If the machine survives, it wins the Endercon building competition, but if your friends aren't around to save it, the Ocelots win instead.
  • At one point within the story, you're given the option of saving either Gabriel or Petra from the Wither Storm. You can't choose both.
  • In episode 3, there's an unusual example that at the time is just presented as a regular choice, with the "sadistic" implications not occurring until later: you need to take either Magnus's or Ellegaard's armor to proceed, but the person whose armor you take will be killed later after taking a lethal blow without armor to protect them. So you have a sadistic choice of saving either Magnus or Ellegaard; you can't save both.
  • In episode 6, there's another unusual example where the implications of the choice aren't immediately apparent: at one point you must choose to accuse either Dan, Lizzie, or Stampy of being the White Pumpkin. If you choose Dan, Lizzie, or stay silent, then either you lock either of them in the library, or Dan locks himself up voluntarily, and the other will come to visit whoever gets locked up. In this case, either you Let Lizzie die to the spiders to chase the White Pumpkin off, or they will ax her in the back. If you lock Stampy up, Dan will come to visit him and will be the one who will fall victim to the above scenario.
    • A more obvious one at the climax, though it's less sadistic and more of a Tear Jerker: Cassie is left above an Endermite-filled pit with no escape, doomed to either starve to death or jump/fall down and get eaten. She begs Jesse to at least toss her cat Winslow down to her, as he's her only friend. Say yes, and you're dooming a mostly-innocent cat to die with its owner. Say no, and Cassie continues to beg as you walk away as Winslow looks down sadly. Many players wished they could Take a Third Option and help Cassie come back up and have her take a Heel–Face Turn similar to if you helped Aiden in episode 5.
  • In Episode 7, you have to choose between saving either Petra or Lukas; once you push one of them into a water stream and de-brainwash them, the other will escape and won't be de-brainwashed until the climax.
  • In "A Journey's End?", there are two sadistic choices: first, you have to choose whether to save Petra or Ivor during the "Spleef" game, and at first you're led to believe that the one you didn't save ends up dead. Fortunately it turns out they just "Respawn" elsewhere. Second, you have to choose whether or not to accept Hadrian's deal to let all Jesse's friends go if Jesse throws the next match. Fortunately, regardless of this decision, circumstances eventually prevent throwing the next match from being necessary.
• Scooby Stack: The group does an overcrowded version while peering into Ivor's hideout. Reuben somehow ends up at the top.
• Secret Handshake: After Olivia complains that the build crew doesn't have a special handshake like the Ocelots do, Jesse comes up with one on the spot. No matter which option you choose, the game will always inform you that none of the characters will remember it. Axel actually does remember it, he and Jesse can do it.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • When Petra/Gabriel (whoever you rescued from the Wither Storm at the beginning of Episode 1) comes down with Wither Sickness, he/she tells you privately and asks that you tell no-one else so as not to drag down morale. When Lukas confronts you in episode 3, you can choose whether or not to tell him. If you do, you can then choose whether or not to tell Petra/Gabriel that Lukas now knows about it.
  • After defeating the Wither Storm, Jesse can convince Gabriel to either come clean about the Order of the Stone or allow the people to continue believing in their legend.
  • After learning that "Tim", who allegedly was the only one to win the Games, never actually existed and was made up by the Old Builders to keep everyone playing a game that was Unwinnable by Design, you're tasked with rallying all of the other teams to work together against the Old Builders. When Tim is brought up, you can choose whether to let them keep believing in him or confess that he never existed.
• Secretly Dying: Whoever you saved from the Wither Storm has been infected by it. They don't want to tell the rest of the group because they're worried it'll slow down the quest, but most of the party has already figured out that something's up.
• Shell-Shock Silence: After Jesse wakes up from blowing up the Wither Storm with the Formidi-bomb, all they can hear is a faint ringing sound and the occasional "THUD" of Wither Storm parts hitting the ground. You can see other characters' lips moving, but nothing they say can be heard.
• Shout-Out:
  • "That'll do, Reuben. That'll do."
  • When asked where the stairs in the Temple of the Order go, one of your choices are: "They go up."
  • In Episode 5, if you choose the Speed potion Ivor offers, Jesse will say, "Gotta go fast!"
  • "Execute maneuver 66!"
  • The Games in Episode 8 bear much resemblance to The Hunger Games, not to mention Hadrian's resemblance to President Snow, along with his speech about "hope".
  • Also from Episode 8, Emily tells her partner Nell "Get dunked on, slacker!" Later on, if you idle until the time runs out during one of the dialogue choices of your Rousing Speech to the other teams, Nell will say something along the lines of "But that stare of yours is filling me with... determination."
• Shrouded in Myth: Contrary to what the narrator said, this is what happened to the "Legend of the Order of the Stone". At least one detail is different than what actually happened, namely that there was an extra member of the team the legend doesn't mention. But that's not the only deception...
• Side Bet: At the very beginning of Episode 6, Lukas and Petra apparently made a bet for 2 iron ingots as to whether or not the portal they went through would lead to their world. Jesse can choose whether or not to call them out on goofing around.
• Slapstick: Both Jesses are prone to Amusing Injuries, especially if you fail a lot of the quicktime events.
• Soft Water: Just like in the games, water cushions all landings no matter how high, which proves useful in a few situations.
• Sore Loser:
  • When your build seems like it's gonna win the competition, Aiden decides to unleash some lava on your contraption.
  • Petra will call your team out on this if you were to say "losing sucks" while they're talking about how they lost the Build-Off.
  • Aiden and his crew is this when Jesse's new Order of The Stone keep finding treasure. What's more, Aiden wanted to be the hero of the Wither Storm crisis instead of Jesse, because he doesn't feel Jesse truly earned it.
• Spell My Name With An S: Even the closed captions of the game can't agree on whether it's "Wither Storm" or "Witherstorm".
• Spot the Thread: In episode 6 Jesse puts together evidence on who's the White Pumpkin. The evidence points to Cassie Rose, because she was the only one in the room with the portraits after Torque Dawg's death and Torque Dawg's picture was already crossed out, she was the only one that didn't already have a crossed out portrait in the White Pumpkin's lair, and the lair was filled with dozens of cats that all looked like her pet Winslow.
• Stage Whisper: Gets parodied if you go back to Ivor's hideout to find Lukas, Jesse will sneak around while doing an exaggerated stage whisper.
  Jesse: Lukas, can you hear me? ...even though I'm whispering?
  Lukas: Jesse? Is that you whispering super loudly?
• Stay with Me Until I Die: Magnus and Ellegaard attempt to defy this, telling Jesse that they should go check on the survivors instead of staying with them, but Jesse can choose to ignore this request and kneel beside them until they pass away.
• Story Branching: One of the game's main gimmicks. What you do within the game alters how the story plays out, but the most notable example is the plot of Assembly Required, which depends entirely on the choices you made in the previous episode. The first half can be about Jesse and Axel's adventure in Boom Town or Jesse and Olivia's journey through Redstonia, and the second half will have either Gabriel or Petra returning, depending on which of the two you saved from the Wither Storm.
• Stylistic Self-Parody: The game has several nods to the fact that it's set within the world of Minecraft.
  • This ranges from the name of "Boom Town" being written using Leet Lingo, to the in-universe term for "criminal" being "griefer", to blocks floating in mid-air.
  • When the Sky City is abandoned in Episode 5, Jesse advises the inhabitants to start punching trees as the first thing they should do.
• Sword Limbo: Jesse will occasionally use this move to dodge attacks in QTE fights.
• Take a Third Option:
  • In some instances where two members of the party have conflicting strategies, you have the power to either side with one of them or present an entirely new idea.
  • In the first episode, when discussing what to build in front of your fireworks display, Olivia will suggest an Enderman while Axel will suggest a Creeper. You are can agree with one of them, pick a Zombie or say nothing, though saying nothing will default to Axel.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Once you get out of Soren's fortress and see how much the Witherstorm has grown, this is word-for-word one of the dialog choices.
• Three Plus Two: The game initially revolves around three friends — Jesse, Olivia, and Axel. Once the Big Bad shows up, the three are joined by resident loner Petra and rival builder Lukas (who already know each other).
• Token Evil Teammate: Ivor in Episode 4 and 5, though he gets better in Episode 6.
• Token Good Teammate: The Ocelots are rude and arrogant — except Lukas, who's surprisingly helpful and friendly. Petra will lampshade this during the Wither Skull segment.
• Took a Level in Badass: Jesse and their friends become the new Order of The Stone in Episode 4, and in Episode 5, Jesse begins the episode by effortlessly dispatching hordes of monsters.
• Training Montage: At the beginning of the first episode, after deciding on what to build; it introduces the main quick time events as well as parodying the trope through having Jesse do things a normal Minecraft player would do within a typical gameplay session (such as punching trees).
• Ungrateful Bastard: Aiden and the Ocelots abandon Lukas and form their own crew, the Blaze Rods, regardless of whether or not he went to go find them in Episode 4.
  • As Petra says, the YouTubers in the mansion during episode 5 are very ungrateful for all the effort The Order Of the Stone has been doing for them. They seem eager to pin the blame of Lukas once he is framed and don't contribute much to helping solve the mystery themselves. However by the end of the episode they are shown to be grateful for Jesse and everyone saving them.
• Unreliable Narrator: The one narrating the prologue was lying about the "Legend of the Order of the Stone" never fading into myth and becoming a lie.
• Unusual User Interface: In episode 7, Jesse briefly uses a headset that allows him to control one of PAMA's mind-controlled subjects, and can even jump between puppets.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can protect Reuben from harm, support Olivia and Axel's endeavors, encourage Lukas, assist NPCs, etc.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Or you could go the opposite direction and have Jesse be a jerk to everyone.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • If Jesse doesn't have a good relationship with Lukas by Episode 4 and insults Lukas when Lukas wants to find the surviving Ocelots then Lukas will refuse to help Jesse throughout the rest of the episode. This makes the final battle with the Wither Storm harder since Lukas won't be around to distract it.
  • If you make Slab late taking you to Hadrian and mock him about not being able to kill you, he won't join you when you and the other competitors in the last game rebel, and you won't get Lukas's book back.
• Villainous Rescue: If you go to Boom Town and beat Magnus in a duel and as a result become King, some people will start to consider usurping you. Then the Wither Storm shows up to level everything to the ground (in a way that puts even Magnus to shame) and snack on the inhabitants.
• Voices Are Mental: When PAMA puts microchips behind peoples' heads to assimilate them, their voices become robotic for no reason except to make it clear to the audience that they're controlled by the computer.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In the Sky City from Episode 5, crafting anything (even food) without permission is a crime that's harshly punished by the Founder. We later find out that it's because everyone, including the Founder, thought the city was isolated so the Founder had to carefully manage the resources they had. When they later find out that the Sky City was suspended over land (and not over a bottomless void), she's still a bit suspicious and careful but when you make Jesse tell her and Milo that they can have a plan without planning every little thing, she goes explore the new land with her chicken.
  • In the next episode, Episode 6, you have Cassie, who simply wants to leave the Youtuber world and go back to her own, but she goes to incredible lengths to try and acquire the enchanted flint and steel to activate the portal to leave. She kills three of the YouTubers, despite her apparently being friends with them, and the YouTubers seem like nice enough people that she probably could have just asked to have the enchanted flint and steel upon explaining her predicament.
• We Used to Be Friends: Something happened between Ellegaard and Magnus when the Order split up, and they're not happy to see each other when the party reunites in the second episode.
  • The same happens in Episode 6 when Cassie is revealed to be the murderous White Pumpkin. The YouTubers cry out at her betrayal, one of them claiming that they shared cookies.
• Wham Line: At the end of Episode 3, after either Gabriel or Petra saves Jesse from the reawakening Wither Storm:
  Jesse: C'mon, Gabriel/Petra! We've gotta go!
  Gabriel/Petra: Who's...who's Gabriel/Petra?
• Wham Shot:
  • In the first episode, Jesse finds a book documenting the legend of the Order and reads an extract from it. As they read, we get a flashback that seems to be the same as the opening cinematic... except that this time the Round Table Shot continues past Soren and lands on Ivor, revealing that he was once part of the Order.
  • At the end of episode five, Jesse and their gang walk through the portal, excited to get home...only to reveal an entire portal network.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Soren runs off in episode four when the plan isn't working. Besides the Running Gag of one of his books always being in the other dimensions, he is never heard of again and his fate remains unknown.
  • What became of the enchanted weapon you crafted in the tail end of Episode 4? We don't even see it in the treasure room.
    • Word of God has stated that the command block tool was destroyed when the command block was destroyed.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • At the start of Episode 3, you must choose whether to save Axel and Reuben from some enemies or run for the amulet. Whomever you saved between Gabriel and Petra will comment on your choice: Gabriel will call you out if you saved your friends for not putting the mission first, while Petra will get angry if you saved the amulet for abandoning your friends.
  • The player has the option to give one to Ivor when you discover the truth of what happened, asking him how his Wither plan was any better than letting the Order's lie continue.
  • Near the end of Episode 3, someone has to craft the Formidi-Bomb and take it to the Wither Storm. Between having to get sucked up a tractor beam to get to the Wither Storm and the volatile nature of the Formidi-Bomb (Soren says it'll likely explode within seconds of crafting), this is heavily implied to be a Suicide Mission. Once you step up, Petra (if she's in your team) will give one of these to Ellegard and Magnus for not stepping up in place of a bystander when they're supposed to be legendary heroes.
    Petra: You should be ashamed of yourselves!
  • When you and the other competitors come together and rise at the end of episode 8, if you made Slab and you late in meeting Hadrian, he'll call you out for being inconsiderate and refuse to join you.
• While Rome Burns: There's a random NPC hopping on a slime block near one of the booths at Endercon. When the Wither Storm shows up and everyone begins to flee in terror, the guy doesn't bother reacting and just keeps hopping 'til he gets picked up by the monster's tractor beam.
• White Stallion: When fleeing from the reformed Witherstorm early in episode 4, everyone has to ride horses to get away. Most of them are brown, except for Jesse's which is white.
• Why Won't You Die?: In episode 5, Aiden has this response when Jesse comes back to fight him, after Aiden previously had thrown Jesse off Sky City into what was presumably the Void below, unaware that there was actually land down there.

Season 2

• Acrofatic: The Prison Golems in Episode 3 are just as big and bulky as normal Iron Golems, but are far faster and more agile.
• Actor Allusion: If Jesse chooses to accompany Lukas and Radar in Season 2 episode 2, they will be forced to run from Snow Golems. Radar is afraid to jump a large gap and Jesse responds with "Sometimes you've just got to fake it, Radar. Hero time!"
• Aerith and Bob: Of the original three Admins, there's Romeo and Fred. Then there's the sole female, Xara.
• Always a Bigger Fish: In Episode 5, if Radar was left to distract the Giant Enderman in Episode 4 then he'll show up when Jesse, Petra, Jack, and (optionally) Romeo are threatened by a Colossus which results in the Enderman tearing the head off the Colossus.
• And the Adventure Continues: Regardless of whatever Last-Second Ending Choice that Jesse makes in Episode 5, they will be guaranteed to have another adventure. Either because Jesse will be adventuring with Petra or because one of the letters Jesse recieves in the Stay in Beacontown Ending implies that the White Pumpkin is coming back.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • During the last question of the trivia quiz you can (but don't have to) win to proceed, which you didn't learn the answer to in town but rather earlier in the episode (making it more understandable to be dismissed as a throwaway detail and forgotten), if you idle long enough Petra will name-drop the answer while thinking out loud.
  • If you die enough times, you'll eventually get a popup saying "You've died too many times, you will no longer take damage", meaning exactly what it says. And this sticks throughout the game, even if you reload to before that last death that triggered it.
• Astral Finale: Terminal Space in Episode 5, while ambiguous as to whether it's in a different dimension or far above the Overworld, looks very spacelike, with as much as nebulas in the background, and is where the final battle takes place.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Jesse has to deal with quite a few oversized threats on this journey, starting with a colossus and continuing with a three headed ghast, a golem made of magma, an Enderman, the Admin in a Vos form, and more colossi.
• Behemoth Battle: If you left Radar behind in the Underneath, when everyone's escaping from Terminal Space, he'll arrive with the giant Enderman that was chasing him. The Enderman will proceed to pick a fight with a rogue Prismarine Colossus, allowing everyone else to escape.
• Be Yourself: Jesse can decide on two occassions to encourage other characters to do this around their idols or to "Play it cool." This trope is encouraged by the game as choosing the "Play it cool" option results in the characters overdoing it and making themselves look foolish.
• Big Bad: The Admin.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: The Sunshine Institute isn't a prison, it's a reformatory. The people there aren't prisoners, they're guests. They don't live in cells, they live in lounges. The Admin is apparently very touchy about this, according to one dialogue option.
  Warden: We don't use the p-word here.
• Bob Ross Rib: There's a Sunshine Institute prisoner in Episode 3 that's pretty much an Expy of Bob Ross.
• Book Ends:
  • The opening sequence for both Episodes 1 and 5 mirror each other.
  • In Episode 1, you have a choice to put Radar in charge while your at the sea temple. In Episode 5, if you decide to hit the road, you can make Radar Beacon Town's new Hero in Residence.
  • After meeting with Petra in the mines, you race each other. If you choose to hit the road in Episode 5, Petra challenges you to a race again.
  • When you meet Jack for the first time, you tell Petra to either be herself, or play it cool. Later in Episode 5, Jack has a similar reaction to meeting Ivor. And you're given the same two options again. Bonus points for being in the same building
  • The main story begins with Jesse getting a gauntlet stuck to their hand. You defeat Romeo by using a different gauntlet to take his admin powers away.
• Brick Joke: If you complete the painter's quest in Fred's Keep, you'll be told that Fred's favorite color was lapis blue, to which Jesse comments that it's the same color as their underwear. Later on, when you're confronted by an assassin (assuming you're sans sword from an earlier choice), Jesse saying that they wear blue underwear is one of the dialogue options to prove that they're the real Jesse.
• Bring It: One dialogue option once you make it to Romeoburg and the two inhabitants threaten to sic their army on you.
  Jesse: I've fought creepers, zombies, a giant computer, a witherstorm... (as everyone strikes an Ass Kicking Pose) Bring out your army. We can take it.
  (next dialogue choice)
  Jesse: Did you not hear me? I said bring it on! I'm ready to fight this army of yours.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: One of the choices in Episode 5 leads to a situation like this. Telling the Ocelots to attack Romeo will just result in Romeo slamming them around with telekinesis. Heck, Lukas gets an extra thrashing for getting a good hit on Romeo.
• Brought Down to Normal: Xara used to be an Admin but was stripped of her powers. Later on, this is how you defeat Romeo.
• But Now I Must Go: Whatever happens, Petra will decide at the end to leave Beacontown and pursue her own path, having made peace with being separated from her friends to this end, just as everyone else has moved on. You can choose whether or not to have Jesse join her.
• Central Theme: How friendships can change with time, the reasons behind it, and how it can be dealt with, are all explored in a couple different character arcs.
• Colossus Climb: The Admin's prismarine colossus form gets taken down by Jesse this way.
• Comically Lopsided Rivalry: Stella makes a big deal about Jesse being her rival, but Jesse never met her before. Stella tries to push the idea that they are, but any acknowledge of it by Jesse is solely Jesse humoring her. Throughout the game, Stella is only really a minor annoyance at worst while Jesse has much more important things to worry about.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Should you choose to pick what aspects of Season 1 you want Season 2 to use, they'll be referenced in the game proper. For example, whatever you built for the building competition in Season 1 will be a structure in Beacontown in Season 2, and Ivor's house in Season 2 will have lavafalls or waterfalls depending on whether or not you allowed his "lava skull" house to stand in Season 1.
  • Some of the characters you met during Season 1's Adventure Pass arc reappear in minor roles in Episode 1 of Season 2. And if you choose to remain in Beacontown at the very end of the game, you're told that you have letters from Aiden and WP — the latter presumably meaning "White Pumpkin".
  • When you're confronted by an assassin in Episode 4, if you gave up your sword to be saved from falling off of a cliff earlier, you'll be asked to prove you're the real Jesse by saying something only they'd know. One of the options is for Jesse to say that their favorite food is potatoes, which they would have said if they'd eaten one of the potatoes they'd found in the swamp back in Season 1 Episode 4.
• Controllable Helplessness: If you idle too long trying to decide whether to leave Nurm or Lluna in the booby-trapped prison cell near the end of "Jailhouse Block", Xara will get annoyed and take them both, leaving you behind. You can wander around the cell all you want, but nothing else will happen, and trying to leave will result in the trap triggering and blowing you up.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: When confronting the Admin in his tower, if you tell the New Ocelots to charge, the Admin will toss them aside like ragdolls, but Lukas will actually manage to land a punch.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Zig-Zagged
  • When you start a new file, you have the option to choose which particular branches you want to cut off by choosing which Season 1 paths you want the references in Season 2 to use. E.G., whatever you pick as what you built for the building competition will be a structure in Beacontown in Episode 1. Alternatively, you can just jump straight into the game and let the branches be cut off automatically.
  • Defied with the Youtubers that appear in Episode 1 since either Dan or Lizzie could have died based on your choices, but that's not something you can pick at the start of the game, neither of them appear; just Stacy and Stampy, both of whom survive no matter what.
  • Played with in the flashback in the beginning of Episode 1; it shows Jesse wearing the armor of Magnus/Ellegard (whoever's armor you chose to take at the beginning), and wielding an enchanted pickaxe, when battling the Wither Storm, no matter what you actually did in Season 1 (this is not something you can choose at the beginning of the game). However, it turns out to be Lukas's literary adaptation of your adventures, and he's revealed in that scene to be a bit of an Unreliable Narrator, leaving it up in the air what the game actually thinks Jesse used.
• Dark Reprise: That song that plays over the intro credits of Episode 5, as the camera sweeps through the Admin-corrupted Beacontown, is a slower, downpitched version of the song that played over the intro credits of Episode 1 as the player saw Beacontown for the first time. The camera even follows a bat in Episode 5, corresponding with the parrot it followed in Episode 1.
• Dead All Along: Vos. He died of starvation in the Sea Temple, and the Admin pretended to be him.
• Death Course: The Admin sets Jesse's group through a series of challenges, with the intent of weeding out the weakest among them. He's increasingly frustrated as Jesse continually stops to help the others.
• Developer's Foresight: When Jesse has to decide to leave either Nurm or Lluna behind, if you make Jesse wait for about five minutes, Xara will lose her patience and take Nurm and Lluna with her, leaving Jesse behind in the cell. Jesse can walk around the cell aimlessly for an indefinite period of time, but the only way to advance the game is to have Jesse walk out, setting of the trap and killing them, triggering a game over.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In Episode 1, Jack's arguments with Nurm about the existence of the Admin comes off as an aggressive atheist arguing with a religious follower. It ends up emphasized if Jesse doesn't take Jack's side.
  (one dialogue tree)
  Jesse: Yeah, but... what if it is real? The Admin, I mean?
  Jack: Ugh... Trapped down here with a bunch of softheaded shulkers...
  —>(a different dialogue tree)
  Jesse: Why are you being so fight-y, Jack? C'mon.
  Jack: Because I refuse to believe there's some all-powerful dude running around, playing games with my life!
  • The same episode has this interesting exchange. Inside the Prismarine Temple during the topic of the Giant Prismarine Colossus statues, Jack enforces his disliking for said statues. Nurm (a villager) calls him out for it, taking it the wrong way.
  Jesse: Right? And what's up with their faces? They don't even look, y'know, like people.
  Jack: I know. I hate them. (Nurm rebukes him) Uh, no, Nurm. There's nothing wrong with "not people." C'mon, geez...
• Doomed Hometown: Downplayed, as Beacontown is never fully destroyed; During the Regular Caller discussion with Lukas after defeating the Admin's Prismarine Colossus, one dialogue option is to have Jesse lament that they can't seem to go on adventures alongside running Beacontown without the residents getting put in danger as a result. What's more, the Admin's challenges immediately before and after that conversation basically boil down to "Beat this challenge or Beacontown is doomed" in order to get Jesse to cooperate.
• Eye Scream: Jack in "Hero in Residence" gets his bad eye torn out in a fight, if you choose to help Petra retrieve her sword instead of assisting him.
• Fake Shemp: Lukas has only two line in Episode 4^note "Jesse? Man, is it good to see you." and "Where are the others?". As it would have been awfully inconvenient to call in his voice actor to record just two lines, both lines were reused from different episodes.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: If you stand completely still, the Three-Headed Ghast can take several minutes to kill you.
• Fighting Down Memory Lane: This literally becomes the case in Episode 5. The final battle between Jesse and Romeo/The Admin has Romeo teleporting him to significant locations from each episode from 1 to 3 and fighting as Vos, the Colossus, the Snowman and Petra/Jack.
• Fighting Your Friend: In Episode 3, the Admin forces Jesse to fight Jack or Petra, depending on who destroyed the clock in Episode 2.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Leader / The Heart: Jesse.
  • The Lancer: Petra.
  • The Big Guy: Jack.
  • The Smart One: Nurm.
  • The Heart: Radar.
• Foreshadowing: In Episode 2 after the group gets trapped in the Admin's "Icy Palace of Despair" Vos openly states that he doesn't believe Radar and Lukas are "up to the task". The similarities to the Admin's established Social Darwinism is because Vos is the Admin.
• Freudian Slip: In Episode 1, if Jesse arrives late to meet Petra in the mines then she'll say that she's worries that Jesse doesn't have time for her before quickly correcting the statement to be about Jesse's friends.
  Petra: Sometimes I worry you don't have time for me— your friends anymore
• Group Hug: In Episode 4 after learning that Ivor is the ninja if Jesse lets Ivor finish his story instead of trying to punch him then there is an option to hug Ivor, who will then pull Petra in.
  • The New Order of the Stone share a Group Hug before Petra leaves at the end of the season.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: When the Admin steals Jesse's identity and returns to Becontown, he becomes a tyrant and enslaves everyone not long after arriving, and everyone, including several of Jesse's closest friends, thinks that the real Jesse has gone mad with power. After defeating the Admin though, everyone is told about the mistaken identity and Jesse regains their status of being Loved by All.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • When trying to escape the Sunshine Institute in "Jailhouse Block", someone has to stay behind in Prisoner X's cell so a TNT trap won't spring. Nurm immediately volunteers, and you can choose whether to let him or instead leave a less-willing Lluna behind.
  • When everyone is about to leave the Underneath in "Below The Bedrock", Radar volunteers to stay behind to distract a giant Enderman so everyone from Fred's Keep can escape. As before, you can choose whether to let him or instead bring him along and leave the Fred Folk behind. However, this choice will come back to haunt you...
  • ...at the end of "Above and Beyond"; if you chose to not leave Radar behind in the Underneath, when a Prismarine Colossus goes rogue after Romeo is stripped of his powers, Romeo will sacrifice himself to allow everyone else to escape. Unlike the previous two, you can't choose someone else as bait in this case—the only way to ensure Romeo survives is to allow Radar to go through with his sacrifice, allowing him to return with the giant Enderman in tow to distract the Colossus so everyone can escape.
• I Call It "Vera": Petra has named her sword "Miss Butter."
• Ice Palace: A good chuck of chapter 2 happens in a big, ominous Ice palace made for the Snowman's challenge.
• Icon of Rebellion: In Episode 5, there are several posters of Ocelots around Beacontown. It is eventually revealed that Lukas reformed the Ocelots to rebel against The Admin, who has stolen Jesse's identity, explaining he reformed the group to remind everyone of what it was like before, including The Admin (who Lukas thinks is his friend Jesse gone mad), directly calling it a symbol for Beacontown to rally around in their rebellion.
• Impersonating the Evil Twin: Variant. The first part of Jesse's plan to infiltrate the Admin's tower in Episode 5 requires them to get Stella's help; to get to her, they have to impersonate the Admin, who has been running Beacontown disguised as Jesse since Episode 3. The effectiveness of this is Zig-Zagged: Stella's the first one to see through it, due to walking in on you taking a Fireworks Guild uniform shortly after she just finished talking to the Admin. Later on, however, Lukas and several others see you, Jack, and Petra in those uniforms (keep in mind that it's never explained how the Admin justified Jack and Petra's absence until this point), and you have to convince him that you're the real Jesse and it wasn't you terrorizing everyone. How believable it is that all the other citizens buy it depends on your dialog choices—you can either be as brutal as the Admin or the complete opposite, and their reactions will vary accordingly, but they're all so terrified of Admin!Jesse that none of them will question you either way.
• Ironic Name: The Admin, a bitter loner with no friends, shares his real name with a character from the most famous love story of all time. The people who worked on the game confirmed this was an intentional decision.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: At the end of the Season, Jesse can either leave Beacontown to adventure with Petra or stay to continue running Beacontown.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Downplayed, but notable. While the marketing doesn't go out of its way to say that Reuben died way back in Episode 4 of season 1, an astute observer can notice he is absent from all images and trailers for the game.
• Malevolent Mugshot: In the trailer for Episode 5, there are several shots of Admin-controlled Beacontown that feature lots banners with Jesse's face on them, presumably put there by Romeo or his goons, while Romeo is running Beacontown disguised as Jesse.
• Meaningful Echo: Vos saying that losers are supposed to lose as it reveals that he’s the Admin.
• Mercy Mode: In a first for Telltale, after so many deaths, the game will refuse to allow you to take damage anymore. You do have to die quite a bit to trigger this, though, making it hard to even get intentionally. ^note If you die exactly once at every opportunity the game gives you, it should trigger once you're killed by the three-headed Ghast near the end of Episode 3.
• Might Makes Right: The viewpoint of the Admin and Stella, with a large helping of Social Darwinism mixed in.
  The Admin: Okay no, no no no no no. This is all wrong, people. Wrong. You're not supposed to help each other. The losers are supposed to lose.
• A Million Is a Statistic: A justified example, believe it or not. The "overarching choices" at the very end of the game treat giving Xara her bed as the better option. Doing this dooms Champion City and potentially hundreds of lives as Romeo will snap his finger wipe out the city all at once. The opposite choice, not giving Xara her bed, results in Xara attacking Romeo when he goes to destroy Champion City, which time he'll kill Xara but leave the city untouched. However, Jesse doesn't know either of these outcomes will happen. In the moment, Jesse is only choosing between giving Xara her bed, convincing her that there is still hope in the world and helping her heal as a person or keeping it from her, depriving her of hope, and letting her believe that nothing in her life matters except her desire for revenge for no real reason. From Jesse's perspective, they aren't making a choice between one person and hundreds of people.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Admin seems to be fond of these, including Wither Zombies, Spider Creepers, Ender Creepers, and what appear to be Magma Slimes. He also has a few varieties of the Iron Golem — Ice, Magma, and Ender.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: In episode 5, when the team searches for fireworks in Fireworks Union uniforms, they get confronted by a guard. Jack says some pretty suspicious things to tell the group is in the Fireworks Union, but the guard doesn't notice.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Like in Season 1, the YouTubers' content gets referenced when they appear, such as Wink from Stacy Plays' Dogcraft series, a miniature version of Stampy's house and Love Garden from his Lovely World series (along with his love for cake, once again), and Anthony's love for cookies.
  • Stampy's appearance in Episode 5, "Above and Beyond" is also a reference to his collaboration series with Stacy, My Story Mode House, where he tames several parrots and names himself the "Parrot Prince". Clearly Telltale took that idea and ran with it in canon.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When you and Petra read Fred's journal to find out how to defeat Romeo once and for all, Fred talks about how much Romeo cared about his friends — Fred and Xara — and how, more than anything, he wanted to keep them together. Petra realizes that she's been the same way the whole time, getting upset when her friends couldn't spend time with her and not wanting them to move on with their lives, and dreads the idea of Jumping Off the Slippery Slope like what happened with Romeo.
• Offhand Backhand: In "Hero in Residence", if the right choices are made, Jesse casually shoves away a beefy bodyguard larger than them trying to attack from behind while in the middle of an argument with Petra, without really being bothered at all.
• Player Nudge: If you don't give Xara her bed before leaving the Underneath, she'll run ahead of you to take on Romeo alone. When you and the others are traveling through the mine to get into Beacontown afterward, Jack will quip how she might have "been more even-keeled if she'd just got some darn rest". While this doesn't have any impact on your ability to beat the game, the "overarching choices" bit at the end of Episode 5 hints that giving Xara her bed was the better choice.
• Power Trio: It's revealed that the Admin was originally part of a trio of Admins who ended up fighting over who would control the world. The second, Xara, was defeated and had her powers taken away. The third was killed.
• Precious Puppy: Blocco in Episode 4. While he does serve some plot relevance (unless you already know the "Fred Fact" he's used to uncover), you can also pet him and play games with him just to watch him be adorable, and Jesse outright calls him cute the first time they pick up the bone that opens these minigames. It helps that he stands out with a Non-Standard Character Design, being black with some white markings instead of all grey like normal Minecraft puppies.^note  This is due to him being based off of "Rocco", the dog of Episode 4's narrative designer Juan Vaca and the unofficial mascot of the design team.
• Prison Episode: "Jailhouse Block".
• Record Needle Scratch: When Jesse, Petra, and Jack are searching for fireworks backstage at The Admin's "JesseCon", the music cuts out with one of these as they realize the chests are filled with anything but fireworks.
• Regular Caller:
  • After finding the Prismarine Gauntlet in Hero in Residence, a possible dialogue option has Jesse lampshade how all their adventures always revolve around them.
    Jesse: Man, what are the odds? Command blocks, portal keys... Why is it always me?
  • After the Admin's Colossus avatar is defeated, Lukas lampshades how typical it seems for Jesse to be caught up in stuff like this, and how they can't seem to escape that kind of life.
• Running Gagged: An In-Universe variation. If Jesse plays along with Stella's delusions of the two being rivals in Episode 1, then Jesse can keep playing along until Episode 3 when they gets sick of it.
• Sadistic Choice: Though a few of them are subverted with non-obvious better answers.
  • In "Hero in Residence", there's a rather tricky one: Either help your old friend Petra retrieve her sword off a ledge, or defend your new ally Jack from an attacker. If you choose to help Petra, Jack gets his bad eye torn out in the fight, but if you choose to assist Jack, Petra loses her sword, which she spent hours enchanting.
    • However, choosing Petra is arguably better because you already spent a lot of effort retrieving "Miss Butter" from a different situation earlier, you've known Petra for longer, Jack was already blind in that eye, and he won't complain as much. Still, though, losing an eye is a lot more painful than losing asword.
  • In "Giant Consequences", you are at one point asked to choose whether to make Petra (who you have been friends with for years) or Jack (who has already suffered through a seriously painful Trauma Conga Line that he probably didn't deserve) break the clock while you and the other person go rescue Radar (and also Stella, if you choose to do so). Whoever breaks the clock is forced to become the Admin's champion and separated from Jesse, and most likely forced to endure horrific circumstances alone.
  • In "Jailhouse Block", you have to choose to leave Nurm or Lluna behind to prevent a trap from blowing up. In both cases you've already made a promise to either Jack (who has been your faithful companion since the start of Season 2) or Stella (who you've been working to your side to fight the Admin), respectively, that you would keep them safe.
    • However, whoever you didn't pick rejoins you later thanks to Ivor, making this less sadistic than it seems at first glance, and leaving Nurm behind is barely the better choice, gameplay-wise, as Lluna will later sniff out some good armor in Romeoburg that would otherwise be inaccessible. However, this comes at the cost of listening to Jack mourn Nurm until he reappears, and the armor is more cosmetic than anything else.
  • In "Below the Bedrock", either you leave the people of Fred's Keep (peaceful players living in a Crapsack World with no sky, who you've already promised to help lead out) to fend for themselves against a several stories-tall Enderman, or agree to your faithful assistant Radar's plan to leave him behind to distract it long enough for the villagers to escape through the portal back to the overworld.
    • However, if Radar is left behind, he reappears at the very end of "Above and Beyond" with the giant Enderman still following him. The Enderman will attack a rogue Prismarine Colossus, allowing everyone the opportunity to escape. Had you left the Fred Folk behind, a newly depowered Romeo would perform a Heroic Sacrifice to let everyone else escape. This makes leaving Radar behind an arguably better option.
  • In "Above and Beyond", a decision made in the previous episode comes back to haunt you. Romeo/The Admin, disguised as Jesse, threatens Axel and Olivia to think twice before leaving Beacontown. He makes an example by waving his hand at Champion City and the next thing..KA-BOOM!, leaving Axel, Olivia and most of all, Stella horrified. This could only happen if you gave Xara her bed in the last episode, which prompted her to stay in the Underneath. If not, she would've came with you and confronted Romeo herself....only to become the example instead of Champion City.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: One of the phases of the final battle between the Admin/Romeo and Jesse includes a sword fight where the Admin will take on the form of either Jack or Petra depending on who broke the clock in Episode 2 and therefore fought Jesse as the Admin's champion in Episode 3.
• Shout-Out:
  • A conversation in one of the dialogue trees in "Hero in Residence" has Jack mention learning how to hold his breath underwater for ten minutes. This is a reference the same talent used by Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island series.
  • The Colossus Climb in "Giant Consequences" involves irritating the colossus with arrows and riding a horse to get close enough to jump on. Much like the original Shadow of the Colossus.
  • Episode 3 has Jesse dressed in an outfit very similar to Chell's.
• The Silent Bob: One dialogue tree in "Above and Beyond" has a character converse this trope if Jesse chooses to remain silent. It appears after Jesse has started to convince Lukas that the Admin has been impersonating him.
  Lukas: I don't know how you manage to say so much without saying anything ... but you're really good at it.
• Sprint Meter: Variant. Combat now includes a Stamina Meter which drains a little when you dodge and a bit more when you attack. If it empties, Jesse will slump over in fatigue and will be unable to attack. If you go a few seconds without attacking or dodging, then the meter will start to quickly refill.
• Sword Limbo: As seen in the QTE fight against the ninja Ivor in Episode 4, Jesse still has a habit of using this dodge in fights.
• Technical Euphemism: The Warden calls Sunset Institute a "behavioral adjustment retreat center". The protagonist comments that it's basically a prison and the Warden insists that they do not use "P-word" around here.
• Unknown Rival: Stella sees Jesse as her sworn rival, even though Jesse has never met her before. You can either point out that she's not your rival or play along, though Jesse will only keep up the latter for a few episodes before deciding enough is enough.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Zig-Zagged in Episode 5; the bare-bone points of Jesse's plan to get into the Admin's tower are more or less successful, but the plan as a whole is not without hiccups. Plus, it only gets as far as getting into the tower — they're intercepted by the Admin before they make it to the terminal, while they were hoping to get there before the Admin even realized they'd gotten in.
• [Verb] This!: Jesse tells the Admin this in "Above and Beyond" before punching him in the face with the golden de-op gauntlet.
  Jesse: Administrate this.
• We Will Meet Again: In the Stay in Beacontown Ending, if Jesse lets Radar finish his rambling then Radar can discuss a note he found in the mail which says, "Look out." and is signed by "W.P."
• What the Fu Are You Doing?: Variant. If you screw up the Quicktime Event where you have to jump off of Radar's shield, Radar will pick up your dropped sword and weakly swing it in the general direction of the surrounding Wither Zombies, without even looking. He still manages to kill all of them this way.
• What the Hell, Player?: When Jesse is roaming Beacontown posing as the Admin in Episode 5, they can talk to the pig owner, who was forced to butcher and cook his pet pigs. He'll fearfully offer them a porkchop, and if they say they'll try one, he'll actually list them by the names of the pigs they once were. If Jesse still brings themself to pick and eat one, you'll get a Telltale popup that reads, "You ate the porkchop. Wow."
• Wham Line: "Losers are supposed to lose."
• Where It All Began: The synopsis for "Above and Beyond" (Episode 5, the final one of Season 2) reveals that the fight between Jesse and the Admin will go back to Beacontown.
• Wowing Cthulhu: Deconstructed. Jesse's accomplishments have managed to impress the Admin. Unfortunately, this makes the Admin use his godlike powers to keep testing Jesse's limits which puts a lot of people in danger.

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