Cliché Storm: From the humens rising up to fight the combines to the Dark Man supposedly being Gordon Freeman, to John Freeman sacrificing himself to save the humens...
Zombie goasts becomes more hilarious when you watch Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, specifically, episode 8's first segment "...Of the Dead" features... Zombified Ghosts.
In addition, the BT (Beached Things) from Death Stranding are Zombie Ghosts in all but name.
At some point during Free Man, John Freeman goes on killing Combines with bear hands! (This was even noted with a clever Visual Pun on Djy1991's machinima) Some years later, a new pair of "boxing gloves" for the Heavy were added into Team Fortress 2: They are a pair of severed bear hands!
Gordon Freeman's really actually final last death.
John Freeman's mom sending an email telling him, "Come home safe and soon with Gordon Freeman for Thanksgiving dinner" can hit hard if you've ever had to break the news of a loved one's death to a mutual loved one. It's one of the few dramatic moments that actually works if you can put aside the awkward aspectsof the prose.
Wangst: John Freeman spends most of the first half of the second installment melodramatically talking about Gordon Freeman's death at almost any opportunity, from landing on "dead people's hands" to accidentally knocking some eggs out of a tree. Granted, given the tone of the fic, it's more hilarious than obnoxious, unlike most examples of this trope.
In the machinimas:
Alternative Character Interpretation: In the Djy version, the Dark Man is the same person as revived Gordon Freeman. In the Gaz version, they're two separate people.
Awesome Music: "Chateau" from The Matrix (Djy1991 version) or "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky III (Gaz version) during the Grand Finale. Not to mention Djy1991's excellent use of "A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics" from A Beautiful Mind in their final scene.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Plenty in the original writings, but the machinimas take this trope to extremes.
In the Djy1991 adaptation of Free Man, they added in a scene that lasts from 6:12 to 11:38, where they deviate from the original, making John Freeman into a badass god figure by showing him fighting through a number of memetastic locales. While it was praised by some viewers, others felt that it added nothing to the video.
Within that segment, while most of the fighting was more or less in line with the rest of the story and John Freeman's larger-than-life image, there is an indisputable BLAM when the G-Man, who has a Hitler mustache, shows up and kicks John Freeman into the sky, before turning into Saxton Hale. John Freeman goes flying over various locales from assorted Source-based games such as cp_gravelpit, ctf_convoy_v2 and gm_bigcity, ultimately landing in GLaDOS's main chamber, where John Freeman gets into a one-sided argument with her, blows her up and arrives back at the Citadel just in time to see the humens at safe place before the Citadel explods.
"the countrysides were nice and the plants were singing and the birds and the sun was almost down from the top of the sky."
, a FanFiction.net-published story, was written to tie Quarter-Life: Halfway To Destruction to Full Life Consequences as a prequel. Because it was written after the fact, much foreshadowing of the events of Hero Beggining occurs in this story.
