Tengai Makyou IV The Apocalypse contains examples of:
- Apocalypse How: The Dark Cult plots. Includes Nuke 'em and recreating the great flood, among many other mass destruction plots.
- Alien Blood: Santenomo.
- Big Brother Is Watching: In IV, after the Recurring Villain immortal idiot monkey Manto proclaimed himself as the King of Lake Tahoe, he placed monkeys in all the houses to watch the local populace, and punish everyone who badmouths "the awesome Lord Manto". One of them is blocking the train station leading to the next area.
- Gratuitous English: IV being set in America takes this to ludicrous levels:
- MANTO'S CHALLENGE THE TRAP! IN USA!!
- At one point, he says “tappu” or “tap” in Japanese instead of “trap” (even when the text below consistently reads as “trap” or “torappu”). It’s difficult to tell whether this was a slip-up left in the game or done on purpose, but considering the fact that Manto is stupid, we can probably let that slide regardless.
- WERUCOME TO ALCATRAZ!
- Of course there's the Jamaican trainer Bob, when the Mexican bobsleigh team lets him down.Bob:"Why! What you say!"
- MANTO'S CHALLENGE THE TRAP! IN USA!!
- Birthmark of Destiny: Played straight then hilariously deconstructed in IV with the Fire Clan Mark. Rizing bears one on his shoulders, but then we find out Yuno (and Yumemi eventually) has it on her breast, and Zengo bears that mark on his... um.. posterior.
- Bloodless Carnage: Averted unlike with the earlier games, and how.
- Cyborg: Dark Cult apostle Doctor M, ruler of Minnesota. Half Mad Scientist, half 1955 Cadillac Series 62 convertible.
- Degraded Boss: Scar Wolf becomes a regular enemy during Yuno's training.
- Expy: Ace in IV to Kabuki in Manjimaru.
- Heel–Face Turn: Billy, Yuno (albeit against her will, and for a very short period of time) and Doctor M.
- Yumemi is absorbed by the Final Boss when he other side, her brother, calls to her subconscious.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Ninja robot Number 3/Kamon, justified in that he's a robot that shifts sides whenever his circuits are shorted.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Averted for the main cast, but you can later in the story not only name a party member, but actually draw his face. The voice acting actually includes the name you chose (at least in the Japanese version), voiced depending on your input!
- Heroic Sacrifice: Magu... and much later in the story, Seia.
- But she gets better.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Rizing encountering ... Death? while casually claiming the soul of an inuit baby. During the fight, Rizing can't use the attack command because the baby is in the way. Cue Seia's entrance, coming to the rescue and slaying him anyways.
- Kurabe, before getting the three treasures, is invincible.
- Kill the Ones You Love: A very popular method among the Dark Cult.—Belladona:"So Yuno, how does it feels to kill the one you loved?"
- Mental World: No less than three times, and then there are journeys inside a movie, a cursed children book and two dungeons of the Womb Level variety.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Delacroix. A Cowardly Boss no less.
- Mood Whiplash: Just after the Disc-One Final Boss, as you go out of the city you just saved, it is nuked from orbit by the Dark Cult. The body count raises dramatically afterwards and the story becomes much darker than before, and in the PSP version, the title screen even becomes crimson red.
- Nonstandard Game Over: During the Alamo arc, you have to infiltrate the Houston base to stop the fake president from firing a laser that will annihilate Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and the Houston base you're inside. Usually whenever your party is KO'ed, you escape barely to the nearest inn. However, this boss battle is different, it's a Timed Mission: if you take longer than 10 minutes to defeat him and stop the beam (which is unlikely unless you really suck), you lose the battle instantly and the monitor shows the cities being erased one by one from the map, and then your turn comes... The game then pulls out a Reset Button and returns you to just before that boss.
- The Neo-Cattle factory is set to explode after 10 minutes in a very similar fashion. You'll have to solve a conveyor belt puzzle for that to happen... However this trope is averted here. While you get to see an alternate cutscene, there's no penality whatsoever for running out of time: you'll start in the inn and the story will proceed normally.
- Played straight when you don't manage to defeat Mecha-Capone on the elevator in Chicago before it reaches Floor 110. He explodes killing everyone.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Zengo posing as "Mister White" (only in the PSP re-release) in front of his family, and as "the Mysterious Shadow" in front of the party whenever they meet him in the final dungeon. The reason being he said he won't come back unless he became a successful demon hunter. However, nobody is fooled.
- Pig Man: Or rather pig woman. Madame Appetit is a morbidity obese, middle aged woman with a pig-like face and an appetite to match.
- Point of No Return: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, the New York "Devil Island". What's bad is that the Saturn version doesn't warn you at all of this coming. While the PSP Updated Re-release added a mini-dungeon in-between and warned you that you can't come back if you continue further, you can still save beyond that point with no chance to go back.
- Sequential Boss: The Final Boss: He even offers you to chose what would be the second phase (after you beat his summon Logoss): "Endless Summons" (a Boss Bonanza), "Four Souls" (where he keeps reviving himself four times, naturally with his nasty potentially One-Hit Kill Limit Break used four times as well) or "Iron Skin" (where only Rizing can deal anything more than Scratch Damage on him). And afterwards comes the Eldritch Abomination.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Madame Appetit is a monstrous pig-woman who sends out her "Debu Rangers" to make everyone in the American Southwest obese so that she can later make them into food ("debu" is Japanese for "fat", by the way). One such unfortunate victim shown in an animated cutscene is a girl named Karen; a Debu Ranger sneaks through her window at night and force feeds her a handful of magic biscuits, causing her to rapidly fatten up and rip most of her nightgown to shreds.
- Starter Villain: "Pure Silver" Blizzard, ruler of Alaska and the first apostle of the Dark Cult fought in the game.
- Updated Re-release: The PSP
Polished Port: besides the new content (mostly added just before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon), the interface got cleaned up and the cutscenes are in a much higher quality than the Saturn version even considering the videos in that version were among the best for the system and the few that used the Cinepack codec. However, the 3D overworld map scaling effects (from the end of the game) look much more gorgeous in the Saturn original than the PSP one, and lots of FMV of Rizing doing a finishing attack on bosses were removed to streamline those fights. - Video Game Perversity Potential: When you meet with Candy with both Rizing and Yuno, she will wonder what are you fighting for, then concludes it must be love. "What men long for is the b-o-d-y. My body is gorgeous. So... want to come in my room and take a look for yourself?" You can accept and indeed she obliges and takes Rizing with her. ... But she won't show him her body. He'll have to fight her alone.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Ace says this to you when you try to leave to the rest of the country while affected by the extremely contagious blue pleague (everyone and everything you talk to -except for one very special NPC- is affected).
- Would Hurt a Child: The Dark Cult manage to find inventive ways to do so... scarring a young Raizing, brainwashing them through terrible pop music/TV/drugs, making them werewolves, zombify them by stripping out their hearts and bathing in their blood, making them obese, and then of course casually claiming baby souls and collecting human flesh and blood...
- You Killed My Father: Rizing was raised by the elderly Red Bear after they survived a shipwreck, but Blizzard, the first Dark Cult Apostle, fatally wounded him (who's also the boss of the first dungeon, an ice dungeon as per the series tradition). He sets then after taking revenge to continue his father figure's legacy and defeat Santomo.
