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"To see a Keeper is not an easy thing, especially one who does not wish to be seen."
Artemus

Originally developed by Looking Glass Studios, Thief is a series of first-person stealth action games starring an anti-hero named Garrett as he goes about stealing stuff in an ancient, noirish and unnamednote  medieval-esque/steampunk city. Each game consists of a series of missions that begin with little or no connection to each other but eventually become part of an over-arching plotline concerning Garrett saving the world from a great evil.

The series is especially notable for the relatively free exploration allowed within the boundaries of each scenario and the many ways the player can approach the given objectives. Self Imposed Challenges, such as completing objectives in as short time as possible or completely avoiding detection and confrontation, are popular among the more devoted fans. The series is rather influential on the stealth genre, as many of its most important features, such as light, the amount of noise being made, and the player character being bad at combat (thus making stealth important in the first place) are things this game popularized. The games are loved for the convincing and engrossing atmosphere they create by taking usually Victorian Steampunk and giving it a dash of medieval flavour, making for a truly unique and interesting setting. The Thief series has a strong following and many elaborate fan-made scenarios have been created.

This devotion eventually led to the creation of The Dark Mod, a total conversion for Doom³, turning it into a stealth-based game like Thief with even more fan-made missions.

The instalments in the series so far:

All four games can be found on GOG and Steam, so you don't have to fret about finding physical copies anymore.

For an overview of the series' many characters and factions, go here.

Not to be confused with the 1981 arcade game of the same name.


General tropes of this game series:

  • Abnormal Ammo: The four available elemental Trick Arrows, which use magic elemental crystals as their arrowheads. Some supernatural monsters in the series are also capable of launching varyingly weird projectiles.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Downwind Thieves' Guild is headquartered in the sewers beneath the Overlord's Fancy tavern and illegal casino.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality: In the games, grass is quiet while marble is noisy. In Real Life, the opposite couldn't be more true. In order to make noise on marble, someone would need to have tap dance shoes, while grass is crunchy no matter what footwear (or lack of) someone has. But "harder surfaces make more noise" is easier to understand.
  • Adjective Animal Alehouse: "The Crippled Burrick Inn" from the second game. (Burricks are the appropriately down-to-earth version of dragons in the game's universe.)
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: The elder civilizations aren't going to need those shiny things any more, are they?
  • Aerith and Bob: The character names (and surnames) in the series' universe run the whole gamut. From common-sounding names of European or Asian origin and rarer Real Life historical names to more fantastic My Nayme Is variations or outright abstract, figurative or descriptive names.
  • The Alcoholic: A grumpy, naive and overall hilarious guard in practically all his incarnations. Played for laughs.
  • All Myths Are True: The existence of some of the mythical antagonists certainly fits this trope. And The City itself is a place where many a local area has its own set of local myths.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Averted with the undead, as you meet a few in the series who can be helpful. Played straight with the Trickster's monsters.
  • Always Night: Given the tone and atmosphere of the series and your character being a shadow-utilizing thief, this is justified. Only two missions in The Dark Project are set during daytime, and even in those, you spend most of your time indoors or in an abandoned old mine. The later games mostly offer glimpses of dusk at best, and usually only during cutscenes.
  • Ancient Tomb: The missions "Down in the Bonehoard" and "The Lost City". The tombs of Fort Ironwood in the third game are also fairly old and spooky.
  • Anti-Hero: Garrett claims to be simply looking out for himself, but it is always up to him to save the day. Granted, revenge also has something to do with it.
  • Arc Symbol: There are eyes everywhere.
  • Arc Words: See the page quote.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Eye. Twice.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The series is well known and highly respected for the impressive AI of its NPCs. On the hardest levels, forget about the guards merely reacting to details like blood on the floor. The guards will get suspicious if a door is open that shouldn't be open.
  • Artificial Script:
  • Asshole Victim: Given that most of the people Garret steals from are corrupt nobles, religious fanatics and literal monsters, it's unlikely players will feel much guilt about doing so.
  • Ascended Fanboy: By the times of Deadly Shadows, Garrett seems to have a lot of admirers among co-workers as well as foes.
  • Atlantis: Two visits to a long-lost underground city that used to be inhabited by The Precursors. And in Deadly Shadows, the sunken city of the Kurshok.
  • Back Stab: Mooks tend to react negatively to corpses they find. It should be pointed out that this game series does not encourage backstabbing, sometimes to the point of initiating a Nonstandard Game Over for any sort of killing, unlike pretty much any other Stealth-Based Game. Usually that's only if you're playing on the highest difficulty setting — although there are some levels where you auto-fail the mission if you're detected even once, or leave behind any trace of your having been there. Dead bodies count as traces.
  • Badass Normal: Garrett. Gods, monsters, and many far more heavily-armed and better-trained soldiers fall prey to his razor-sharp cunning.
  • Bad Moon Rising: The second-to-last mission in The Metal Age has a red full moon in the night sky.
  • Bag of Spilling: In the first two games, Garrett loses whatever consumable resources he has when finishing a level, and any gold he fails to spend when starting one.
    • This was a deliberate decision made by the designers in order to encourage players to buy lots of equipment and then go ahead and use it during missions instead of hoarding it for later, or alternatively having such a large stockpile that they never need to fear running out. No justification was given, just an attempt to invoke Rule of Fun.
    • Garrett loses Constantine's Sword between the first and second games, but this doesn't seem to be an issue since there are very few practical uses for a sword in the second game and the only distinction that it offered was not making Garrett more visible when it was drawn.
  • Bank Robbery: The sixth mission of the second game is one of these. Oddly enough, the main target is not money, but an incriminating recording. Still, there's plenty of cash to be picked up.
  • Beastly Bloodsports: You can eavesdrop on a conversation between two guards discussing bear fighting; one will lament that he remembers fighting bears being more savage when he was younger, and the pit owners didn't need to give the bear's paw hooks or razor collars to keep the fights interesting.
  • Beast Man: Quite literally - the animal-descended fantasy humanoids in the game's universe are referred to as "beastmen". Most of them are allied to the Pagans and often even live amongst them and serve in the Trickster's army.
  • Berserk Button: Though Garrett is the epitome of a cynical and seemingly self-centred Deadpan Snarker Anti-Hero, he often displays shock and outrage when confronted with violence against innocents or the helpless. Cue Tranquil Fury.
  • Bizarrchitecture: Constantine's mansion in the mission "The Sword". The first floor and forward area of the mansion appear normal but the further you go, the weirder it gets.
  • Bittersweet Ending: These seem to be the standard. But then again, Garrett apparently earns his happy ending at the end of the third instalment. Sort of.
  • Blinded by the Light: Flashbombs and flash mines are available to thieves, though we only see Garrett using them. They're useful for temporarily incapacitating civilians, guards or even certain kinds of monsters/creatures, allowing Garrett enough time to flee and avoid getting caught. However, if you throw them clumsily, you can blind yourself as well, though only very briefly.
  • Body Horror:
    • Well, there are zombies in all three games. But particularly the first.
    • The Mechanist Servants in The 'Metal Age. Being made into one of these is so horrific, some will thank you for killing them.
    • The Necrotic Mutox. You never actually see it used on a person, but you hear it. The person it is being demonstrated for reacts with both horror and fascination.
    • Pretty much anything to do with The Hag in Deadly Shadows. She does much worse than eat children alive. In fact, eating a child alive would be kind compared to what she does to at least one. Then there's her body, which is a vaguely humanoid mass of flesh studded with eyes and mouths, most of which do not appear to be under her control.
  • Book Ends: The beginning of The Dark Project and the end of Deadly Shadows.
  • Bookcase Passage: Lots of these, both literal and more figurative examples. Some of them are opened by hidden buttons and levers, but some can be opened as easily by slashing them several times with the sword.
  • Breaking Lecture: The villains of the series, mostly towards Garrett. He doesn't give a damn. But they usually don't know of his exact location when he's hidden, so they keep on ranting, hoping to unsettle him... In a rare aversion, the Big Bad of the first game managed to briefly "lecture" Garrett face-to-face.
  • Canis Latinicus: The Hammers have their "ye olde" style of speech, the Pagans talk in a childish pidgin and the Keepers (during the events of the third game) revel in some sort of faux-Latin while reading the ancient scrolls and textbooks from their library.
  • The Caper: Some levels (or groups of levels) are definitely full-fledged capers. Others are simple "pick the lock and loot what you find inside" missions.
  • Carry a Big Stick: This is probably one of the few game series where the protagonist's most iconic weapon is a blackjack - i.e. a simple wooden cudgel for knocking out people - rather than his sword or dagger.
  • Central Theme: Several, but the main overarching theme of all three instalments so far was the "fall from grace" motif of the three major factions of the setting. Each instalment explores what happens when one particular faction gains too much power or becomes too corrupt or too decadent for their own good and the good of the rest of the world. In each instalment, Garrett needs to help defeat the extremist part of a faction or stop the spread of corruption within a faction. This goes hand-in-hand with the gradually built-up theme of Garrett as a relatively True Neutral hero in a world full of opposites and divided loyalties.
  • Cherry Tapping:
    • On the score screen of each mission in the first two games, you receive separate bonus points for blackjacking people while in mid-air. It's actually easier to achieve than it sounds. Just prepare your blackjack for a swing and leap towards your unsuspecting victim from behind.
    • The Blackjack inflicts lethal damage and thus can kill a guard if he's somehow on the last hit point.
  • The Chosen One: A large number of Keeper prophecies revolve around Garrett, and at the end of Deadly Shadows, we discover why. Note that this doesn't mean he had or has supernatural powers. Garrett only acts, in the end, as the ultimate balancing agent. Whenever any one faction gains too much power, he topples it. Garrett may be The Chosen One according to others, but he certainly acts and thinks of himself as the opposite. Until the end of Deadly Shadows, when he accepts his fate - though not without much grousing and grumbling and sarcasm.
  • Chromatic Arrangement: Pagans wear green, Hammerites wear red and Keepers wear blue.
  • City of Adventure/Absurdly Cool City: Hoo boy. Lots of interesting and varied areas to visit, including the region surrounding the city. The third game even had a sandbox game feel to it - you could walk around a few select streets in the core quarters of the City, loot various establishments and bypassers, or sell your loot and purchase new equipment in hidden thievery shops.
  • The City Narrows: Several of the poorer boroughs and quarters.
  • City Guards: The ubiquitous City Watch.
  • City with No Name: The aptly named "The City" (as in, that seems to be its actual name). However, the City definitely has named boroughs (Shalebridge, Auldale, Old Quarter, etc.).
  • Clingy MacGuffin: Once again, The Eye (especially after it reappears in the third game). Do you see a pattern here?
  • Color-Coded Eyes: Garrett. His eyes are naturally grey (befitting a snarky, noir-esque loner) and his mechanical eye is bright green, which also matches right up with his sneaky, untrustworthy nature, what with him being a professional criminal and all.
  • Cool Old Guy: Artemus, the Keeper Elder who brought Garrett into the order and served the role of his teacher and father-like figure. Apparently, the only Keeper who can still top Garrett in stealth. Overlaps a little with Mr. Exposition in nearly every cutscene or location he appears in.
  • Constructed World: Though it does have characters with Earth-like names, it's very clearly set in a setting completely removed from everyday reality.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Garrett has no trouble delving into caves half-filled with lava as long as he remains on solid ground. But should even his little toe actually touch the lava, he drops dead instantly.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Garrett. We know nothing of his earliest past or who his parents were. Nor does he. When we first see him, he's already a ten or twelve-year-old street urchin, and there is no hint whatsoever of who he may have been before that.
    I was a kid. No parents, no home. Running messages and picking pockets to keep my ribs from meeting my spine.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: The grenade-launching robots seen in the second game can be tricked into destroying themselves by firing their grenades into the wall they are pressed against. Also, they can be disabled by water arrows in the open boiler on their back. This weakness is mentioned within the game; apparently, the smith just never got around to fixing it. What's more strange is that those big ugly death machines can be broken easily by Stuff Blowing Up (if you have enough), but the annoying "steel cherubs" cannot.
  • Cool Sword: Subverted with Garrett's standard sword (or, in the third game, his dagger). It's a completely average, not very flashy weapon, though a useful and competent one for certain situations. Played straight a bit more by Constantine's Sword, which Garrett acquires (for a time) during the events of the first game. It deals more damage and while it has dimmer colours, this is actually an advantage - unlike Garrett's classic sword, it doesn't shine when exposed to light sources. This makes it stealthier when unsheathed, even while hiding in shadows.
  • Conspicuously Selective Perception: The entire game mechanic is built around NPCs failing to notice the player character if he is in shadow while being extraordinarily sensitive to noises he makes himself and oblivious to noises made by machines set in motion by the protagonist. The Keepers, and Garrett, as an ex-Keeper, have quasi-mystical ninja powers, and the loss of all Glyph magic later implies that the stealth powers are non-magical, as well as the fact that young Garrett (and later, the young girl) can see Keepers. Not to mention the fact that Garrett continues to possess his stealth capabilities even while hiding in the Cradle's Memory (the past) while carrying a Toy. The Keepers' ability to hide buildings is magical. The Keeper Tower was invisible to the city until it lost its glyph protection.
  • Corridor Cubbyhole Run: When faced with corridors in indoor environments, Garrett has to hide from patrolling guards/monsters/zombies/etc. by dodging in and out of rooms, into alcoves, and so on.
  • Continuity Nod: Lots within the entire series, often with a Mythology Gag or two. They're a common part of the series - so much so that the fans were actually pretty annoyed when the third instalment didn't reference some major aspects of the second one (i.e. the Mechanists) as much as they were expecting. There are two main nods to Thief II in Deadly Shadows. First, the Viktrolas in the Wieldstrom Museum play recordings of Karras' voice which contain screaming and Karras repeatedly saying "repent." The other is a readable object in the Hammer cathedral that, to the annoyance of the player, says that the Master Builder was responsible for taking down Karras in the last game.
  • Crapsack World: "Noir Fantasy" describes it well. Everyone has an agenda, they conflict constantly, and even just living day-to-day is perilous. The nobles play games and see the poor as little more than animals, it's hard to distinguish between the keepers of the law and the actual criminals, and things live in the shadows and beyond the City's borders that you're better off not meeting...unless they decide to come to you. Then there's no 'better off' at all.
  • Crazy-Prepared: The Keepers in the first two games. The third... not so much. Kind of justified by the fact that it was their turn to undergo a major crisis, just like the Pagans in the first game and the Hammerites in the second. Though, technically, the Final Glyph is itself an example of Crazy Prepared: if someone like Gamall does what she did, wipe out all Glyphs to prevent them from being used for evil. The Keepers in the third game had problems merely because Gamall herself was crazy prepared and erased all information as to the reason for the Final Glyph.
  • Create Your Own Hero: In the climax of the first game Constantine could have simply paid Garrett for the Eye, taken someone else's eye to activate it, and proceeded with his plan mostly unopposed. His decision to betray and mutilate Garrett spelled his own doom when Garrett turned vengeful on him. In the second game Karras is from the very start after Garrett's hide for some reason (the best guess being, ironically: "Deal with the hero who defeated the Trickster before he has a chance to defeat me too") and what motivates Garrett to eventually find out about Karras's evil plan is the simple will to get him off his back (as he himself says at one point), even though the thing assumes a decisively more personal slant when Viktoria decides to sacrifice herself to try and save the City.
  • Creepy Child/Emotionless Girl: Gamall, the Keeper Translator, a 10-year-old girl, from the second and third game. She gets a pretty shocking Reveal during the course of the third game.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus:
    • The Hammerites are essentially your typical medieval Christian church Expys, but with a few twists on their mythology: The belief that the Builder (the one god) led humanity out of savagery by the gift of fire and more advanced tools like the first hammer, slightly mirrors the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus. It's also the reason why Hammerite rituals and worship are centred around human work, handicrafts and industry... And a possible explanation for the whole steampunk feel of the world.
    • It's pretty obvious that the Hammerites are primarily based on the conservative Catholic church of medieval times, whilst the Mechanists seem to be more or less the Protestant equivalent, with Karras being a sort of steampunk Martin Luther or John Calvin, only more misanthropic.
  • Cult:
    • The Pagan faction, which shuns advanced technology and the society of the City. They worship nature and its incarnate deity — the legendary and powerful, but chaotic Trickster, who despises industry and the working of steel. Needless to say, Pagans don't get along very well with Hammerites and the feeling is mutual (despite some rare instances of Worthy Opponent between the two factions).
    • The Mechanists in the second game. Essentially a much darker and even more self-righteous version of the Hammers (of whom they are an offshoot). The Mechs are partly based on some of the progressive, yet at the same time dogmatic Calvinist sects of Protestantism. Mechanist worship of technology and the leading figure of the church (Karras) borders the fanatical, and gradually goes off the rails... On the other hand, they seem to be progressive in things like gender equality (owing to their quasi-Protestant nature) and "donate" their technology to a number of major institutions and noble families in exchange for favour, including the Watch which is all part of the plan.
  • Cute Ghost Girl: Lauryl from the infamously haunted Shalebridge Cradle isn't all that scary once you get to know her in Thief: Deadly Shadows. She's a subversion of sorts since she appears as a ghostly blob of light with the shadow of a small girl. She's helpful and kind, showing Garrett various clues about the Cradle's dark past and guiding him out. After both of them leave the Cradle and enter the alleys of Old Quarter, the guards start fleeing in terror at the sight of Lauryl's ghostly appearance. For once, Garrett can take it easy with stealth in the City's streets. Funny stuff.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: The intro videos for the first two games have Garrett killing a guard with his bow. On the highest difficulty level, that's not even allowed, and canonically Garrett is considered the master thief because he doesn't murder everyone in his path.
  • Day in the Life: Garrett starts both the first and the second game while being quite down on his luck and having to lift additional weights (like by helping friends in need or taking unappealing or dangerous jobs) just to pay his landlord. Then, the main story kicks in.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Gray-and-Grey Morality. Light's just not any better. In a more literal sense, most games condition players to be nervous around very dark rooms and more comfortable in well-lit areas. In this game, it's the opposite: darkness is very good, and light is to be avoided whenever possible.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Garrett, known for his cynical, sarcastic view on life among over-serious and righteous people.
  • Deconstruction: Of several fantasy tropes.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • If you never sell the Kurshok Crown in Deadly Shadows, you won't have to steal it in the final level. But they don't make it easy for you: if you didn't sell the Crown, but head for the fence who buys stolen jewellery after exiting the Museum with all the other loot, you can accidentally sell the Kurshok Crown and break the ending because you cannot buy back the Crown. So the seemingly hard way is actually the easier way: If you do sell the Crown, and have to steal it from the Museum, the Crown becomes a protected item and you will be unable to accidentally sell it, a handy feature in the chaos and confusion at the end of the game.
    • In some levels, you can steal every key from a guard, have them chase you into a locked room, and then quickly leave and close the door. Doing so will lock the guards into the room so they can't leave, giving you free rein over the house. In fact, this is the best way to deal with the golden baby in Thief II.
    • In level 5 of Thief II, the intended method of beating the level is to listen in on Karras's conversation and learn where the safety deposit key is located. If you happen to find the key and make the wax mould first and then listen on the conversation, Garrett will say this:
    Garrett: I wonder how I knew I was going to need this wax keypress?
  • Devil, but No God: The Trickster is very much real and plays an active part in the goings on of the physical world (although he may possibly be just an exceptionally powerful nature spirit), while there is never any indication that the Builder is anything more than a religious construct.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Happens to the BigBads of the first and third game. Garrett being a stealthy bastard, he achieves victory not by brute force, but through cunning and preparation.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: The gameplay of the series in general, particularly if you choose to play all three games in a Stealth Run style as much as possible (to the extent of not even knocking out enemies even if you would have the opportunity). If you beat a tough mission on Expert level without getting caught and stealing all the loot or getting all the needed information/MacGuffins, you can congratulate yourself - you'll pretty much be ready to handle most stealth games in existence (at least the more flexible ones, without Useless Useful Stealth and Fake Difficulty).
  • Difficulty Levels: Higher difficulty levels not only increase the amount of loot that must the gained but also restrict the use of deadly force. In Deadly Shadows, it also affects how much hostile guards react to noises (which was used to discover that difficulty levels get reset when saving and reloading.)
  • Disposable Sex Worker and Disposable Vagrant: In the second and third games; the nobility conform to the old standard of seeing those below their social class as servants or playthings, not people. Sheriff Truart specifically mentions prostitutes as the kind of people he can bring to Karras who "will not be missed by anyone of consequence". And the Hag sees those who fall to her as resources to extend her life and skins to use as disguises.
  • Double Caper: A several-layered one in The Dark Project: someone hires Garrett to steal stuff from Constantine. Surprise! Constantine hired Garrett to steal stuff from himself (as a test). Constantine gives you a real mission. Surprise! Constantine turns out to be the Big Bad, and Garrett just stole the Artifact of Doom for him. Garrett then performs several more missions to stop Constantine/get revenge.
  • Drone of Dread: Used commonly throughout all three instalments, in certain segments of the ambient/atmospheric music. Particularly in scary missions. Though it is also common in some bits of non-supernatural missions, in order to build tension.
  • Dungeon Crawling: The subterranean and outside-the-City missions in general. Sometimes in actual catacombs and tombs, sometimes in various caves and caverns. In a subversion, only some of them are actually haunted. This trope also applies literally, since this is a stealth game where you'll mostly be crawling around and/or skulking in the shadows.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Viktoria, Lauryl, and Gamall from the original trilogy. Erin from the 2014 reboot. From what little we actually see of him, Garrett maybe this as well.
  • Eldritch Location:
    • In the first game, besides the Old Quarter and the Lost City, Constantine's mansion qualifies. The first few halls are quite conventional, but once you infiltrate it deeper, the weirdness starts, and it's quite unsettling.
    • In the third game, the Shalebridge Cradle is this trope personified. It's implied that the building itself has its own malevolent consciousness.
  • Elemental Powers: One of the unusual natural occurrences in the world of the series is the spontaneous formation of crystals that represent the four elements, depending on location (e.g. water crystals form in ponds and rivers, fire crystals in lava or fires, etc.). These are then commonly utilized by various thief guilds or independent thieves, including Garrett: They serve as the arrowheads for the various Trick Arrows used in heists. For instance, water arrows can put out torches, gas arrows knock out adversaries, moss arrows create moss carpets that deaden footsteps on louder surfaces. Funnily enough, the fire arrows in the game are not just simple arrows set alight, but fire crystal arrows that explode when hitting something, making them the most powerful offensive arrows. Then there's the Hand Brotherhood, a group of oriental-esque mages that specialize in magic based on the four elements. You get to visit their elaborate compound in the mission "The Mage Towers" from Thief Gold. And, appropriately enough, your elemental Trick Arrows do come in handy in that mission as well.
  • Elves Versus Dwarves: The rivalry between the Pagans and the Hammerites has elements of this, including The Magic Versus Technology War.
  • Enemy Chatter: Particularly memorable: the bear pits conversation in "Lord Bafford's Manor"; and a savvy guard asking a Mechanist how the cameras know to sound the alarm when they see a thief, but not when they see a guard. (His response? The Mechanists' version of the MST3K Mantra, of course.)
  • Enemy Mine:
    • Late in the The Dark Project, Garrett teams up with the Hammerites against a common enemy, an 'eye for an eye', if you will. Fittingly enough, the level in which the event takes place is called "Strange Bedfellows".
    • The Metal Age has Garrett team up with the survivors of the group he defeated in the first.
    • In Deadly Shadows, Garrett can team up with these groups despite his history of targeting both of them and killing the Pagans' god while he was trying to destroy the City they hate. Hell, it happens right after he's robbed both of them of some pretty valuable loot. It's possible they've realised he's a dangerous enemy to have.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: The Big Bads of the series love to wipe out civilization. Go figure.
    • Subverted in the case of Gamall. She just wants to live forever. The fact that the Keepers all got an eyeful of her true form, and thus need to be eliminated is ancillary.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: Being a Low Fantasy setting, zombies do show up in a few missions in the series. The zombies follow a general rule of being slow and dumb, but also rather difficult to fully kill. The first game has a few missions where zombies are the main hazard rather than security guards. While there are multiple ways to destroy them, including holy water, fire, or explosions, it can sometimes be noisy and often use precious resources.
  • Exact Words: Sometimes the mission briefings will give details about the mission away. On Hard mode, the game normally says "Don't kill anyone", but two missions have different goals which tease towards their content: "Trace the Courier", which says "Don't kill any humans", have you entering the Maw and running into some of the Chaos Beasts, while "Precious Cargo" says "Don't kill any Mechanists" because you have to Mercy Kill one of Viktoria's agents in order to progress.
  • Exploding Barrels: They're red and marked with a flame logo. Averted in the third game: barrels marked like the first two games marked exploding barrels, don't explode.
  • Every Device Is a Swiss-Army Knife: Garrett's bow comes across as this, since the wide array of Trick Arrows that it can fire makes it a very versatile weapon. Oddly enough, given the nature of the gameplay and the types of arrows you'll usually be using the most, the bow is more often than not a tool, rather than an offensive weapon. The bow itself also has some funky accessories, particularly an attachment with a simple targeting reticle made from iron. The arrows themselves and the blackjack and sword/dagger also have a great degree of multifunctionality.
  • Eye Scream: Garrett gets his eye plucked out by one of the bad guys during the first game. We later see a brief, detailed close-up of the shrivelled, bloody gap in his face. The third game reintroduces Garrett to his missing eye, which talks to him and suggests that one day it may remove the other eye.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: The world of Thief has scientific advances such as electricity, steam engines, clockwork robots, surveillance devices and even stun grenades (flashbombs and gas grenades), but there are no gunpowder firearms to be seen (which amusingly contrasts the otherwise accurate Late Medieval-like setting). Even the City Watch and Mechanists are armed with swords, maces, bows, and crossbows at best.
    • The cannons require gunpowder, and they can be seen on ships and, of course, the Children of Karras. The cannonballs also have fuses that are lit. And they act more like cluster grenades after landing on the ground and lying still for about a second or two.
  • Famed In-Story/Shrouded in Myth: By the third game, Garrett's name is pretty famous in the city as the pre-eminent thief, "rarely seen and never caught" — you can listen in on snippets of gossip (both accurate and exaggerated) about his exploits, and other lower-calibre criminals bragging about being as good as him or out-and-out claiming to be him to bolster their own reputations.
    • In the third game, there are even lesser thieves who pretend to be Garrett to get business. Garrett himself finds this amusing.
  • Fate Worse than Death: The Masked Servants. It's unknown precisely what Karras does to make them compliant to orders, but the fact that they plead for death as an idle dialogue and thank you if you kill them will send shivers up your spine.
    • In one spot you can overhear two normal servants talking about one, and one of them mentions it "crying like a lost soul".
    • In one mission, you can eavesdrop on a "conversation" between a Mechanist and a servant. The servant repeatedly asks to be killed, but the Mechanist continues on as if he doesn't hear it.
  • Fertile Blood: The intro for the first mission dealing with Pagans in Deadly Shadows shows a Pagan cutting his palm in order to "water" a plant, which then grows exponentially faster than normal.
  • Film Noir/City Noir/Fantastic Noir
  • First-Person Ghost: Played straight in the first two games, averted in Deadly Shadows.
  • First-Person Smartass: It's a first person game and Garrett is a smartass. His opening narration for each mission especially falls into this a lot.
  • Fish People: The Kurshok from the third game. Surprisingly, they're not in allegiance with the Pagans like most of the other non-human races — it's subtly hinted that the Trickster cast them below the earth.
  • Five-Finger Discount: As a child, Garrett came to the attention of the Keepers when he tried to pickpocket one on the street, because "it's not an easy thing to see a Keeper, especially one who does not wish to be seen." In the game, there are frequent opportunities to filch bags of gold, keys, potions, and arrows from the unsuspecting, with a "pockets picked" counter on the score page after the mission.
  • Foreshadowing: The intro cutscene of each game drops hints about the main plot and Garrett's enemies. The third one's is more ambiguous than those of the first two games, but it features a major Continuity Nod towards them (with two brief rapid montages referencing their events).
  • Fractional Winning Condition: On normal and lower difficulty settings, most games allow you to finish the level after pocketing just a portion of the total available loot (the hardest difficulties, on the other hand, require you to find and bag nearly every valuable item on the level).
  • Friendly Enemy: Garrett and Viktoria in The Metal Age. They plot devious things together. It's simultaneously both disturbing and a little cute.
  • Gainax Ending: The end of Thief II.
    Garrett: All this...it was written?
    Artemus: All.
    Garrett: Viktoria's death? And Karras? Was it written? In your books?
    Artemus: All is, as it was written.
    Garrett: And there's more?
    Artemus: Yes.
    Garrett: Tell me.
  • Game Mod: Several. Most notable is Shadows of the Metal Age, a full-length, fan-made expansion for Thief II, with a new main character, weapons and items, and a story of Revenge and manipulation.
  • Genius Loci: As Garrett describes the Cradle:
    Garrett: This feels like a house with bad dreams.
    • Not a house that gives you bad dreams, but a house that, itself, dreams. This invites the question of what occurs when you wake it up.
  • Genre-Busting/Genre Popularizer: Game critics had a hard time pigeon-holing the first Thief into any recognisable genre when it came out in November 1998. It played from a first-person perspective, yet wasn't an FPS (nor did it reward killing everything in sight). It featured lots of various puzzles, yet wasn't an Adventure Game. It had vaguely RPG elements, yet wasn't an RPG at all. Along with Metal Gear Solid, Thief practically defined the stealth game genre as we know it today.
  • Gentleman Snarker: First Keeper Orland and some of the other Keepers, to varying degrees.
  • Gentleman Thief: Garrett is the ultimate subversion of this trope. He's a gentleman on the inside, with a rough and snarky outward shell.
  • Ghost Ship: The "Abysmal Gale" from Deadly Shadows, owned and commanded by the wealthy naval merchant Robert Moira. It sailed back into the harbour, but the crew didn't come out or attempt any communication with the outside world. Since the ship becomes relevant to the main plot, Garrett has to sneak aboard, search for the ship's log and investigate what happened to Moira and his sailors.
  • Giant Spider: These appear occasionally in the first game and more rarely and with less variety in the second one. Even the small-by-the-game's-standards yellowy spider is as big as your foot. They usually attack by jumping and biting. Sometimes they spit.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Garrett usually acts ignorant or dismissive of the evils threatening his world, but his Jerkass behaviour hides a character with strict personal standards, who dislikes seeing pain inflicted upon those who were already given a bad hand by life.
  • Grappling-Hook Pistol: The (slightly magical) rope arrows in the first and second games are essentially a medieval version of this. They can stick to any wooden or earthy materials and provide new routes to otherwise inaccessible areas. The vine arrows from the second game are a full-blown magic version of the ordinary ones and can also stick to surfaces with metal grating. Garrett obtains them after teaming up with the Pagans.
  • Green Thumb: The Pagans, who can manipulate plants and use them to either help allies or harm enemies. Viktoria from the first two games and the Pagan Shamans from the third game in particular use plant-based attacks, Viktoria extending vines to pin or impale enemies and the Shamans firing blasts of natural energy at enemies and using it to speed up allies. The Earth Mages in the first game can also fire a projectile that will entangle Garret in vines if it hits and gradually saps his health until he shakes free.
    • The moss arrows create patches of vegetation that muffle any movement you made on them, and in the third game can choke enemies it is fired at, rendering them temporarily helpless. The vine arrows in the second game create a vine down from any surface that they are fired at which you can use to climb up high areas, unlike the similar rope arrows which can only create ropes down from wooden or grass surfaces.
  • Grey-and-Grey Morality: Everyone in the setting, including the forever-locked-in-conflict Hammerites and Pagans. Each faction and character have their moments of nobleness and humanity, as well as Kick the Dog and What the Hell, Hero? ones. The only apparent exception to this trope would be the major villains, and even then, they may simply have taken their faction's dogma too far or have sympathetic motives buried somewhere deep in the past.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy:
    It was probably just the wind...
    • Also, it's one thing to go after a Noisemaker arrow; another is to pretend the freaky crystal lying on the floor under a doused lamp is invisible.
    • Noticeably, the guards fluctuate between absurd incompetence and absurd hypercompetence. Douse a torch five feet away from them? They won't suspect a thing. So much as brush past them in a pitch-black room? They'll instantly know it's an intruder and go straight to trying to murder you. They won't notice if every other guard on their patrol mysteriously disappears, or a door is mysteriously open that wasn't 5 minutes ago, but they'll sure as hell notice if you so much as breathe on a metal surface even if there are 3 other guards noisily clomping all over the metal floor in the same room.
  • Harmony Versus Discipline: Played very straight with the Pagans and the Order of the Hammer, respectively.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Played straight in the first two games. Averted in Deadly Shadows, however, as there Garrett trades his longsword for a more concealable dagger.
    • The Dark Engine (used in TDP and TMA) was first developed for an Arthurian-themed game that never saw the light of day because the swordplay was far too complex, so they gave the complex swordplay to a character who wasn't meant to be good at sword fighting. They made Thief and the rest is history. Thief: Deadly Shadows used the Unreal Engine, so they finally replaced the sword.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Viktoria explodes herself into a torrent of trees and plant matter to set up Soul Forge for Garrett to wipe it out with the rust gas.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: The Keeper Assassins from the third game were criticized for their unstealthiness while dealing with other random NPCs.
  • Holy Water: Arrows doused in holy water are by far the most effective weapon against the undead, although they're extremely rare.
  • Hufflepuff House: Various readable objectss and some conversations mention the outlying city-states of Blackbrook, Bohn and Cyric and The City's relations to them. We never get to see them, though.
  • Humans Are Morons: "Manfool", as the lingo of the Pagans goes.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: Food is edible and heals in the first two games, particularly the second. All games also have healing potions.
  • I Have Many Names: The Trickster. Just a few are "The Woodsie Lord", "The Jacksberry", "The Harvester", "The Gillsweet", and of course, Constantine.
  • Implausible Fencing Powers: Massively averted all the way by all normal sword-wielders. The Hammer Haunts and other monsters don't count. Particularly important in Garrett's case, since his creators made him a deliberately average/weak swordsman to prove a point - he's a thief, not a warrior. The sword (and later dagger) is for self-defence only and always a last resort (if you want to undergo the tiring process of fighting off a guard or creature instead of just reloading your save and not alerting them the second time you sneak across that location).
  • Industrial Ghetto: Glimpses of this are caught throughout several of the city districts, particularly in The Metal Age. Fan missions tend to portray this aspect of The City frequently.
  • The Infiltration: The Dark Project mission "Undercover".
  • Ink-Suit Actor: Viktoria's face is rather similar to that of her voice actress, isn't it?
  • Insecurity Camera: The Mechanist surveillance cameras from The Metal Age can be shut down easily by finding their fuse boxes and pulling a lever or two. However, if there's one central generator room for all of them, then it's usually well-guarded or pretty hard to sneak into. An alternative, much noisier way of disabling the cameras, is to simply blow the cameras up with your fire arrows or by placing an explosive mine under them and triggering it with your broadhead arrows.
    • The Wieldstrom Museum's security systems from Deadly Shadows can also be disabled this way, though only for a minute or two. Furthermore, the Tesla-coil-like electrical fence protecting the two most valuable exhibits can be disabled by shooting a water arrow into one of the coils, shutting it down for about 5-7 seconds - enough time to grab the loot and run back for cover to the nearest dark corner.
  • Instant Sedation: Played straight by the gas arrows and gas bombs, but subverted by the gas mines, which need to be deployed first in one set spot and then triggered (whether by an NPC or the player with the help of an arrow).
  • Instant-Win Condition: Some missions on normal difficulty end right after you collect whatever it is you came for. Harder difficulties will require you to make your getaway afterwards before you win.
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Averted. While some keys do open multiple doors, they don't open every door, and often you'll have to go hunting to find the right key. They also stay with you, and you can even end up with multiple copies of the same key since several guards will have them in a single stage.
  • In the Hood: Garrett and most of the Keepers.
  • Invisible to Normals/Jedi Mind Trick: The Keepers, thanks to their mastery of stealth and espionage, and in the case of their buildings, their unique Glyph Magic.
  • Ironic Echo: When Garrett tried to pickpocket Artemus in his youth, Artemus caught him and told him he had a talent for being able to see a Keeper, especially when he doesn't want to be seen. At the end of the third game, when a little girl tries to pickpocket Garrett, he says the same thing and smiles at the memory.
  • Ironic Name: The Mechanists named their submarine Cetus Amicus, which is Latin for "friendly whale".
  • Irony: Constantine awards Garrett a magic sword for a successful mission - however, players who are experts at the game will never use it. This is a shame, because it's excellent for clearing out most undead without wasting other resources, especially if you get the drop on them.
  • Island Base: The Markham's Isle complex in "Precious Cargo" (which is also an Elaborate Underground Base).
  • Is This Thing On?: Karras, in one of his more humorous moments, asks this when he records his messages for his party.
  • It's Probably Nothing: Even if guards hear your footsteps or other loud noises, as long as you don't get seen or make more noise, they'll just pin it on the rats or wind.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold/Loveable Rogue: Garrett.
  • Kill It with Fire: The Hammerites and Mechanists are fond of this, with their Priests specializing in fire-elemental magic and firing hammer or gear-shaped fireballs at enemies, and in the third game Hammerite Priests using it to increase the attack power of their allies and allow them to harm undead enemies. Several enemies in the first game also utilize fire; the Fire Shadows, invincible flaming undead enemies who can be driven off with attacks and drop fire crystals whenever they are; Fire Elementals, living flying fireballs aligned with the Pagans which launch smaller fireballs at enemies; and Fire Mages, who also launch small fireballs at enemies and can survive in lava.
    • The fire arrow is one of the most damaging weapons in Garret's arsenal, is one of the few weapons that can kill undead (Except fire-based enemies, for obvious reasons) and can be used to light torches, but lights Garret up like a Christmas tree when readied and makes a ton of noise on impact with enemies/objects.
    • At one instance, in the factory of St. Edgar's Church, a Hammerite Priest kills a bunch of zombies in an incinerator room.
  • Kill It with Water: The proper way to deal with Fire Elementals, and the Mechanist robots in the second game (that is, other than heavy firepower). Less obviously, water arrows can temporarily incapacitate zombies. Not very effective, but leads to an ingenious trick - if you manage to lure zombies to a pool, even a shallow one, they will quickly collapse and stay underwater, thus saving you on the precious holy water that dispatches the undead permanently.
  • Knight Templar: The Mechanists in the second game, and the Hammerites in the first to a degree.
  • Knockout Gas: Shooting a mook with a Gas Arrow will knock him out even if he's fully aware of your presence (and thus would only get annoyed by the Blackjack). Shooting the ground has an area effect, knocking out everyone within a meter or so. Gas bombs and gas mines have an area effect as well, though gas mines need to be triggered first to deploy gas.
  • Land of One City: You visit the outskirts, but that's as close as you get to see if that City has limits.
  • Large Ham: The voicework for the shopkeepers in Deadly Shadows is either good or just okay, but all of them are appropriate-sounding. Except for one.
  • Loony Fan: The fence Marla Madison towards Garrett in Deadly Shadows.
  • Lost Technology: The cultivators in the second game.
  • Low Fantasy: Definitely. Some omnipresent examples of this trope in the series' setting:
    • Humans are the dominant species and there are no Tolkien-esque races.
    • The overall moral alignment of characters often gets very fuzzy.
    • Everything in the setting has a down-to-earth feel to it.
    • There's no explicit Medieval Stasis.
    • Magic - whether good or bad - is not seen as something magnificent and cosmic.
    • The fight between good and evil is more internal than a physical affair.
    • Each character and faction has an agenda and few can be trusted.
    • Your protagonist is an Anti-Hero and Grey-and-Gray Morality abounds.
  • Light Is Not Good: Of the literal variety - brightly lit spaces and loud floors are Garrett's greatest enemies (as far as thieving goes). Using water arrows to douse out torches and gaslamps and moss arrows to muffle otherwise loud surfaces (like metal floors) is one of the basic parts of gameplay in all three games. Still, nearly all levels can be passed without using a single piece of thieving gear.
  • Limited Sound Effects: Averted big time. Nearly every type of surface imaginable has an expansive and context-sensitive set of sound effects. Listening to your surroundings is even part of the gameplay (you can guess the distance between you and any NPC and also the direction from which the sound is coming). Thief was probably the first game to use the concept of sound FX as more than just a background decoration to its full degree.
  • Mad Scientist: Karras, the founder and leader of the Mechanists. He seems to have a Freudian Excuse, but yikes.
  • The Magic Goes Away: In the Deadly Shadows finale, Garrett activates the "Final Glyph", which causes all other glyphs to lose their power. This puts an end to Gamall's rampage, as well as exposing the Keepers to the world, and burning a non-magical "key" symbol into the back of Garrett's hand. The loss of the glyphs leaves the fate of the Keepers uncertain. Loss of the Glyphs also seems to indicate that the stealth powers of the Keepers are non-magical, as Garrett retains them and is surprised when a talented young girl is still able to see him, much as he did in the first game with Artemus.
  • Magitek: Some of the technology in the game's universe seems to be of this variety. Sometimes, it's clearly related to the Lost Technology trope.
  • The Masquerade: The Keepers. There is no mysterious, conspiratorial group with near-mystical stealth skills in hoods watching and nudging events from the shadows, and if you disagree, you might receive a visit from a mysterious assassin with near-mystical stealth skills in a hood to shut you up.
  • Master of Unlocking: Garrett. The start of the Assassins mission from the first game even shows Garrett visiting one of the City's fences and buying a new pair of trusty lockpicks (that come packed with a short manual for newbie thieves).
  • Moving the Goalposts: Multiple missions in each game have cases of the mission objectives changing mid-mission. Usually, this is justified as some development makes the original objective unattainable (such as being told to meet someone for information, getting to said person, and finding they've been murdered). One case that stands out, however, is in the Thief Gold mission "Song of the Caverns". At first, you are trying to find the Water Talisman in the caves under the opera house and also have to get 200 gold worth of loot. You later find out the tablet has already been taken and is being stored somewhere inside the opera house itself, at which point the game ups your quota to 700 gold. While this is probably due to the opera house being likely to have a lot more valuables than a cave it still seems kind of unfair.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
    • The "necrotic mutox", a.k.a. "rust gas" - a Steampunk biochemical weapon of mass destruction created by the Mechanists. It wipes out all biological matter. Take three guesses on what they wanted to use it for.
    • Subverted with the Cetus Amicus, which means "Friendly Whale". Keep in mind, the thing is a deadly submarine.
  • Natural Weapon: The four elemental Trick Arrows in all three games. In The Metal Age, there is also the Vine Arrow (an organic variation of the rope arrows) and the Frogbeast Egg.
  • Nature Spirit: Viktoria. Green Skinned Wood Nymph, natch.
  • Nature vs. Technology: The franchise has this trope present in the conflict between the two main religions of the city, the Pagans worship nature, chaos, and magic while the Hammerites use construction and technology to advance civilization. The Big Bads of the first two games have a Contrasting Sequel Antagonist relationship with each other from taking these two positions to dangerous extremes. In the first game, The Trickster, a Nature Spirit the pagans worship as a god wants to use a magic ritual to return the city to its natural state, destroying all trace of human civilization, while in the second, Father Karras plans to use a robot army to flood the city with poison gas and wipe out all organic life that doesn't meet his ideals.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Unsealing Sealed Evil in a Can is bad. Who knew?
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: This applies to certain characters and factions.
  • No "Arc" in "Archery": Mostly averted. Nearly all arrows arc. The broadhead, rope, water and moss arrows follow the laws of physics, while the elemental arrows of Air (sleeping gas) and Fire (rocket launcher stand-in) fly straight and fast. Since the elemental air present in the arrowheads could probably be considered to have its own personal updraft... and hot air rises.
  • No-Gear Level:
    • In The Dark Project, Garrett has his gear taken away after the Big Bad plucks his eye out and leaves him for dead. Garrett starts the level with no gear at all, but if you have the presence of mind to search the room you start in you'll easily find his bow and some other useful items.
    • In Deadly Shadows, the trope can be played straight if the City Guards capture you while you're roaming the streets in plain sight. They will toss Garrett into one of the local prisons, where he later wakes up in a locked cell, weaponless. Then you have to figure out how to escape.
    • This trope is also popular in fan-made missions. The difficulty depends on whether you've been depending on your weapons to get by, or if you've properly honed your stealth skills.
  • No Ontological Inertia: There are several levels in the game which treat completing all the main objectives as an Instant-Win Condition. As such, you can set off all the alarms and have five enemies after you, only for the level to abruptly end and Garrett to seemingly have magically escaped. On some levels this can be handwaved by the final objective being to get out of the place you're stealing from, meaning Garret could have just outrun all the people chasing him offscreen.
  • Nothing Is Scarier/Hell Is That Noise: Many of the creepiest levels use this to great effect, the first half of the Cradle mission being a textbook example. Granted, there may be some real threat lurking in the shadows or eerie spaces, too. Maybe.
  • Oh, Crap!: This isn't an expression we see Garrett use very often, but it snuck its way in, most memorably in a The Dark Project cutscene when Viktoria takes his eye and in Deadly Shadows when he spies Gamall animating statues in the Keeper compound. Just about every Keeper got this in Deadly Shadows during Gamall's advancement ceremony when she revealed herself as the Hag.
  • Optional Stealth: Theoretically, you can ditch stealth and kill everyone in sight, but it is a lot more dangerous and resource-consuming, even on lower difficulty levels. However, there are some missions where killing or even simply getting spotted results in a Game Over. The hardest difficulty settings pretty much force the player to play as stealthily as possible.
  • Order Versus Chaos: The struggle between the orderly Hammerites and chaotic Pagans is a major plot point in all three games. Notably, the third main faction - the Keepers - is meant to act as a balancing agent and watchdog of the duo of rival ideologies. Fittingly enough, the Keepers are not known to the general public and are extremely secretive about who they are and what they do (their glyph magic certainly helps with this).
  • Orphanage of Fear: Shalebridge Cradle used to be an insane asylum and an orphanage at the same time. The children and patients were supposed to be kept separate; it didn't always hold true.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Burricks - wingless reptiles with the size of a pony and the outward appearance of a chubby theropod dinosaur - are apparently the closest thing to a dragon in the Thiefverse. Expectable in such a down-to-earth Low Fantasy setting. Burricks aren't actually ferocious (being herbivores), but they can still be dangerous. No, they don't breathe fire - instead, they burp cloud after cloud of some sort of highly concentrated fumes created in their digestive system. The fumes are corrosive and you'll suffocate in them almost immediately. It's implied they have slightly explosive properties — Garrett makes a snappy remark in the second game about how "infiltrating Shoalsgate is like looking down a burrick's throat with a lit match". Burricks appear up close and personal in several levels of the first game and in the form of hunting trophies and occasional references in the second and third games.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different/Our Zombies Are Different: Where to begin? Hammer Haunts, Fire Shadows, Shalebridge Cradle inmates (a.k.a. "Puppets") and shadowy spirits of its former staff members... Then there are literal ghosts, both friendly and malicious, called Apparitions. Only the regular type of zombies has generic zombie appearance and behaviour throughout the whole series.
  • Oxygen Meter: Appears in the lower right corner whenever you are swimming underwater in the first two games. Since the third game has no swimming mechanic, the meter doesn't make an appearance in that one.
  • Pardon My Klingon/Unusual Euphemism: Taffer, to taff, taffing taff... The most common and versatile curse word in the series' universe. The various guards are its most prominent users. "Taffin' cripes, I knew I smelt trouble! Where are you, you taffer? Aah, you're taffing me. Who's gonna clean up all this taff?" The word "taffer" seems to be a general term for a criminal, low-life or annoying person. And some other things. Other curse words uttered by various characters are fairly standard or slightly archaic. A cut piece of dialogue in The Dark Project alludes to the notion that "taffer" is yet another name for The Trickster.
  • Perpetual Poverty: Uh, Garrett? Over the course of three games, you've stolen thousands and thousands of gold. Why do you still have trouble paying the rent? Are you throwing it all away between each caper? Ale and whores? Seriously, hire an accountant or something, man.
    • His landlord is even tougher than the Hammers, apparently.
    • His life as an independent thief also costs him, figuratively and literally. Ultimately he can only steal enough on a job to afford to set up the next job, especially since as an independent he gets awful rates from fences and merchants willing to deal with him. He's living heist to heist just like someone living paycheck to paycheck, spending a lot of money just to be able to continue working.
    • It's not known how much time elapses between jobs, however, and a few comments Garrett makes during briefings hint that considerable periods pass between jobs. He says at one point that a rather paltry score (as Thief missions go) will give him enough cash to lay low for a while. It's quite possible that he does jobs only every so often, then lives off of his earnings for a while, only setting out for his next job once he burns through his savings.
  • Phantom Thief/Impossible Thief: Garrett, of course.
    • While he steals for a living, he also turned to it to get out from under the self-imposed (and self-righteous) restrictions of the nigh-invisible Keepers. Many of his capers are clearly done as ars gratia artis. In one first-game mission, Garrett decides that the best revenge against a crimelord's assassination attempt is, instead of killing him, to sneak in and remove every valuable object from said crimelord's house. Granted, you also have the option of doing that and (depending on difficulty level) killing him. Also subverted in that Garrett's single most frequent recurring complaint is 'I have to do this job because the rent is due'.
    • Garrett has robbed from castles, mansions, patrician houses, taverns, shops, museums, city guard stations, abandoned haunted parts of the city, ancient ruins, places defying the very laws of physics and the office of his landlord. Hell, he's even managed to snatch a few trinkets from the heart of the well-guarded and nearly impenetrable Keeper Compound. He's busted out the imprisoned fiancee of his old pal from a heavily guarded manor. He routinely stops by to rob banks and establishments clean, while en route to fulfil a more crucial mission objective.
    • Of course, all of his incredible exploits heavily depend on the skill and patience of the player. There are really few things as satisfying as being able to sneak through an entire mission stealthily, grabbing all the visible and hidden loot, and not getting seen or otherwise detected by anyone.
  • Plot Coupons: The first game has Garrett find the four keys to a locked cathedral.
  • Pluralses: In the first game, the Trickster talks this way. The Pagans and their allies also often incorporate it into their You No Take Candle style of speech.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Servants in The Metal Age. In Deadly Shadows, Gamall's disguise is an orphan's stolen body. How do you reveal her? By giving it back.
  • Precursors: The, uh, Precursors.
  • Recruited from the Gutter: The Thief series contains a few examples;
  • Red/Green Contrast: The Hammerites wear red and silver while the (human) Pagans (who are their enemies) wear green and brown.
  • Red Herring: In Deadly Shadows, Garrett is led to believe that First Keeper Orland is the traitor when the ruins of the collapsed city clocktower point to his office.
  • Refusal of the Call:
    Artemus: You cannot run from life as you did from us, Garrett. Life has a way of finding you, no matter how artistic a sneak you are.
    Garrett: Tell my friends that I don't need their secret book, or their glyph warnings, or their messengers. Tell them I'm through. Tell them it's over. Tell them Garrett is done.
    Artemus: (after Garrett departs) I will tell them this: Nothing has changed. All is as written. The Trickster is dead. Beware the dawn of the Metal Age.
  • Remixed Level:
    • The Lost City. Appears in two different versions in the first and second games.
    • The Hammerite Cathedral in the first game, within that instalment only.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction: The Mechanists became this to the Hammerites.
  • Retirony: A variation - Garrett expresses his intention to retire after stealing the Eye from the cathedral in the first game, before the Trickster betrays him and leaves him for dead.
  • Retro Universe/Schizo Tech: Seriously. A hodge-podge of medieval and Victorian society, architecture and tech. Lots of gears and ticking valves.
  • Robbing the Dead: Garrett is not above stooping to this if it's necessary. He prefers robbing the living, though, because the undead creatures that tend to inhabit crypts and graveyards are generally a lot more dangerous.
  • Roofhopping: You use the "Thieves Highway" in the second game to get to Angelwatch.
  • Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Soundly averted. Many of the ancient ruins visited in the series will give you an almost dizzying sense of their long history, to the point where merely walking around them becomes genuinely unnerving.
  • Rule of Symbolism: Quite a lot, especially in the cutscenes and the more dramatic moments.
  • Schizo Tech: The technology of the setting seems to vary from late Medieval to Victorian, as while they have things like gas lighting, indoor plumbing, and in some cases even electric power, there are no guns (not even flintlock pistols or the like) and, as far as we can tell, no Penny Farthings or carriages.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Eye in the first game.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • Thief 1: "The Trickster is dead. Beware the dawn of the Metal Age."
    • Thief 2: "Was it written? In your books?" "All is as it was written." "And there's more?" "Yes." "...tell me."
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Perfectly doable in all three games, as long as you lure groups of NPC that are enemies with each other into a single location. While your noisemaker arrows are usually meant to be used as a decoy to ward off attention from you, you can use them to lure two enemy groups together to a single spot, where they'll promptly start fighting each other.
  • Ship Tease: Plenty of it between Garrett and Viktoria in Thief II: The Metal Age.
  • Shout-Out: A number of Easter Eggs and well-hidden popcultural references.
    • While Garrett is visiting the Bonehoard (A large underground cemetery) in the first game, he does a quip that goes like this: "Time to... raid some tombs." (Eidos Interactive was the publisher of both the Thief and Tomb Raider series.)
    • The "Lost City" level in the first game has a Cthulhu Mythos reference: It contains a statue that looks very like Cthulhu, and a reference to a god called "N'lahotep". It's strongly hinted that angering these gods is what caused the city to be buried under lava.
    • A deadly fireball-type projectile is called a "Tiltowait". But you will never find out unless you try the Level Editor.
    • The second game contains a conversation between a guard and a warehouse worker in the second mission that makes clear reference to the movie Clerks. The worker is named Dante and is exhausted due to the fact that his boss unexpectedly went away and left him in charge. During the conversation, the guard drops the line "bunch of taffers in this city", echoing the film's repeated "bunch of savages in this town".
    • A rather famous Easter Egg is a basketball court hidden in the training level of the first game. It is only accessible if you select Expert difficulty. The place doubles as a Developer's Room thanks to a scroll containing the dev team's quotes, compiled during the development of the project. A basketball court was a common easter egg in games developed by Looking Glass Studios. For instance, it also appeared in System Shock and System Shock 2.
    • Here's a pretty detailed (though not definite) list of the various hidden references. (Of course, take caution while reading - there might be minor spoilers about the structure and content of the missions.)
    • The leader of the Mechanists is named Father Karras.
  • Sinister Minister: The Mechanist leader, Father Karras.
  • Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: The visuals and atmosphere of the series literally bathe in grittiness - and unlike in many other games, it feels very believable, with only minor exaggerated stylisation. Of course, the shiniest places you see belong to either the City's mostly corrupt nobility or the Mechanist Order. Not even the Hammerites and Keepers have such lavishly decorated and polished interiors in their buildings.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs: The two sets of guards arguing in Thief II's Life of the Party, Lady Van Vernon's guards are far better spoken, coming up with some truly classy insults.
  • Soft Water
  • Spider Tank: The second game has some.
  • Spirit Advisor: Brother Murus (first game) and Lauryl (third game) send Garrett on multiple Fetch Quests to help them resolve their Unfinished Business.
  • Stalking Mission: Unsurprising in a stealth game. They're actually pretty entertaining. Some examples include The "Assasins" mission in the first game, the "Trace the Courier" mission in the second one and (partly) the Forbidden Library of the Keepers in the third one (after Garrett teams up with them once again).
  • Stalker with a Crush: Possibly Father Karras. Just listen to his endgame rambling at Garrett. "I'd have had thee under my control, else dead! Indeed, I'd have had both..." What the hell's he on about? Well, consider those masks, and then twitch! Garrett, amusingly, shrugs off hearing this recorded Yandere-fest. "Yeah, keep talkin'..."
  • Stealth-Based Game: The series is effectively impossible to complete without either stealth or cheating. The main character simply isn't formidable enough to actually fight all the guards one at a time, let alone in groups, and in Thief 2 there was at least one mission where remaining undetected was a required victory condition. Although lone guards are easy to dispatch if you could get a clear shot at their back while they were unaware of your presence, even then, some missions stipulate that you cannot disable any guards or civilians. (It should be noted that in the first two games at least, circle-strafing and having lots of room to back up can help take out several guards at once. Most die after 2 or 3 overhead swings from the sword. The trick is just making sure they don't hit you.)
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: Garrett loves these. He does this to half the people he meets in the third game of the trilogy, including the Big Bad. His mentor manages to pull the same over on him once, amusingly.
  • Steampunk: Or maybe Steam Gothic. Styles of dress and architecture are mostly late medieval, but there are electric lights on the street, Garrett gains a mechanical eye, and gauges with no discernible purpose are everywhere. In the second game, there are even clockwork surveillance cameras and steam-powered robots. And those... servants. Given the quasi-medievalness of the setting and the abundance of ever-present cogs and gears, it qualifies nicely as Clock Punk too.
  • The Stoic:
    • The Keepers certainly fit this kind of characterization, with their training and dedication to their ideology of balance making them avoid overly emotional reactions in their behaviour.
    • Garrett himself is always calm and collected, even in The Cradle. He will only occasionally express surprise, but he's only been scared shitless once. The first time he ever smiles or even resembles being happy is at the very end of Deadly Shadows.
  • Stompy Mooks: Inverted. Garrett, the main character, actually wears loud boots because he believes the guards to be complete idiots. Not without good reason, mind you.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker The Pagans, as well as the various Trickster-affiliated monsters capable of speech, all talk in a very strange dialect which involves (among other things) adding -sie to the end of random words, using the "word" "bes" in the place of "be" (pronounced just like "bees"), Fantastic Slurs such as "manfools" for "humans" (even when the speaker himself is human), and removing pronouns from the beginning of sentences while adding an s after the verb (e.g "You build your house" becomes "Builds your house".)
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: The entire plot of the first game is driven by this. What idiot would possibly think that unsealing the ancient Hammerite Cathedral and freeing the Eye from its confinement would be a good idea, after the Eye talks to him in his head and visibly manifests its obvious evil on several occasions? For that matter, what idiot would think that Constantine had any intention of actually paying him that ridiculously oversized fee for delivering the Eye when he could simply mug Garrett and take it from him? Garrett didn't even get half the money upfront. Apparently his streetwise instincts and common sense completely evaporate if you wave a bag of gold under his nose... which is in character for Garrett, at least.
    • This is especially true considering the cathedral is in a part of the City that was walled off. Garrett's tone in describing the abandoned part of the City seemed fairly sceptical of the actual danger. If the Hammerites were comfortable with leaving such an important artifact in a sealed cathedral in a sealed part of the City, it's fairly safe to assume the Hammers know something Garrett doesn't.
    • Constantine did pay Garrett with his magic sword and kept stroking Garrett's ego while challenging him at the same time.
  • Super Drowning Skills:
    • In the first two games Garrett can swim, but in the third, he drowns instantly upon contact with nose-deep water. The need for swimming is avoided in the last game.
    • In the third game, guards take pratfalls on oil slicks, and it's even funnier when they slip right off a pier in the docks. Thanks to their Super Drowning Skills, it's a useful tactic, too.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: Once they've locked onto you, nothing will stop a Hammer Haunt from chasing you short of death.
  • Super-Strength: The Hammerites. Their hammers are made from solid iron which, combined with their size, would make them VERY heavy. Such a weapon would usually require two hands, yet they wield them one-handed.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon: Garrett's (perfectly ordinary) bow, when combined with the use of various arrow types (including trick arrows), is by far the most versatile weapon/tool he has at his disposal.
  • Tap on the Head: With a blackjack. Hitting an unaware target with the blackjack will knock him/her out quickly and quietly. (If they're alerted, they cannot be knocked unconscious but can take damage, although the attack is less effective than if they were unaware.) Though even if you use the blackjack (at least in the first game) when a guard finds an "unconscious" person they'll loudly announce that someone's been murdered. The intention might be to render them unconscious but for all you know, you are delivering a lethal blow more often than not.
  • Technical Pacifist: Garrett, surprisingly enough. He's a thief, not a murderer. In the first two games, the medium difficulty level consistently forbids killing unarmed civilians, while the hardest difficulty does not allow you to kill any humans.
  • Thank the Maker: The Metal Age's Mechanist robots reeeally love this trope.
  • Thieves' Guild: Garrett's not interested in sharing his profits. The local guild bosses are less than pleased. One baron gives him trouble and giving it right back is the object of a mission in the first game. There's also a mission in Thief Gold that requires you to directly infiltrate the Downwind Thieves' Guild, and steal something that the guild's bosses are arguing about.
  • Title Drop: Of course, the main title gets a lot of use, but the subtitles of each game get only a single mention.
    • In the first game Constantine in one written journal calls his plan his "Dark project".
    • The second game never uses the words "metal age", but those are the last words spoken in the sequel hook ending to the first game.
    • In the third game, a Keeper prophecy uses the phrase "the deadly shadows amass".
  • Too Awesome to Use:
    • Averted by Bag of Spilling in the first two games: Not only can't you keep items you don't use, but you also can't even keep the extra cash if you don't buy them.
    • Even then, Gas Arrows and Gas Mines with their ability to silently knock out one or more people from a distance, are incredibly rare, and it can be hard to justify using them until it's too late to use them at all.
    • Though Bag of Spilling is averted in the third game, you're also given the in-game tip about hoarding loot being pointless, and are encouraged to invest in buying equipment whenever you need it.
  • Trespassing Hero: You, of course (in Garret's shoes). Aside from the most relevant loot in each mission you partake in, you can also help yourself to some extra loot for your own needs, or steal things like food, ammo and explosive supplies to replenish your health and equipment.
  • Trick Arrow: Gas arrows, moss arrows, explosive fire arrows, distracting noise arrows and the ever-handy water arrows. They're versatile and can be used for a number of very different tasks (e.g. water arrows can douse torches and gas lamps, but also kill undead creatures if filled with holy water, etc.).
  • Trick Bomb: Flashbombs and flashmines, explosive mines, gasbombs, gasmines and even Frogbeast Eggs. Holy Water Flasks and Oil Flasks from the third game also count, though they are of the non-exploding variety of bomb-like gadgets. Naturally, since this is a stealth game series, you'll mostly be using (and finding/purchasing) the non-lethal knockout bombs, since they also make the least ruckus when deployed.
  • Troperiffic: Seriously, just look at this page. Deconstructions are like that.
  • Underground Level: It's a recurring thing among the series' missions...
    • The Dark Project: "Escape from Cragscleft Prison", "Down in the Bonehoard", "Thieves' Guild", "The Lost City", part of "Song of the Caverns", "Strange Bedfellows", "The Maw of Chaos".
    • The Metal Age: Parts of "Trail of Blood", parts of "Precious Cargo", "Kidnap".
    • Deadly Shadows: A part of "Into the Pagan Sanctuary" and "The Sunken Citadel".
  • Upper-Class Twit: Just about any of the overheard conversations between the nobility carry shades of this, in all three games. In the third game, even one of the nobles has had enough of their "Quite!" and "Yes!" and storms off in frustration.
  • Useless Useful Stealth: Nicely averted (unsurprisingly, since proper stealth is the meat and potatoes of the whole series). Sure, you can still cut or blast your way through most enemies if needed, but it's not as fun or effective and you'll be scorned by both the game and the fans for it.
  • Videogame Caring Potential:
    • Adorable drunk guards and any other innocents you can't convince yourself to kill or harm. And for some, in the first game, burricks.
    • Many players even have the pointless yet heartwarming habit of leaving the knocked-out NPCs on softer surfaces (beds, carpets, sofas), as a sort of compensation for the inconvenience of being knocked unconscious.
    • The third game has a specifically scripted instance of this: You find out the place you're robbing is home to a blind, grieving widow. If you fetch her a glass of wine as she asks, don't kill her guests, and DON'T steal the sizeable inheritance her husband left for her, she'll reward your kindness a couple of missions later by sending you an expensive bottle of wine. (If you DO steal her inheritance, she sends a loyal servant to try and kill Garrett.) Unfortunately, the mission's loot requirement on the highest difficulty level is impossible to meet without stealing from her, though the issue can be fixed with a mod.
  • Videogame Cruelty Potential: Play the games the way they're meant to be played and you'll avoid it. But still, you can pickpocket virtually anyone (given the right circumstances), backstab anyone not aware of your presence from behind, snipe people and various fauna in the head with a broadhead arrow, blow up or gas people and creatures with fire arrows and bombs/mines, blackjack everyone in the city quarter and hide them in bushes or ignite puddles of oil and throw the unsuspecting innocents in there, blind people with flashbombs, blow zombies to chunky bits or dust with holy water arrows, etc., etc. And best of all, if you kill any normal living being, you can clean up the puddle of blood by shooting a water arrow into it. Of course, you should steer away from any open violence, since in the end, the guards or creatures will probably catch you and arrest or kill you. The punishment tropes always come into effect on harder difficulties, where you may not even kill guards.
    • Whenever a carryable enemy is exempt from Garrett's Thou Shalt Not Kill rule, it can be very tempting to do cruel things to their unconscious body, such as hurl them off high ledges or drown them.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: "Dumb Guard" (a.k.a. Benny) and "Smart Guard" (a.k.a. Hal, Nick or Jored). As different as night and day, but good pals and co-workers. A lot of their conversations turn into pure Funny Moments.
  • The Watcher: The entire faction of the Keepers is secretly struggling since ancient times to preserve the balance between good and evil in the world and peace between the various factions (especially the Hammerites and Pagans). But even though the members of this monastic and scholarly secret society try their best, they're not always as neutral as they claim, or perhaps wish they could be.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Garrett, despite being far from a physical powerhouse, is able to regularly outwit and outmaneuver burly guards and superhuman monsters through a combination of smarts and stealth.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: The individual levels are very conducive to wasting time playing around and trying to find routes into every nook and cranny, and have plenty of rewards (both treasure and interesting easter eggs such as hidden dialogues) for doing so. Officially invoked in the third game, where the City itself is a Hub Level that you can sneak around exploring and robbing people between missions.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: On Expert difficulty, killing human civilians and guards is an automatic mission failure. This doesn't apply to animals, monsters, machines, undead or humanoid beasts. One exception is the Servants, who are people who've been kidnapped, vivisected and turned into cyborgs/living weapons. Killing them on Expert difficulty also grants you a mission failure. A notable exception occurs in the last mission of The Metal Age. The Masked Guards are apparently Mechanists who started questioning Karras' increasingly unstable behavior and methods, earning them a hasty conversion into Servants (as evidenced by the blood on their chest plates). They'll actually beg you to kill them and thank you if you do.
  • Word Sequel: The series went on an interesting trajectory, with Thief: The Dark Project, then Thief II: The Metal Age, and finally a numberless title again, Thief: Deadly Shadows.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Being an Unscrupulous Hero, Garret has no moral qualms about knocking out female NPCs, whether they are guards or civilians.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Hammerites speak like this to a hilarious degree. The Mechanists too, though they have their own idiosyncrasies.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the most terrifying way.
  • You No Take Candle: Pagans, on the other hand, have a unique tribal-ish dialect to their speech, using "bes" for "is" and other "to be" permutations and frequently attaching the suffix "-sy" to the end of words.


In addition, the Game Mods mentioned above contain tropes not seen or as prevalent as in the main games. These include:

  • Adaptation Distillation: Or something close to it. A fair number of fan missions take creative liberties or outright ignore canon.
  • Art Evolution: Many FMs use custom resources for objects, items and textures, making a fan mission look like a completely different game!
  • Creepy Child: And their toys, too.
  • Fan Remake: Two of them, no less.
    • An odd variation: through accident and happenstance, the source code to the first two Thief games found its way into the hands of the public. A little over a year later, an anonymous source began releasing patches to make the games run bigger, better and faster than ever before. "New Dark" has allowed fan-mission authors to use more detailed architecture, textures, and more intensive resources than was ever possible before, and even doing away with the old Dark Engine's limitations (thus killing the Kill Screen phenomenon detailed below).
    • The Dark Mod, built in the idTech 4 engine also used by Doom³, has been under continuous development since the summer of 2004 and became a fully standalone freeware game in October 2013. Part of the reason behind its existence was a craving for remaking the first two games in a more modern and more flexible engine, while another motivation was the lack of a more accessible level editor for Thief: Deadly Shadows. Though The Dark Mod doesn't use any copyrighted terminology from the series, it uses the same general art style, storytelling methods and gameplay approach. It's basically a freeware Adaptation Distillation of the three Thief games.
  • Guide Dang It!: Fan missions tend to be harder, with trickier clues, better-hidden keys and switches, almost to the point of absurdity, leading to multi-page threads on the official forums asking for assistance.
  • Kill Screen: The default number of polygons that the first two Thief games can render on screen at any given time is 1024. Any higher than that and you get a "hall of mirrors" effect, and then the game crashes. Several ambitious fan missions skirt carefully close to this number at all times due to the level of detail! Some even come with warnings saying "Don't look here or there at this point" to avoid a crash.
  • Shout-Out: Too many other games, TV shows, movies, and even other mission authors.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: The individual levels are very conducive to wasting time playing around and trying to find routes into every nook and cranny, and have plenty of rewards (both treasure and interesting easter eggs such as hidden dialogues) for doing so.
  • Would Not Shoot a Civilian: While this only applies to Hard or Expert in the main game, many fan missions make you automatically fail if you kill anyone unarmed by default.

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