Webcomic / Fate/Gag Order

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fall

"The Champions of Chaldea are always good for a chuckle or two."

An ongoing “sprite comic” (by OroJuice) based on Fate/Grand Order that uses in-game assets like portraits and backgrounds to showcase “the unique brand of heartbreak and hilarity that could only play out among the soldiers of a most extraordinary army in time and space”.

While primarily an episodic comedy series featuring the humans, Servants, and fantastic creatures of Type-Moon franchises, its various strips are prone to brief serialized storylines and can even take unexpected forays into horror and tragedy.

The comic is currently hosted on SpaceBattles.com, and has several affiliated mini-arcs and spin-offs that inhabit both the main page and their own threads:

• Nero Fest Nitwits: Otherwise known as “Jaguar Dojo CCC”. To celebrate (and profit from) the 2019 Nero Fest Event, BB and Jaguar Man create a sports special mini-series. Ostensibly made to interview newcomers to the Chaldean Event, the program quickly goes off the rails in a hurricane of grandstanding, sinister PSAs, counterfeiting schemes, death threats, and what may be the strangest magical duel of all time.
• The NEW Twelve Labors of Heracles: With the Greek Lostbelt looming over the forces of Chaldea, Jason takes it upon himself to strengthen his Argonaut Ally Heracles by reenacting his famous Twelve Labors with the power of a Holy Grail. A Bootleg Holy Grail.
• Mordred’s Paladin Problems: A deep dive into the Carolingian cycle as Charlemagne and his paladins continue their misadventures in the present day at the expense of almost everyone else in Chaldea. Mostly Mordred.
• FSN/Case Files: Waver Velvet manages to snag a slot in the Fifth Holy Grail War, but the decisions he makes as to who the main Master will be might have some strange repercussions as to the challenges he will face and the Servants that wind up being summoned.

Fate/Gag Order can be read here and typically updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with the odd “Special” cropping up in between.

See also P1 Crypter, a comic series also by OroJuice that follows the Crypters being present in Part 1.

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Tropes in Fate/Gag Order:

In General

• Abusive Parents: Gaia to the Elementals. And even towards Arcueid, who she didn’t create directly. BB being a bad “mother” to the Sakura Five is also given some focus.
  • BB and Morgan immediately hit it off over having to raise "five ungrateful brats".
• Adaptational Abomination: The Yellow Kid starts out looking mostly true to his original design. Then the Wham Shot of his comic reveals he only has four fingers on each hand and it’s all downhill from there.
• Adaptational Deviation: Robin in this series is in fact the Robin Hood that knew and fought alongside Richard the Lionheart.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Astolfo’s more pragmatic and nigh-ruthless side from his stories is emphasized here. Mostly to comedic effect.
• Agent Peacock: Many of the post-Fate/Stay Night Argonaut designs are rather gaudy and elaborate when set alongside the much more subtle ones Medea and Heracles had in the original visual novel.
• All There in the Manual: Many of the story details for the ‘’Fordlandia’’, ‘’Toyland’’, and ‘’Ultrapoliz’’ Singularities can only be found in the Commentaries. These tend to be very long.
• Always Someone Better: The comic opens with Goredolf bemoaning how Hakuno Kishinami from the Fate/EXTRA series has much nicer living conditions than either the Shadow Border or the original Antarctic Chaldean headquarters.
• Animal Disguise: Odysseus disguises himself as Red Hare so that he can backstab Hektor and Paris.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: During the prelude to “The Neo Bronze Holy Grail War”, Mordred cheerfully proclaims that she did something foul to Gareth’s helmet before she put it on for the tournament.
• Arrow Catch: In an attempt to impress Artemis enough that she'd break her Vow of Celibacy just for him, Orion invented "The Deluxe", a variant of this stunt where he fires an arrow into orbit in such a way that it slingshots around the world back to where he's standing so that he can catch it with his mouth once it lands.
• Ascended Extra: Servants who have appeared in-story but are not yet summonable appear in the strip as Servants of Chaldea. Most prominently Roland and Karl.
• Ascended Fanboy: Mostly played straight with Don Quixote, but he takes note that Artoria’s “return” can only mean bad things, and he’s rightfully both terrified and in awe of Roland, who famously rampaged around Spain in Orlando Furioso.
• The B Grade: During her birthday strip, CCC Elizabeth uses a Holy Grail she bought online to summon multiple versions of herself (sans Rider Carmilla who hadn't been released yet) in a bid to conquer the Moon Cell. Despite getting powerful doppelgängers in almost every class, including two Alter Egos, she is incensed that there is no "Ruler Liz", "Avenger Liz", or "Saver Liz" among them.
• Battleaxe Nurse: Nightingale. Although the International Nurses Day Special (read: her birthday) shows her more tender side.
• Berserk Button: While certainly often in-character, these are often exaggerated for quick punchlines. Like Anastasia’s beef with communism or Nemo’s issues with Queen Victoria.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Half of the 2021 Chinese New Year Special is Ritsuka, Mash, Qin Liangyu, and Xu Fu wishing the reader a Happy Year of the Metal Ox. The other half is Europa voicing her intent to enjoy her Year of the Metal Ox…with Tauros.
• Big Brother Instinct: Apollo’s first instinct upon seeing Artemis and Orion getting cozy together is to have Paris gather as many scorpions as he can.
• Big Shadow, Little Creature: Inverted with King Enma who resembles a tall, floating, reclined figure behind a shoji, but when the screen door is pulled open by Beni-enma, it turns out that the room he’s in isn’t the only thing Bigger on the Inside.
• Bishounen Line: Gudako expresses annoyance that after Ivan, none of the Lostbelt Kings are particularly alien or monstrous.
• Black Comedy: Infidelity, Violence, Felonies, Cannibalism, and other reprehensible topics abound.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Bordering on Happy Ending Override. Strip #150 acts as a quasi-epilogue to Ultrapoliz, which shows that for as hard as the protagonist, Quixote, Hippolyta, and Gaheris fought, the most they were able to do was injure (not even destroy) the right hand of Hastur.
• Butt-Monkey: Hank Morgan (no relation) in A Connecticut Yankee in King Artoria’s Court. While essentially the same character from the novel he originates from, his story plays out very differently. Firstly, he’s actually plucked from the 1800s by Morgan, who wants him to provide her with his modern day knowledge to use against Artoria. Then he’s “rescued” by Agravain, who lets him out of Lot’s castle…so he can send assassins to kill him to deprive his mother of the future knowledge that Hank possesses while keeping his own hands clean. Afterwards, he’s rescued for real by Gawain who brings him to Camelot whereupon he tries to modernize the kingdom. Which where things get worse for him as every single legitimate improvement he tries to implement backfires out of a mixture of human error and bad luck.
  • A meat processing plant to rectify food shortages? Having so much food and blood in one place attracts dragons, which results in the deaths of everyone working there.
  • Introducing the bicycle as a convenient means of transportation for the masses? An ambitious army captain attempts to replace cavalry horses with them and he and his squad are wiped out by the Picts because these are the not very maneuverable or rough terrain-friendly “penny-farthings”.
  • Democratic elections? The lack of existing safeguards allows mob rule and vote-rigging to run rampant. Merlin invading his dreams to have sex with the memories of women in his life (including a young version of his mother) only adds to his fraying mental condition, culminating in him trying to take over the kingdom himself in a grim inverse of his last stand in the book. Unfortunately, armed pre-pubescents and teenagers prove to pose little challenge to the superhuman Knights of the Round table and his insane rebellion is swiftly suppressed.
  • His uprising does convince Artoria that it was unfair to keep him in her era just to see how his toils could aid her kingdom and elects to send him back to his own time (which she apparently could’ve done from the start). Which she does. By knocking him out and having Merlin put him in a deep sleep that will hopefully preserve his body until he wakes up back in the year 1889. Instead, he wakes in 1887 in London’s royal vaults where he is mistaken for a thief and jailed under that assumption for about a year until Queen Victoria herself realizes he is “The Slumbering Yankee” mentioned in one of Artoria’s surviving kingly decrees. The monarchy arranges for his safe transport back to Connecticut where he arrives just in time to see himself get abducted by Morgan’s spell.
  • Perhaps wanting to get a bit of revenge on his tormentors, he visits his friend author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and tells him of a “dream” he had where he was transported to Arthurian times that he can turn into a book, taking care to change a lot of key details so he comes out on top. Then he looks out the window and sees Mordred peering at him, because a Connecticut Singularity is apparently going on, and Hank’s old friends thought they’d pay him a visit since they happened to be in the area.
• Cleavage Window: The “womb window” of the Valkyries.
• Combat Pragmatist: It transpires that Hector wasn’t exactly playing fair during his fateful duel with Achilles.
• Confusion Fu: Nobu sabotage’s Okita’s jetpack, making her flight patterns too unpredictable for her to be shot down by enemy defenses.
• Cool Helmet: Nemo’s return gift (distinct from the official one that would be released more than a year later) is a diving helmet with prehensile mechanical tentacles for the purposes of interacting with the environment, locomotion, and self-defense.
• Crossover: With Castlevania and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and more.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Talos attempts to kill the protagonists are literally quashed when the much larger Kingprotea vertically presses him down into sand.
• Dead All Along: Martha and Tarasque midway through ‘’So Long, Saint Martha’’.
• Deadly Euphemism: The Ganelon Special.
• Destructive Savior: Singularity Incorporated manages to save the day and catch the culprit only after “the requisite collateral damage”.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Da Vinci’s infatuation with the Mona Lisa’s model, the young Lisa del Giocondo, is the subject of her birthday strip.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Amakusa Adventures has the eponymous apocryphal saint stabbed to death by Musashi during Shimosa rather than Fuuma Kotarou.
• Divided We Fall: Jeanne Alter’s refusal to share her flames with her counterparts results in all three of them being frozen solid during the Russian Lostbelt.
• The Dog Bites Back: Qin Shi Huang is excited to meet “a canine”, because it’s been centuries since he ate one. The Hessian Lobo team puts him in his place. The strip this happens in is even called “Yulin Calling”.
• Eagleland: Both types show up, sometimes in the same strip like in the President’s Day and Fourth of July specials.
• Edutainment Show: The “Edison IRL” sub-series.
• Eldritch Abomination: Hastur.
• Electric Joybuzzer: Zeus can perform this prank unassisted, and his electrical discharge is so powerful that it destroys the room he and Heracles are in when he performs it on him.
• Ensemble Cast: While Fujimaru Ritsuka and Mash still appear, the comic’s focuses is distributed among the game’s various characters, with it being easier to list who hasn’t at least shown up in some way.
• Epic Fail: Almost a dozen Servants are frozen solid the moment they step out of the Shadow Border during the Russian Lostbelt because they weren’t wearing winter gear.
• Escape Pod: In the fallout of a failed “Dyson Sphere theft”, Holmes and Moriarty find themselves on a burning space station with only one of these left. The two of them note that “the ideal British citizen” would “let the other chap have it” before they both make a mad dash to claim the pod for themselves.
• Everyone Knows Morse Code: In his car form, Ford can only speak this via his horn with “Honks” acting as dots and “Beeps” acting as dashes.
• Evil Is Bigger: Arjuna is so intimidated by his Alter self's much larger and more ornate bow that his own weapon comically deflates in submission.
• Forced Transformation: Ashwatthama summons Duryodhona into Edison’s body due to him being the only Servant who was compatible with him. Not only does Duryodhona find out that he’s allergic to his new form, not only does the combined patriotism of America’s presidents start to warp his brain, but he’s horrified to discover that he has “nipples” on his shoulders.
• For Want Of A Nail: Some Servants are involved in story chapters they weren’t so a strip’s punchline can land. Such as Astolfo in SE.RA.PH, Nursery Rhyme in the Chinese Lostbelt, and Mash during the Case Files Event.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Seeing Ibuki-Douji grow up orphaned and alone has Kintoki reflect that while it doesn’t excuse Shuten’s future cruel and decadent behavior, he understands that it probably played a big part in why she turned out so aloof and misanthropic.
• Groin Attack: Subverted in “The Super SUCC Experience”. Due to the poses of some Servants in their card art, it appears as if Materials and Embers are being shot at their crotches to enhance him. Reactions to this range from shame (Vlad and Geronimo) to outright pleasure (Yan Qing and Sherlock Holmes).
  Astolfo: Meh. I've had better.
• Guest Strip: Some comics borrow art from sources outside of official Fate/Grand Order visual assets like pictures made by Moto Murabito or Kevin O’Neill. Some play this rather straight with outright illustrated comics, presumably to show stories that the typical sprite comic format can’t.
• Handsome Lech: Astolfo’s sadness at Sieg hooking up with Jeanne instead of him despite how he “hit all the right flags” is immediately superseded when he spots “co-eds with obvious daddy issues” walking through the town he’s in.
• Henshin Hero: The “Stopwatch Soldier” Mystic Code they get in Ultrapoliz is reminiscent of this archetype.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Flashbacks to Ushiwakamaru’s childhood reveal that her teacher Kiichi Hougen did little to shield her from traumatic and bizarre subject matter, even going so far as to have her participate in the massacre of a Rokurokubi village for the neck tenderloins of its denizens.
• History Repeats: When challenged by Jeanne Alter, Hessian Lobo, and Gorgon in the Scandinavian Lostbelt, Skadi is irritated by their resemblance to the three great figures of Ragnarok^note Surtr, Fenris, and Jormungandr respectively.
• Humanoid Abomination: Mickey Dugan, The Yellow Kid.
• Humiliation Conga: The appropriately titled “Siege of Sieg” mostly consists of in-game screenshots that show an underlevelled Sieg being one-shotted by every other Servant featured in the Apocrypha Inheritance of Glory Event (including Shakespeare), and ends with Gudako being disappointed that she can’t have Jeanne beat him up as well.
• In Spite of a Nail: Ibaraki tries to challenge Tsuna to a rematch while sober. It fails to change the outcome, but it’s even more painful since she isn’t drunk during it.
• Irony: The premise of "So Long, Saint Martha" has an elderly Martha attempting to bring Tarasque to the Reverse Side of the World in fear of what will happen to the comparably old dragon once she's no longer around to look after him. Despite that awareness of her mortality being the impetus for this quest she both fails to notice when she actually dies on the very next page and doesn't question why Lazarus suddenly shows up having not aged at all since she last saw him. She remains completely oblivious right until the end where she and Tarasque (who might have died on the very first page) are presumably whisked away to heaven.
• Is That Cute Kid Yours?: In one strip, Shuten-Douji sees Sakata Kintoki hanging out with Paul Bunyan. Comparing their visual similarities (Dumb Blond with an axe), she assumes Bunyan is Kintoki's daughter. Hilarity Ensues.
• Jerkass Gods: The Greek Pantheon laughs at Perseus for his Humble Goal of protecting his mother from “the unwanted advances of a lascivious and domineering patriarch” since his very existence as one of Zeus’ bastard demigods is proof that he’s over a decade too late to stop that from happening the first time.
• Kick the Dog: Shuten meets her younger self, an orphaned oni who has nothing but the shell of the egg she came out of for companionship. She then tries to steal the shell from Ibuki-Douji while calling her a “little freak.”
• Kill and Replace: What Nobu did to the Orpheus under Wodime’s command.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Some strips are less newcomer friendly than others.
• Limited Animation: Being a “sprite comic”, this is a given, but it’s especially apparent when characters who don’t have expression sheets like Flat Escardos are onscreen.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Paul Bunyan clearly doesn't understand the Ret-Gone ramifications of cutting down a Lostbelt Tree, she's just happy she can "help" her friends with her lumberjack skills.
• Mood Whiplash: The comic where Qin Shi Huang compares Koyanskaya to his mother.
• Mr. Alt Disney: Edison as Volt D.C. of D.C. Land and Menlo Cinematic Universe fame, who lampoons both himself and Disney’s modern day antics.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: A flashback to a Holy Grail War that Xiang Yu fought in before coming to Chaldea had him come up with an alternate solution to his Master wanting to use the Grail (which he didn’t trust) to get his dream job: kill all the other applicants for it.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: When he sees Orion getting close with Artemis, Apollo asks Paris to go find some scorpions. All of Them.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Tesla averts this in a strip based on a newspaper interview he did a day after Edison died, citing him as a man of great determination who could’ve saved himself a lot of trouble if he had put just a bit of time into theory and calculation.
• Nice Girl: Barbara “Barbie” M. Roberts.
• No Poker Face: Having never really gambled in life due to being a stickler against vice, Ford managed to give away a lot of tells despite two of his “modes” not having faces.
• Old Shame: Averted with Lilli of Bild Lilli infamy, whose erotic line of dolls inspired Ruth Handler to create Barbie. Barbie considers Lilli to be family and looks up to her “big sister”. As much as she can anyway.
• Original Generation: Ricciardetto, Meurvin, Gaheris, Don Quixote, Ned Kelly, Henry Ford, and…Barbie. Among others.
• Out of the Frying Pan: When Sir Kay is summoned to Chaldea, he is immediately beset upon by all the allies from Camelot he can’t stand like Tristan and Lancelot. As he attempts to flee, he is “rescued” by a masked knight who winds up being Artoria Alter Lancer, who has brought him to a room filled with the various versions of his surrogate brother so that they can keep him for themselves.
• Out with a Bang: Romani jokingly refers to this trope as “The Louis XII Special”.
• Overly Long Gag: The duel between Medea and Odysseus contrasts her quickly pulling out her small Rule Breaker and his much longer deployment of his massive Trojan Horse.
• Painting the Medium: Mickey Dugan wears the word balloons of the last page of "The Kid in Yellow" like a crown.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Jaguar Man infiltrates a Yaga settlement by…changing her name to Yaga Man and peppering her dialogue with the names of famous Russian politicians. Who don’t exist in the Russian Lostbelt.
• Pass the Popcorn: Instead of being annoyed or upset at Faker and Soldier inexplicably taking whatever offscreen Holy Grail War they’re part of to the Enma-tei during his visit to it, King Enma’s attitude to the skirmish is this, and his dialogue implies that he might have had a hand in them winding up at the inn so he could watch Heroic Spirits fight.
• Phallic Weapon: Lampshaded during the Father's Day Special where Fergus treats the "girth vs. length" debate (vis-a-vis Caladbolg and Gáe Bolg) as Serious Business to Cu's chagrin.
• Poirot Speak: Used to accentuate the nationalities of certain Servants.
• Power Creep: After Semiramis overwhelms Helena with the protection of her Double Summon Skill, the protagonist subsequently overwhelms her with Alter Egos, new Class that can bypass her temporary née defenses.
• Power Perversion Potential: For Halloween, Enkidu uses his shapeshifting abilities to prank various Servants by pretending to be their loved ones, rivals, and sometimes themselves.
• Power Trio: Tres Viajeras (Three Voyagers). With Santa María being the id, Pinta being the ego, and Niña being the superego. Although, given their association with Columbus, they might qualify as more of a Terrible Trio.
• Pretender Diss: One of the ways that Sigurd uses his Crystalized Wisdom in battle as a means to psychologically unbalance his enemies. When fighting Achilles, he vocally goes through the Long List of Greek heroes that he could possibly be before loudly proclaiming that the Rider of Red must be ‘’Patroclus’’. Just as planned, being reminded of his dead friend and lover who was killed while impersonating him shocks Achilles and allows Sigurd to get a clean hit in.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Like in the game, the male (named Fujimaru) and female (named Ritsuka) versions of the protagonist are completely interchangeable. This also applies to Gudao and Gudako, their goofier versions who sometimes appear.
• Random Power Ranking: By Sigurd's estimate, Astolfo is ranked #11 among Charlemagne's Twelve Paladins. Presumably, he's right above Pinabel.
• Recycled Script: Some comics lift entire jokes from tv shows, podcasts, and online videos. However, they are usually recontextualized to fit characters in the setting such as acting out the enmity of Captain Raymond Holt and Commissioner Madeline Wuntch with Hans Christian Andersen and Kiara Sessyoin as two similarly estranged and hostile ex-partners.
• Reforged into a Minion: British Rebels Artoria and Boudica attempt to attack Romulus-Quirinus only for him to forcibly turn them into "Roman Allies" with his Quirinalis Throne Skill.
• Replacement Scrappy: In one of the Babylonian strips based on the anime, Dr. Roman and Da Vinci manage to send Blackbeard to replace the fallen Ushiwakamaru as the team’s new Rider. Despite how useful his Noble Phantasm would be for their mission, Ishtar murders him before he can even finish explaining how he got into the Singularity.
• Rooting for the Empire: Ritsuka commissions the creation of a custom Mystic Code made to resemble the outfit of the T-800…from the very first Terminator movie. She then shushes Mash for suggesting that maybe it would be less of a bad look if she dressed like one of the actual heroes from the franchise instead.
• Shout-Out: Often mixed with the occasional Mythology Gag.
• Shower of Angst: Melusine. However, Murasaki, Artoria, and Tamamo (who all have umbrellas) are uncertain if they should assist her or leave her to her moment.
• The Sixth Ranger: Ibaraki was also summoned as a Swordmaster during Shimosa, only to ditch the whole story when she attempted to swim to Europe to enjoy Western sweets. She spends the rest of the chapter stuck in the Philippines after mistaking it for Spain as it was heavily colonized at the time.
• Sole Survivor: Jaguar Man’s status as the only Lancer to survive the Babylonia Singularity is given some focus.
• Sour Prudes: When Fujimaru expresses concern over Ned Kelly’s desire to beat up all modern Australians for trying to put restrictions on pornography, the bushranger accuses him of being a “wowser.”
• Spell My Name With An S: The strip uses certain translated names for characters over the official ones, like “Jaguar Man” instead of “Jaguar Warrior” and “Artoria” instead of “Altria”.
• Stalker without a Crush: Medusa’s tendency to have Perseus motifs in her multitude of forms is highlighted by her nemesis, who is rather unsettled in particular by how she apparently named one of her Noble Phantasms after his wife Andromeda.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Nero's massive, self-indulgent ballad is so bad that it kills an entire room of Voguns^note Vogun poetry is considered to the third worst in the universe and is a legitimate torture device in its setting during a poetry duel she was having against them to free her comrades.
• Title Drop: In the appropriately titled How Fate Grand Order should never EVER end, Marisbury Animusphere reveals that he masterminded both the Incineration of Humanity and the Lostbelts in a drastic paternal gambit to remake the universe as Olga's premature death is subject to a Quantum Time-Lock. In the ensuing new multiversal paradigm that Chaldea has created, Olga's life is now her own and Marisbury can rest easy knowing that he has defeated "the true enemy of (his) Grand Order: Fate".
• Too Clever by Half: An issue that Sigurd has with using his Crystallized Wisdom offensively. It allows him to deduce the identity of Servants and gauge how much of a threat they pose, but it’s not flawless as seen when he correctly guesses most of Astolfo’s Noble Phantasms but fails to do so with any of his Skills. He can also put too much stock in his assumptions, such as when he tries to get Karna to expend more and more magical energy during their fight under the belief that the mana demands will kill their unseen Master only to be overwhelmed when that doesn’t happen. Or when he advises that the Black Faction invest more heavily in their ground forces as both sides having powerful Archers should make aerial assaults infeasible only for Semiramis to come in with her Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
• Transforming Mecha: Henry Ford.
• We Need a Distraction: To circumvent Qin Shi Huang’s Sinister Surveillance so they can sneak into the capital of the Chinese Lostbelt unseen, Jing Ke has Nursery Rhyme transform into her nigh-indestructible book form and begin narrating stories. Seeing a book floating around and spouting fairy tales causes the emperor to panic that “the Confuciansim has become self-aware” and divert all attention and resources to Nursery Rhyme’s location.
• What If?: The “/if” strips focus on Masters from across the Fate franchise summoning alternate Servants, such as Kayneth summoning Fionn instead of Diarmuid and Gordes summoning Sigurd rather than Siegfried.
• Would Hit a Girl: After he smashes through both Karna and Vlad, Semiramis tries to invoke the opposite trope against Beowulf. Beowulf is almost disappointed that she apparently hadn’t read his book^note Grendel’s mother was one of his biggest enemies in it, and he killed her like he did her son.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Upon learning about how Siegfried betrayed his former Master Gordes Museik, Lu Bu gives him a thumbs-up, eliciting this response from the knight.
• You Get What You Pay For: Semiramis abducts Edison and forces him to rebuild her Hanging Garden of Babylon, on pain of death if he refuses. Edison decides the building materials he was given were insufficient, and so feels its more efficient and cost-effective to use concrete. Every inch of the Garden, made of concrete. The result means that it is poor at properly channeling Semiramis' power, and can only float 25 feet off the ground. The commentary after the first strip is "You get what you pay for."

Mordred’s Paladin Problems

• Animated Armor: Agilulf and (for the duration of an Interlude) Meurvin.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Merlin’s first meeting with Bradamante had her believing he was a hallucination brought about by her hitting her head on her way to fight a different wizard.
• As the Good Book Says...: Karl tries to raise the protagonist's spirits by recalling Corinthians 16:13^note Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.his supposedly favorite passage from the Bible. Astolfo muses that he always thought that his lord's favorite verse was Genesis 1:28^note Go forth and multiply.. Karl quickly shushes him.
• Book Ends: The series begins and ends with Astolfo’s English roots being accentuated.
• Chainmail Bikini: Deconstructed. Bradamante says she only dresses the way she does to show that she’s most definitely a woman, which ought to discourage her siblings from trying to steal her identity to hit on her female admirers. This hasn’t really stopped them.
• Composite Character: Astolfo, an English prince and Paladin, is combined with a character with the exact same name in Orlando Furioso who was based on Aistulf, the King of Lombardy.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Karl recommends that Artoria “tonsure” Mordred to discipline her, like he did with his own son, Pepin the Hunchback. Mordred is initially all for a little “torture” getting her off the hook for all her misdeeds and back in her father’s good graces. Then she learns what tonsuring actually entails.
• Covert Pervert: Karl.
• Cursed Item: Durandal. Maybe.
• Downer Ending: In the end, not only does Mordred fail to get her father’s respect while being once again shown up by Charlemagne’s paladins, she is forced to confront the fact that she might not only be similar to Astolfo but inferior to him in a number of ways.
• Empathic Environment: The final strip has Mordred so absolutely livid that it not only turns the blue cosmic background behind her red but obliterates all the space debris that was floating around in it as well.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Mordred might call Bradamante a “french cow” while wanting to beat her into the ground to show her superiority, but she’s rather horrified at the thought of Merlin preying on her due to the paladin being a married woman.
• Expy: A rather long commentary is devoted to positing the theory that Shirou Emiya, Kiritsugu Emiya, Artoria/Rin, and Illyasviel von Einzbern are expies of Ruggiero, Atlante, Bradamante, and Marfisa respectively.
• Forced Transformation: Karl and Charlemagne share the same body and “switch” whenever one of them sneezes. Much to Ereshkigal’s distress.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Roland randomly does this against Mordred because something reminded him of Angelica. Mordred tries to take advantage of the situation, but it doesn’t take.
• I Am Very British: Mordred sometimes descends into popular British slang despite technically being Welsh. Astolfo, who is English in the traditional sense, shouts “Spotted Dick!” apropos of nothing outside of being Astolfo.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each comic’s title begins with a character (or place) whose name starts with “M” having a “Paladin Problem” of some kind.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Dantes and Roland are not impressed by EMIYA offering the Counts some Monte Cristo sandwiches.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Mordred gets murderously angered when the image of her mother getting “double-teamed” by two Ogier the Dane statues for centuries is put into her head.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Many of the comics are based on actual existing stories of Charlemagne like The Song of Roland and Orlando Furioso. These inspirations are explained in full in the commentaries which tend to dwarf the strips they’re attached to.
• Nothing Personal: Bradamante tries to frame Ruggiero’s beating and killing of Mandricardo as this to make him feel better before their own duel. It has the opposite effect.
• Odd Friendship: With Edmond Dantes and Roland.
• Parody Sue: Meurvin, Mordred’s half-brother by way of Ogier the Dane from an obscure chivalric romance, is ridiculously perfect, and spends much of their team-up unintentionally bragging about how successful he is in comparison to all of Morgan Le Fay’s other kids.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The Children of Aymon. Bradamante thinks the rest of them look like her. Her brothers think it’s the other way around.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: To Mordred's dismay, while she easily defeated Astolfo every time they fought, he was actually one of the weakest of Charlemagne's Twelve Paladins, so she struggles more against those ranked above him like Bradamante, Roland, and even the Holy Roman Emperor himself.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Like in ‘’Epic of Remnant’’, Kiara becomes Beast III-R. Luckily for everyone, Astolfo is there to talk her down in the stupidest and most asinine fashion possible.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The Valentine’s Day Special. Although it’s less about gender and more about Mordred being bewildered by the situation.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: In his quest for the perfect armor to inhabit, Agilulf ultimately settles on Lancer Artoria Alter’s, with the intention of painting it white to suit his tastes.
• You're Not My Father: Played with. Mordred refers to King Orkney as "Uncle Lot" but was nonetheless appalled by how Morgan would often cheat on him.

The NEW Twelve Labors of Heracles

• Action Girl: Like in Agartha, Penthesilea proves more than a match for Heracles, and he and Jason only manage to swindle her of her girdle through trickery.
• Affectionate Parody: Of Interludes and Strengthening Quests. Which, as the protagonists find out, can be mutually exclusive.
• Animal Gender-Bender: Fionn wants to kiss the Cerynian Hind based on the very flimsy justification that it might secretly be a beautiful woman like his first wife Sadhbh was. Soon after, he bashfully admits that he’s aware the deer has horns, but he’s still willing to take the risk.
• The Artifact: The story was written almost immediately before the Atlantis Lostbelt, which isn’t immediately apparent outside of a few dated references such as how the three Foreigners at the time were making Heracles look bad (the number of members for that Class has more than doubled since then), and Caenis and the Dioscuri fail to appear as Argonaut ally cameos since they weren’t formally in the game at the time. Also, while the ultimate joke of the series is Heracles failing to be strengthened by the fBay Grail in any way, he eventually received a Balance Buff months later with Indomitable A.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Subverted. What ultimately turns Heracles and Jason against Volt D.C.’s plans to turn them into women is the revelation that they won’t be this trope as the Corrupt Corporate Executive’s market research has concluded that they must be feminine but not too beautiful to not alienate certain viewers.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Eric Bloodaxe takes a break from trying to rip Jason’s cheekbones through his eye sockets to address the audience directly, and thank Kiara Sessyoin and the Queen of Sheba for passing on the roles for the Cattle of Geryon so that old understudies like him and Darius could snag the roles as they don’t get to be on stage much.
• Bring It: Heracles reaction to fighting the “Spiritron Mock”, an abomination made from the magical fecal matter of the mystical mounts of various Servants such as those owned by Iskandar, the Lancer Artorias, and Marie Antoinette. Jason is much less enthused about the whole thing.
• The Cameo: Angra Mainyu’s original shadow form shows up in the penultimate chapter in a bid to steal the counterfeit grail. Jason easily shoos him away.
• Closest Thing We Got: Interludes substituting certain characters or creatures in a Servant’s history with comparable mobs or other Servants is extensively parodied.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Near the end, Jason muses that if he and Heracles did not separate during the Argonauts' quest, they could have avoided their original deaths and become old together.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Heracles vs. Ishtar and Gugalanna. His rematch with the Erymanthian Boar ends with him striking a blow so powerful that it demolishes his following two forms, ultimately rendering him a diminuitive, wizened pig.
• Gender Flip: Deconstructed in the very first labor where Volt D.C. admits that the only reason he wants to do this to Jason and Heracles for the Argonauts movie he is making is for quick publicity and to “reduce that testosterone girl audiences are so afraid of nowadays” rather than due to any sincere or progressive motives. Also, nerds with money to burn are into that sort of transformation. Jason is further annoyed that Volt has no intention of doing the same to Medea or any of the other female Argonauts as that would be “problematic”, rendering the crew an Improbably Female Cast.
• Go Through Me: Heracles often puts himself between Jason and danger to protect his friend.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Former Argonaut crew mates Atalanta and Asclepius appear to assist the duo in two of the Labors. Medea shows up at the end.
• Guile Hero: Jason’s cunning is highlighted in the story, as it’s how he’s able to keep up with Greek heroes who are stronger (Heracles) or smarter (Asclepius) than he is.
• MST: The cast of Fate Cinema Order reacts to this series in their fic's second chapter.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jason’s usage of the fake grail typically creates scenarios reminiscent of Heracles legendary 12 labors. However, in the case of the Horses of Diomedes, it warps the minds of Chiron, Red Hare, and Xiang Yu to turn them into “man-eaters” perpetually covered in baby oil.
• Not Quite Flight: Heracles is capable of stomping the air so hard and fast that he can sort of hover in a controlled fashion.
• Not So Above It All: Jason is absolutely livid that after everything they went through, the fake grail just gave them a single Saint Quartz. He screams in rage while pocketing the Quartz.
• Off with His Head!: Salome finds her ideal pet in the Hydra, as if she has the urge to decapitate someone, she can cut off one of its heads and it’ll grow a new one later. If she needs its poison, she can cut off one of its heads and it’ll grow a new one later. If it gets too noisy, she can cut off its heads and it’ll grown new ones later. And if it gets hungry, she can cut off one of its heads and feed it to the other heads because a new one will grow later.
• Perilous Old Fool: The real Erymanthian Boar still thinks he has a chance against Heracles, but his attacks wind up being so weak that they don’t even produce any hit effects. They don't even hurt Jason.
• Peter Pan Parody: Pirate Servants have deep-seated animosity to “Peter Pans” as these child-snatching imps tend to steal their grog and eat their hands.
• Save the Villain: The second labor sees Heracles and Jason having to save the Hydra from Princess Salome.
• Shoot the Dog: Rather than return him directly, “Hades” and “Persephone” tell Heracles and Jason to just feed “Cerberus” grapes, onions, and chocolates when they’re done with him as the trio will just wind up back in the underworld after those foods kill them.
• Those Two Guys: A Recurring Element. Specifically an egotistical kingly Anti-Hero and their more dutiful Hypercompetent Sidekick as seen by the likes of Artoria and Lancelot, Fionn and Diarmuid, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and of course, Jason and Heracles.
• Toilet Humor: The Augean Stables. As expected.
• Took a Level in Badass: Heracles gradually goes through all his Ascensions as he performs more and more reenactments of his labors.
• True Companions: The Argonauts.
• Ungrateful Bastard: When Sion utilizes a disused Atlas Institute facility to give Golden Apples to the duo free of charge or hassle, Heracles responds by making fun of her uniform as he met the actual Atlas who didn’t dress as a “preppy grape.” Incensed, Sion activates the facility’s anti-phantasmal defense system Ladon while loudly claiming it was a random accident.
• Whole-Plot Reference: It’s the Twelve Labors of Heracles but Off the Rails, and the title cards are reminiscent of the classic Rocky Balboa film posters.
• The Worf Effect: Heracles being the victim of this too much is what kicks off the plot.
• Your Answer to Everything: Foot races for Atalanta.

FSN/Case Files

• Composite Character: Rather than just using his personality as a basis, here Add is Kay’s spirit grafted onto Rhongomyniad.
• Foreshadowing: Zahhak, the Berserker of Waver’s route, is a Zoroastrianism demon known as “the Deceiver”. In middle Persia, he is known as “Bēvar Asp” or “he who has 10,000 horses.”
• Jerkass: Artoria Alter doesn’t bother to hide her disdain for Waver’s crew or Fuyuki, and frequently gets into spats with Add/Kay, the only member of the group she seems to like.
• The Load: Flat really doesn't do much besides get on everyone's nerves.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Because he’s been summoned as his younger self, Alexander is unable to recognize that Berserker Zahhak’s various forms are just permutations of Darius III’s Athanaton Ten Thousand Noble Phantasm.
• No-Sell: To his consternation, Alexander’s Fair Youth Skill is completely ineffective against Illya and Medea due to the former viewing him as a “squirt” and the latter because he’s the “exact kind of man (she) despises”.
• Optional Boss: In the “Master Waver” route, if certain conditions are met, Waver and Iskandar can challenge Melvin and Darius III before destroying the Greater Grail.
• Resurrective Immortality: Berserker Zahhak’s main gimmick appears to involve coming back from the dead in a new form each time he is killed. This is a sham perpetuated by Melvin and Darius III.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: When summoned by Waver in the scenario where he is a Master in the Fifth Holy Grail War, Alexander claims that he’s always summoned as a young boy due to Memetic Mutation, and that if Waver saw him as anything otherwise, he was likely imagining it. After letting Waver stew in this revelation for a bit, the young King of Conquerors reveals that he was joking but says that Waver’s new mindset when summoning him was probably a factor to how he manifested instead of Iskandar.

Jaguar Dojo CCC/Nero Fest Nitwits

• Balance Between Good and Evil: Defied. Moriarty only believes in this trope because he doesn’t like how he and the other “Evil” Servants are outnumbered by the “Good”-aligned Servants.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Jaguar Man is the Boke and BB is the Tsukkomi. Although Jaguar Man winds up getting the last laugh.
• Call-Forward: When criticized for wearing her tiger outfit for the show, Jaguar Man claims that Tezcatlipoca told her that in the future, Lancers with animal hoodies will be all the rage, foreshadowing the arrival and popularity of Summer Meltryllis.
• Dirty Coward: Angra Mainyu’s solution to getting the crap kicked out of him by Rulers despite Class Advantage is to train hard, upgrade his stats, attain the power of a Holy Grail, and to run the other way and let other Servants who can hurt Rulers like Kiara and Hessian Lobo do his fighting for him.
• Irony: For a gag series set during the last Nero Fest, Nero herself fails to actually show up in it.
• Mic Drop: Played with. Vlad concludes his segment during the Lancer chapter with a veiled threat to Nero and ‘’eating’’ his microphone.
• Off the Rails: The interview format gradually gives way to much looser, sensationalist segments as the story goes on.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When the First Hassan outlines his game plan for Nero Fest.
• Spotting the Thread: Merlin’s otherwise flawless Edison Illusion is seen through by Helena when he says “Grey” (the British English way of spelling/speaking it) instead of “Gray” (the American English way of spelling/speaking it).
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: A version of the Indian-head test pattern appears at the end of the Assassin segment but with Geronimo instead of the usual Native American.