Web Animation / If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device

The Emperor speaketh about shit.

The Custodian: My divine lord, we have managed to implement a text-to-speech device into your glorious Golden Throne! Please, lord, speak to us!
The Emperor: [garbled noise] About fucking time.
The Custodian: At last! Our glorious lord can command us once agai—
The Emperor: I have so many things to complain about.

If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device (informally abbreviated to TTS by fans) is a series of online videos made by Bruva Alfabusa, asking the question of what exactly would happen if the Emperor of Mankind could ask about the current state of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Hilarity ensues as the Emperor proceeds to have some... colorful critiques about the universe as well as its numerous Retcons over the years, and begins some changes.

The story follows the Emperor as he tries to "unfuck" the galaxy, his personal caretaker "Little Kitten" (and later others) as the other half of a Double Act, and intertwined subplots such as the Inquisition trying to enforce their own martial law on Holy Terra. Initially, the series mostly focuses on a kind of "question per episode" format, with the Emperor as a Fish out of Temporal Water Catching Up on History, either asking or answering a question about the setting in rather colorful language (such as what the hell the Warp is), though slowly the overarching plot begins to emerge. It's a very comedic take on the 40k universe, though itself can serve as an introduction to its complex lore.

Each season is composed of ten episodes. Season 2 has been completed with help from Karl the Deranged. Season 3 began with a two episode premiere on March 3rd, 2016. In October 2017 the series saw a small spin-off called Brotrip 40,000 depicting the journey of Corvus Corax and Vulkan as they make their way to Terra, stopping to see the galaxy as they go. The series occurs in the same universe as Karl the Deranged's series "Chaos Descends" and Eliphas the Inheritor's trilogy "Behemoth". Now has a Recap page.

On July 2nd 2020, a new Actual Play side series, called "WarHams", debuted following the adventures of four low-ranked members of the Bro Trip crusade, via games of Cubicle 7's edition of Wrath and Glory. Following Captain Zedek, the (incredibly alcoholic) leader, Reeb Van Horne, an Inquisitorial Acolyte, π-Braine, an Axe-Crazy Skitarii ranger, and Lorn, a half-senile Fenrisian sanctioned psyker, the quartet travels from planet to planet on their dubiously-reliable ship the Debt Collector, trying to gather resources and allies to fund the Crusade, in hopes of winning coveted "points" with their leader, the food-obsessed Minister Moderatum Katje Van Noord. This being the TTS universe, the WarHams soon find themselves in wacky adventures that they hope they can navigate successfully, and hopefully with all their limbs intact.

On July 29th 2021, Alfabusa announced that the series is on indefinite hiatus due to Games Workshop establishing a zero tolerance policy on fan animation. This ended the series, so far, at episode 30 part 2.

On December 18, 2021 Alfabusa released a new animated video not based on Warhammer 40,000, but on Hunter: The Reckoning, called Hunter: The Parenting with the core TTS ensemble becoming a Universal-Adaptor Cast, this time portraying a clan of Hunters lead by The Big D.

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If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device provides examples of:

Tropes A to M

• Accent Adaptation: Magnus is given an Australian accent, though this was entirely by accident as the voice actor was trying for a British accent. This led to an in-joke in the TTS cast about him being Australian and it has since been declared a Prosperan accent.
• Action Figure Speech: The only way the characters are indicated talking is by shaking the clip-arts around, sometimes to exaggerated effects. With the exception of the Emperor, of course, who can't move at all since he's a skeleton. (Instead, his speech is hinted by his eyepiece glowing.) As of season 2, some characters have their artwork articulated to let them gesticulate. Lampshaded in Short 7 when Kitten is unable to place his hand on an Ouija board because his hands are drawn grasping his weapon.
• Actor Allusion: An In-Series variant; Asdrubael Vect and the Emperor (Whenever he isn't using the TTS device, which is usually only in flashbacks or when he's in psychic vision form) are both voiced by SpeakerD. That lends a certain subtext to this line.
  Vect: It is time for two Emperors...to meet.

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Especially in the "Brotrip 40,000" episode. Take a look at this line:
    Corvus: I refuse to believe for a single second that the Machine Cult would EVER willingly waste whatever minuscule amounts of minerals that can be mined off of this world on making knives for regiments that refuse to wear even the most basic of armors.
  • It's a Running Gag:
    Vulkan: Did not our fluorescent friendly brother Ferrus do something similar?
  • The Masque of Slaanesh, in the both the first Brotrip episode and the Battle at Khaine's Gate, constantly spoke in this manner.
• Advertised Extra: Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka appears fairly prominently in the Season 2 intro, but only appears for a single scene in that season — one which doesn't have many ties to the main plot.
• Aesop Amnesia: In the 7th special Stellaris playthrough:
  • The Emperor tries to reenact the Great Crusade in Stellaris. While he tells Eldad that he will keep control over it this time, he proceeds to demonstrate that he has learned exactly nada since the Horus Heresy, by neglecting his children, causing Boy to come under the influence of an alien power and becoming an Archtraitor.
  • Near the endgame, Eldrad reveals that he wasted a lot of resources building pleasure domes.
• Affectionate Parody: A satiric take on the 40,000 with extreme devotion to the lore of the source material.
  • The first and fourth specials seem to be smaller examples for Yu-Gi-Oh!, complete with a Shout-Out to Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.^note "children's card game"
• Alliterative Title: Both Q&A episodes: "Awful Answers" and "Atrocious Answers".
• All-Loving Hero: Vulkan comes across as this, talking about friendship and cooperation in his first appearance. Spoofed immediately when he's fed up with what appears to be Ferrus Manus's ghost and tells him to shut up.
• All There in the Manual: Some of the Continuity Nods also become this. Case in point, if you haven't seen "Chaos Descends" (or aren't familiar with Crazy Hassan) you were probably wondering why some of the Ultramarines were riding on camels in episode 25.
• All There in the Script: The Fab Custodes actually have names based on the Pillar Men, but it can only be seen in the credits and video description. Whammudes, Karstodes and Custodisi. According to the same credits, the unfortunately talkative Watcher in the Dark is called Snurko.
• Almighty Janitor: Technically, in the lore the Captain-General is the second least powerful High Lord of Terra behind the Head Scribe (who is basically a glorified secretary). This is due to the Adeptus Custodes' job almost exclusively revolving around the defense and maintenance of Terra, but more specifically the Palace and the Golden Throne. His inclusion in the Council is mostly ceremonial. With the revival of the Emperor's voice and his ability to issue orders, coupled with the fact that only the Custodes are allowed to see the Emperor on a regular basis basically makes Kitten the second most powerful person in the Imperium.
• Amazing Freaking Grace: Plays for a second or two when Dominique dies.
• Ambiguously Brown: Kitten, as it turns out has dark skin under his armor but given that the Imperium exists in a far future post-racial society, he doesn't take note of this.
• Angst: Ferrus Manus's ghost tries to invoke despair on Vulkan by droning "Flesh is WEEAAAKKK". It's defied in that the recipient is clearly fed up with the constant attempts and they're not working.
• Animation Bump: Season 2 is a massive improvement overall in animation quality.
• Anti-Climax Boss: invokedWhen asked about the Men of Iron, the Emperor tells about what's basically an army of indestructible Terminators on steroids. He then says that the war against them was so short it's not even worth talking about.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Tu'Shan tends to speak like this, not quite reaching Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe but definitely sounding a little like a fantasy paladin.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • This is how the battle between "Papa Smurf" and the Swarmlord ended, with the Ultramarine Chapter Master ending up without limbs.
  • In the crossover with The Fate of Abbadon, the Emperor rips Abbadon's arms off and then warps him into space. ^note As a reference to the infamous meme of Abaddon perpetually losing his arms, likely due to early model quality not quite agreeing with overseas shipping, though the true source of the joke is up for debate.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Small, and hidden in the middle of general berating, but it's a particularly effective part of it: As the Emperor's reading his Custodes the riot act for standing around in the Imperial Palace instead of actually going out there and actually fighting battles, he drives it in with the following question:
    The Emperor: When was the last time anyone of you killed anything?
  • Magnus to Kitten when the latter is defending Emperor's logic.
    Magnus: Well, if that truly is the case, how come you haven't deactivated Guilliman's life support yet? It is one of his highest demands, isn't it?
• Art Evolution: For the second special, Warp Hijinks, the Greater Daemons are just photographs of their real-life models. By Episode 26, they all have their own artwork.
• Ass Shove: During Cato Sicarius's first appearance, Papa Smurf gets so annoyed at him that he threatens to deliver an "Imperial Fisting" upon Sicarius with the Gauntlets of Ultramar. He follows through with the Fisting part in Episode 21, but thankfully for Sicarius' posterior Marneus Calgar only smashed his face in.
• Atomic F-Bomb: After suffering from a censoring vox-hailer that bleeps out cursewords and any chaos references with terribly loud truck horns for two whole Podcasts, the Emperor finally blows it up by belting out one of these, which the vox-hailer tried to keep up with and lost.
• Atrocious Alias: Boy briefly has to deal with a bodyguard who uses a sonic-based Vox weapon to attack. While the name does work as a Portmanteau of "assailant" and "hailer", you have to wonder who would want to get a job with the title of "Asshailer".
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Emperor's entire Yu-Gi-Oh! deck revolves around creating the Winged Warrior of Terra and taking Kitten out in two turns with no way of destroying it while still having 100 lifepoints left... while giving Little Kitten the deck that exploits its core weakness: cards can still be returned to his hand without being destroyed.
• Awesomeness-Induced Amnesia: Magnus seems to completely forget about his hulking out into a daemonic giant and rampaging throughout the throne room, going by his utter obliviousness to what just happened.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: In-Universe, it seems that Marneus Calgar/Papa Smurf is suffering from a form of this, Glory Withdrawal, because none of the victories of the Ultramarines feel good anymore as there is no risk involved. Basically, the Ultramarines have become a whole chapter of Comically Invincible Heroes and he has begun to loathe it. The fact that Captain Sicarius, a Glory Hound to the highest degree, is typically involved in this only makes it even worse. It's later implied he made a deal with a Reality Warper of some kind in exchange for becoming a Showy Invincible Hero, and between the guilt and the Withdrawal he's starting to lose his sanity.
• Badass Normal: The Catachan Jungle Fighters are extremely hardcore, to the point where they aren't actually used as a Space Marine recruitment world so the Imperial Ar... Imperial Gua... Astra Milita... The Wall of Guns can have something to point to and be proud of. Daemonette hunters reject Space Marines because their muscles are gained through what they consider cheating.
• Batman Gambit:
  • The Emperor has been playing one ever since episode four. His plan to disband the Inquisition: order their disbanding, knowing the most radical, batshit insane members will refuse to believe he sent the order. When they storm the palace to destroy the Adeptus Custodes and the High Lords of Terra to retrieve him, he has Magnus send the lot of them into the Warp, then re-instates those who actually followed his order. Before doing so he ensures their throne-bound, angry, incredibly hypocritical leader Fyodor Karamazov believes he is an aspect of the Emperor of Mankind. After joining with Leman Russ and Kaldor Draigo in the warp, Karamazov's insistence at being the Emperor reaches the point where the Emperor's Compassion, in the form of the Star Child, is able to possess him. This brings back the remaining Inquisition, Leman Russ, Kaldor Draigo, and the reborn Emperor from the warp into the Dark Eldar's twisted capital of Commoragh... Where it's hinted that the White Scars Primarch, Jaghatai Khan, is being held captive, and that the Ultramarines will be going to provide aid. And the Emperor has yet more plans regarding the incoming birth of Ynnead, the Eldar God of the Dead.
  • Magnus' acquisition is also another one. His treatment of Magnus manipulates him in useful ways, not to mention his presence in the Palace is drawing the still-loyal Primarchs back to Terra. Vulkan, Corvus, and Leman all stop doing what they had been and make a beeline for Terra when they hear that Magnus is with the Emperor. The Emperor also knows that Magnus has a nasty habit of screwing up everything he touches, but in a useful way (if handled right). Thus far, his screwups have saved the Imperium from imposter High Lords and reawakened Corvus.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: While he's talking to Rogal Dorn in Episode 23, the Emperor gets fed up and begs for somebody (Magnus, Kitten, whatever...) to come and save him from the conversation. Cue Karstodes leaping into the throne room, and the Emperor desperately back-pedaling as he realizes having the Fabulous Custodes around is even WORSE than talking to Dorn.
• Berserk Button:
  • The Emperor has several:
    • Religion. Even if it's worshiping the Emperor. Especially if it's worshiping the Emperor.
    • Don't tell the Emperor that you have cost massive, irreplaceable resources for no reason when other options are available, such as an Emperor-class Battleship. Just don't. That said, he'll forgive such an act if it actually accomplishes something meaningful, as with the Astral Knight's sacrifice.
    • Also don't ask him about the Traitor Legions. His anger at this line of thought makes the loss of an Emperor-class Battleship look tame by comparison. In particular, "Fucking Horus".
    • And never ever mention any race (like the Tau) that refuses to fight in melee. He goes apocalyptic at the mention of that.
    • He really hates it when someone pokes fun at the state of his physical body. When a tongue-in-cheek question about whether he ever skips leg day is read to him, his reply is a "Fuck you!" said with such ferocity that it triggers earthquakes on planets across the galaxy.
  • Marneus Calgar practically starts foaming at the mouth when he hears of the canon defiling antics his chapter gets up to. If it doesn't cause him to go into a spiral of depression, that is.
  • Kitten goes nuts at the mention of the Tau. Even moreso if someone mentions his failed relationship with Shadowsun^note THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!. He gets so furious that Magnus actually leans back.
  • Magnus the Red also does not take kindly to unfavorable comparisons between himself and Leman Russ. He's also completely unable to hold his tongue when it comes to calling out someone being an idiot, and when exposed to the Imperium's stupid questions spends the entire episode on edge. Kitten gravely misjudges Magnus's response to saying the Space Wolves are much better than the Thousand Sons, smashing another of Magnus' buttons. In addition, while it is a downplayed trope, confusion seems to act as an emotional trigger for Magnus. It crosses back into straight territory, however, as mocking him about this easily makes him angry.
    • Another sore spot Magnus has is the Burning of Prospero, which comes to light in Episode 29.
      Eldar Harlequin: [mockingly] Go back to Prospero, Wide Ahriman!
      Magnus: [CRACK] AH. YES. You know that feeling when your HOME PLANET is TORN ASUNDER by a PACK of SPITEFUL BIGOTS and you live in PAIN and SUFFERING for TEN THOUSAND YEARS KNOWING that you could have SAVED IT had you not FUCKED UP OVER AND OVER AND OVER and then you're forced to stand before an assemblage of LITERAL JEERING CLOWNS who call you [horrible illegible clown word]^note 'cringe' and tell you to GO BACK TO YOUR AFORMENTIONED LONG-SINCE DESTROYED HOME?! CAN ANYONE RELATE?!
  • Also, when Kitten and Tzeentsch are playing Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Chess-Strip-Poker for his soul, and Tzeentsch discards his whole deck, rapidly "flick"ing the cards one-by-one:
    Magnus: Stop. Flicking. Your cards.
    Tzeentch: [Beat] Flick flick flick flick flick—
    Magnus: [strangled cry of rage and brief turning back into a cyclops]
  • Leman Russ' feelings towards Magnus are much the same as Magnus towards him; he completely blows his stack at the description of a towering, one-eyed red daemon, bellowing Magnus' name in fury.
  • The Ordo Xenos leader goes into a Red Rage once the word "Genestealers" are mentioned. She actually slaughters Kairos the Fateweaver when she asked whether he's a Genestealer, and because Kairos can only give two answers (one a truth and one a lie), it was no... and then yes. In a crossover "The Shadow over Immateriums" she, banished in the Warp and severely drunk on Fenrisian ale, emerged straight out of the Warp to kill off a Genestealer cult trying to infect a detective. Then pops back into the Warp. No explanation for how this is accomplished is ever given.
  • While Khorne is already in a state of perpetual anger given his nature, he gets absolutely pissed as hell at anything to do with Slaanesh, especially since he/she used his chainaxe as a vibrator. It's especially notable when compared to his interactions with Tzeentch, the other Chaos God he's canonically antagonistic to; he clearly doesn't like the Changer of Ways but he doesn't get outright infuriated at him either, at least relatively speaking.
  • For everything that the Emperor has, the Khornate daemon Skarbrand has even more, in fact everything is. If anything, he seems to have inverse Berserk buttons, aka things that don't make him homicidally angry. Thus far this includes "standing in the doorway," and that's about it.
• Best Friend: The Emperor considered Malcador the Sigilite his bro-for-life and was very saddened by his passing. Notably, Malcador himself, while flattered by this, did not see himself as equal to his "best friend" in any way or manner and was OK with it.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Cegorach may be the "Laughing God", and his race may be dying, but he is still a god. Ahriman finds this out the hard way when he tries to force his way into the library.
  • Fyodor found out that as silly and cringe-worthy as the Custodes' exhibitionist and homoerotic ways are, they are still the Imperium's most powerful warriors.
• Beyond the Impossible: Just to show how obscenely overpowered the Ultramarines are, they are sent on a Impossible Task. They manage to subdue and retrieve Magnus, a Daemon Prince, from the Eye of Terror, with their Gellar Shields deactivated. Yeah. Calgar rants about how impossible this is but his subordinates don't get it.
• Bias Steamroller: Kitten falls into this when discussing the Tau in episode 15.
  Magnus: I'm taking the side of reason in this debate — and my reason is telling me that you are very biased in this discussion.
  Kitten: No I'm not! I'm just telling the truth!
  Magnus: The truth about how the Tau are a race of creepy old vagina-faced hobos who exist for no reason?
  Kitten: EXACTLY!
• Big Bad:
  • There is no true main bad guy, as it is more of a Big Bad Ensemble, with the likes of the Inquisition, the forces of Chaos, and others.
  • Brotrip: 40,000 has Clancy, a very polite man who dreams of killing a Primarch, and proves to be a particularly difficult nuisance for Corvus and Vulkan.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Malal, who, every time we see or hear from him, is trying desperately to become a relevant and canonical Chaos God.
• Big "NO!":
  • In "Why Kitten Hates the Tau" short, Kitten lets out a big "NO" after his great love, Commander Shadowsun, leaves him. Then another one at the episode itself being made: THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!
  • One of shards of the Emperor when he realizes that he can't contact the "Throne Emperor" to warn him about the Tau.
    • The same soundbite is used by Rogal Dorn in the podcast covering Inquisitor when Boy repeats "gussy".
• Big Red Devil: Magnus' true form is far more daemony. Usually he restrains himself to keep his Primarch shape, but when Kitten smashes his Berserk Button...
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: In episode twelve, Emperor's critique of all of his Primarch sons (bar Sanguinus) makes it look like his family was like this. Meanwhile, he had absolutely no idea about the existence of his biological children, due to a combination of their psychic invisibility and not realizing their mothers survived the experience.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • The Emperor reacts with shock upon learning about the division of Legions into Chapters.
  • Kitten reacts with confusion and shock when he hears that the Emperor was building the Human Webway to get access to Eldar prostitutes.
  • Magnus and Kitten both deliver one when hearing about the origins of the Orks... namely in response to learning the Orks actually played a major role in galactic history are were not a bunch of irrelevant barbarians.
  • Magnus in the second Q&A:
    The Emperor: This put me more into balance than the time I surfed a Space Hulk right into one of Tzeentch's crystal garden planets.
    Magnus: YOU DID WHAT?!
• Bile Fascination: In-Universe, this is the response to the main cast to the "clusterwreck trainfuck" that is Lucius's Slaaneshmas HV Special. Everyone sees it as inherently heretical, but it's such a goddamn mess that they can't stop watching it.
• Black Comedy: At the end of episode fourteen, Magnus runs over a couple of kids playing around the Palace. There's tons of black comedy in the series in general.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: The second Q&A ends with Kitten backing off as Magnus and the Emperor are arguing, with their argument being represented by "rabble rabble rabble" from both sides.
• Blasé Boast: One of the few moments where the Emperor can actually get back at Uriah is by making one of these in regards to when he got Magnus back on his side. He speaks of simply kidnapping Magnus from his homeworld and getting his soul back by stabbing Tzeentch in the face repeatedly like it's such a minor, casual deal it's not worth elaborating on, which leaves Uriah utterly flabbergasted.
  Uriah: C-could you- could you- could you run that one by me again? I don't think... Like, we can't just walk by... what you just said... as if it's not... something that you just said, this is not something we can just ignore.
• Body Horror: Principal Vox-Caster Proprietus has horrendously swollen feet and varicose veins from standing in place for extended periods, useless blue fingers from pushing the activation rune on his holy Vox-caster until they broke, and an expanded ribcage that he hangs stuff off of since he can't hold anything. And he's quite disappointed in "Boy" for not developing the same deformities, until he bleeds to death after Boy kicks him in the shin.

• Book Ends: In "Kitten & Tzeentch play a Children's Card Game," Wind-Up Kitten is among the first monsters Tzeentch sends to Kitten's Graveyard. That said, Wind-Up Kitten ends up being one of the keys to victory, contributing to the massive attack point gains of itself, and the three Milus Radiants, sending Tzeentch's Morphing Jar back to his hand, leaving Tzeentch exposed to direct attacks, and gaining personal vengeance by being the monster to deliver the final blow.
• Boring, but Practical: In "Kitten and Emps play a Children's Card Game", Emperor floods his deck with some of the most hilariously-broken Yu-Gi-Oh! cards in the game, including a card that only appears in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime because one of the characters cheated and made the card stupidly broken. Kitten wins by using Giant Trunade and Wind-Up Kitten to send everything back to the Emperor's hand, bypassing the "This card cannot be destroyed" that's printed on all of Emperor's cards. Seeing how the Emperor spent all but 100 Lifepoints to humiliate Kitten in two turns with the most amazing monster he could make he really deserved this.
  • Kitten adopts a similar strategy to win in the Stellaris special, where he's the only player to survive to the end of the game with a thriving empire simply because he focused his attention on domestic development, diplomatic alliances, and not declaring pointless wars every five minutes.
• Both Sides Have a Point:
  • Kitten and Magnus pointing fingers at the Imperium and the Thousand Sons' faults. Magnus rightly points out that the Imperium is violent, paranoid and superstitious. Kitten responds that the Thousand Sons and the rest of Chaos make themselves very easy propaganda targets with their actions, and are for the most part completely horrible.
  • In Remilez's "40k Theories" video on Kitten's identity, Kitten angrily asks why, if people want to know what his name is, they don't just look it up, as he is the Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, meaning his name is in the public record and able to be looked up. While true, Remilez fires back that not only does the hall of records cover hundreds of miles of storage space, but that Rogal is busy making a fort out of the documents.
  • In essence, episode 19 is this between the Emperor and Magnus. Magnus argues that the forces of Chaos (as in the energies therein, not the hordes of monsters) are vital to mankind, seeing as how they make up a huge part of the human psyche. The Emperor accepts this as true, but fires back that they are also horrible, evil things that need to be stopped since they make everything in the galaxy worse.
  • Second podcast is this between the Emperor and Uriah Olathaire, who was saved by Chaos gods and turned to Chaos. The former believes that Chaos is a grand evil mess that should be removed and pokes holes in religions, while the latter points out that it's practically impossible to get rid of chaos and the Emperor screwed up majorly and is a massive hypocrite who isn't really that much better, while Chaos actually provides purpose for existence and it's mostly actually its followers who muck things up.
• Brain Bleach: The Emperor requests some after being told Lorgar was a literal bookbanger.
  The Emperor: Please erase these mind images immediately.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • "Dangerous, stupid, dangerously stupid and stupidly dangerous" is what the Warp is like.
  • Khorne's realm is full of "blood, skulls, bloody skulls"
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Or as the Emperor likes to call it, "4TH DEGREE INTER-DIMENSIONAL WARP FUCKERY."
  • Episode 12 is the first to have an opening. Immediately afterwards, the Emperor wonders what it was.
  • In a more serious case, the If The Emperor Had A Podcast episodes revolve around the Custodes discovering that the Black Library in the Warhammer 40,000 universe contains documents from the real-world Black Library (the Games Workshop publishing division). While they aren't aware where the documents in question came from, they correctly come to the conclusion that whomever must have written them are able to omnisciently understand the nature of the 40,000 universe. This reaches some kind of peak in the Inquisitor podcast where the characters have to repeatedly remind each other of the conceit that the book is a "historical document" and not fiction, finally just giving up.
  • Episode 25 has Cegorach screw with the opening, causing it to fast-forward through it while a Laugh Track plays.
    • Later in the episode, Marneus Calgar orders that a non-canon character called Illiyan not get "any screentime".
  • Kitten angrily insists that his relationship with Shadowsun is "not fucking canon" everytime someone brings it up.
• Brick Joke: In episode 12.5 one of the questions sent to the emperor was by Grey Knight 31 saying "Are you going to send Draigo to rehab? Dude needs help." Come episode 18, we see just how much help he needs.
  • Kitten names Santodes while recalling the Custodes who sacrificed himself for the Emperor against Horus so as to not be upstaged by a mere mortal. Santodes makes a later appearance in Fabulous Custodes Pattern Dreadnought Armor (Dreadnoughts are a form of power armor where the person inside was mortally wounded).
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Played for laughs — Karamazov is disgusted and let down when he finds out that his idol's secret tactic are Barrels of Jokaero.
  • Equally applies to Karamazov when he meets Kaldor Draigo in the warp, in this case, portrayed as a delusional raving egotist who steals Karamazov's dreadnought throne idea in the span of five seconds. Karamazov is not happy about this one.
• Brown Bag Mask: When the Emperor talks about his sons, Alpharius and Omegon both wear bags to hide their faces. Makes sense — in-canon, their faces are neither shown nor described, despite the two going mask- and helmetless fairly often.
  • The Emperor suggests this to the Black Templars chapter master Helbrecht. As he points out, most mutants are still loyal citizens of the imperium, and covering up their "fuck-ugly faces" with a paper bag is a more effective method of hiding their mutation than simply murdering them on sight.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Entire organizations are weird but effective.
  • The Custodes are exhibitionist, Macho Camp and love swimming in promethium pools, but they can be surprisingly competent.
  • The Ultramarines can't shut up about their own glory and speak in a grandiose way, but if they're supposed to do something, they will do it, even if it violates laws of physics, canon and common sense.
  • Cato Sicarius in particular — he manages to sneak on Prometheus, break a wall, drop a tank inside (with its radio blasting his theme music no less) and escape without being noticed, despite being an obnoxious Glory Hound proclaiming his being fantastic all the time.
  • Salamanders love fire to the point of fetish, but are the most people-friendly Astartes Chapters out there.
  • Similar with the Space Wolves. They might be "furry fucks" as Magnus would say and drunkards but their rejection of the Codex allows them to stay independent and versatile, acting as both executioners and protectors of the people.
  • The White Scars might be speed-obsessed and with a fixation on hunting those who have slighted them, but even the Emperor compliments them on their effectiveness.
  • Kaldor Draigo. Absolutely insane. Considered non-sapient by Leman and Karamazof. Still manages to Kill the Masque and eat a sun.
• Burning with Anger: The Emperor's skeleton turns red with flames when the above Berserk Buttons are pressed. It's taken to extreme when Kitten tells Emperor about the Sensei and how Inquisition has hunted them down. This leads to Emperor venting steam from his ears. Which is pretty impressive, seeing how he is just a skeleton at this point. And then, his anger reaches such a state it causes warp storms to occur.
  • Played for Laughs when he gets a message that confuses him with a fast food franchise asking him to replace a burger. Steam comes from his ears and mouth, but thankfully the Centurion is there to help calm him down.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The Emperor's caretaker and Custodes Captain-General, "Little Kitten". Half of the time, he's getting insulted by the Emperor for being a moron, while his own fellow Custodes mock him despite him being Captain-General, which they didn't even know about until Fyodor invaded the Palace. Oh, and once Magnus the Red joins the regular cast, he mocks Kitten constantly too.
  • Magnus himself also gets mocked about as much, typically by his own father.
  • Dominique, Karamazov's scribe, gets this treatment all the time, combined with shades of Only Sane Man. Admittedly, he's not very good at his job and has a serial drugs habit.
  • "Little Billy", the young presumably psychic boy in cardboard power armor. According to his friend Boy he's a mutant, and the universe seems just as determined to throw him into horrifying and traumatic experiences as it is to make sure he survives them. To make matters worse, he seems to be Lucius the Eternal's favorite target for "Pranks" and general bullying. To date the only good thing to happen to him was being saved from a band of Dark Eldar by Sly Marbo and even then he had to be put through the traumatic experience of being captured by the Dark Eldar.
• Call-Back:
  • In episode four, the Emperor mentions that he's still disgusted with the Dreadknight from episode one.
  • In second Q&A, the Centurion — not seen since episode one save for a brief cameo — shows up again to calm the Emperor down.
  • In the same episode Kitten mockingly repeats Emperor's words about "fourth-degree Warp fuckery" from the first Q&A.
  • In episode 16, Kitten claims he could hear his Heresy Detector going off during an argument with Magnus. In episode 19, he pulls out a literal Heresy Detector when Magnus' argument with the Emperor reaches critical mass.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Magnus does it to the Emperor, pointing out that he was bullied by him for powers that the Emperor also had, that his father was insanely secretive, that he manipulated his sons and that he didn't trust them.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Kitten can't bring himself to tell Magnus that the latter has gone berserk at the mention of the Wolves, because Magnus doesn't remember a thing and Kitten doesn't want to trigger another outburst. Later, it turns out it was All for Nothing in Episode 27 when Rogal tells Magnus anyway and the worst Magnus does is say "Oh, really?" in a shocked way.
• Camp Gay:
  • The other Custodes make rather... obvious remarks about their attraction to the Emperor (and each other). When they are not criticizing the Inquisition's sense of fashion or jumping on the scene and posing.
    "My loincloth is bursting with anticipation"
  • Lucius the Eternal makes the Custodies look normal with his high-pitched voice and effeminate mannerisms.
• Captain Obvious: The Emperor is no fan of this.
  Kartodes: The Space Wolves are Space Marines!
  Rogal Dorn: He's incredibly unknowledgeable, father.
  The Emperor: Thanks, Rogal. I noticed that.
• Cassandra Truth: One of the Emperor's soul fragments feels this way; he believes the Tau are the greatest potential threat to the Imperium, but has no way of communicating his prophecy to "Throne-Emperor" in a way that Throne-Emperor will actually listen to. Then we see Tzeentch next to him, giggling like a maniac (well, more than usual), which confirms it.
• Casting Gag: SpeakerD, the voice actor for the Emperor when he's not using the TTS device, plays a tech-priest in War Hams. Tech-priests replace body parts with augmentics as a sign of prestige, including the voice box, so SpeakerD voices someone whose artificial voice is a sign of how low he's fallen, and someone whose lack of an artificial voice is a sign that he hasn't risen.
• Catching Up on History: The entire plot of this series (at least initially) is about the Emperor needing to be filled in on all the stuff he missed over his 10,000 year slumber.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first few episodes were dedicated to the Emperor caustically commenting on the state of the Imperium/thinly veiled Take Thats at the 40K canon. It isn't until the Emperor decrees that the Inquisition be disbanded that things start to get somewhat serious. Downplayed in that while the events are indeed very serious, the way they are presented to the audience is as silly as before.
• Character Check: While trapped in the Warp and especially in Episode 26 Part 1, the Inquisition is portrayed as surprisingly sympathetic as they struggle to escape the hell world they're trapped in, and while Elirush and Adrielle's death are played for dark, but tragic, comedy, Donklas is shown mourning their loss. Then in Part 2, when Karamazov, who's essentially become The Emperor's kindness at this point and saved them them all from getting annihilated by Daemons minutes before, suggests listening to the Dark Eldar, cue the entire Inquisition calling him a heretic and chanting for his death, only being stopped thanks to Kryptmann being the Only Sane Man.
• Character Development: Being a show that has progresses slowly each episode this will happen but the Fab Custodes are one of the most extreme examples. Whamuudes and Custodisi were originally "homoerotic muscle man" and "boring muscular guy" but after they had a meeting with Cegorach which had left them traumatized they lose their main characterizations and become more dynamic characters with Whamuudes acting as more the straight man to the Emperor and Rogal Dorn's arguments in the podcast for the former and being more of the snarker for the latter. The two Custodes even put their feet down and tell the Emperor he's an asshole after reading The Last Church by Graham McNeill and them being programmed to kiss his ass doesn't change anything. Custodisi is even more of a Servile Snarker than Little Kitten and became one even faster. Despite these changes their... "peculiarities" still show up.
  Custodisi: That I may suckle on your kneecaps?
• Chekhov's Gunman: That Imperial Fists centurion that the Emperor becomes so adored by in the first episode of Season 1? He appears at the end of Season 2 and reveals himself to be Rogal Dorn.
• Chess with Death: Closer to the "Cards with the Devil" variant:
  • In the first special the Emperor challenges Kitten to a game of Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker (which looks suspiciously like Yu-Gi-Oh!) when he refuses to carry out an order to pull Guilliman's life support. Shockingly, Kitten wins.
  • In the fourth special Magnus and Kitten accidentally summon Tzeench while playing with a Ouija Board, who attempts to reclaim Magnus' soul. So Kitten again plays Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker, and wins.
  • In episode 29 Magnus attempts to enter the Black Library but is stopped by Cegorach, who's willing to let him in if he wins a contest. But when Magnus spots the Laughing God strapping on a Duel Disc he's having none of it and blows it up, which is when it turns out to actually be a comedy competition. Magnus bombs until he accidentally discovers self-deprecating humor, and since he's a hybrid being of both pure thought and flesh, it almost kills him. But Cegorach needs him so he stops the match and offers an alternative...
• Chirping Crickets: When the Emperor asks Magnus and Kitten whether they have heard about the War in Heaven, the rebellion of the Iron Men and all the times when humanity was kicking ass, awkward silence falls, wind howls and a lone Servo Skull drifts by.
• Chromatic Superiority: Played with; Kitten suggests that both Salamanders and Orks loose all the time because they are green. The Emperor dismisses it; to him, all colors are equally inferior when compared to gold.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Episode 17 ends with one, as the Inquisition breaks into the hall of the Golden Throne and Magnus steps forward to defend his father, prompting Karamazov to scream daemon!
  • Episode 20 ends with the Centurion revealing himself to be Rogal Dorn.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: During Special 6: Tabletop Adventures, the Master of the Administratum's halfling character gets punted by an ogre tyrant (actually a Custodian shield-captain), and can be seen evaporating into a red mist from the force of the blow. When the Master tries to use a fate point to survive the blow, Magnus flatly refuses on the grounds of this trope.
  Magnus: You, small halfling man, just had your cranium caved in by a punch with the force of a frag grenade. YOU ARE DEAD.
• Clip-Art Animation: The whole animation style, using characters taken straight out of Warhammer 40,000 illustrations. In season 1, their movements are mostly limited to Action Figure Speech. From season 2 onward they have a few moving parts, like the arms, but are still clip-arts.
  Kitten: Yes, let me just bounce up and down to get the papers.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Kaldor Draigo. Sweet, merciful Sigmar, Kaldor Draigo. Let's just say that Warp isn't good for his mind.
  • Somehow, Rogal Dorn is so literal-minded he veers directly into the same sort of strangeness as the typical type.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • The Emperor's "C", "F", "K", and "U" keys should be worn out by now.
  • Ahriman also has quite the Potty-mouth, dropping an F-bomb at least once a sentence once he realizes that Cegorach is fucking with him.
  • Somewhat averted in the "If The Emperor Had A Podcast" special, since the vox has a machine built in that makes a loud air-horn noise any time someone either curses or mentions "Chaos." This does lead to a scene where the Emperor uses it so much the Custodes are begging him to stop as it's hurting their ears.
• Coin-Targeting Trickshot: When Kitten was playing a game of Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker against Tzeentch for Magnus' soul, Kitten uses Cup of Ace to flip a coin so whoever it lands for would have to draw two cards. Kitten shoots it to force Tzeentch to draw two cards, which would deck him out. It turns out to be a trap, as Tzeentch had an elaborate scheme to give him the winning move. Fortunately, Kitten counters the plan by just summoning a bunch of monsters that self-buff and throwing them at Tzeentch.
• Color-Coded Characters: Supernatural entities seem to use color coded subtitles. From what we have now:
  • Emperor — gold and all capitals
  • Magnus — bright red
  • Tzeentch — blue
  • Nurgle — dark green
  • Cegorach — orange
  • Malal — white
  • Horus — Black and Dark Red
  • Khorne — blood red
  • Slaanesh — pink
  • Rogal Dorn — a lighter yellow
  • Perturabo (in flashback) — dark yellow
  • Kitten (Post duel with Tzeentch) — blue, but in a more basic font than Tzeentch. After changing into his Captain-General's armor — yellow, darker than Rogal but lighter than Pertuabo.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: Just milliseconds before Fyodor Karamazov gets a Greater Daemon's axe to the head, we get a brief wave of negative colour and then everything turns to a pinkish monochrome.
• Comically Invincible Hero: The Ultramarines who can do anything, anything if they're ordered to do it such as fly through the Warp with their Gellar Fields off, capture Magnus the Red in a big box, and take out an Eldar titan with a single punch, and Marneus Calgar aka Papa Smurf is sick of it. Calgar seems to have gotten them their awesomeness through some kind of dark pact (possibly after the disastrous Tryanid attack) and now he's paying for it.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • When the Emperor learns that he's worshiped as a God (and he had a very strict Stop Worshipping Me policy) and reacts with terror, Kitten is quick to assure him that the worship is holding strongly, which doesn't exactly calm the Emperor's mind.
  • When the Custodes go to meet with the Fabricator General, they're blocked by a contingent of a Skitarii guarding the door. After a bit of back and forth and pulling rank, it's established that the Skitarii quite simply are not going to let the Custodes in. Kitten asks dreadnought Santodes to "convince" the Skitarii to see things their way. Santodes takes the cue to do what he does best... flexing and showing off his body. Strangely (or perhaps not), it actually works in short order, to Kitten's mild frustration.
• Computer Voice: The Emperor's Text-to-Speech device, of course, sounds like a machine.
• Continuity Nod: The full playlist of all videos that are canon to the TTS universe is mostly filled with filler and non-TTS specific videos. That said, these videos have a LOT of nods to each other, and many get referenced in the main series itself. Camels, "Soi Soi," and the Alfa Legion are just a few memorable examples.
• Cool Old Guy: Torquemada Coteaz seems to be one. When the order to disband the Inquisition came down, he apparently went off to make movies to pass the time.
• Cosmic Retcon: Ventris has noticed how all of the Ultramarines' past failures and defeats have been retroactively either undone or made so minor as to be irrelevant, including his own personal My Greatest Failure moment. Calgar seems to know something about it but refuses to explain. General lore changes are usually explained as the Imperium getting better intelligence, although Kitten does note with confusion that the Necron Pariahs just sort of... wandered off one day. The "Salamanders are coal black" retcon is also noted, with the Emperor being positive they used to be just normal black men and Kitten insisting it's always been this way.
• Cosmic Temper Tantrum: When the Emperor gets truly pissed off, Warp Storms erupt. Episode 16 has him cause five at once upon hearing about what happens to his biological descendants.
• Creator's Pet: Invoked.
  • Parodied with the Emperor's attempt to get the Ultramarines killed and their Primarch, Guilliman, unplugged from life support. And despite this mockey, they actually manage to succeed in their suicide mission to capture Magnus the Red. This is later deconstructed. In episode 14 it turns out that Marneus Calgar has either grown out of his Glory Seeker ways, or is suffering from glory withdrawal. He's also been trying to get his successor, Cato Sicarus, killed; problem is, Cato won't die, no matter how utterly impossible or canon-defiling the situation is.
  Calgar: Nothing is satisfying anymore...
  • And then there's the other infamous Pet of the WH40K universe, Kaldor Draigo... Let's just say, no matter how "amazing" and "decisive" your battles in the Warp are, you're still in the Warp, which leads to bugfuck madness.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Rogal Dorn does raise some legitimate points about the Fridge Logic in the 40k universe. For example, how did Terra's oceans disappear? The Emperor's explanation is that they boiled away due to a combination of nuclear wars and massive overpopulation. Dorn points out that, even if that were possible, boiling water would not remove it from the planet. When the Emperor tries to Hand Wave it by saying it was stolen and brought off-world, Dorn questions how one would steal 1.26 sextillion liters of water in an age of limited space travel. Then the Emperor says it was magicked away into the Warp by psykers. Dorn finds that idea absolutely hilarious.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Karamazov leads an entire army of Inquisitors, Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and a decent number of Grey Knights to the Golden Throne to "save the Emperor". Magnus banishes him and the entirety of his collected forces into the Warp with a single wave of his hand. He isn't even fazed.
  • Also, apparently, any engagement the Ultramarines participate in will quickly end in their favor, including kidnapping Magnus without their Gellar Shields on (by the Emperor's request).
  • Episode 22 has an especially nonchalant example of this trope, when Kaldor Draigo instantly, and off-screen, knocks out an enraged Magnus.
  • Episode 25 shows the Ultramarines in action, first leisurely jogging through the webway, but then they encounter an Eldar Phantom Titan. It starts insulting them and boasting about its prowess, to which Calgar responds by angrily punching it in the foot, causing it to fall over and explode. Then they just walk away.
  • Episode 26 mostly consisted of a battle between the forces of the Inquisition that were sent to the warp in episode 18 and the daemons that were terrorized by them since then. Being as this actually followed the Warhammer 40,000 rules and the Inquisition's forces were much smaller than those of Chaos (due to using Meatgrinder rules; the smaller army wins by lasting six turns). Their greatest losses came from infighting, and the greatest victories the Inquisition had was when their Taurox tanks survived an onslaught for a very short while.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: The Emperor believes that Magnus is too curious for his own good. He really is. In the background lore, when the Emperor first met Magnus, he realized that his son was an active Psyker and warned him not to screw around with the Warp too much. Magnus being who he is proceeded to ignore his father's warnings and continued to fiddle around with his powers until he met Tzeentch. That said, Magnus does note that the Emperor never bothered to tell anyone, including the Primarchs, the ones for whom it would be most dangerous to fall to Chaos, exactly why they shouldn't have Dug Too Deep and thus were unprepared when Chaos did come a'calling.
• Curse Cut Short: In Episode 21:
  Ultramarine: My glorious Chapter Master! We have succeeded in acquiring and planting the Salamanders artifacts!
  Calgar: ...WHAT THE FU—[cue intro]
• Cutaway Gag: This bit in Episode 24, during the Emperor's discussion with Rogal Dorn about the latter's gene sons:
  Emperor: I AM SURPRISED ONE OF THOSE DO NOT HAVE THE WORD "FISTS" IN THEIR NAME.^Note Referring to the "First Successor Chapters" of the Imperial Fists, in particular the Crimson Fists and the Black Templars.
  Dorn: That is because they are absolute lunatics.
  (Cue to scene of black drop pods falling from the sky, then to a scene of a Black Templar stabbing a heretic with his sword)
  Black Templars: ~PUUUURGING WIIITH MY KIIIIIN!!!~
• Cuteness Proximity: The Emperor loves having a Centurion seated on his lap because he thinks it's adorable. Inverted when he sees the Dreadknight, which He finds absolutely horrible. The fandom of 40k typically agrees on these viewpoints.
  • Despite having a very compelling explanation as to why he should immediately get away from the Catachan Barking Toad at his feet, Vulkan cannot help but be overcome by a desire to pet it.
• Cut Short: Due to the indefinite hiatus following Games Workshop's crackdown on fan videos, the series effectively ends with Kitten being cut down by Belisarius Cawl in front of his horrified entourage, Rogal Dorne seemingly sacrificing himself to stop the Emperor's subsequent Freak Out from destroying Terra, Leman Russ and Jagatai Khan doomed to die in the Dark Eldar arena, and Magnus and Custodisi stuck on the moon with Eldrad.
• Cutting the Knot: The winning gambit in the 4th Special ends up amounting to this, with Kitten Lampshading it. Rather than play Tzeentch's overcomplicated, twisty-as-hell games that always seem to have another escape route, he realizes he needs to think like a simpler human rather than playing Tzeentch's game, and uses a much simpler strategy to call back his own creatures, swat Tzeentch's only monster back to his hand to leave him entirely open to a simple attack and just burying him under a stampede of small, fluffy animals.
• Dark Secret: Calgar seems to know the secret to the Ultramarines' awesomeness, and he's terrified of Ventris figuring it out.
• Deadly Euphemism:
  • A (possibly) unintentional one. Azrael claims that he didn't want Asmodai to kill two Dark Angels when he asked him to "make them repent", and that Asmodai is "a fucking asshood who cannot make anyone repent"^note Asmodai: DID SOMEONE JUST SAY "MURDER ANYONE VIOLENTLY"?!, but Belial points out that Azrael knows that Asmodai hears the words "make them repent" as "murder them violently", and Azrael claims that the two could have turned at any moment.
  • Subverted when Kitten resigns himself to using "unreasonable means" against some uncooperative Skitarii and then tells Santodes, who was brought along as the brawn of the expedition, to "convince them". Instead of resorting to violence, Santodes shows off his fabulous Dreadnought frame, making the utterly technophilic Skitarii grant everyone access (after oiling themselves on the spot). Amusingly enough, Kitten seems to be visibly miffed that this worked.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • The Emperor snarks at the Custodian, Magnus, and the rest of the universe. His grilling of Fyodor Karamazov is an epic trolling, sarcastically congratulating him on his "greatness" at failing to get the memo. Granted, it's rather easy to do deadpan when the only method you have of talking is a monotone, robotic voice, but still, it is definitely sarcastic.
  • Dominique's character seems to live for this role, specifically because it pisses off Karamazov. He even takes in the fact that he's been transported to the Warp in stride. He has his moment after Karamazov's particularly long rant:
    Dominique: Hey, Fyodor? Maybe you should just preach them to death?
  • Magnus, being the bookworm of the Primarchs, gets in on the act just about every chance he gets.
  • Rogal Dorn, as literal-minded as he is, is able to shoot a few shots to his father, with The Emperor saying that he's lucky that finds SALT AND SWEET TO GO NICELY TOGETHER.
• Death by Despair: While he was already dying due to bleeding out, seeing Karstodes confirm what Boy told him causes the Adept Overseer to die. Karstodes claims that it was a "collaborative effort."
• Deconstruction:
  • The series humorously deconstructs much of 40K's rather tangled lore. By episode 22, the series begins deconstructing itself much more seriously: What would realistically happen if the Emperor was a constantly sarcastic jerk to his children? They'd lose faith in him. Again.
  • Humorously, this second Deconstruction has itself ground to a halt in chapter 23. Yes, Kitten and Magnus are currently acting independently rather than on the Emperor's orders, but the results of their actions have so far been played for laughs in accordance with the overall nature of the show. Meanwhile, the Emperor is back to sarcastically commenting on the state of the Imperium, starting with the Space Wolves, only with Karstodes and Rogal Dorn instead of Kitten and Magnus.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: After hearing about how his citizens are freaked out about the Salamanders being black, the Emperor gets up in Kitten's grill for the Imperium's apparent racism. He doesn't realize that he's using outdated terminology, and that the Salamanders are not so much what modern terminology would refer to as "black" (Kitten sans armor actually does fall under that category) and more like you smeared charcoal all over their bodies (and gave them glowing red contact lenses to boot). Given that the Imperium is about as tolerant of things that deviate from the norm as they are about... pretty much anything else, this does make some sense in-universe.
• Department of Redundancy Department: As of the short "Decius Breaks the News", the God-Emperor of Mankind is renamed the Man-Emperor of Mankind — a double example of this trope.
• Destination Defenestration: The series is fond of this. One tech priest in the "If the Emperor Had a Podcast" sub-series gets repeatedly thrown from the palace through a window, courtesy of Karstodes. Later, Whammudes is threatened with this same fate by Rogal Dorn. Also, all in attendance, in the fourth episode of the podcast series, "Draco" have a brief argument about who would defenestrate Jaq Draco if he came into the Imperial Throne Room.
• Digging Himself Deeper:
  • When Kitten tells the Emperor about Inquisition, he tries to talk about good things connected to it, but ends up bringing up all the horrid things it has done.
  • The Dark Angels' ruling cabal, while trying to ensure that the not-in-the-know Angels don't know about the secrets, accidentally blabber them all out.
• Discontinuity Nod: Malice/Malal, a character Games Workshop has willfully dropped the rights to so as not to get sued, is trapped in "the retconnian".
• Discriminate and Switch: When the Emperor asks why everyone is afraid of the Salamanders, Kitten replies that they're "black". Emperor takes this to mean that they're of African descent and Kitten is being racist. What Kitten meant is that the Salamanders are inhumanly black due to heavy radiation on their home planet, much darker than even the blackest Africans ever were, and it causes an Uncanny Valley effect when they try to talk to mere humans.
• Dissonant Laughter: Lucius, adding to his Nightmare Fuel factor, laughs like a deranged Mickey Mouse when killing his enemies and screaming things like "We are all going to skullfuck your families!"
• Dissonant Serenity: Magnus' most emotional reaction at a few thousand inquisitors invading the place he's in is expressing annoyance at someone who forgot to close the door and let the rabble in.
• Diving Save: Magnus pushes Kitten to the ground and covers him when the Emperor has the most epic Unstoppable Rage phase up to date. Then the two GTFO to avoid it.
• The Dog Bites Back: The poor Imperial citizen who spends most of Unsubtle Criticism Featuring the Adeptus Arbites in pain, confusion and fear eventually gets back at the braindead arbitrator and obnoxious official by joining Chaos. This summons the Exterminatus-happy wrath of the Inquisition, and as the wall of flame screams in on the trio, the official is helpless to do anything but scream childishly while, at the last second, the hobo gets warped clear of the devastation by his new masters.
• A Dog Named "Dog": In If the Emperor had a Podcast — Episode 0: White Scars a servant boy is forced to be known solely as "boy" because he couldn't get his name out in a quick enough fashion.
• Door Stopper: The Book of Judgement. Although it's less of a Door Stopper and more of a Frickin' Support Beam. Rogal even has to use his Grav Weaponry to carry it and even uses it as Support Beam due to its length, and that's the Out-dated version. Not even the Emperor himself knows how big the current one is.
• Double Entendre:
  • Episode 20 "You're Green With It" has The Emperor give a very thin one of these to Kitten when talking about the Salamanders, a group The Emperor believed was just one of Kitten's gay fantasies.
    The Emperor: YOU HAVE SPENT SO MUCH TIME AROUND PERFECT TONED ABS AND FLAWLESS OILED SKIN YOUR MIND HAS STARTED FANTASIZING ABOUT BIG, EXOTIC, CRUST-COVERED MEN TO COME AND TAKE YOU AWAY TO THE LANDS OF A THOUSAND VOLCANO CANNONS EXPLODING IN YOUR FACE.
  • Kitten as much admits he does have such fantasies, but that it is besides the point.
• Double-Meaning Title: Episode twenty's title, "You're green with it!", can actually refer to three things:
  • The topic is the Salamanders, who have green as their color motif.
  • "Green with envy", referring to Magnus having a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Leman Russ and the Space Wolves.
  • invokedGreen from Squick, which is what happens to the Emperor (figuratively) in the season three premiere once The Reveal that the Centurion is actually Rogal Dorn rolls around at the very end of this episode.
• Double Take: When Kitten tells the Emperor about Sensei, his human descendants.
  The Emperor: YOU MEAN THE DESCENDANTS OF THE SHAMANS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES TO FORM ME? ISN'T THAT, LIKE, ALL OF HUMANITY?
  Kitten: Not exactly what I meant...
  The Emperor: GOOD. I NEVER LIKED UNCLE RAGNAR ANYWAY. BUT REALLY, THOUGH, WHAT IN THE FUCK DO YOU ME— [suddenly realizes that he has biological children] FUUUUU...
• Drama Queen:
  • Magnus has an aptitude for blowing things out of proportions and acting like a theatre diva whenever he's not being deadpan.
  • Belial keeps on overreacting, is always on verge of tears and takes everything as a sign that nobody loves him.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: During the Black Templars podcast, Dorn reveals his is willing to tolerate even less of Karstodes' bullshit than normal, which is already preciously small, by racking the slide on a shotgun. It's such a departure from his usual Tranquil Fury that even the Emperor is alarmed by this development. He does it again in the third podcast when one of the Custodes suggests that Boy be made into a Custodes.
• Dramatic Unmask: The Centurion takes off his helmet, revealing himself to be Rogal Dorn.
• Dressed in Layers: While disguised as a Space Marine, Kitten wears his normal helmet under the Astartes helm, much to his discomfort.
• Drunken Master: The secret to surviving in the Warp, according to Leman Russ? A few mugs of strong ale. Apparently it helps boost confidence and dull one's senses to the horror.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • The other Custodes have no respect for their Captain-General, or as they call him, Little Kitten. Hell, until episode 11, they didn't even seem to know which Custodes their Captain-General WAS. Overall they continue to treat him as competition at best^note eventually it turns out many of the other Custodes do respect their Captain-General — but they also don't go into the throne room, unlike the half-naked trio or Kitten, and hence spent most of the series off-screen.
    Captain-General: Hey you do know I'm your fucking Captain-General, right?
  • In a similar vein, the Emperor consistently orders the Custodes to "put some damn armor on", which they openly and flagrantly ignore.
  • And from Chaos, we have Miriael Sabathiel. Despite being one of the best servants of Slaanesh and the most infamous enemy of the Sororitas, she is hardly ever taken seriously by her foes or allies, even when in the process of torturing inquisitors to death.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • The Dark Angels ruling cabal: Azrael is paranoid and panicky, Belial is a teary-eyed Drama Queen and Asmodai is violent to the point of hilarity.
  • The Primarchs are shaping up to be this. Magnus is a half-daemon Insufferable Genius, Vulkan has his personal Ferrus Manus ghost he keeps screaming in rage at while being partially possessed by an Ork, Dorn has spent ten thousand years hiding as a Centurion only to reveal himself when the topic strays on Space Wolves and is apocalyptically Literal-Minded, and Corvus Corax is every bit the overly poetic, mopey font of despair The Emperor has made him out to be. It says something that Leman Russ, of all people, is the most normal and level headed of them, and he still has his wolf fixation, in addition to going berserk at the mention of Magnus.
• Dystopia: To give an idea on how utterly messed up the Imperium is, look no further than the Book of Judgement. It's this massive tome so big that an outdated version can be used as a support beam, that at its current rate adds 100 volumes a day, its laws are stupid and contradictory, that if a judgement can't be rendered immediately (usually by a Judge Dredd knockoff performing a powermace to the head), it can be debated for millennia (even past the death of the original judge and defendant), after which the judgement will be performed on the defendant's descendants, and failing to define things to a high ranking Imperial official involves a five-day death sentence and a kick to the jaw, even if the individual is an even higher member of the Imperium. Oh, and it's written on human skin.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Emperor casually drops a homophobic slur in the pilot episode, which is the only time this happens in the series. As a further testament to how outdated this is, when the pilot was remastered two years later, the slur was omitted.
• Easter Egg: The binary text in the "ASK ME QUESTIONS!" mini-episode reads: "I can't wait for Cypher to get to Mars so he can execute the plan." and "I think the Ultramarines are coming around with Magnus soon." The third message started out "As long as the questions don't scream about Baneblades" (an inside joke among Alfabusa videos) but was cut off by the Emperor.
• Easy Evangelism: It takes Kitten all two minutes to convince Dominica into acting against Vandire.
• The Eeyore:
  • Apparently, blanks, or at least those strapped to Magnus's prison to keep him from escaping. Then again, in a Crapsack World like 40K's universe, blanks have it a lot worse than most.
    Blank: I remember the time I cared about anything... oh no, I forgot
  • One of Inquisitors who accompany Karamazov becomes noticeably fatalistic when they're transported into the Warp, spelling doom for everyone involved within days.
  • Belial is relentlessly emo, and will start weeping at practically anything slightly negative.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • A whole pantheon of them, as detailed on the main Warhammer 40,000 pages. Within the show, however, an entity implied to be Matt Ward (who influenced a lot of the more snarked on bits of lore for the series and has a somewhat variable reputation within the fandom) is treated as one by Uriel Ventris for the Ultramarine's Creator's Pet status (which he's gradually becoming aware of).
  • "The Shadow Over Immateriums" has the Tyranid "god", the possible source of the the Hive Mind and Hive Fleets.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The Custodes in The Throne Room is referred to as "Little Kitten" by the other Custodes.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Several characters have made references to "The End Times," describing what appears to be a class X-3 or X-4 Apocalypse How. Rogal Dorn says he showed up in the throne room in preparation for it.
• Enemy Mine: In the Slaaneshmas special. Loyalist and Traitor humans alike join forces for one day out of the year to murder the fuck out of the Xenos hordes.
• Enraged by Idiocy:
  • Magnus has some serious problems with this, not helped by his own intellect being leaps and bounds ahead of most. Kitten is already enough to occasionally set him off, and reading through the Imperium's mailed questions pisses him off big time.
  • He seems to share this trait with Rogal Dorn, who finally has enough after Emperor and Kitten fail to stay on topic yet again.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The Dark Angels take the fact that Cypher is on the planet and the fact that the Adeptus Mechanicus are on the planet, and manage to come to the conclusion that, rather than both being after the same thing, AdMech is working for Cypher and the Fallen.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first words out of Emperor's mouth— er, speakers, are "ABOUT FUCKING TIME. I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT."
• Establishing Series Moment: The quote at the top of the page succinctly summarizes the series.
• Even the Guys Want Him: The only people who are not aroused by The Custodes are The Emperor, The Custodes in the Throne Room and a few Inquisitors.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Episode 24 shows that the daemons of the Warp have families.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Typhus thinks clitorises are disgusting.
  • Skarbrand hates kill-stealing.
  • Lucius might be one of the "best" examples Slaanesh servants might aspire to be, but even he is horrified when he sees Fabius Bile's "Ahriman 2.0".
    Lucius: Okay. We need to talk about this shit you're doing, Bob, it's getting out of hand.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • The High Lords of Terra outlawed saying the name of the Old-Folks-Home Planet and don't react well when Fyodor mentions going there to find new High Lords of Terra after killing the present ones.
  • The Fabstodes might be Macho Camp to the extreme, but they are NOT Slaanesh or Chaos worshippers. Cegorach indirectly confirms it when he lets Custodisi and Whammudes enter the Black Library.
  • Magnus the Red and Whammudes are both deeply disturbed by the overt sexual content (innuendo, overt sexual imagery, and even a sex scene) in Inquisitor/Draco in the third Podcast.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Tzeentch comes across less as the Eldritch existing-in-the-past-present-and-future mastermind, and more as a petty little bully.
  • In the second Q&A episode, the Emperor gets a troll letter from Eliphas the Inheritor.
• Evil Laugh: Karamazov has an outburst of evil laughter when he finally manages to reach Eternity Gate.
• Exact Words:
  • While Ecclesiarch Decius reluctantly agrees to let the Inquisition conduct their investigation about the disbandment message on the Holy Terra, he tells Karamazov to remember the ruling of Terra (not a single drop of blood shall fall upon these sacred grounds) and take their suspect away from the Homeworld before killing them. Karamazov agrees, and promptly tells his men to burn them instead.
  • The Emperor is furious when he hears that people in the forty-first millenium have started to hate and fear the Salamanders because they're black. He thinks that this is a sign that mankind has gone back to the old ways of discrimination based on skin color... only for Kitten to tell him that, no, it's because the Salamanders are literally black, as in, the color of coal, and have burning red, glowing eyes.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Kitten mentions the Sensei and tells the Emperor they are his human descendants, the Emperor asks if he means the descendants of the shamans that sacrificed themselves to give birth to him. Kitten says they are not.
  Emperor: BUT REALLY, THOUGH, WHAT IN THE FUCK DO YOU ME— [suddenly realizes that he has biological children] FUUUUU...
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Decius fails to notice a nearly five-metre-tall, devil-red Primarch standing some three meters away from him. Magnus suggests that it's a case of Selective Obliviousness.
  • Kitten and Magnus fail to identify a package of Nurgle's Rot inside the Emperor's mailbox.
  • Salamanders are so used to their planet being absurdly loud that they fail to hear brightly-colored Ultramarines rolling a giant, rumbling tank right behind their backs wile the Ultramarine's Chant is blasting everywhere they go. A moment later, the same tank fails to wake up He'Stan despite destroying the wall of his bedroom and Cato Sicarius running away yelling about how awesome he is.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Kitten seems to have gotten this attitude after all the millenniums in the Palace. When making tea for the Emperor, he cheerfully hums to himself even as a grand battle to open a can of alien beans rages behind him, and even sudden arrival of Fab Custodes falling from the sky doesn't move him in the slightest.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Surprisingly averted with the Emperor. He reveals he doesn't mind living in peace with the other alien races, he'd just prefer they accepted his idea of peace under his rule (Eldar's idea of peace is keeping humans like zoo animals, for example). Furthermore, he thinks the current Imperium's goal of trying to exterminate all aliens in the galaxy is not only impossible but also impractical.
  • A strange appearance of mundane racism shows up in Episode 20, in which Kitten's description of the Salamanders as having "frightening" black skin inadvertently causes the Emperor to erupt in fury that he and therefore likely all of the Imperium have managed to fall back into inter-human racism against black people in the traditional sense. The Emperor calms down when he learns that Salamanders are literally black as charcoal and have glowing red eyes, especially since those traits apparently weren't dominant when he was still around.
• Faux Affably Evil: Lucius. His voice and manner of speaking sound like some kind of deranged stereotype of a Boy Band fangirl or Micky Mouse on Helium. What he says, though...
  Lucius: It's Slaanesh patrol! We're breaking into your base! (...) We are going to skullfuck your families!
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Lampshaded — Emperor bemoans that he only has the visor on his left eye, despite both having rotted long ago. Kitten claims that that's because when the Emperor was carried on the Golden Throne, one of Rogal Dorn's giant iron halo spikes took the eye out.
• Fatal Flaw: When badmouthing his Primarchs, both the traitors and the loyalists, the Emperor lists off all their obvious flaws. Except for Sanguinius.
  • Magnus: A nerdy bookworm who couldn't stand up to the brothers who bullied him over being a psyker.
  • Fulgrim: A sissy brown-noser on a quest to obtain more fabulous hair than the Emperor. He has yet to succeed.
  • Perturabo: Volatile and childish, constantly bitching and moaning when he didn't get as he wanted.
  • Mortarion: Smelled like shit from day one.
  • Lorgar: A brainwashed choir boy with a victim complex.
  • Konrad: Couldn't stand sunlight and kept having fantasies about a dark, depressing future.
  • Angron: Constantly, extremely, Earth-shatteringly, unreasonably fuck-ass mad.
  • Alpharius Omegon: Huge anonymity issues.
  • Fucking Horus: Started off nice and friendly, but then stopped trusting the Emperor when he left for Terra and so became an edgy rebel.
  • Leman Russ: Bigoted, self-righteous, unnecessarily rash, and had a fetish for wolves.
  • Ferrus Manus: A brutish asscrack with a "survival-of-the-fittest" mindset
  • Vulkan: Died all the time and was always too nice.
  • Rogal Dorn: Uptight and brutally honest, completely unable to tell even the smallest lie to make someone feel better.
  • Roboute Guilliman: Acted infallible as he clung steadfastly to everything being traditional, but wasn't as infallible as he wanted to believe.
  • Lion El'jonson: invokedConfusingly both a self-absorbed, spiteful, envious prick and an honorable, courageous, and dutiful warrior at the same time.
  • Jaghatai Khan: Reckless and constantly hyped on speed.
  • Corvus Corax: invokedInfernally angsty.
  • Interestingly, the Emperor's judgment seems to be remarkably accurate from what we've seen of the Primarchs. However, as per canon, he's blind to his own flaw: his massive arrogance, which was one of the key factors in the Horus Heresy, and one he thoroughly refuses to own up to.
• Firearms Are Cowardly: Played against the Tau. Kitten thoroughly marks his hatred for the Tau, but one of his biggest grievances is that he sees them as a cowardly race who only fires at their enemies with extreme firepower from afar, use other species as meat shields to fight in close quarters for them, and refuse to fight in melee themselves. Of all his grievances, this is the one that actually infuriates the Emperor.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • In episode 25, Magnus and Kitten see the Engine of Woes. When Magnus claims that one could hear the ethereal moans of despair and anguish, Kitten asks if that's true, causing the Engine to respond. Turns out, that's because the person inside of it was, in fact, Corvus Corvax, an angsty Primarch who was placed into it by Vulkan. He comes out of the Engine when Magnus uses it to kill Vulkan.
  • In Episode 26 Part 2, when the Star-Child infused Fyodor uses his psychic powers to convince the Inquisition, everyone but Headsmash is seen tilting backwards. Naturally, he seems to be the only one not affected by the psychic powers.
  Headsmash: So, like.. am I actually going to have to be the straight man here in pointing out how bad this idea is? It feels... gross.
• Flashback: More than a few times:
  • In episode three, Kitten flashes back to the execution of Goge Vandire.
  • In episode five, the Emperor remembers Malcador setting up what would later become the Inquisition.
  • In episode thirteen, Magnus has two flashbacks about how Tzeentch played him into becoming his pawn.
  • A big part of episode sixteen is a giant flashback to the universe's past.
  • A big part of episode seventeen is a giant flashback to the Emperor's personal past.
  • The short "Why Kitten Hates the Tau" has a short flashback to Kitten's past, although this might be just the Emperor trolling him.
    Kitten: THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!
• Flat Joy:
  • The Emperor's reaction to the Centurion. Justified in that he's using a text-to-speech device, so this is about as expressive as he can get.
    The Emperor: YEY.
  • His son Rogal Dorn does this as well in Episode 24 when he gets a bike (only if he "KEEPS [his] ASS IN SMELLING DISTANCE") like his brother Magnus does.
    Rogal Dorn: Yey. Bike.
  • The Salamanders shout out “Vulkan Lives!” every time Vulkan revives. But by the fourth time the novelty has clearly worn off.
• Flat "What": The Emperor lets out one when he thinks that Kitten is being racist against the Salamanders for being black.
• Flipping the Bird: At the end of Episode 19, the Emperor shapes the Astronomican into this, which means he flipped the bird to the whole galaxy! This led to at least one ship to take it as a holy sign to commit vulgar action.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: The first letter in second Q&A uses this. Emperor wonders out loud whether the author is a time traveller or "just dyslexic".
• Foreshadowing:
  • Our Custodes friend, the Emperor's caretaker, claims to have been the one to meet Alicia Dominica during Goge Vandire's Reign of Blood. In canon, the Custodes who met Dominica was of the rank Centurion, second only to the Captain-General. This is the only clue we get to Kitten being of a much higher rank than his Butt-Monkey status makes him look.
  • A meta-example, but in the opening, we can see Magnus's form coming out of the shadows. Right in the episode after the opening's début, he joins the character roster.
  • A more comedic example in the remake of the first episode. When the Custodes is told the text-to-speech device has been installed, and that he'll be the first to speak with the Emperor in 10,000 years, he's so excited that he could take off his armor, but calms down, saying that he's restrained himself for millennia. It hints at what the Custodes have become in the Emperor's absence, and how he's really not that different.
  • The Centurion the Emperor is always seen with is from the Imperial Fists. It turns out he is actually Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists.
  • In episode 24, The Emperor orders that while the Ultramarines are in the Dark Eldar city of Comorragh, they seek out Jagheti Khan (having previously ordered them there to have a dance-off with Harlequins). In the same episode, Leman Russ hears that Magnus is with the Emperor, and orders that the Inquisitorial Army under his command go to the only stable passage between the Warp and realspace- The Gate of Khaine, which is in Comorragh. Once they reach Comorragh, they pick up another passenger- the Star Child, possessing Fyodor. Comorragh appears to be the site of some interesting events in the near future.
  • In episode 20, among the pile of Artifacts of Vulkan collected and then surreptitiously delivered by the Ultramarines, a green Smart Car is visible. Five episodes later, we learn that Smart Car is, in fact, the Engine of Woes, and that Corvus Corax is inside it. In between the two, we see a scene from Corvus' location, and in hindsight, it's the blurred-out inside of said car.
  • A little bit in the short Requiem for Dominique, which is so short it doesn't even have a section on the Recap page. When the head of Dominique starts spinning disturbingly, the music it's accompanying is Chairbound Prankster, the leitmotif belonging to the Star Child. It's heard in full when the Star Child fuses with Fyodor. Who led the Star Child there? The spirit of Dominique.
  • During the musical duel in episode 28, what the characters say is translated into Leet Speak into binary in the background, except for the last two lines, where the Fabricator-General says "Fine", what the binary behind the words translates into is "n3v3R, 1 W1ll h4v3 J00 4224221N473D" ("Never, i will have you assassinated"). Sure enough, after the Custodes have left, the Fabricator-General orders Cawl to assassinates them.
• Foil: Magnus and Leman are this to each other. Whereas Leman is a Boisterous Bruiser who calls a Guardsman a nerd for having read about the Warp in a book, Magnus has dedicated his life to accumulating knowledge and is almost always calm. Magnus' fault was going against his father's (admittedly somewhat vague) warning about the Warp, Leman's was not questioning an order to kill Magnus he had received. Magnus, a sorcerer drawing his powers from the Warp, had been brought back from it by force while Leman, who hates sorcery, has been stuck here for 10,000 years and, as of Episode 24, is still trying to find a way out. Finally, pressing their Berserk Button (each other) yields opposite results: Magnus becomes The Berserker, rampaging and attacking anything in sight, while Leman instantly becomes serious and in full Tranquil Fury mode.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot:
  • Episode 12.5. While technically it is an in-universe Q&A with the Imperial citizens (and a few non-Imperials), there a few moments of breaking the fourth wall. Also, one of the notable things to come out of this is that there way too many to ask the same question: What does the Emperor think of Tau? Since he doesn't know them, he ask his caretaker, who answers that they are insignificant, to what the Emperor counters that with how many citizens asked about them, they cannot be insignificant.
  • Episode 18.5 is another one, again supposedly an in-universe Q&A but really just answering questions from viewers. Magnus is quite incensed over the regular Imperial citizen's level of intelligence (which is to say, appallingly low), while the Emperor explains his vision of the future, among other things.
  • The Podcasts also serve as one, with the exception of the one covering Draco, all of them end with letters sent to the Emperor.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Due to the sheer scope of the setting, numerous side-stories develop concurrently to the main plot, though aren't given the same amount of focus.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In general, there are a lot of subtitles that flash across the screen almost too fast to be seen — and while the subtitles usually represent what's being said by the characters, they may do so in a rather creative way.
  • The short and speedy title animations consist pretty much entirely of things happening too fast to be easily seen. The Season 3 intro particularly is full of these, with characters such as Lufgt Huron and the fusion of The Star Child and Karamazov appearing.
  • In episode 13, just as Magnus smashes through the Webway gate, a subtitles flashes that says "You are all free now." Then, of course, suddenly daemons.
  • In episode 14, Uriel Ventris is standing next to a box that reads R. A. Veldt's (Striked Out Snake Oil), Miracle Elixir.
  • In episode 18, during Emperor's speech to Decius, there's a caption saying "Sudden daemonic TTS crackle". Uh-oh...^* It's a Text-to-Speech program glitch, probably just some Adeptus Mechanicus who can't code right and likely just some Fun with Subtitles, but one can never be sure.
  • In episode 21, during Calgar's brief bit of good old-fashioned Ultra-violence, one can briefly see one of the charging Necrons picked "SOI SOI MOTHERFUCKER" as his warcry.
  • In episode 23, you can see that Decius' cup is actually a "sanctioned recaf container".
  • During the first special, right before the assembled group starts contemplating ding dong ditching Skarbrand's home, you can see Kaldor Draigo's sword-arm flailing like a Gmod ragdoll. You can also see that outside Skarbrand's house is a sign that reads "Skarbrand Hates Signs."
  • Multiple context boxes in the Brotrip Special are only on screen for a few seconds
• French Jerk: Cegorach, the Laughing God, has a French accent (due to his voice actor being French) and is, as in canon, a massive troll. Given that his primary targets are Chaos and the C'tan, he still comes across as one of the more likable gods in the galaxy.
• Freudian Slip:
  • The Emperor's Webway may or may not have been an excuse to score some Eldar hookers. Similarly conversations about the Tau may or may not be a place for Kitten to make penis innuendos.
  • Less charged, from Magnus:
    Magnus: Yes, that will certainly knock the father down a few notch— I mean MAKE THE IMPERIUM GREAT AGAIN! YES! Yes.
• Funny Background Event: After the Emperor puts Kitten's armor back on him, the Custodian can be heard breathing with relief for a few seconds.
  • While the Emperor talks about the Eldar repopulating the galaxy after the war in heaven, an Ork attempts to join in the Eldar's huge orgy, only to get launched out by a very flustered looking space elf.
  • When Dorn is telling the story of how he accepted the Codex Astartes, Jaghatai's paper puppet is constantly vibrating whenever it's on screen.
  • In Episode 29, when the Emperor is trying to convince Rogal to stop hiding from the wider Imperium, Boy can be seen trying to attack his well-fortified waffles, first with a large hammer, then with a drill the size of his torso, and finally by trying to light it on fire, all to no avail.
• Fun with Subtitles: Occasionally, subtitles have their own gags added to them to emphasize certain things. Helps a lot when the most talkative person in the series doesn't have any ability to emphasize naturally. The most recurring is tacking on the role of the speaker to a non-verbal action, such as "[Inquisitorial chuckle]" and "[Empirical laugh]"
  • One in particular that doubles as a Bilingual Bonus is all of the description gags relating to the Emperor's Soul are written in (accurate!) Gratuitous Latin.
  Emperor's Soul: *chuckles*
  Subtitles: [Imperator Risus] (Emperor laughs)
  • Evil laughter is inexplicably subtitled as "[WAFFLES]". Finally explained why in the credits of Episode 26 Part 1 : Eliphus, the voice of all characters with evil laughs, is Belgian.
  • Particularly emphatic words wiggle in the subtitles.
  • Sound effects can get subtitled into Unsound Effects as well; for example panicked whimpering is subtitled as "[escalating fear]," and Ciaphas Cain's cry of despair is subtitled as "Scream of unending imposter syndrome." Kitten shuddering at the thought of dressing like the Fabstodes is subtitled as "well-oiled abs". Most unsound effects made by Marneus Calgar additionally have Ultra- appended to the front of them, as in "[Ultradepression]" or "[Ultra-fuckn'-crying]".
  • On one occasion, though not all, someone saying "quote unquote" causes the quotation marks to appear in the subtitles right away, with the word going between them appearing only once it's said after that.
  • At one point during the /40k/ special, Magnus tells Kitten that they have to spin opposite of the Warp energies to stop the ongoing crisis. However, the subtitles portray this as "Ssssspin", with the word actually spinning.
• Gambit Pileup: The Emperor has his plan to fix the Imperium. Magnus ALSO plans to fix the Imperium, but according to his own vision. Cypher is planning something. Abaddon is readying for a new Black Crusade. Gazghkull is uniting the Ork clans. Fyodor is trying to escape from the Warp, convinced that he's a shard of the Emperor and does become it. Rogal Dorn has his own agenda. Needless to say, when these plot threads collide, things will get very bloody, very funny, or (most likely) both, very fast.
  • Then you factor in Eldrad's plan to create Ynnead, whatever the hell Vect is up to, Cegorach's plan, and The Deceiver's plan to maybe save the galaxy. Everyone has a plan.
• Game-Breaker: Invoked. In "Kitten and Emps play a Children's Card Game" Emps plays the Golden Castle of Stromberg from Yu-Gi-Oh!. Keep in mind, not only has this card not been put to print in real life at this time, it had never been put to print in the Yu-Gi-Oh!! universe either (it was developed as a computer virus by a cheater)! It's THAT broken! Kitten nullifies it with Great Trunade.
• Gargle Blaster: Leman Russ can brew a spectacularly powerful one made from Bylestim and Bloodthirster liver extracts. Karamazov's not too far off when he calls it literally "liquid Chaos". Apparently, it gets everyone so insanely drunk they start pranking powerful daemons and succeed.
• Get Out!: Marneus Calgar to Cato Sicarius after a particularly stunning display of egotism and stupidity.
• Girls Have Cooties: The Emperor's reason not to create female Astartes.
• A God Am I:
  • While Emps denies his own divinity, he also states that he's the only one who could legitimately make that claim. He also remarks "Holy mother of myself," at one point in episode 14. There's also the conspicuous pause when he calls himself a god...like being. Later a "not-god".
  • He exploits this with Karamazov, feeding his ego until the man is dancing on his strings like a puppet.
  • Magnus mocks this, pointing out that The Emperor claims one minute to not be a god, but the very next instant says that "You should still treat me like one."
• A God I Am Not: As with the canon, the Emperor has major gripes with being called a god, and because of this uses his newfound voice to that the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy are to be immediately disbanded.
• Go-Karting with Bowser:
  • Khorne and Khaine apparently hang out together and have an almost "step dad / step son" relationship.
  • The Emperor, Tzeentch, and Cegorach apparently have a regular Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker a.k.a. Yu-Gi-Oh! game. Emps has also mentioned The Deceiver showing up occasionally, and apparently Tzeentch sometimes brings Ursarkar E. Creed as a plus-one.
  • The throne room crew casually play Stellaris with Eldrad and The Deceiver. The Deceiver ends up getting banned, but purely because he's annoying to play with.
• Going Native: Kaldor Draigo is considerably more... chaotic than the last time he's been seen.
  Kaldor Draigo: I too have a beard. Have you seen my beard? It is full of... TINY MEN. Please. Kill them ALL!"
• Go Mad from the Isolation:
  • This is, apparently, what happened to the Custodes. According to Kitten, after 10,000 years of doing nothing but watching over the Emperor's body and killing the odd daemon trying to infiltrate the throne room every hundred years or so, they all fell off the deep end, hence the loin cloths and obsession with well-oiled abs. Kitten went through a similar phase, but eventually got tired of it and became the only reasonable and sane one out of the whole lot. This is later shown to not to be the case, as multiple groups are still operating normally (or at least semi-normally) when Kitten grabs them for his mission to Mars.
  • It would seem the same happened to Kaldor Draigo after too much time in the Warp with no allies or friends.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • It's implied that Marneus Calgar might have made a pact with some greater power, with Behemoth off-spin series being a possible sign that he made it during Tyranid attack on Ultramar. Because of that attack, Ultramarines suffered great losses and it could be that Calgar made the pact in order to make the Ultramarines survive the assault to at least some extent. Cut to the present. The Ultramarines are not only back to their full strength, but they became an entire Chapter worth of Mary Sues, not able to experience any defeat at all, no matter how impossible their missions are. This trope kicks into full effect when TTS shows Marneus Calgar actually being depressed over this situation. The Ultramarines are thriving but in the worst way possible. It is obviously not what he originally wanted.
  • Episode 25 has Magnus wanting to sneak into the Salamanders' artifact storage commando style, to remind himself of his scouting days. When Kitten points out if he wanted to be stealthy all he had to do was turn invisible with his Psyker powers, Magnus decides he's sticking with his previous idea, and appeals to Kitten's Berserk Button by telling them invisibility would be more of a Tau thing. It works far too well, convincing him to forgo stealth entirely in an explosive rant that nearly gets them caught.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: This is how The Emperor sees the Imperium at its current state; the civilization he founded to be based on science and devoid of any kind of organized religious belief (especially organized religious belief that worships he himself as a god) is a theocracy that shuns science and holds him up as a god.
• Good Hurts Evil: The Star-Child's general goodness and friendliness makes the Dark Eldar melt as they suddenly experience feelings of compassion and empathy.
• Got the Call on Speed Dial: Vulkan shows up literally seconds after all artifacts are collected. Based on his words in episode 25, however, this seems to be a coincidence.
• Grumpy Old Man:
  • The High Lords of Terra are basically what 1d4chan imagines them to be: a bunch of old, useless farts who alternate between doing absolutely nothing and making things worse through their idiocy. For example, the first thing that we hear them doing is having a "serious" debate over if they should ban breathing air or not.
  • The Emperor acts like a grumpy dad, equating the fall of nine of his primarchs to Chaos with "rebellious teenage phases".
  • The Eldar god Khaine has the same reaction to the Chaos gods when he sees them arguing.
  • The Old Ones are depicted as such in the Emperor's re-telling of the history of the universe, equating them to retirement home folks who were summarily executed by young punks.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Security of the Salamander's temple is... bad. One guard is a total idiot who's only line of dialogue is "What?" and his co-guard can barely hear anything three feet away from him.
• HA HA HA—No: Two so far, in the same episode ^note Episode 24, from the same person ^note Leman Russ to the same person ^note Fyodor Karamazov.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Ahriman doesn't take being booted out of the Black Library too well, and takes it out on the first available target.
  Thousand Sons Sorcerer: Master, was your visit to the Black Library successful?
  Ahriman: No it wasn't, you useless rotten pile of disgraceful, warp-infested pubic hair!
• Hands-Off Parenting: The Emperor pretty much expected his sons (even those that had grown around Chaos) to bow in awe of his magnificence, follow his instructions to the absolute letter, and never question him; even their interactions with each other are a complete non-concern to him. Even in canon it's acknowledged he's a peerless general but a terrible father.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: According to the letters, the Sororitas all turned into this after the Emperor had outlawed the Imperial Cult. There's so many of them it's actually becoming a serious problem for the Arbitres, who are struggling to contain all the drunken shenanigans; and the brewhouses and distilleries, who literally cannot produce enough grog to keep up with demand.
• Hates Everyone Equally: A list of people The Emperor doesn't have something bad to say about: Malcador the Sigilite, Sanguinius, the Astral Knights (though this is only after he learns about how they destroyed the World Engine), the Centurion until The Reveal, and Ollanius Pius. That's it. Oh, and possibly Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, although since that was in one of the comments specials, its status as canon is questionable.
  • If his final summary at the end of the White Scars podcast is of any indication, he is genuinely impressed with and approves of the White Scars. While he is also quick to point out their weaknesses and occasionally mocks them, overall his opinion of them is still significantly higher than his opinion of...pretty much anyone who isn't mentioned in the list above.
• He Knows Too Much: Thanks to Dark Angels' rulers' ineptitude, two Angels have to be mauled to death for knowing about the Fallen. Subverted when Belial points out next episode that the two Angels were indicted into the inner circle, so they were allowed to know about the Fallen, making their deaths completely unnecessary.
• He-Man Woman Hater: The Emperor recalls the end of the Reign of Blood less favorably and explains that he didn't make female Astartes because he thinks girls are yucky.
• Heel Realization: The Asshailer in "Day in the Life of Boy" realizes that with Boy having just been rescued by Karstodes (who basically confirmed Boy's story), he's unwittingly just committed treason when he attacked Boy earlier. It's possible the Principal Vox-caster also realized the same thing, but it matters little, considering it would have been literally the last thing he did. The video ends with the Asshailer pondering his options between going on the run, joining a gang, or just executing himself to save everyone the trouble.
• Heroic BSoD: The Emperor when he remembers that he and Malcador created the Inquisition. Kitten pokes him with a stick for hours trying to get a response.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • The series takes a Broad Strokes approach to the three versions of Ollanius Pius story: all three of them happened! The lone Guardsman AND the Space Marine Terminator AND the Custodes had all thrown themselves between Horus and the Emperor, in that order. The Emperor thinks that the latter two did it so that they could save face from being upstaged by an ordinary human (though Kitten implies that he was the one who got the Custodes to do it).
  • Spoofed in the beginning of "Atrocious Answers" when the Emperor decides to answer the questions despite Magnus fearing that this may end up with destruction of Terra.
  • The Emperor shows his distaste for this trope if it's unnecessary, such as the sacrifice of the Emperor-class battleship to stop Hive Fleet Behemoth rather than retreating to a more advantageous position in space. That said, he's more okay with it if it accomplishes something useful (such as the Astral Knights' sacrifice to destroy the World Engine).
• Hidden Depths: In Episode 19, we get to see more than just Insufferable Genius Magnus – he readily admits that he’s not sure why he had done what he had, hadn’t made an informed decision back then and had been utterly lost and confused – and, to some extent, still is now.
• Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • Rogal Dorn was the Centurion all along.
  • Corvus was in that Smart Car among the pile of Salamanders Artifacts.
• High-Pressure Emotion:
  • When the Emperor hears what happened to the Sensei, his rage begins with puffs of steam erupting from where his ears used to be.
  • Again in second Q&A when the Emperor hears a message about an undelivered burger, steam shoots out his ears and his mouth. Thankfully the Centurion is there to calm him down.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Played for laughs in "Special 1: 𝐊𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐚 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞", The Emperor gives Little Kitten a deck full of weak monsters to take him out in a single turn with a single, overpowered, monster... while giving Little Kitten a viable one-turn-kill deck full of weak monsters with abilities that make them much stronger! The Emperor is left pouting while he makes Little Kitten clean the dishes.
• Holier Than Thou: Karamazov seems to believe he's much holier than everyone so therefore his actions are justified despite the fact the Ecclesiarch and the Custodes, the Emperor's personal bodyguards, call out on his actions. This only fuels his convictions that he is truly the most holy.
• Hollywood Atheist:
  • The Emperor is presented as a smug example of atheist fundamentalism.
    The Emperor: I DESTROYED ALL ASSHOLE RELIGIONS THAT EXISTED ON TERRA. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?
    The Custodian: Because you are the one true God, my lord?
    The Emperor: WRONG. IT IS BECAUSE RELIGION IS STUPID, SUPERSTITIOUS BRAINWASHING CRAP THAT MAKES YOU AN ASSHOLE. THIS IS WHY I SPECIFICALLY SAID WHEN DESIGNING THE IMPERIAL TRUTH, THAT EQUALITY, SCIENCE AND GALAXY CONQUEST IS THE WAY TO GO. AND RELIGION NEEDS TO BE THROWN OUT A WINDOW.
  • It is somewhat justified- every single god in the setting is either irredeemably evil, useless, trapped, incompetent, dead, or literally a clown, and their followers tend to make things even worse. It's not hard to see why the Emperor wants to get rid of religion. Not like the Emperor walks out of this guiltless however as the second podcast show us.
• Hollywood Tactics: The Emperor commented on how many battles should get better results had the combatants in Warhammer 40k universe had used reasonable tactics (i.e. trying to pull back and fire at Tyranid fleet rather than having a rare Battleship go on a suicidal assault into Hivefleet to detonate a warp, retreating in dire situations, trying not to resort on ramming things with irreplaceable ships, etc.). Though The Emperor himself is a fan of hand-to-hand combat that he became angry at Tau's disdain for it, and he does allow such tactics if they get actual results (such as the loss of the Astral Knights and their Battle Barge, which allowed the Imperium to stop the Necron World Engine).
• Hope Spot: In Episode 29, Commorragh and its inhabitants come close to destruction as they begin to feel empathy and compassion with the influence of the Star-Fyodperor which causes physical damage. However, the despair the Star-Fyodperor feels when he learns his friends and sons have been sent to the arena reverses the effects and actually rejuvenates Vect who was literally melting moments before.
• Horns of Villainy: Magnus's old form has a pair of large horns jutting from his forehead, much like the ornamental horns on his chest.
  Magnus: I've got nipples on my head!
• Humanity Is Superior:
  • Decius appeals to the Ecclesiarchy with this argument, pointing out that referring to the Emperor as a God is demeaning, since as a human, he is actually so much more. Thanks in no small part to his speech skills, this sways the entire organization to the mindset.
  • The Emperor believes this... somewhat. He's willing to accept Xenos into the Imperium, so long as they accept humanity's version of an ideal galaxy. The reason being that a human's ideal galaxy is everyone living in peace and harmony, while all others... Well, the Eldar's version of an ideal galaxy starts with humanity in cages, and the others are even worse. The Ork's want to fight everyone forever, the Tyranids and Necrons want to kill and consume everything, and Chaos wants to torture everyone forever.
• Hypocrite:
  • Magnus sees the Emperor as one, given the latter's tendency to expect everyone to blindly follow his orders like he was a god despite his protestations that he isn't one.
    Magnus: Yeah, one second you're all like "I don't want to be a god!" and the next you're like "but you should all still treat me like one!"
  • Also, the Emperor said he was done with all the deception and secrecy... right after he got Karamazov sent to the Warp by convincing him they were the same person and lets Magnus take the fall for it.
  • In episode 3 of the podcast, the Emperor is not amused when the story of Inquisitor Draco insinuates that he would want humanity bound in a vast Hive Mind... only for Magnus to note that it sounds like something he'd be into, a reference to when Emps first heard about the Tyranids. Emps counters that he wanted it under his control, not that of some sort of Warp beast acting as a middleman.
  • The Emperor voices annoyance at an Inquisitor for celebrating a victory, without first checking if the threat is truly rooted out. Rogal and Magnus have one word for him: Lorgar.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Magnus the Red is a little incensed at Kitten's accusation of bringing daemons over for a party... but he really did have some over for a literal party. Though that might be not because they are extra-British daemonic party guests per se, but because the word "tentacled" fell, which is more of a Slaanesh thing and "Besides, I [Magnus] am not Fulgrim".
  • The Emperor makes fun of a Human and Eldar couple in a Q&A, calling their relationship similar to Bestiality, yet a couple of episodes earlier, he accidentally reveals he started the Webway project to hire Eldar hookers. It's Bestiality for the Eldar because of their enormous arrogance and ego. As the Emperor explained, the Eldar basically think of Humans as primitive primates and unevolved beasts.
  • Karstodes claims to be utterly disgusted by the daemons of Slaanesh in Episode 23. This coming from a guy who never wears any armor and all but oozes Camp Gay tendencies. The Emperor doesn't even bother to humor this trope.
  • On a meta-level: The series takes a potshot at Sonichu for combining characters from different franchises, but the series itself has several major characters that are aesthetically Jojos Bizarre Adventure characters with Custodes helmets slapped on them.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": The Emperor calls his junk "The Big E'", "Big Ol' Bonerston", and "My Giant Flaming Greatsword".
• I Call It "Vera":
  • The Imperium's love of pompously named relic weapons gets mocked by The Emperor and the Tour Guide, with Russ' "Sword of Balenight" and Dorn's "Storms Teeth" getting special attention.
  • A critical piece of Whammudes' sewer cleansing kit is a piece of personal artillery dubbed "Grand Uncle", necessary for obliterating blockages in the Imperial Palace's sluices.
• Ignoring by Singing: Magnus defends himself this way from the tales of Emperor's troublesome sex life. It doesn't help much.
• I Knew It!: invoked Karamazov says it word-by-word when he sees that a (supposedly-)traitor Primarch is in the Hall of the Golden Throne.
• I Love the Dead: Alicia Dominica is a bit TOO into The Emperor — it's left up for grabs whether or not she understands just how much the Emperor has decomposed.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Hearing Emperor's vision for Mankind puts Decius into a mood of high religious pleasure.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Averted, but part of the reason the Emperor made the Primarchs is because he didn't think he could have children the normal way. The fact that sex with him (according to him) tends to be awesome but potentially fatal (using words like 'literally explosive climaxes') also helped fuel this belief, not to mention his tendency to love 'em and leave 'em. Plus, Sensei are invisible to the Warp, so the Emperor wouldn't have realized that he sired any children.
• Impossibly Mundane Explanation: Apparently, the terrifying Tyrant Star is actually a peeping hole for the beings in the Retconnian.
• Inane Blabbering: When the Centurion shows his face, the Emperor's eloquence suddenly vanishes.
  The Emperor: AAAAAAAAAAAAA?
• Incoming Ham: Many a character enters the stage thusly:
  • Whenever you hear this, be prepared for ham in more than just one way.
  • Magnus: NO PATHETIC BOX CAN HOLD ME LIKE THIS!
  • Kaldor Draigo: GREETERLINGS! THIS IS A GOOD-LOOKING BEARD YOU HAVE THERE, SIR!
  • Cato Sicarius says practically nothing but his own praises and glory before running off to do it again somewhere else.
• Inconvenient Itch: In addition of feeling endless torment of sitting upon the Golden Throne while his body perpetually decays little by little and feeling every bit of it, his soul being torn apart by the entropy of the Warp as his mind clashes against it to safeguard reality, the Emperor also has an itch on his nose, despite not having the nose anymore, courtesy of Nurgle.
• Innocent Bystander Series: Downplayed with Chaos Descends. The main characters are cultists and not "innocent bystanders," but next to Emps, Kitten, Magnus, and even the crew of Kryptman's ship, they might as well be. Even in episodes 3 and 4, the characters are just the poor schmucks who wandered into events far beyond their pay level.
  Smarty: Y'think we're dealing with Stormtroopers instead? Piss...
  Numbers: Yup. We're gonna be playing with the Inquisition's Golden Boys.
• Insane Proprietor: Crazy Hassan in Chaos Descends ep. 2 sells camels in the middle of the desert with no one around for miles. "Buy three for the the price of three."
• In-Series Nickname: Plenty.
  • Played with the Custodian — the title itself is a nickname, but he's also called a number of names by people around him, including Kitten, Corncob and Banana. Turns out that all those are a subversion — rather than nicknames, they are all parts of his Overly Long Name.
  • The Throne Room crew nicknames the party of Draigo, Leman Russ and Fyodperor the "Bearded Triumvirate".
  • The Emperor has a habit of calling Magnus "Magnymagic".
• Insistent Terminology: Fucking Horus. Also, the leader of Ultramar— sorry, Smurfs is Papa Smurf, not some "Marneus Calgar".
• Insufferable Genius: Magnus has some of this attitude in the beginning of episode sixteen.
• Insult of Endearment: Magnus notes that for all the verbal abuse the Emperor throws at the Custodian, the Emperor seems all in all rather fond on him, trusting him to tell the Emperor "stupid shit" and listening to the Emperor's complaints. He goes on to posit that the Custodian is the closest thing to being the Emperor's wife (Taunting him by calling him "Step-mother").
• Interface Spoiler: Averted. Centurion's lines only turn into his character colour when he reveals his face.
• Interspecies Romance: There are a few examples.
  • The Emperor stated that the Webway Project was originally so he could have easy access to Eldar Prostitutes.
  • At one point an Imperial Citizen sends the Emperor a letter asking him to give his blessing to the romance between LIIVI and Taldeer. The Emperor then talks about how the Eldar see humans as inferior, how by the standards of her race Taldeer is into bestiality "and is a sick fuck", and how she will probably catch a bunch of interspecies STDs and kill off half her craftworld. He concludes by giving his blessing to the romance.
  • The Emperor showed a video of Shadowsun breaking off a romantic relationship with Kitten and him being devastated by this, suggesting that this is the reason Kitten hates the Tau so much. Kitten insisted that this was not canon.
  • Lucius the Eternal asks Miriael Sabathiel if she would consider having sex with a Tyranid. And yes, he takes this question seriously.
• In the Style of: In the Eliphas The Inheritor side story Farsight Enclaves, the Farsight Tau are depicted in blatantly over-the-top anime-esque style and characterization.
• I Shall Taunt You: Tzeentch utilizes cheap insults and clever remarks to slowly win Magnus over to his side.
• It Amused Me: The Emperor suggests stealing all of Trazyn's collection for the kicks.
• It's All About Me: When the Emperor talks about the history of the galaxy after his birth, his listeners point out that he's mostly just telling the history of himself.
• Jerkass:
  • Tzeentch has no evident plan except "troll the hell out of everyone".
  • Basically all of the Inquisition are a bunch of trigger/burn happy assholes who commit atrocities simply for not getting their way. The ones that aren't are kept offscreen.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While the extremes he took it to are wrong, Karamazov had good reason to be suspicious about the Emperor's decree that disbanded the Inquisition and the Ecclisiarchy. After all, which sounds more likely: that the Emperor, whom suddenly has the ability to speak and command again after ten thousand years of doing nothing, has suddenly decided to make a massive announcement across the Imperium (keeping in mind that Karamazov, indeed, most of the Imperium that wasn't the Custodes, didn't know that there was a text-to-speech translator in the throne and that Big E was back), or that someone decided to send a falsified message that would shut down the two organizations that work hardest at keeping the Imperium safe from chaos, mutants, and xenos? Keeping in mind that the age of Apostasy happened already, and that (as Decius and Karamazov discussed) that a loyal servant of the Empire who appeared loyal had heretics and Cultists in his ranks, Karamazov was right to think poorly of the message, given what information he had at the time.
  • Karamazov accusing the Custodes of heresy as a kneejerk reaction and charging into the palace is going a bit far, but they're standing in the perfect position for a coup. They're the ones who allow visitors through Eternity Gate, so they can block all orders from the Emperor, leaving none the wiser. This legion of seemingly Chaos-proof guards can, and have, refused to take orders from the Inquisition, and have murdered Inquisitors before (some try to help the Emperor "ascend" by cutting life support). They'd be worthy of investigation, if Karamazov knew what the word "investigation" meant.
  • While the Emperor giving one last insult to Magnus in episode 22 appears to be the straw that breaks the camel's back regarding Magnus, who has proven up until that point that he could be trusted by the Emperor, Big E's insult- "Don't use your powers or you'll screw up everything again,"- really makes sense in context since Magnus just got done having a psychotic break where he turned into a demon and tried to kill everything within killing range. Mind you, Magnus didn't know that, but E being a little annoyed with his son's powers at that point in time is very understandable.
  • The second podcast has the Emperor bring in Uriah Olathaire, The Last Priest of Terra... who has turned to The Powers Undivided after his death. He then horrifies the Custodes with rational arguments!
• Just as Planned: At the end of episode eleven, the Emperor sits on his throne and muses that everything is going just as planned. And he does lampshade that "Just as planned" is Tzeentch's catchphrase.
• Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: When Karamazov prepares to enter the Imperial Palace, Decius summons his guards to stop him. Later, Kitten does the same with the Custodes, this time, with more success.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his Hates Everyone Equally tendencies and the fact that he likes to be a dick, the Emperor still wants to get everything back in order, hates the Crapsack World that formed in his absence and other signs that he's a good man underneath it all.
• Kick the Dog: The Emperor refers to the time he teleported Angron away from his men and leaving them all to die as hilarious. It's worth mentioning that this is what compounded Angron's already massive anger issues and played a heavy hand in Angron turning against the Emperor.
• Kill It with Fire: As Whammudes discusses, doing so in the Imperial Sewers is not a great idea, despite being the logical thing for obliterating the more putrid fungi found in the depths. The last time this was tried "exactly everything" in the tunnels ignited, and stayed on fire for months, which had the horrific side effect (according to Whammudes) of causing unseasonably warm temperatures in the Throne Room.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • Fyodor Karamazov. As soon as he enters the story, things gets ever-so-slightly more serious.
  • Ahzek Ahriman. Magnus the Red claimed that nothing that Ahzek could do could possibly pose a threat only for the show to immediately cut to Ahzek, showing that he has found none other than the Black Library. This is then subverted however, when he is easily and humiliatingly defeated by Cegorach. However, this also starts another plotline where apparently, Abbadon is starting to pull together Chaos Warbands for another Black Crusade. It's not just any Black Crusade, though- it's the thirteenth Black Crusade, the one that will finally break down the Caidian Gate. Oh boy.
  • Lucius the Eternal, Fulgrim and Abaddon are about to crash the party even worse than the above two. The first one has already managed to kickstart the series' invoked Nightmare Fuel section on YMMV.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Karstodes gets positively giddy when Emperor beckons him to continue speaking.
• Large Ham: EVERYONE. Even those that sometimes restrain themselves (such as Kitten) have moments where they can't help but unleash the ham.
• Leitmotif:
  • "Awake" from Jojos Bizarre Adventure Battle Tendency blares out whenever the (half-naked) Custodes make their appearance.
  • The Ultramarines have their battle-chants, that play whenever they show up or do something ludicrous; the sole exceptions seem to be Marneus Calgar and Ventrus. Notably, one of the main reasons the Emperor despises the Ultramarines is that he's heard this chanting for millennia on end, giving him the greatest headache in the history of mankind.
  • Most of the early series has faint choral singing when in the Emperor's presence... until he inevitably gets mad.
• Lampshade Hanging: Happens a lot. For example Rogal Dorn asks the Emperor where all the water on Holy Terra went. When the Emp said it boiled away after nuclear wars (and over population), he retorts that boiling water doesn't remove water. When the Emp changes it to it was stolen, he asks how people could steal it away during the Age of Strife with limited travel and small ships. The Emp just pulls out an explanation from his skeletal ass and says Psykers sent it to the warp.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Special 7: Space Game Pains, the Deceiver's Motive Rant is this trope on several levels: Within the context of the video game everyone is playing, he's sabotaging everyone else to stave off the late-game and prevent the crisis factions from tearing the galaxy a new one for his own benefit, which doubles as an apt description of his motives in the "real world" (to ensure that the C'tan/the necrophage can sustain themselves indefinitely). The phrasing of the rant, however, alludes to common arguments within the Warhammer 40,000 fandom against change; expressing the sentiment that the galaxy is meant to exist as a fixed, immutable setting, and that progression of any kind would inevitably lead to the End Times.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • According to one of Emperor-shards, the Tau, the same non-melee pussies that everyone makes fun of, will doom everyone if not purged quickly enough.
  • The Non-Kitten Custodes. They may not wear their armor, but they still have the best wargear in the Imperium of Man. Them surrounding Karamazof ends his attempt to burn everyone on Terra.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The conclusion of "Kitten and Emps play a Children's Card Game". The Emperor sure doesn't want the fact that he lost a Yu-Gi-Oh! card game to Kitten to be mentioned ever again. Tzeentch doesn't take losing a children's card game to Kitten any better than the Emperor does.
• Like Father, Like Son: The Emperor and Magnus both note that there's a lot of similarities between how the former kept secrets from his son and it blew up in his face and how the latter kept secrets from his first captain and how it blew up in his face.
  Magnus: This is too ironic for my taste...
  The Emperor: LIKE FUCKING FATHER, LIKE FUCKING SON.
• Liquid Courage: Leman Russ has a Gargle Blaster made from bylestim and demon liver-juices intended to make mortals confident enough to survive in the Warp.
• Literal Metaphor: Kitten accuses Magnus of inviting some daemons over for a party. Immediatly afterward the camera shows 4 daemons who came for a literal party, with hats, a grill and everything.
• Literal-Minded: Rogal Dorn flat out doesn't understand metaphors or subtle messages.
  The Emperor: THE ONLY ROGAL-RELATED THOUGHTS I HAVE BEEN HAVING IS HOW NICE IT WOULD BE IF HE COULD BUILD SOME KIND OF WALL BARRING ALL THE STUPID SHIT THAT IS GOING ON IN THE GALAXY FROM ENTERING MY COMFORT ZONE.
  Rogal Dorn: Fecal matter does not have mental capacity. You do not require fortifications against it.
• Little "No": When Kitten finally flat out states that he won't unplug Guilliman from life support.
• Lord British Postulate: In Tabletop Adventures, Magus creates Lord Magnar Buckethead to be a benefactor and quest-giver for the players. Unfortunately, their incompetence and bad luck results in Magnar getting killed in the same scene he's introduced, and Magnus neglected to give Magnar any Fate Points to prevent it. The Grand Provost Marshall scolds Magnus for his lack of foresight, describing the trope.
  Grand Provost Marshall: If you didn't want him to die, you shouldn't have given him any stats! Rules as written; if it has no statistics, it cannot die!
• Lost Him in a Card Game: In the fourth special, Tzeench literally loses Magnus' soul to Kitten after betting him in a card game.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Rather than use his hands to pick up the phone, Lucius utilizes one of his (apparently many) tentacles.
• Macho Camp: The other Custodes, who dress like the Pillar Men (complete with the theme song). Note that this is actually canon to an extent: Custodes uniform, outside of their Power Armor, is Stripperiffic. They are also all men.
• Made of Evil: Surprisingly Subverted in regards to the Chaos Gods. Episode 19 is essentially about noting that all four Chaos Gods are the collective sum of all emotions, not just the negative ones, even if they prefer showing off the latter.
  • Tzeentch: A cruel, devious trickster, but he's also a force of progress, and a beacon of hope. Change is neither good nor evil, after all, and while without him there would be no malicious schemes, there would also be no-one clever enough to save people from those schemes.
  • Nurgle: An inevitable cycle of decay and renewal without change, yet also represents the resilience, resolve, and solidarity to face those same, unsettling inevitabilities. Without him there would be no consistency, safety, or comfort in living or dying; and he is essentially nature incarnate.
  • Khorne: A force of merciless might, mindless slaughter and hatred, but that's because he proscribes to "survival of the fittest": strength and skill are all that matter to him, and he represents justice, vengeance and honor, so unlike the others he would never try to trick or stab a person in the back.^note He would just stab you in the face, over and over again, until your face stops resembling a face. Without him there would be no honesty or strength to fight against injustice.
  • Slaanesh: A horrifying, cruel, tortuous fiend that breaks the mind and inflicts untold suffering, but they also exude just as much joy, freedom, expression, and happiness; representing emotional extremes ranging from joyful freedom to crippling suffering. Without them, there would be no happiness, and no grief to make the happy times mean anything.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Nurgle's Rot being released into the throne room during the second Q&A episode is treated with mild annoyance, even after Kitten identifies it as the most deadly disease in the galaxy. Granted, the three of them are probably the most well-suited to handle a warp-plague — Magnus is made of pure Chaos Stuff and isn't even corporeal anymore, The Emperor is the Motherfucking Emperor and currently just a skeleton kept alive by ancient technology and his own will, and Kitten is wearing his armor (which is some of the best in the entire galaxy).
  Magnus: Just refrain from breathing through your nose, and you should be fine.
• Manchild:
  • Magnus hides it a bit better than the Emperor, but it still shines from time to time, such as when Space Wolves come up or his pride drags him into petty arguments.
  • Rogal can be childish as he wants a bike because Magnus has one and he wants to be fast too.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • The Emperor is shown to be one of these, with extra emphasis on the "bastard" part. It's revealed that the primary reason he disbanded the Inquisition was to see which members of the organization would not follow his orders, which would draw them all to Terra so that he could get them in a single location to deal with them all at once. It sounds good, until you realize that he did this knowing the Inquisition would come to Terra and murder thousands of its citizens before they were eventually dealt with. Furthermore, despite his assurances that he was going to forgive Magnus and give him a second chance, it's revealed that the primary reason the Emperor brought Magnus back to Terra was to deal with the inquisition, and to be made a scapegoat for doing so if the need arises. Except him telling Magnus that was part of a further plan that would see Magnus attempt to deal with the Imperium's problems on his own, inadvertently solving several more... including getting Vulkan and Corvus back out into the galaxy again.
  • As of Episode 22, Magnus joins in the fun, distancing the Emperor and Kitten for his own reasons.
• Manly Tears: After witnessing Captain Diomedes's death, Captain Boreale was shown with teary eyes as he declared retribution upon the traitors calling themselves the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Most of the Emperor's sexual partners suffered literally explosive orgasms, and the ones that didn't die were still often left in bad shape. Emps was unaware that any of them survived, and had no idea he'd actually fathered children with those survivors.
• A Match Made in Stockholm: Isha seems to have warmed up to Nurgle, despite the whole kidnapping-and-force-feeding-diseases ting. She seems genuinely upset when Tzeentch sends his daemons to ravage Nurgle's garden.
• Meaningful Background Event: In hindsight, Centurion popping up to listen on Throne Room debates seems like foreshadowing.
• Meanwhile Scene:
  • When Kitten is about to explain the Inquisition to the Emperor, the video cuts to the Imperial Guard in middle of several warp storms.
    The Emperor: I THINK I SHAT OUT AT LEAST FIVE WARP STORMS DURING THAT PRESENTATION.
  • Happens again in Episode 12 when the Emperor's caretaker, eager to change the subject, mentions the Traitor Legions. Then the episode cuts to Mars, with some tech-priests discussing a newly discovered STC-fragment.
  • A third time in Episode 17: after hearing about how the Inquisition treats the Sensei, steam starts pouring out of the Emperor's ears and the ground begins shaking... cut to deep space, with warp storms opening up all over the place and "Ride of the Valkyries" playing in the background.
• Megaton Punch:
  • Delivered by an extremely angry Leman Russ to Karamazov. It's hard enough to be heard back in the Emperor's throne room, back in the Materium, and when Karamazov wakes up he's on the other side of the Warp.
  • Marneus Calgar, as befits a man wielding the Gauntlets of Ultramar, performs such punches as his Signature Move. He first bestows one on the very, very deserving grill of Cato Sicarius, and later floors an Eldar Wraith Titan with a single punch.
• Menagerie of Misery: The Imperial Zoo in the Tabletop Adventure special is a place of squalid, cramped cells with stone floors and a pile of straw to sleep on. It's no wonder the Dragon goes berserk when it escapes.
• Metallic Motifs: In episode 18.5, the Emperor explains the Imperium's obsession with gold-plating everything by saying that gold is the color of the winners, and he intended mankind to be the first in everything in the universe. A bit of Fridge Brilliance here, too: "gold = first place" may not hold in other species' cultures... but the Emperor does not give a flying fart about what xenos think!
• Mind Hive: The Emperor explains that his psyche has fractured into such an immeasurably vast number of still-rather-interconnected fragment-minds to watch over the Imperium in myriad ways, that he — that is, the part of his soul that is directly connected to his decaying body on the Golden Throne, and which thus empowers the Astronomicon as well as is what/who has been conversing with Kitten, Magnus, et al. so far since Episode 1 — is no longer sure what the sum totality of his knowledge is. As he puts it when Magnus asks how come he's reliant on Kitten to inform him of the Imperium that's supposed to be watching over, "I don't know. Maybe I do know, but at the same time not."
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: The Emperor and Custodians gain access to the Black Library, ultimate trove of all knowledge in the universe (including all the Real Life published 40k material), in episode 25. They use it solely to amuse themselves looking up obscure background trivia in the army codexes and making fun of their own setting's more notorious novels as ridiculous "historical records". When they mention it offhand to Magnus many episodes later he lampshades the absurdity and assumes they're joking.
• Mistaken for Racist: The Custodian, and by extension the rest of the Imperium, due to him bringing up the Salamanders scare people due to their black skin color. It takes a bit of angry banter (and the Emperor tearing Kitten's armor off) to clear up this means charcoal black rather than a normal skin color sort of black.
• The Modest Orgasm:
  • Decius has a moment when in Emperor's presence for the first time, although it's more religious ecstasy than anything sexual.
  • Alicia Dominica seems to quietly get off staring at the Emperor's ribcage. Even 5000 years later the Emperor and Custodes are still squicked out about it.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • In episode nine, the scene cuts from Emperor planning the theft of Trazyn's stuff to Terra burning. It gets right back on track again, though.
  • First Q&A has the Emperor speaking proudly about nurturing humanity to its power, grand music playing in the back, only for the mood to be broken completely by the Emperor bemoaning that the questions sent in are the worst thing he's seen so far.
  • The second Q&A has the Emperor and Magnus having a grand conversation about sacrificing oneself for greater good, only for Kitten to point out that the questions they're talking about aren't all that bad.
  • Episode 23 has Cypher approaching the Dark Angels at last, being bold enough to ask for a meal, causing a tense pause... followed by Azrael simply pointing him in the right direction, none the wiser; the Dark Angels, in their paranoia, have entirely forgotten what Cypher actually looks like.
  • In the second part of the "BEHEMOTH" special, we go from the hilarity of Marneus Calgar re-enacting the Black Knight scene against an openly confused Swarmlord to a thoroughly depressing and brutal depiction of a helpless (and limbless) Calgar looking on in silent horror as the endless Tyranid swarm ravages the Ultramarine's homeworld, destroying both buildings and Titans and mercilessly exterminating his marines.... only to suddenly cut to a few years later with him telling Inquisitor Kryptman, "and then we won" without any explanation.
  • "The Shadow Over Immateriums" appears to be a Lovecraftian horror story set in the 40K verse, then just as the protagonist is about to be infected by Genestealers, a drunken Inquisitor Quist shows up and effortlessly slaughters the whole cult before popping back into the Warp.
• More Dakka: Discussed during one of the Q&A episodes, where someone asks the Emperor how much is enough. His response:
  At the point in time when bullets can pass through the interdimensional walls, when firepower takes up the entirety and eternity of space and time, all being stuck in a neverending life and death cycle as bullets recover and destroy their bodies in quick succession, no one able to think about anything but the sheer force of the bullets rapidly flying literally everywhere in the Materium, turning the Warp itself into nothing but a sea of semi-automatic weaponry... then there will be enough dakka. [Beat] Or at least almost.
• Mr. Exposition: Everyone, depending on the topic.
  • The Emperor talks about the Warp and the times before the Imperium.
  • Kitten can be counted on when it comes to current times and xeno races.
  • Magnus gives a lecture on the Warp in episode 19.
• Mundane Solution: The Emperor suggests that the Tyranids could be beaten by a bug spray. Kitten notes that this isn't likely due to their adaptive abilities.
• Mushroom Samba: One of the Fab Custodes claims the Flesh Eaters were founded after a squad of Blood Angels ate Ork flesh and hallucinated Sanguinius telling them to eat heretics. This of course leads to the Emperor eating Ork in an attempt to see his boy again.
• Musical World Hypothesis: Referenced in episode 28. After a translated debate between Kitten and the Fabricator General is portrayed as a song, the Emperor wonders if it was diegetic or not.
• Must Have Caffeine:
  • Implied; whenever Decius is on screen, and it's implied to be morning, you can bet he'll have his cup of recaf with him.
  • In the "BEHEMOTH" special, Inquisitor Kryptman often asks to drink some recaf, to much of the frustration of his Deathwatch guard (who has been relegated from purging the enemies of mankind to a glorified barista).
• My Greatest Failure: Hinted with Marneus Calgar in Episode 14. After tossing out Cato Sicarius, he collapses, and bitterly weeps and starts saying what it is that he did, implied to have been the reason for the Ultramarines' absurdity, before being interrupted by Ventris.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The Watchers in the Dark are all silent and brooding... except the one assigned to Azrael. This one is cheerful and too talkative.
• Mythology Gag: Much of the humor is derived from an understanding the 40K universe, though a few examples stand out.
  • In episode nine, the Emperor refers to card-games-and-chess parties the top Magnificent Bastards of the galaxy — him, Cegorach, Tzeentch, Deceiver and Creed — have sometimes. This is actually a joke on 1d4chan.
  • In episode 17, Lord Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz, a character from original canon and getting his own fanfilm The Lord Inquisitor, shows up for a moment before leaving so that he can do his film.
  • In second Q&A, one of the letters is from the Snake Person, main character of fanfic Defrosted.
  • In the same Q&A, one of the letter is a character going through one of the plot hooks of Dark Heresy, the Tyrant Star, describing his experience and hoping someone can do something.
  • In episode 22, Typhus is seen reading Lucius' fanfic, which is actually the infamous^note And we do mean infamous "Squad Broken".
  • Captains Diomedes and Boreale becoming hangers on for Magnus is a reference to the idea that the Blood Ravens were formed from loyalist Thousand Sons which is heavily implied by Warhammer 40K lore. It's also a reference to the Memes associated with them which Alfabusa also indulged in back in the day, remixing their voice lines create new and ridiculous stories.

Tropes N to Z

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: After being told about the Age of Apostasy, the Emperor asks what kind of idiots would let a guy named Goge Vandire become the most powerful man in the Imperium. He also thinks the same thing with the Marines Malevolent chapter, who made an enemy with the Salamanders for killing innocent civilians during the 2nd War of Armageddon, even saying that they must suffer from "Goge Vandire Syndrome".
• Never My Fault: The Emperor always finds someone to shift the blame on for his faults, whether it's Chaos Gods or (Fucking) Horus. For instance, he insists that Malcador's sacrifice is Magnus' fault even after Kitten logically demonstrates that it is not.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Magnus points out that by purging belief, the Emperor had almost created a Chaos god of unbelief.
  • Yes, Emperor, it was brilliant idea to mock Magnus when the latter was just trying to help.
  • The Emperor comes to conclusion in episode 26 that discarding his compassion so as not to halt establishment of Imperium was a grave mistake and plans to return it.
• Noodle Incident: Many of little references the characters make may seem like this. Subverted, though, as this is mostly the case of All There in the Manual.
  • Kitten once had a... phase. An armor-less phase. It's also implied that something traumatic happened between him and the other Custodes. There's also whatever happened between him and Shadowsun; he keeps insisting that everything we hear about it being a straightforward bad breakup is "not fucking canon".
  • Even mentioning Magnus' true daemonic appearance is enough to embarrass him.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • In episode 13, not only do the Ultramarines manage to capture Magnus the Red and bring him to the Imperial Palace, but Magnus and the Emperor forgive each other!
  • Two moments occur in episode 20, not only do the Ultramarines find all of the Salamander's artifacts causing Vulkan to return to his planet, but the Centurion is also revealed to be Rogal Dorn in disguise ending season 2. Also, Kitten is stripped down by the Emperor.
  • As of Episode 22, the Fab Custodes are now the Emperor's caretakers, sending Kitten straight into Magnus' web.
  • Episode 26: Fyodor fuses with the Star Child and actually BECOMES a shard of the Emperor. Just. As. Planned.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Though he doesn't want to admit it, Kitten secretly wants to engage in the same male Stripperific tendencies as his brother Custodes.
  • The Emperor, for a guy that likes logic and reason, and who can rightfully be considered a god, sees people who don't engage in melee combat as disgraceful.
  • Magnus poses as the Only Sane Man, but when the Emperor makes the Astronomican flip the bird to the whole GALAXY, he’s clearly having fun.
  • In the Slaaneshmas special, Miriael Sabathiel presents herself as seeming being quite sane and on-the-ball for a champion of Chaos, let alone a Slaaneshite, aside from her personal issues about feeling that she doesn't get the respect that she deserves. When the discussion goes completely off the rails (not that it had much focus to begin with), with Lucius just sprinting off and starting to destroy things offscreen on a random whim, she briefly wonders aloud about what in the Warp is going on... and the moment that Ahriman confirms that it's Slaaneshmas, she briefly remarks that "now it all makes sense" before donning her own Slaaneshmas hat and bolting off to join her fellow Slaaneshite in wrecking havoc.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • The Emperor notes how Wolf Priests claim to "commune with the spirits of nature" when they are actually daemons, just like he's been saying for 10,000 years. Irritated that they cling to this belief, he orders a sequel to the Council of Nikea banning interaction with said "spirits", just like the first one banned Librarians.
  • The Star Child, his lost compassion describes Fyodor Karamazov as a hypocritical, angry Jerkass with a god complex. Just like the Emperor.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Ordo Xeno Inquisitor Adrielle Quist is fanatically obsessed with killing genestealers and generally completely inept at everything. Then comes the Halloween video The Shadow Over Immateriums... where Norring merely mentioning Genestealers causes her to pop out of the Warp, Draigo-style, and single-handedly slaughter an entire Genestealer cult in a matter of seconds. For reference, a Genestealer cult is composed of one of the most powerful Tyranid subspecies to exist, at least one very powerful Psyker, and dozens if not hundreds of various cultists, many of them Half Human Hybrids with Tyranid abilities. Say what you will about Quist, but when it comes to her domain of expertise, you can hardly call her incompetent. Technically an inversion: compared to a genestealer cult planning to infect entire civilizations in preparation for the Tyranids to devour the universe, she's probably the more heroic party here.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Magnus gets uncomfortably close to Kitten when trying to convert him to his cause.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Magnus is entirely calm during Karamazov's raid until Emperor's "reveal" prompts a Flat "What".
  • Rogal Dorn is for the most part incredibly deadpan and emotionless... until he receives confirmation of the survival of his brothers.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: In Episode 29 the Star-Fyodperor is brought before Vect, where they share wine, chat and play cards games.
• No Yay: In the questions episode, one person asks the Emperor if he hesitated to kill his son because he had sexually confused feelings for him. The Emperor makes him explode on the spot.invoked
• Odd Friendship: Kitten and Magnus get on surprisingly well for a Custodes and a former Daemon Primarch.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Karamazov and Russ are arguing at the end of Episode 24, you can hear Kaldor Draigo destroying the entire daemon village offscreen through a series of explosions.
• Oh, Crap!: Kitten realizing the scale of the daemon threat.
  Kitten: What about the great enemies of man? How does all of this explain the Dark Gods, daemons, and all that?
  The Emperor: HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE SAYING "WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN PERSONAL DAEMONS?"
  Kitten: Yes?
  The Emperor: THINK ABOUT THAT PHRASE, AND TAKE INTO ACCOUNT WHAT MAGNUS JUST SAID ABOUT THE WARP ^note being the manifestation of all thoughts and concepts of sentient beings. NOW APPLY THE RESULTING REALIZATION TO THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE GALAXY.
  Kitten: Oh. Ooooohhh. OOOOOOHHHHHHH.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Marneus Calgar is depressed, and has seemingly shed his glory hunger and obsession for being seen as the best that's crippling the rest of his chapter. Keep in mind that last time we saw him, in a flashback with the Tyranids, he was just as much a Glory Hound as his Honor Guard, so something serious must have gone down. One of the implications is that he's suffering from glory withdrawal, no longer satisfied with his victories. This gets fleshed out a bit when we learn he's made some kind of deal with a Reality Warper, and the guilt is driving him mad.
  • The Emperor figures out something's up with the Tau when Kitten gets ballistic about them, while before, he was serenity and politeness incarnate.
  • In the Podcast: If Tacos should be eaten on Tuesday or on Friday. The Emperor treats having been tricked into eating Tacos on Tuesday as "The worst betrayal since flipping Horus". The argument between Rogal and the Emperor on the subject sparks riots across Holy Terra that take a week to suppress and lay waste to much of the planet.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: During his speech in "TTS Short 4", Decius at one point loses his grumpy voice and proceeds to talk in higher tone. This could be his voice actor's mistake, but it could also be, in-universe, a result of Decius falling under the effect of divine or divine-like inspiration during that speech. Seems to be the latter as his later appearances have him use the more dignified voice and being much more confident in serving the Manly Man-peror.
• One-Hit Kill: Marneus Calgar reminds us all exactly why he is Chapter Master of the Ultramarines when, while traversing the Webway, his Marines encounter an Eldar Wraith Titan. That he takes down such a monster with a single punch is, while truly impressive, a sobering reminder of the absurdly overpowered nature of the Ultramarines.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Marneus Calgar's duel with the Swarmlord is basically them re-enacting the the King Arthur vs Black Knight scene, with the Lord of Macragge being the Black Knight.
• Only Sane Man:
  • The whole theme of the series is the Emperor reacting to the grimdark state of the Imperium and how stupid it actually is.
  • The Ecclesiarch and the Captain-General are the only High Lords who aren't frothing idiots or useless pieces of shit. The Captain-General takes it even further by stating that he's the only rational one of the Custodes left while everyone else has completely lost it, though he notes even he went through a "phase" (and secretly still wants to re-lose it)...
    Kartodes: Hey Kitten! Want to go take a swim in the Promethium pools with us?
    Kitten: [unconvincingly] No...
    Karstodes: Fine, be that way!
  • Marneus Calgar seems to be as sick of how ridiculously overpowered the Ultramarines are as the Emperor is. He also asks what the Hell Cato Sicarius was thinking going into the Eye of Terror without an active Gellar field even if it somehow worked.
  • Magnus gets a moment of this during Episode 15, in which the Custodian manages to convince the Emperor that the Tau are dishonorable cowards by mentioning the fact that they don't fight in melee combat. Magnus counters this by bringing up the Farsight Enclave, who are much more liberal towards the use of melee weapons. Generally, with Kitten being a Yes-Man and the Emperor so full of himself it’s a wonder how the Throne can fit his ego, Magnus often comes across as this.
  • Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz is the only Inquisitor with any screen time that isn't depicted as a frothing lunatic. Also Amberley Vail whose letter appears in the second Q&A confirming that she is not only canon in this universe but also one of the Inquisitors who didn't come to Terra when Fyodor made his paranoid order. All she asks is why CIAPHAS CAIN (her secret lover, and HERO OF THE IMPERIUM) was so unlucky. This prompts the Emperor to praise Cain as one of the few people in the galaxy with common sense.
  • Belial is the only person in the Dark Angels' Inner Circle to realize that if they keep holding secrets and murdering is all they know, they'll never go anywhere.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Salamanders' everything being connected to fire takes up several minutes of an episode.
  • Done for a second time, and for even greater effect, when describing the Space Wolves and their motif.
    The Emperor: ALL I GOT OUT OF THAT WAS WOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLF AND WOLF.
    Rogal Dorn: The Space Wolves are incredibly uninspired.
• Overly Long Name: The game the Emperor challenges Kitten to. It's called Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Forth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker. It's actually just Yu-Gi-Oh! with different backing on the cards.
• Painting the Medium: You may have noticed that Emperor's lines are ALWAYS WRITTEN THIS WAY. It's the same in series' subtitles and unique to him. This tends to be used for comedic emphasis as well, such as an ellipses gliding across his subtitles and off the edge to convey "a rollercoaster ride of disappointment."
• Papa Wolf:
  • Finding out that he has biological children in the form of the Sensei despite his immortality through his many awesome (but potentially fatal) couplings throughout the centuries made him pleasantly surprised. Finding out the Inquisition hunts them down for being heretical mutants causes him to shit warp storms.
  • For all the shit-talking he does about the Primarchs, Emps does not take kindly to anyone else disrespecting them. Custodisi learns this the hard way after one too many tries to hit on Magnus.
  • The Emperor badmouths all his sons, loyal and traitor alike, except Sanguinius.
    The Emperor: DON'T YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT MY FABULOUS FUCKING HAWK-BOY. HE DIED FOR ME, SO BE GRATEFUL.
  • Extends to the second Q&A where, upon learning of the Sanguinor, wonders if it can be a surviving aspect of Sanguinius, he sadly remembers how Sanguinius died and hopes if it is true what they say about the Sanguinor, that he hopes the later knows that "DADDY MISSES [him] VERY MUCH." Note that at no other point does the Emperor ever show any kind of grief or is shown to mourn his other dead sons. It should be noted, though, that while some of his other sons have died, they did so with their souls intact with the exception of Horus (the Emperor made sure that Horus could never return). Sanguinius on the other hand had HIS soul obliterated by Horus. In this universe, people can have their souls summoned (if they aren't eaten by chaos) in order to have conversations with people whereas Sanguinius is just gone. That Sanguinius was his only son to die protecting the Emperor helps.
• Parody Sue: Played with with the Ultramarines. They are portrayed as overly polite and honorable and ludicrously effective at everything they do. Even so, the Emperor still thinks they are "a stupid fucking smurf village", and even their own Chapter Master is sick and tired of their perfectness. As of episode 20, they have succeeded in not only getting not one, but two primarchs (Magnus the Red and Vulkan) to return with little effort. Though it turns out they DIDN'T have as much to do with Vulkan's return as people originally thought... the Primarch of the Salamanders was already on Nocturne and coincidentally decided to meet with his sons at the exact same time that Cato Sicarius brought in the Artifacts.
• Pass the Popcorn: One of the Inquisitors discovering Vulkan in 32nd millennium was quite enjoying the ork carnage.
• Perpetual Frowner:
  • In Episode 7, Emps demands that he always have someone close-by to "tell me stupid shit I can complain about". He also manages to pull this trope off in the literal sense despite being a skull, which has to count for something.
  • Rogal Dorn always maintains the same frowning facial expression and flat tone of voice.
• Perpetually Shiny Bodies: To the Emperor's irritation, the vast majority of Custodes have adopted this style. At one point he considers tossing a lit match at them. And eventually Fucking Horus does so in the April Fool's episode! At one point, Wamuudes states as he slides around on the floor "the feeling of friction is all but lost to me!"
• Pet the Dog:
  • The Emperor is actually impressed by people who are willing to sacrifice themselves meaningfully. He badmouths all of his Primarch sons except Sanguinius, he compliments Ollanius Pius for standing between him and Horus after Horus nearly slew him (and badmouths the Custodes and the Terminator who also threw themselves to be destroyed by Horus because they didn't want to be upstaged by some plain human), and although at first he dismisses the Astral Knights especially after he hears about how they crashed a Battlebarge into the World Engine, he changes his tune when he finds out that doing so cracked its void shield enough to get them down on the planet, and they all died fighting to successfully cripple the enemy ship making it possible for the accompanying fleet to take out, so he claims that he totally created them.
  • The Emperor giving Magnus the Red a Space Marine war motorcycle. And later his brother Rogal gets one as well, but only a slow one so he can "KEEP [his] ASS IN SMELLING DISTANCE" and keep his father company.
  • His interactions with the Ecclesiarch is him alternating between insulting him for his unwanted worship, stupid pope hat and following a doctrine that has helped screw up the Imperium for millennia, and commending him for following his will to the best of his abilities and trusting him to help fix the Imperium.
  • Subverted in second Q&A when Emperor call Magnus "special" (in a good way), only to say that he's still "part of a failed batch".
  • Oddly enough, Horus gets a moment — when Malal is having a nervous breakdown in the retconnian, he offers to make him hot chocolate.
  • The High Lords of Terra, who are usually depicted as senile, incompetent, selfish fools, get one after Kitten calls them out on their behavior and asks why they don't try making laws that help the Imperium for a change.
    Lord-Commander Militant: Eh, you know... my Guardsmen could use some benefits now and again. The way they're always dying in droves for us, they deserve it...
    Fabricator-General of Mars: I am totally going back to Mars to serve oil margaritas!
  • In "A Day in the Life of Boy", Karstodes pauses his usual bullying of Boy to compliment him on kicking his superior to death. He reassures him that he'll get medical attention for the sonic assault he suffered and his family, whose executions said superior had ordered, would be protected. Of course Boy can't hear any of it thanks to his burst eardrums.
• Poor Communication Kills: In episode 22, Kitten leaves just moments before the Emperor wakes up, and Dorn isn't saying a word, leading both sides to assume that the other doesn't want them anymore. With the Fab Custodes' exaggeration and Emps once again belittling Magnus, a rift quickly develops between both. Episode 27 reveals that this was deliberate on Emps's part, as he once again used them to fufil his plans.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Kitten doesn't understand why the Emperor keeps calling Ultramarines "Smurfs". Then again, 38,000 years have passed.
• Psychopathic Manchild:
  • When he isn't being a Grumpy Old Man, the Emperor has quite a few immature moments.
    The Emperor: Holy shit, a giant skeleton space robot planet that shoots molecule-breaking beams and destroys everything it spots... I want one!
  • As of episode 14, everyone who could fit underneath the Really 700 Years Old trope is being given this treatment. The primarchs are prone to acting like actual children, such as Magnus reacting to a Space Marine war motorcycle the same way a small child would react to his cool new bike, while the Chaos Gods settle their fights like schoolyard bullies muscling on each other's turfs or angry teenagers on a forum. Though Khorne is oddly absent during the episode. The Eldar Gods Isha and Khaine seem to be the only ones exempt from this. With Isha being a Deadpan Snarker with a serious grudge against Slaanesh (which if her backstory here matches up with 40k lore is VERY justified) and Khaine being a Grumpy Old Man. Fellow Eldar god Cegorach still plays it straight, but that's not really a change from the source material.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Kitten is notable as quite an antithesis to Sir Swears-a-Lot of Emperor's (Tau notwithstanding)... until episode eighteen and its "reveal" roll around.
    Kitten: ...the fuck?
  • Magnus usually prefers sharp wit to fountain of obscenities, but there's one person he reserved the heavy words for...
    Magnus: Suck it, Leman, you furry fuck!
• Punctuated Pounding: Azrael does not react well when his Watcher in the Dark starts yapping about Cypher in front of a pair of new initiates. Said Watcher promptly gets curbstomped by the boots of an enraged Azrael's power armor. Repeatedly and literally.
  Azrael: OF! ALL! THE! FUCKING! WATCHERS! IN! THE! ROCK! WHY! DO I! GET! ONE! THAT! TALKS!!!
• Pungeon Master: The density of puns when Ghazkull Mag Thraka shows up on screen is appalling.
• Pyromaniac: The Salamanders are this, what with not only their obsession with flame-related weaponry, but also with destroying their enemies with fire, wearing fire on their armor, walking out into a fiery desert to meet their death in flames, and ritualistic cremation. The Emperor wonders if it has anything to with putting them too close to a couple of candles back when they were still geneseeds.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The main reason the Emperor is so utterly hateful of his loyal subjects: they've basically transformed 75% of mankind's "victories" into massive unrepairable losses, quadrillions dead and millions of souls devoured for pointless reasons, and a general disdain of basic human rights and human potential in humanity itself.
• Quarreling Song: A logical extension of the Fabricator-General's tendency to sing all his lines, Kitten and his Shield-Host's "negotiations" with him transform into straight-up vocoder Rock Opera. The Emperor isn't sure whether it was meant to be diegetic or not.
• Rage Breaking Point: When Magnus is just trying to help and the Emperor mockingly tells him not to break everything again, there's a visible *snap* and Magnus starts to plot behind Emperor's back.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": The title of Episode 30 Part 2 is "Oh No Oh NO OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO".
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • The Emperor:
    • Bitter and caustic as he may be, the Emperor is genuinely upset at what has become of the Imperium and is slowly trying to put it back the way it was before the Horus Heresy. Predictably, the Inquisition has other ideas on that.
    • Kitten is appalled to learn that the Emperor is perfectly willing to allow the Tau Empire to be absorbed into the Imperium, provided they serve as humanity's vassals. He argues his case with legitimate concerns—like concentration camps and sterilization for non-compliant citizens—and ridiculous ones like their weapon aesthetics or the culture around them but the Emperor is willing to disregard all of it if the Tau are willing to obey and serve...until the Custodian mentions that they don't engage in melee combat and the Emperor goes ballistic.
    • He reinstates the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy members who actually followed his orders to disband, since they actually do what they're told.
  • Among the High Lords, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard tries to be this to a very minor extent. He tries to impede the other High Lords from weakening the Imperial Guard... by keeping laxatives and air legal.
  • Also, the Ecclesiarch, even after having his organization disbanded by the Emperor, tries to prevent Karamazov from killing all of the Custodes.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • The Emperor gives a few indirectly in his criticism, and Alicia Dominica gives one to Goge Vandire offscreen.
  • Kitten gives one to the Fab Custodes for being self-centred narcissists.
  • Uriah, the old priest from The Last Church, manages to give The Emperor a blistering rant about the differences between the Imperial Truth and Chaos, and to every one of the witnesses' horror, the recipient isn't fully able to shrug it all off.
• Record Needle Scratch:
  • The other Custodes' entry into the scene begins with this before playing "Awake" from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (AYYYAAAYAAAIII!)
  • Another one occurs after the Emperor gets an especially stupid question, at which point he breaks into singing the chorus of Simple Plan's "Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)" in despair.
  • During the "Slaaneshmas" special, the music during Lucius's variety show abruptly stops when Fabius Bile brings in an incomplete clone of Ahriman.
• Remaster: The First Episode has been remade, with minor additions like lines for the Dreadknight and Kitten repressing his need to rip off his armor.
• Refuge in Audacity: The series does little to stray away from the source material. So how do you turn a Grimdark setting into a comedy series? By cranking it up to extremes and showing how ridiculous and foolish everything and everyone in the setting is. It probably helps that 40,000 did start as a parody series itself and that everything is quite intentionally over-the-top.
• Refugee from TV Land: At the end of the sixth special, a group of characters created by members of the Imperium Palace from a tabletop game wind up in their world after Magnus tries to delete them. It's implied that because they were standing over a pit which may be The Great Maw, they survive their world's destruction.
• Retcon: Disturbingly, this is happening to the Ultramarines In-Universe — their defeats are being minimized or eliminated while their triumphs are being exaggerated and increased. It's implied Marneus Calgar has a very good idea of what might be causing the changes — and it terrifies him.
• The Reveal:
  • The Custodian who has been chatting with the Emperor the whole time is actually the Captain-General, leader of the entire Adeptus Custodes. He manages to use this power to dissuade Karamazov from burning the High Lords.
  • Subverted in episode eighteen. The Emperor tells Karamazov that he's a shard of his psyche... only for it to turn out to be a part of a Batman Gambit. Then again, the existence of the gambit is quite a reveal on its own.
  • There is one in second season finale, when it turns out that the Centurion was Rogal Dorn all along.
  • Magnus has some plans regarding Kitten...
• Reveal Shot:
  • Magnus' speedy run to the Imperial Palace is halted somewhat...
    Magnus: There's still time to warn him! I could save everyone... [zoom out] If there wasn't a fucking WALL IN THE WAY!
  • After Lucius explains to Ahriman what Slaaneshmas is, the latter isn't very impressed.
    Ahriman: I don't think this sounds like a good idea at all. I mean... [zoom out, showing dead bodies all around them] If your goal is spreading happiness to people, you're clearly not very good at it...
• Ridiculous Future Sequelization: Apparently The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still getting re-releases into the 41st millennium.
• Right Behind Me: Kitten realizes Magnus is there just after singing the Space Wolves' praises.
• Rocky Roll Call: In Episode 27.
  Magnus: Father!
  Emperor: SON.
  Rogal Dorn: Brother.
  Magnus: Brother.
  Custodisi: Hot stuff!
  Magnus: What?
  Emperor: CURTAILMENT.
  [Custodisi hit repeatedly with the Emperor's Prohibition Hammer]
  Emperor: PROCEED.
• Rousing Speech: Decius gives a very impressive one to the other cardinals of the Adeptus Ministorum when he brings the news of all the changes the Emperor wants to make to convince them that worshiping the Emperor as a God is heresy.
  Cardinal: You are a liar and a heretic, Decius!
  Decius: NO! Do you not see the error in your ways?! The Emperor is no god, and to lump him into that obscene category is what is HERESY around here! Compare our Emperor, radiant, beautiful, magnificent, to the ones considered gods in this galaxy! Nurgle; a supernatural garbage bag. Khorne; a paraplegic sociopath. Tzeentch; an indecisive mollusk. Slaneesh; never went to rehab. Gork and Mork; literal mushrooms! Khaine; Big Daddy Calgar's personal pleasure object. Isha; supernatural garbage can. Cegorach; a fucking CLOWN! The Nightbringer; has no friends. And The Deceiver; who's just straight-up an idiot. [...] That you even DARE to compare our Emperor to these filthy creatures is DISGRACEFUL! It is a title fallaciously forced upon him, to associate him with beings of lesser worth! No, our great father is no god — he is a MAN! Like all of us, he is a human being — the greatest human being to exist in our galaxy and beyond! We must all learn that gods are not intrinsically better than us. Only weaklings succumb to their deceitful promises of fame and power! We share the same blood with our magnificent Emperor! We are him, and he is us! We always knew this better than anyone, and he wants us to embrace that same ideal! Mankind is greater than any lowly god-creature! We are the greatest species in existence! And the Emperor is the greatest being of our species! HE IS A MAN, AND YOU WILL PRAY TO HIM AS SUCH! [beat] ALL HAIL THE MAN-EMPEROR OF MANKIND!
• Rules Lawyer: While Magnus is the biggest bookworm of the bunch, the Provost Marshal is completely obsessed with the concept of rules itself. During the Warhammmer Fantasy Roleplay Special, this lead to him pointing out whenever Magnus decided to bend the rules to his favor or simply didn't know better.
• Running Gag:
  • Almost every time the Adeptus Mechanics appear, there is a reference to toasters.
  • Horus Lupercal is always referred to as "FUCKING HORUS".
  • Karamazov replying to his right hand man's every sentence with "Be quiet, Dominique".
  • The spooked Guardsman who runs off every time something kinda spooky happens, or generally just finds himself lost anywhere in the universe.
  • The more notable factions and figures get a preface for non-verbal noises, such as [Aroused snickering] for the Custodes, [Inquisitorial Laughter] for the Inquisition (and Karamazov in particular), and [Ultra-<insert action>] for the Ultramarines.
  • Rogal Dorn's weapon of choice being a cement mixer.
  • A neon-green Smart Car shows up repeatedly as some horrid abomination of technology. It's actually the Engine of Woes.
  • Whenever Vulkan dies the Salamanders emotionally lament the loss only to joyously shout "VULKAN LIVES!!!" when he comes back as he always does.
  • "What's a better word for marketable?"
  • In the podcasts, threatening to throw a character out a window for being obnoxious.
  • Also from the podcasts, they will invariably end on an argument about when the appropriate time to eat a taco is (Emperor believes it should be on Friday, while Rogal believes it should be on Tuesday, and they are both very passionate about these opinions).
  • The phrase "ultra-rapid ___" pops up every so often in the podcasts, mocking the repeated use of "ultra-rapid deployment" in reference to the White Scars that was noted in the first one.
  • The series go-to when the scene calls for gibberish or babbling is inevitably "Welcome to the Dawn of War tutorial..."
  • Tech-Priests instantly giving knowledge to someone by hitting them with blunt objects.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Karamazov is so incredibly down this trope, when the Emperor gives a long and exquisite series of sarcastic remarks and thinly-veiled insults, Karamazov takes it all for 100% sincere. Then Magnus the Red decides he had enough of it and shoots the whole Inquisiton present into the warp, after which the Emperor reveals that was the plan all along.
• Sarcasm Failure: The Emperor suffers from this upon end-of-the-season reveal.
  The Emperor: AAAAAAA?
• Saved by Canon: Calato and Wilford are guaranteed to survive the finale of the Behemoth Trilogy due to their presence as members of Karamazov's faction.
• Say My Name: To say the Emperor was furious about Magnus ruining his Webway project 10000 years prior is a massive understatement, not to mention the daemons he inadvertently brought along after breaking the psychic wall protecting said project.
  Flashback Magnus: [materializes in the throne room] Father, something terrible is going to—
  Flashback Emperor: MAAAAAGNUUUUUS!!! [cue everyone else in the room blown away]
  Flashback Magnus: Oh, uh, I— I better go.
• Scary Librarian: Turns out Cegorach, Laughing God of the Eldar, is one of these, with almost fatal results for Ahzek Ahriman and the Thousand Sons with him who tried to invade the Black Library.
• The Scapegoat: Emperor claims that Magnus will take the blame for the events of episode 18. He may be joking... may be.
• Scenery Porn: In episode eight, there are some pretty shots of Terra, Imperial Palace and Senate before the story begins properly.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: He'Stan's [Space Marine Scream] is entirely too high-pitched for a Space Marine, let alone one with a voice as deep as his. Then again, he did witness his Primarch being murdered (momentarily), which would lead to unmanly conduct in anyone.
  • A few minutes prior, Magnus also looses a hilariously high-pitched shriek when Corvus pops out of the Engine of Woes.
  • Turns out to be a family trait, as Rogal Dorn lets one loose upon seeing the now-daemonic Uriah in The Last Church podcast.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The Inquistion and Ecclesiarchy, by way of representatives Karamazoc and Decius, show how and how not to do this.
  • The Inquisition is informed that the Emperor has ordered them disbanded. Suspecting heresy, they invade Holy Terra and interrogate everyone in sight until the Custodes stop them. Karamazov is informed that the order did come from the Emperor, twice, but he dismisses the clarifications as a Custodes conspiracy. So he gathers every Inquisitor he can find and charges into the palace.
  • Meanwhile, the Ecclesiarchy ignores the same order to disband, but don't go to the same lengths as the Inquisition. When the Inquisition breaks into the palace, Decius learns that not only are the palace's defenses gone, the Emperor told the High Lords that they're not to impede the Inquisition. Even going against orders, Decius gathers the Sisters of Battle to defend their lord.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • The Emperor convinces Karamazov that he disbanded the Inquisition to test if he was loyal enough to disobey a direct order. Double subverted when he reveals the real test: checking which Inquistitors would have to be sent away. The salvageable ones would have either obeyed the order to disband immediately, or kept working for the Imperium regardless; Karamazov and his band failed by invading Holy Terra and the Imperial Palace despite repeated assurances that the order was legit. As soon as Magnus unceremoniously tosses Karamazov and his band into the Warp, the Emperor reinstates the rest of the Inquisition.
  • Played 100% straight with Decius. Even after his organization has been disbanded, and given the secondhand order to not defend the palace, he still tries his damnedest to keep Fyodor and the Inquisition out of the throne room. Even after he and the other Ecclesiarchs get their asses handed to them he manages to drag himself, exhausted and out of breath to try one last time to stop him, even if Magnus already cleaned up. And even after that, he takes the revelation of how his entire life is built on lies very well, after the Emperor assures Decius that the two of them are going to get to work on fixing the Imperium together and he can reform the Ecclesiarchy under true Imperial supervision.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Episode 27 ends with Boreale and Diomedes having a lengthy debate on whether scones are sandwiches or cakes. It ends with Diomedes bashing Boreale's face in with his hammer when he refuses to back down.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • The Star Child bitterly lists Karamazov's flaws, calling him a throne-bound, angry, incredibly hypocritical man. And then...
    Star Child: [chuckling] I'm going to feel right at home.
  • A Meta example, but the Alfa Legion as characters aren't treated with much respect at all, with their "lore" being considered an Old Shame by most. The end of Fear and Loathing in Commorragh sees Magnus murder Alfabusa's old Author Avatar and steal his soul before offering to do the same to the rest of the Alfa Legion. They swiftly accept death.
  • Also in a meta sense, Alfabusa himself tends to only voice characters who are considered creepy (Whammudes), completely insane (Asmodai), or repeatedly get the crap beat out of them (Snurko).
• Self-Made Orphan: Numbers from Chaos Descends stabbed his parents to death. His mom was a "tough old broad" that took seven stabs to go down but "dad only took the one" but he thinks he got him "in the old blood pumper". Smarty, a Khornate, is disgusted by this seeing it as not only dishonorable, but also because he holds family as sacred people who trust you.
• Send in the Clones: When Decius sends his ministers against Karamazov, they turn out to be Decius' lookalikes. Either they're really clones or they're just each an Identical Stranger.
• Self-Serving Memory: Upon hearing about the Astral Knights actions against a Necron World Engine, the Emperor claims he totally founded their order despite dismissing them as having a stupid name earlier.
• Serious Business: The Emperor and Rogal Dorn initiate a civil war over whether tacos should be eaten on Tuesday or Friday and view the idea of eating them on any day of ones choosing as akin to rape. When a Daemonic Prince is inadvertedly summoned onto the voxcast, the thing that finally convinces the Emperor to banish him back to the Warp is neither the literal capital-H-Heresy he preaches, nor his repeated rebukes of the Emperor's arguments, but the fact that he said Tacos weren't good enough to be worth fighting a war over.
• Servile Snarker: Little Kitten slowly becomes this over the course of episodes while Custodisi becomes this over the course of a single podcast... and meeting Cegorach.
  • Custodisi's snarks are apparently his ways of being passive-aggressive towards the Emperor, who he sees as a total hypocrite and asshole who shifts blame and takes credit whenever it suits him.
• Shared Family Quirks: For a definition of "family" and of course there are a lot.
  • Vulkan is a total Love Freak, going on constantly about friendship and giving everyone a big friendly hug (that crushes bones). His sons, the Salamanders are the some of the nicest Space Marines in the galaxy and are completely overjoyed when their Primarch "returns"... twice. Tu'Shan takes after his father the most as he's super nice and friendly, refers to other marines as "cousin-friends" much like his father refers to other Primarchs as "brother-friend", and having his love for adventure. All of them share coal-black skin and red eyes due to their gene-seed.
  • Corvus Corax is angsty, uses a lot of pointlessly ornate words, and talks down about himself alot. His sons, the Raven Guard, are much the same as they too use a lot of "eloquent" words and are horribly angsty about everything. When Vulkan accidentally hurts Kayvaan Shrike by hugging him too hard, Kayvaan is the one who apologizes for being "too approachable", showing that they too depreciate themselves.
• Shared Universe: Elphas's BEHEMOTH is set in the Text-To-Speech continuity.
• Shooting Superman: A Commissar attempts to execute an unruly Ogryn for knowing about Chaos. Said Ogryn is pinnacle of human potential Corvus Corax, who simply shrugs off the bolt pistol to the head, the autoguns on the firing squad, the autocannon on the firing squad...
• Shout-Out: Enough of those to fill an entire page.
• Shown Their Work:
  • For the record, Magnus' true form isn't a wholecloth invention; while blue, there really was a model for his true form way back during the game's earliest years, though one so briefly available few even remember it existed.
  • The reference to an astropath working for the Ultramarines named Illiyan is also from canon... sort of. Back when 40k was still known as "Rogue Trader", the Chief Librarian Astropath of the Ultramarines was indeed one Illiyan Nastase. While Games Workshop have never outright stated he no longer exists, he most likely is not canon anymore, because he was half-eldar. Probably explains why Calgar didn't want him to have any screen time.
  • Little Kitten's deck is an actual one-turn-kill deck called "Weenie Beasts" and yes the "Milus Radiant", "Rescue Cat", and "Big March of Animals" cards are used in it to boost the weak monsters on the field to become extremely strong. Yes, the Emperor is so arrogant that sets up the possibility of losing at his own game to make fun of Little Kitten.
  • The musical battle between the Custodes and the Fabricator-General is actually based off of an obscure reference in the lore of 40k that Mechanicus tech-priests communicate using binary transmissions that, to their mechanically-augmented ears, sound like beautiful, melodious music.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Surprisingly enough, Emperor berates Magnus when the latter mocks his utopian idea for Mankind's perfect future.
• Sickening "Crunch!":
  • In Requiem for Dominique,Dominique's rotting corpse, for reasons that probably relate to it being in the Warp, suddenly starts crunching its neck to the beat of an Ominous Music Box Tune. Karamazov was instantly sobered up from witnessing this.
  • In the 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥, Kaldor Draigo is sent "backstage" into the Warp until it's his turn to be a guest. In the process he's twisted into a tight ball with painful crunching but it's not like it'll kill him.
• Significant Double Casting: The Emperor (when he's off the Text-to-Speech device) and Hammurabi Unferth share a voice actor. Hammurabi is the Shield-Captain of the Custodes diplomacy division, so he's literally speaking with the Emperor's Voice.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The Emperor, natch. It's started rubbing off on the Custodian. Magnus the Red also has a tendency to swear, but as could be expected he swears more like a savvy nerd, with clever insults mixed in.
• Something Else Also Rises:
  • When a Dark Mechanicus notices a huge, phallic Emperor-class battleship floating through the warp:
    Dark Mechanicus: This is getting me harder than Terminator armor!
  • When Decius is told by the Emperor that everything he's believed in is wrong his miter starts drooping. And it perks back up when the Emperor lets him keep his job, and his stupid pope-hat. And when he gets a little too excited at the idea of the Emperor's perfect humanity he blows a hole in the roof.
  • Ahriman is more open about it, quote: "This is getting me so excited, I could use my dick as an AP1 weapon!"
• Sound-Effect Bleep: The recording device the Emperor uses to record "If the Emperor Had a Podcast" automatically plays a foghorn over any words not approved by the Adeptus Ministorum, namely the Emperor's two favorite words and "Chaos". Much to the Emperor's annoyance and the misfortune of the poor servant boy operating it.
• Speak of the Devil: In "If the Emperor Had a Podcast episode 3" the second prologue to "Inquisitor" Draco states he's switching to third-person for the rest of the book to avoid readers accidentally summoning him like a daemon. Magnus then demonstrates the "True Name Clause'' by reading aloud a daemon's name and summoning him into the throne room. The Emperor near-effortlessly kicks the (panicking) daemon back out of reality before admonishing Magnus.
• Speed Demon: The series makes fun of the White Scars' obsession with going fast, which they inherited from their Primarch, Jaghatai Khan. The Emperor admits that he thought Jaghatai went missing to become "One with the Speed Force", and is proud to hear that he managed to stand still for more than twenty seconds—albeit on top of a Razorback going over 200 mph.
• Spelling for Emphasis: One of the shorts has the Emperor respond to the revelation that the book detailing the Imperium's Code of Law is written on human hide by tossing it out the door while proclaiming, "Fucking E-Double-U!".
• Spirit Advisor: Ferrus Manus' ghost/hallucination is more of a Spirit Demotivator. Not like Corvus being a total buzzkill helps matters much.
  Ferrus Manus: You are weak Vulkan!
• Springtime for Hitler: Magnus and Kitten are recognized as Heroes of the Imperium for offing the Lachrymole xenos masquerading as the High Lords of Terra. While Kitten rolls with the punch and hopes to convince the High Lords to start working, Magnus would be happier controlling the Administratum.
• Squick: In-Universe, this generally sums up the Emperor's reaction to his "Centurion" wanting to still snuggle up near him... after it's revealed that he's Rogal Dorn.
  • The golden bucket the Emperor uses to put out Magnus' fireball has "GENESEED CONTAINER" written on it.
• Stealth Pun: When Magnus returns to the Throne Room in Episode 27 the Emperor conjures a bucket of chicken wings in Magnus's hands, leaving him confused. The rest of their meeting is littered with more overt chicken puns made by the Emperor at Magnus's expense.
• Stunned Silence: The Emperor's reaction to Kitten's Little "No" moment.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: In "Warp Grumbling", the Emperor has this reaction when Magnus the Red tells him that he's been creating a Chaos god of Unbelief and becoming his champion.
  The Emperor: THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE SINGLE DUMBEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, AND THAT IS COMING FROM A HALF-DEAD SKELETON THAT HAS BEEN STUCK ON A LIFE-SUSTAINING GOD-COUCHE FOR THE PAST 10,000 YEARS.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders:
  • Dominique (one of the Inquisitors who follow Karamazov, and literally seated at his right hand on the former's power throne) gets sexually confused by the presence of the half-naked Custodes.
    Dominique: Hey Fyodor, we're surrounded again. But this time by a bunch of half-naked men. It's like a ruddy ocean of bare nipples and bulging muscles. IT'S MAKING ME MOIST.
  • As does a random woman they rescue from the Inquisition. "I'm so aroused right now."
• Suddenly Speaking: Exploited; the plot for the series kicks off when the Adeptus Custodes and Adeptus Mechanicus install the titular Text-to-Speech device, which finally allows the Emperor to speak with his subjects again which he was not able to for over 10,000 years. He is... less than impressed with the state of His Imperium. It winds up causing the more fanatical portion of the Inquisition to commit heresy and storm the palace because there is not way the Emperor could do such a thing.
  • And then there's the Centurion... or should we say Rogal Dorn.
• Suicide Mission: Early on, the Emperor orders that the Ultramarines venture into the Eye of Terror and capture Magnus the Red. The Emperor flat out knows, and even hopes, that the Ultramarines will not survive this. Yet somehow the Ultramarines manage to capture Magnus, looking no worse for wear at the end of it. Just to compound how absolutely impossible this is, the order the Emperor gave early on in the series to get Magnus back with the Gellar Fields turned off? THEY ACTUALLY DID THAT!
• Summon Magic: When Magnus is rampaging and it's clear the Fab Custodes aren't enough, Kitten grabs Magnus' spellbook, pulls out an altar shaped like a Grey Knight Dreadknight and a pot of Sororitas blood, chants the glory of the Grey Knights backwards, and summons Kaldor Draigo.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When the Custodes, Dorn, and Emps get into a massive fight during the Black Templars, Dorn's Angry Boys podcast episode, Helbrecht tells them they can stop pretending now, as he's learned what horrors (and screaming) untempered hatred brings. Everyone instantly calms down and acts like this was the plan all along.
• Surrounded by Idiots: The Emperor thinks his immediate subordinates, and the entirety of the Imperium, as rotten, superstitious garbage that he will have to personally deal with. This sentiment extended even towards the Primarchs, both loyalist and heretic. The sole exceptions to this are Sanguinius and Malcador the Sigilite, who both died during the Heresy.
• Sycophantic Servant: Author of one of the letters in second Q&A asks whether he could be this for the Emperor. The Emperor orders an immediate restraining order.
• Tag Line: "The Emperor speaketh about shit."
• Take a Third Option: When the Emperor tells Ecclesiarch Decius that he doesn't want to be worshipped as a god, Decius is stuck between following the orders (which will get him lynched by the rest of the Church) or folding to his fellows' arguments (and thus getting the wrong kind of attention from the Emperor). How does he get out of it? He points out that there are about a dozen gods running around, and that calling the Emperor a god (and, thus, equal to said gods) is an insult, when mankind is above said gods and the Emperor is the greatest human being to ever exist.
• Take Our Word for It: Apparently, between episodes twelve and thirteen the Emperor told Kitten some really touching and heartwarming stories about the Primarchs, but we only have Custodian's word for it.
• Take That!:
  • Half of this series is critiquing some of the more questionable decisions GW has made regarding the lore. The biggest one, and one of the reasons this series even exists, being GW's refusal to continue the story past 40,999 CE... At least at the time that the series began.
  • Slashfic writers get their share of Emperor's hate in episode 17.
    Kitten: (...) my only desire is to serve you, my lord!
    The Emperor: THIS CAN EASILY BE SKEWED IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS. IT'S A GOOD THING THAT SHITTY SLASHFIC WRITERS AREN'T ANYWHERE NEAR HERE.
    Magnus: Don't jinx it, Father...
  • When the Emperor asks if there are any female Space Marines exist, the Custodian denies it, explaining "Only lewd and deviant artists of pen and parchment would ever come up with something like that."
  • In-universe example: Coteaz ends his conversation with Karamazov thusly:
    Coteaz: Try not to kill the Emperor for being innocent or whatever it is you could possibly accuse him of.
  • Short 6 is a not-so-subtle jab at YouTube pranksters, whether it's harassing people on the street, "social experiments", or nominally charitable acts that are aimed more towards making the channel look good than actually helping anyone. The fact that it's Lucius doing these pranks makes them downright horrifying.
  • In episode 1, the Emperor declares whoever designed the Dreadknight to be a "terrible, terrible person." He also finds the Centurion close-assault armor adorable. In later episodes, he compares them to a baby carrier and a teddy bear, respectively.
  • When the Emperor talks about his past lives, he heavily implies that one of them is Chris-Chan (the author of the infamous Sonichu and infamous lolcow). The reasoning behind this is that he wanted to create an Anti-Role Model Psychopathic Manchild to help humanity understand the kind of person they shouldn't be... which went over their heads, as the persona was apparently mocked and nobody learned anything from Chris's mistakes.
  • The fourth special seems to have one in-universe, with Magnus having a particular dislike for Yu-Gi-Oh! and making it known at every opportunity.
    Magnus: The only intricate thing about this game is its banlist.
  • In the same episode, a much more subtle one gets dropped against Magic: The Gathering, albeit perhaps against those who mock one game while turning a blind eye to the idiosyncrasies of their own game.
    Magnus: Oh wow, a massive play undone by a single card. Only in a children's card ga- {Beat} Y'know what? I play Red/Blue, I am not allowed to criticize.
  • The entire point of Unsubtle Criticism starring the Adeptus Arbites is to air the many grievances the greater YouTube community had with the platforms now legendarily draconian and easily abused policies regarding copyright and user accounts in late 2015/early 2016.
  • In Episode 25, Vulkan's Engine of Woes relic is revealed to be a Smart Car. Kitten finds its very design unnaturally horrifying.
  • In episode 25, Calgar asks the Ultramarines to put their jump packs on, saying he doesn't need one as he's in Terminator armor. Cato Sicarius remarks that this doesn't make any sense. This is a Take That! to Dawn of War 3, where despite Terminator armor supposedly being too cumbersome for a Space Marine to even jog in, Gabriel Angelos can perform backflips in his.
  • Again in 25, Cegorach sticks in a heavily bass-boosted "Bazinga" and Laugh Track after every punchline. He also claims the harlequins have mostly stopped talking to him because they're so sick of it (and because he stole the bit).
  • Everyone on the voxcast for Inquisitor don't hold back on how disgusted they are with the sheer amount of Squick the book is filled with on top of the overly purple prose that makes it hard to read. While reminding people the writer helped with the script to A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.
  • Magnus's attempt at a humor routine in Episode 29 is to list every single thing wrong with a popular TV show (or the Eldar Harlequin equivalent of a TV show anyway). It's portrayed as being completely unfunny in every respect.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has apparently received yet another re-release in the 410th century.
  • In TTS Short: Squats Reborn, it takes the piss out of the notion that every horrific act the Imperium does is a necessary evil needed to maintain the survival of humanity, only for the people at the top to maintain oppressive power structures that grind the less fortunate into paste while refusing to take any action that could mildly inconvenience themselves.
• Talk to the Fist:
  • Happens twice in second Q&A, both times with spectral fists — first to Kitten after he mocks one of Emperor's lines, then to Eliphas for his letter.
  • Calgar has also done this twice, once to Cato Sicarius and once to an Eldar Titan. The latter invocation was considerably more lethal.
• Tautological Templar: Karamazov states that charging the Eternity Gate would be heresy, but not when Inquisition does it.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In episode 13, Calgar says that his day isn't completely ruined as of yet, only for Cato Sicarius to burst out and be obnoxious.
  • In April Fool's episode, one of the Custodes says that nothing could ruin this moment just before Horus bursts in and kills the Emperor.
  • In Episode 21, Kitten, used to Insufferable Genius Magnus, sees no issue with talking about the Space Wolves despite knowing the subject will definitely enrage Magnus, and even says the Primarch is probably jealous that the Wolves are better than the Thousand Sons. He comes to regret those words immensely.
  • In episode 26 part 1, Leman is surprised that a demon army isn't assaulting Khaine's gate at the moment. He says that he expected a huge fight with the Inquisition being ground up in the meatgrinder while the psykers popped like balloons trying to get the gate open. Guess what happens not 10 minutes later.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Rogal Dorn doesn't seem to be capable of showing much emotion, even when he claims to have been "something beyond furious" in his own flashback. It's easy to confuse him for a The Stoic but it's clear enough that he is still capable of strong emotions such as anger and joy in spite of this impediment.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Done by the Winged Warrior of Terra ^note that is, the Winged Dragon of Ra transformed into an angelic figure reminiscent of the Emperor in his prime in the first special. The Triumphant Reprise of the below song (also the ending theme) bursts into life just as his new form is revealed, and the strings and choir continue to blare as it's equipped with even more powerups, then proceeds to kick Kitten's ass, only fading away after it lands the damn nearly final blow.
• Theme Naming:
  • The Space Wolves
    The Emperor: ALL I GOT OUT OF THAT WAS — WOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLFWOLF.
  • In a more serious example, the Tempestus Scions of the Inquisition are all named for British tanks and armoured vehicles from WWII (Cromwell, Stuart, Valentine, Priestly, Matilda, Grant etc.)
• Theme Tune: "We Are One" by Triarii.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • The Inquisition has this reaction when they learn that the disbanding message is from the Emperor.
  • In April Fool's video, the Emperor reacts this way to Horus' arrival.
• Thing-O-Meter: Episode 25, when the Ultramarines are trying to track down harlequins in the Webway:
  Ultramarine: "Astropath Illiyan's clown-o-meter is reporting high levels of honk in this section of the Webway."
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • From episode 3:
    The Emperor: SO, WHAT'S UP WITH THIS INQUISITION THING?
    The Custodian: Oh, boy.
  • In episode 7, Kitten again has this reaction when the Emperor asks to see the other Custodes Companions.
  • Episode 17, Kitten informs him about the Sensei, the Emperor's biological children... and how the Inquisition have been hunting them down as heretical mutants.
• Time Abyss: The regular cast all qualify. The Emperor has been around for 50,000 years in one form or another. Kitten mentions to Magnus he's served the Emperor for over 11,000 years and Magnus himself has been around a similar length of time. None of them ever really pay attention to the years anymore.
• Tin Man: We're told countless times that the Custodes don't have emotions, but that's clearly not the case. Best exemplified by Kitten's rage against the Tau. It got to the point that even Kitten is worried about it. Another great example of this would be the literally everything that the other Custodes do ever.^* This may be Alfabusa getting his facts crossed. In the Black Library novels it's shown that the Custodes have emotions, but are VERY much The Stoic, to a level that makes Rogal Dorn look like he's Nicolas Cage at his best by comparison
• Too Much Information: Both Magnus and the Custodes express this opinion when the Emperor starts talking about his sex life.
• Touché: This is what the Emperor's reaction to this gem from Rogal Dorn (who doesn't even seem to get the sheer scale of the burn he's just inflicted) boils down to:
  Rogal Dorn: Father, are you familiar with the expression "you are what you eat"? Seeing as you are behaving like an ever-growing pile of screaming psychic children.
• Touched by Vorlons: After the Star Child (implied to be either the largest remaining shard of the Emperor's soul or his discarded compassion made manifest) fused with Fyodor, he took on an appearance that is best described as a Fusion Dance between the Emperor and Fyodor, with Fyodor's chair made gleaming white and gold and his body gaining a better skin complexion, red and gold robes, and a luxurious mane of hair. He also let off a beacon of light so huge it shone out of the Warp and bright enough the the whole galaxy and some things beyond could see it.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • When the Emperor learns that the Sensei, his biological children, have all been either hunted down or forced into hiding, he calmly remarks that he finally found the bottom of the barrel. Just before the warp storms start.
  • When Kitten stops being the Emperor's caretaker, Magnus sincerely suggests to the Emperor that he talks to Kitten, to which the Emperor backhandedly brings up his Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment again. Cue an audible snap, with Magnus calmly going to Kitten to convince him to work for Magnus instead.
• Trivially Obvious: Kitten, after hearing the Emperor praise the Sisters of Battle.
  The Custodian: Ye-heheheah!... euh... Sensible and rational, yes, those are... [beat] Words.
• Troll:
  • Cegorach, the Laughing God. Manages to stop Ahriman from reaching the Black Library by asking Ahriman for his Library card. And while he was laughing with the Deceiver about the C'tan eating each other.
    The Emperor: [imitating Cegorach] Killing all of your allies in the middle of a giant war was apparently a bad idea — who would've fucking thought!
  • The Emperor himself, to Fyodor, taking half an episode to lead him around before finally letting Magnus warp the entire Inquisition off Terra with a warp rift, banishing all the worst parts of the Inquisition into the Warp in one fell swoop rather than have them stick around and undermine his Imperium.
• Turned Against Their Masters:
  • When the Necrontyrs converted a bunch of sentient gas into an artificial race with synthetic bodies and computerized brains as the C'Tan, the latter decides to show their "appreciation" by absorbing the living metal the Necrontyrs, brainwashed them into their slaves, and ate their souls.
  • The Krorks (ancient Orks) turn against The Old Ones after defeating the C'Tan, and as the Emperor states, they forgot to install a fucking off switch.
• Understatement: Emperor after hearing about fate of the Sensei, his biological children he didn't even know he had.
  The Emperor: WELL, I FOUND THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL AFTER ALL... I THINK I FEEL A GRUMBLE.
  [cue warp storms appearing all over Terra]
• Unexplained Recovery: The Fabricator General (High Lord on the far right) malfunctions and self-destructs. No-one comments on it, and he's back alive within fifteen seconds, which implies that this must be a regular occurrence.
  • As of Episode 27, this has been explained: the Fabricator-General is using the Proteus Protocol to bring himself back from the dead.
• The Un-Favourite:
  • The Emperor really doesn't like Magnus the Red. Who certainly feels like he is this when he appears in episode 13.
    The Custodian: Oh! So... Everything is Magnus's fault?
    The Emperor: DEFINITELY. IF I COULD, I'D BRUTALLY SPANK MAGNUS UNTIL HIS ASS WOULD TURN SO RED THAT HIS FACE WOULD LOOK PALE IN COMPARISON.
  • Or invokedRoboutte Guilliman and the Ultramarines. Their insignia is continuously mocked as a toilet seat and a reverse vagina.
    The Emperor: I ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WAS THE GREATEST OF MY TWENTY PRIMARCH SONS.
    The Custodian: ... Well. That's excellent, my Lord.
    The Emperor: THE GREATEST LITTLE DERIVATIVE PILE OF BLUEBERRY PUDDING POP FUCKERY THAT HAS EVER GLAZED THE SURFACE OF THIS SHITTY LITTLE GALAXY. [Custodian uncomfortably fidgets] IS HE STILL ALIVE?
    The Custodian: Barely. He was almost killed... He's in stasis back on the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge.
    The Emperor: CUT HIS LIFE SUPPORTS AND DISBAND THAT STUPID FUCKING SMURF VILLAGE.
  • Has crept into Hates Everyone Equally territory in episode 12. The only son he doesn't say anything about is Sanguinius; the other 19 get brutally torn apart. Even the other two that he insists to never speak of again.
• Ultimate Lifeform:
  • The Emperor describes The Old Ones as the ultimate rulers of reality and evolution, and that they evolved so damn hard, they became spiritual entities.
  • The Emperor himself is the fusion of various shamans souls that committed ritualistic mass suicide to create the ultimate soul. As he tells Magnus, he is and isn't human in that he was born of human parents, and he has a human soul. But he isn't a mere man, since he is what humanity could become if they evolved like The Old Ones.
• The Unreveal: Double Subverted with Kitten's name in episode 23. At first it's cut off with a Monty Python "Intermission" gag, but this gag is itself cut off by an abrupt bout of Lampshade Hanging, but then we learn that Kitten's list of middle names is so absurdly long that Magnus never even got halfway to Kitten's last name.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The Emperor has a plan to defeat Chaos once and for all. Unsurprisingly, given his paranoia after the Horus Heresy and his refusal to trust anyone, he refuses to explain how he intends to do it.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • The Emperor bursts into it a few times, notably when he learns about the Inquisition and Calgar sacrificing an irreplaceable battleship.
  • This is Kitten's attitude towards the Tau.
  • Magnus hulks out into a giant monster (based on his First Edition model) when Space Wolves are spoken of favourably.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Karl the Deranged sending a Nurglite poison in his letter is met without much surprise or inconvenience by those in the Golden Throne. Justified, as they're all immune to it.
• Unwitting Pawn: Magnus was this to both Tzeentch and Horus, and is forced to accept these facts by the Emperor in episode 13.
• Verbal Backspace: Rapidly growing tired of Rogal's extreme Literal-Minded speech, the Emperor begs for anyone to save him from the conversation. Cue Karstodes.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Cato Sicarius can't use the pronoun "I" without inserting his name afterwards.
    Cato Sicarius: Because I, Cato Sicarius, am the most esteemed swordsman of all of Ultramar!
  • In "Brotrip", Kadus tends to begin his sentences with "ooaaa~'
• Victory Is Boring: Calgar is bored out of his mind with his chapter's endless and effortless victories. He's also feeling guilty.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Karamazov is surrounded and about to be blown up when the Emperor orders Kitten to invoke this and let the man escape.
• Villain Has a Point: Pretty much the entire point of the The Last Church podcast. The Emperor summons Uriah, the last priest on Earth, who has converted to Chaos worship since his death (although Uriah seems to be only Anti-Villain and Wide-Eyed Idealist at his worst). They have round two of their argument, but this time instead of being a random uneducated man of faith Uriah is both highly knowledgeable about his religion and the universe in general and also a skilled orator with millennia of experience. The Emperor uses the same arguments he used in the original, and gets the utter hypocrisy of his using the trappings and methods of religion to try and build a secular state thrown in his face. Even though his beliefs about Chaos are incredibly naive and his dismissal of the malevolent nature of the gods flies in the face of the evidence, he makes a hell of an argument and the Emperor fails to make a case against him.
• Villainous Breakdown: When surrounded by Custodes, Karamazov breaks down and starts screaming that it's them who are heretics and that the text-to-speech device is a lie. He recovers, only to simply start screaming when he finds Kaldor Draigo has gone nuts, and he's stuck in the Warp with him.
• Villainous Valor: When travelling across Commorragh to the Crucibael, Leman Russ plays a psychically-enhanced "small baby game" with his 3 Dark Eldar chaperones. They must name what he's thinking about before he summons it into reality with them. It, on the 3rd pass, being Slaanesh, who would immediately devour every Dark Eldar in Commorragh (that is, damn near all of them). To save the rest of his race, Xylatro attempts to say its name, even though he knows any Eldar even trying to speak Slaanesh's right name will have their soul instantly devoured by it, which is exactly what happens. Anyone who knows anything about Drukhari would rather expect a daemon to attempt Heroic Sacrifice than one of them!
• Virtue Is Weakness: Big E certainly though so, so he cast aside his kindness long ago to focus on the Imperium of Man. Though in his private thoughts, he realizes that its need to counter the grim-dark shithole the galaxy had become, and began a scheme where on component was to retrieve the Star Child, the shard of said kindness, and have it return to him. However, in Episode 29, while Star-Fyodperor's kindness literally begins killing off the Dark Eldars, once Vect reveals that he lied and has sent everyone in his party to fight in the arena, the Star Child falls to despair and the effects are immediately undone. Emps claims that this easiness to fail into despair was precisely why he got rid of it long ago.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • Cato Sicarius's extremely high-pitched voice in relation to his 7'-tall Super-Soldier physique.
  • Lucius the Eternal is even higher-pitched, sounding like some sort of deranged cartoon creature while looking like a Humanoid Abomination. It's slightly creepy this time.
  • "Stonetooth" Harker has a noticeably high-pitched and soft-spoken Southern Drawl, to contrast his own 7'-tall physique and otherwise manly persona as a veteran sergeant among the Catachan Guard.
• Vocal Evolution: Karamazov's voice seems a lot clearer as of Episode 17. Though, according to some reports, it's mostly thanks to a new microphone.
• Voodoo Shark: Played for Laughs regarding Sly Marbo's ability to fly: according to his fellow Catachans he doesn't fly but rather soars in the air using his aerodynamic muscles and knowledge of Catachan's natural flexible and buoyant trees which of course doesn't explain how he got to that Feudal World in the first place other than "It was funny".
• Wangst: When Big E said that Corvus was "INFERNALLY ANGSTY" he wasn't lying: when he escapes from the Engine of Woes (a tiny smart car), he proceeds to whine so much that it drives off Magnus and Little Kitten. He does wangst less when he's on his "Bro-trip" Spin-Off with Vulkan so he's not completely full of wangst.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: When Magnus is in full demon mode and rampaging in the Throne Room, the other Custodians blackmail Kitten, saying that they'll only help if he gives up the job of caretaker. It should be noted that defending the Emperor from exactly this is their entire job.
• Walking Spoiler: A many in this series, but most of these characters here are in Season 3.
  • Vulkan and Corvus Corax, two Primarchs who come out of the shadows thanks to Magnus and Kitten, and stars of the Bro Trip mini-series, accidentally forming a collation of various followers from the different planets that they vist while going to Homeweorld so they can confront Magnus for revenge.
  • Rogal Dorn. It's revealed at the end of the second season that Big E's teddie bear of a Centurion turns out to be the Primarch of the Imperial Fists legion, who took a vow of silence to make up for his past sins following the Horus Heresy, and he only reveals himself now because Kitten and the Emperor were going to piss off Magnus the Red by reigniting his hatred of the Space Wolf. Which is what happens, and the results lead to the events of the 3rd season and the reappearance of the two Primarchs above.
  • The Star Child, shard of the Emperor's kindness, who fuses with Fyodor Karamazov to become Star-Fyodperor, so it can finally leave the Warp and reunite with the Emperor, taking the reins of the Inquisitorial Warparty as they march to Commorragh.
  • Belisarius Cawl, whose very presence reveals that Kitten's party is on Mars, seeking the Protus Protocol for Magnus's plan to revive the Emperor.
• Waxing Lyrical: Upon hearing about the heroics of the Astral Knights, Emps says they were "... The best around. Nothing was ever gonna keep them down."
• We Will Meet Again: Karamazov promises this to Kitten when he's running away.
• What If?: The series is what if the Emperor of Mankind had a text-to-speech device enabling him to properly communicate again after 10'000 years. Hilarity ensues as he undertakes the arduous process of unfucking up the Imperium of Man.
• With All Due Respect: Cato Sicarius very blatantly wants to become Chapter Master as soon as possible. As current Chapter Master Marneus Calgar promptly Lampshades, Sicarius is effectively wishing for Calgar to die at the earliest opportunity.
• With Catlike Tread: Ultramarines' idea of "stealth mission" is sneaking a rumbling, earth-shaking tank right behind Salamanders' backs and shouting paeans to their own glory a bit more quietly than usual. To their credit, Salamanders completely fail to notice. It helps that the Ultramarines are blessed to be Ultra-perfect and Ultra-infallible and... the Salamander Guards are just dumb (and nearly deaf; they have to shout to hear each other even face to face). Even when Little Kitten flies into a rage and starts shouting at one of the guards he just stands there and asks "What" to literally everything and the guy standing barely two feet away barely heard anything!
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 4: The Emperor, sick of hearing just how fucked up his Empire has become from Kitten, decides to actually do something and issues a decree to have both the Inquisition and Adeptus Ministorum disbanded. This does not go over well with the leader of the Inquisition, Fyodor Karamazov, who denounces it as heresy. This is effectively when the plot changes from two guys talking about the 40K Universe to Big E and the rest of his circle trying to unfuck the galaxy.
  • Episode 18: Magnus sends most of the Inquisition into the Warp. Good news, huh? Well, Fulgrim and Abbadon are gathering the Chaos Legions for a new Black Crusade, so it seems another Cerebus Syndrome is inbound.
  • Episode 20: The Ultramarines recover all of Vulkan's artefacts, leading to his return, the Centurion is really Rogal Dorn in disguise, and the Emperor takes off Kitten's armor.
  • Epsiode 21: There is a REASON for the Ultramarines' Sueishness, Magnus unleashes his true form, and Karamazov finds Leman Russ.
  • Episode 22: The Fab Custodes are now the Emperor's caretakers — and Magnus drives a wedge between Kitten and the Emperor...
  • Episode 24: Not only are Leman Russ, Fyodor Karamazov, and Kaldor Draigo heading to the Gate of Khaine in order to get to the Imperial Palace, but it's also implied that Kitten knows so much because he has access to the Black Library. Oh, and Custodisi and Whammudes are now face-to-face with the Eldar Laughing God, Cegorach.
  • Episode 3 of "Chaos Descends" has Mar and Stitches find one of the artifacts of Vulkan which causes a lot of powerful factions to race towards the planet to capture it.
  • Episode 26, Part 1: The forces of the Inquisition and Leman Russ manage to reach Khaine's Gate and must fight off a massive horde of daemons, and midway through the battle, Fyodor Karamazov's belief that he is a part of the Emperor becomes so intense that it is enough for the Star Child (the compassion and humanity of the Emperor) to take over his body.
  • Episode 28. Bellisarius Cawl is now tracking the Custodes Warband, with orders to kill them all. And the Custodes are being lead to the resting place of the Proteus Protocol... the Noctis Labyrinth. The resting place of Void Dragon.
  • Episode 30, Part 1: Even without dialogue to explain the visuals, it's made clear during the Deceiver's flashback that not only did he make Kaldor Draigo so overpowered by shoving a shard of the Outsider into him, apparently he also created the Tyrandids!
• Wham Line:
  • At the end of episode 20:
    The Centurion: Father. Your sweetheart was I... ROGAL DORN!
    The Emperor: AAAAAAAAAA?
  • And another one at the end of Episode 22:
    Magnus: [to Kitten] Well... have you ever considered... serving someone else?
  • In Episode 24, Whammudes trips and falls into the Webway Gate, finding yet another gate beyond:
    Custodisi: That is... a clown...
  • At the end of Episode 26 Part 1 after the Star Child merges with Fyodor, granting him the strength to shatter the Gate of Khaine and sending a blinding light from the Eye of Terror that incinerates every Chaos entity in the vicinity in and outside of the Warp.
    Russ: .....Father?
  • When Lady Malys raises her fan to her face after discussing her plan with herself she devolves into manic laughter with a smile to match when suddenly...
    [BAZINGA]
  • In episode 27, after two real world years of thinking that the Emperor's Jerkass behavior had caused him to chase away Kitten and caused Magnus to start scheming behind his back and the Custodes' lies had seemingly fooled him into thinking that he was left with the Macho Camp freaks as a form of punishment, Emps delivers this line, completely re-textualizing everything that has happened during the third season;
    The Emperor: I AM AWARE.
    [...]
    HE IS ON MARS NOW, IS HE NOT?
  • Several small moments in episode 28, but big none the less.
    GIANT MACHINE!
    Karstodes: I WOULD LIKE TO RESIGN FROM MY POSITION AS CARETAKER!
  • There's also this one for those aware of certain implications regarding Mars's Machine God: "Find the shortest route to... The Noctis Labyrinth"^note  For reference, the Mechanicus recognizes the God- er, Man-Emperor as their Machine God, in part because of his defeat of the "Dragon of Mars". However, it is strongly hinted that the Dragon of Mars is the Void Dragon, the most powerful of the C'tan, and likely the TRUE Machine God. And it's all but stated that it is imprisoned in the Noctis Labyrinth.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The Emperor tells the Custodes that they should stop being useless and start to actually help the Imperium, seeing how they have the best gear in the galaxy.
• White-and-Grey Morality: Despite its source material being a prime example of Black-and-Gray Morality, the series is firmly rooted in this trope. On the protagonist side, The Emperor maybe a jerk but his goals are on the right track and he's actually improving the Crapsack World setting bit-by-bit (which is the point of the series anyways). In fact, there's room for a couple genuinely good (or at least decent-hearted) characters in the setting, such as The Custodian and Vulkan. The main antagonists are not the more monstrous villains of the setting, such as the Tyranids, but rather other citizens of the Imperium who do not accept its reformation out of genuine belief in its current values. Truly evil individuals do appear from time to time, like Asdruabel Vect or Lucius, but mostly serve as comic relief.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "The Shadow Over Immateriums" drew heavy inspiration from The Shadow Over Innsmouth
• Woman Scorned: Gender-inverted by Kitten of all people. When Shadowsun left him, he became hell-bent on murdering her entire species. Alone, if necessary.
  Kitten: THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!
• A World Half Full: The Emperor's nigh-insurmountable goal is to turn the Galaxy from the complete nightmare that it is to a less grim and dark pseudo-utopia for the human race. Thus far, the text-to-speech device has helped tremendously to that end.
• Xanatos Gambit: The Emperor uses the Ultramarines for these. If they succeed in whatever suicide mission he gives them, then he is one step closer to fixing the Imperium. If they fail, then a chapter the Emperor can't stand gets killed or humbled.
• Yaoi Fanboy:
  • Joe the Stormtrooper from Chaos Descends ep. 4 enjoys it when Numbers and Smarty start arguing. He gets shot by the disgusted pair for filming their argument and telling them to kiss.
  • It should be no surprise that the Fab Custodes are this, but Whammudes ships Uriah and the Emperor after reading The Last Church. He continues to ship it even after learning that Uriah has become a daemon.
• Yes-Man: The Adeptus Custodes who guards the Emperor. In the Emperor's own words, they including Kitten are basically programmed robots that exist solely to serve his will and agree with everything he says. As it turns out... they are not anymore. Little Kitten used to be the best of them and was a total kiss-ass (agreeing that he was a total kiss-ass robot) but even he was ground down by the Emperor's extremely abrasive personality starting with a little "no" when told to unplug Roboute Guilliman's life support. Custodisi and Whamuudes (being far from Little Kitten's professionalism) took the total of one half of a podcast (and being traumatized by Cegorach) to stop being yes men and by the end of it they are completely aware of the fact that the Emperor is a huge dick. They'll still obey and praise him but they don't like him.
• You Are Fat: The Emp doesn't give Rogal a bike because he is "TOO FAT" but the real reason seems to be not to lose his only company that doesn't drive him nuts in less than 10 minutes. He gets him one anyway.
• You Didn't Ask:
  • When asked why he never told anyone about the War in Heaven, the Age of Technology and world history in general, the Emperor says that no-one ever asked him about it.
  • Magnus calls out the Emperor's questionable claim that he's not going for the smokes and mirrors approach any more when he just got Magnus to send roughly 80% of the Inquisition into Warp by tricking the leader of the Inquisition into believing he was the Emperor's son/partial reincarnation. The Emperor counters that he never bothered to ask if what he was saying was true. Subverted in that the leader of the Inquisition did ask, repeatedly. Magnus even calls him out on this too, but the Emperor dismisses him.
  • Magnus gets the Emperor back when it turns out he was fully aware Rogal was still alive, even if he had no idea of where he was. If anything, he was surprised the Emperor didn't know.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  • The Emperor's reaction to a lot of things.
    The Emperor: SO, THE NECRONS AND THE BLOOD ANGELS DID WHAT?
  • The sheer disbelief at seeing his Custodes' current state of (un)dress uniform as he spends several minutes just dumbstruck from the sheer shock.
    The Emperor: HOLY SHIT. WHAT ON THE NAME OF TERRA ON FUCKING ROLLERSKATES IS THIS? [...] THIS SHIT IS SO SURREAL. AM I ON DRUGS?
  • His reaction to Magnus's revelation that his efforts to stamp out all religion and render the Chaos Gods powerless were actually fueling the birth of a Chaos God of Unbelief is nothing short of hilarious.
    The Emperor: ...COME AGAIN? [...] THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE SINGLE DUMBEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. AND THAT IS COMING FROM A HALF-DEAD SKELETON THAT HAS BEEN STUCK ON A LIFE-SUSTAINING COUCH FOR THE PAST 10,000 YEARS.
  • Rogal Dorn of all people gets one in If the Emperor had a Podcast, incredulous that out of all the "historical records" it's the Book of the Astronomican that the Emperor takes most seriously.
  • In the second Podcast, Uriah gets a few of these whenever one of the others expresses an extremely twisted sentiment that everyone else ignores. Like, say, the suggestion that traitorous babies should be killed.
• Your Head A-Splode: A somewhat background event in episode 18 is one stormtrooper's head exploding from exposure to the Warp. This happens more than once.
• Zerg Rush: When Magnus breaks the barriers surrounding the Imperial Palace, hordes of daemons swarm all around him, all running to the Golden Throne.
  *SUDDENLY DAEMONS*
  Magnus: Well, that certainly happened...

---

WE ARE THE GODS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
WE ARE THE SOLDIERS, THE LEGION OF LIGHT.
WE ARE THE CENTER, THE DEATH OF THE SUN. (SON)
FIRE AND FLAME.
WE ARE ONE.

The Emperor: WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?

---