Tropes which Extra Credits provides an example of:

• Accentuate the Negative: Averted. Extra Credits tries to avoid outrage and flaming and provide as nuanced a view of their topics as they can fit into a seven-minute YouTube video. At least half the time, they explain the worst of a backlash as resulting from somebody's Marketing department putting their foot in their mouth, when the actual issue was a moderately-problematic thing that could have been done better but didn't deserve the vitriol that the Internet was calling forth.
• Animation Bump:
  • Episode 200 featured a fully-animated dance party at the beginning, and even a few of the usually-still shots of Dan at the lectern had more movement than usual.
  • Awesome Per Second has more detailed pictures and a flashy "Awesome Per Second" logo that pops up.
  • Episode 400 has more fluid animation than usual for the intro and outro. The switch to EC's conventional style in the middle is lampshaded, with the "production time big budget machine" apparently having ran out of fuel.
• Anthropomorphic Personification:
  • Several abstract concepts discussed on the show are represented visually by some kind of creature. Microtransactions by "micro-transaction-raptor", a small blue feathered dinosaur; First-Order-Optimal (or FOO) strategies by a foo dog, and user choices by a two headed kangaroo-like beast. Games themselves are represented by green rectangles (probably to emulate the green cases that Xbox games are generally sold in).
  • James is shown to have a plush-doll version of the green rectangle "Game" during the South Sea Bubble "Lies" episode of Extra History.
    • These plush-dolls are for sale in Extra Credits' store
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The Stinger for "Our Oscars":
    Dan: Big E3 Developments. New Sony handheld. New HD Nintendo console. And apparently, sports stars don't count as celebrities. I didn't know that.
  • Mentioning examples of serious "mechanics villains" in "Big Bad I - The Basics of Villains in Video Game Design":
    Dan: Maybe you want a true villain of pure evil so that the player feels like a hero fighting them, like the Enchantress, Chaos, Lavos, Maleficent, Tom Nook...
• Art Evolution: The show's signature art style went through three iterations during its run, not counting the guest artists. The pre-Escapist videos used a crude, but bright art style employed by Floyd. After the series became weekly, Allison provided smoother art with a more pastel-type color palette. After she was replaced by Scott DeWitt during Season 6, the new artists revamped the style, making them closer to Super-Deformed.
• The Artifact: The reason why Dan's voice is sped up was because the first Extra Credits episodes were presentations at a college. There was a 10-minute time limit, so he sped up his voice to fit the videos in the limit, and the sped-up Dan ended up staying.
• Artifact Title: While the punny title Extra Credits is still appropriate for the series, the word Extra has become a form of branding used for many of the later series. It's a superfluous call-back to the original series. The Credits part of the title also became this once Extra History became the most popular series on there and the channel's shift away from video game content in favor of general education content.
• Art Shift:
  • In "Innovation", and whenever a guest artist is invited. They generally imitate the style while putting their own twists on it.
  • In Season 4, they added LeeLee to their ranks, and while her and Allison's styles were mostly similar, difference between the two could be seen during certain points.
  • "The Economics of Obsession" is presented in Extra Sci-Fi's art style, but when Matt's casual self shows up at the end to promote Nebula, the episode switches to its usual art style.
• Ascended Extra: LeeLee, previously a guest artist, joined the team in the 100th episode. Dan Jones, also previously a guest artist, replaced her in "Big Bad I - The Basics of Villains in Video Game Design". Same goes for Scott DeWitt.
• Ascended Fanboy: Matt mentions that he's been a huge fan of the show since the Escapist days when he makes his debut.
• Audience Surrogate: Varied a lot before, but has recently settled as a young game designer with red hair in pigtails and freckles.
• Author Appeal:
  • James really likes the Cyberpunk genre and Horror Video Games, dedicating several episodes to exploring facets of each of them.
  • The web series loves to bring up and talk about First Person Shooters and Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games more than any other game genre.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: While covering the Malian Empire, Extra History depicted topless tribal women, which the limited art style showed as having breasts but no nipples.
• Battle in the Rain: The Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War, and in a fitting bit of symbolism, the battle was won because both the rain and the arrows of English Longbowmen bogged down the heavily-armored French knights too much.
• Berserk Button:
  • Poorly-made propaganda games. Well-made propaganda games don't always set their world on fire either, but poorly-made propaganda games inspire epic rants like these.
  • The big problem they have with propaganda games is willfully misinforming the audience. While Call of Juarez: The Cartel can't really be described as propaganda, it is such a disrespectful hack-job of the Mexican Drug War that it deserves everything it gets.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Given the idealistic tone of the series, they rarely criticize games unless they have a really good reason. However, there are a few episodes where they simply tear a game apart, such as the one about Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which uses lots of heavy-handed language; Daniel flat-out calls it despicable and horrid, due to its lazy design and dishonor of the subject matter.
• Blank White Eyes: Artist Scott DeWitt's style features these when beady-eyed characters are shocked/surprised, like here.
• Brain Bleach: In the first "Western & Japanese RPGs" episode, Allison does a search for "Eroge visual novels" while working on the episode, only to start scrubbing her eyes out with bleach on viewing the results.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Extra Credits: Mailbag #1 3m35s: "If you love games, music and game music,"
• B-Roll Rebus: Done in a similar style as Zero Punctuation, the narrative is accompanied by relevant and/or related pictures and drawings.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S":
  • James was always shown wearing his blue "J" T-shirt. This was changed after the change in artstyle in Season 6.
  • Generic characters are shown wearing letter-coded clothing, such as "D" ones for Developers and "G" for gamers.
  • Frequently used in Extra History to label the main historical figure or figures being discussed.
• Captain Obvious: Mentioned by name in the Amnesia episode, complete with a Captain America like drawing.
• Cardiovascular Love: In "The Division - Problematic Meaning in Mechanics":, it's used with Heart Symbols being emitted from a woman's head to portray her affection for a player character.
• Catchphrase: James seems to have made "Hello Youtubes! Welcome back to James Recommends!" into one for the James Recommends side series.
• Caustic Critic: A beautiful aversion. While there are things that piss off the EC team, most of their analysis are done fairly, and often conceding to the problems and troubles the other side of the debate goes through. Even their Call of Juarez: The Cartel review, which is possibly the most negative and judgmental thing they've produced, always speaks professionally and thoroughly justifies every complaint. This is in part due to James working in the industry and both being sympathetic to the troubles that lead to flawed games and not wanting alienate his colleagues. The upside is that they do then share their insights into how these problems come about.
• Continuity Nod: After receiving her shoulder surgery, Allison's avatar has had a Bionic Arm drawn in some episodes.
• Crossover: Extra History has a crossover with The Great War. The presenters of both shows make brief appearances in each others' videos, in EC's video on The Zulu Empire IV and TGW's episode South Africa in the Great War respectively.
• Cute and Psycho:
  • Allison, as she grows more crazed looking as each episode wears on. Lampshaded repeatedly:
    Dan: Uh oh, Allison, put the eraser down, I'm almost done!
  • The guest artist Erin too.
• Depending on the Artist: Dan's sleeves tend to disappear whenever he's not standing behind the lectern.
• Diabolus ex Machina: There are in several of the stories where things suddenly take a turn for the worse through nobody's fault.
  • In the Justinian and Theodora storyline, a Plague from Egypt rips across The Mediterranean and cripples The Roman Empire. This pretty much ensures that Justinian's dream of a Restored Roman Empire will never come to fruition.
  • In the Seminal Tragedy storyline, near the end, two diplomats are working out an agreement that will minimize the effects of WWI and prevent it from becoming more than a regional conflict ... then one of the diplomats drops dead. For no reason whatsoever. Moments before he could sign the document that would prevent WWI.
  • In the Mary Seacole storyline, her business burns to the ground AND her husband dies on the same day. Not only are these unrelated, but they also happen out of nowhere.
• Dope Slap: invoked In "Easy Games", James delivers one to a hardcore gamer who says that real gamers work for their fun.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • At the show's inception, it was called Extra Credit and not Extra Credits.
  • Occasionally the plaque on Daniel's lectern would display "Daniel Floyd".
  • During Allison's tenure as artist on the original run of the series; she employed increasingly bizarre creatures which would represent various themes in each episode. The artists who would succeed her opted not to follow suit and employed their own stamp while keeping to the overall style of the show.
• Epic Fail: The People's Crusade as detailed in the Extra History concerning the First Crusade. But then, it turns out that it directly helped the actual crusade in the process, causing the Turks to initially fatally underestimate what they were facing.
• Fake Interactivity: Done and lampshaded in "Choice Architecture: Manipulation for Fun and Profit!", where at the start of the episode, Matt quizzes the viewer about the video's topic, presenting four questions for a while before the correct answer is chosen. The second time this is done, the fourth choice says "This is a non-interactive YouTube Video that will make me pick #1, making this whole thing a flawed analogy," and predictably, the correct answer is #1.
• Femme Fatalons: Allison sometimes draws herself with some pretty nasty claws for the sake of a visual cue.
• Flat Joy: What Daniel does when revealing that they're going to be talking about Call of Juarez: The Cartel. "Ta-daaa."
• Flipping the Table: The episode "Delta Of Randomness" depicts a player doing a Rage Quit in this manner.
• Floating Limbs: The main art style has these for all human characters that are not Daniel or Matt behind their lectern. Guest artists might or might not follow this.
• Foil: Near the beginning of the "Microtransactions" episode, Daniel says that EC is always trying to be the calmer voice, while a crude picture of EC-inspiration Yahtzee shows up, angrily saying, "What are you getting at?"
• Heart Symbol: Multiple times in "The Division - Problematic Meaning in Mechanics":
  • First, it's used to symbolize the "heart" of The Division.
  • Second, it's used as part of Cardiovascular Love that's being emitted from a woman's head to portray her affection for a player character.
• Helium Speech:
  • Daniel Floyd constantly narrates the videos with a voice that's been computer-shifted into this by using Audacity. (Originally it was the result of speeding up the video of his original class project presentation in order to cut down its run time.) His videos on Extra Play show what he actually sounds like.
  • Tried briefly with Scott in one video before he just coughed and used his actual-sounding voice.
  • Scott revisited the gag for James' voice, even hanging a lampshade on it.
    James: ...wait, is this... my voice?
    Scott: It sounds like you caught whatever it is that Dan has.
    [...]
    invoked James: And this has nothing to do with you not asking me to voice this?
    Scott: Nooo, I'm sure those two things are completely unrelated.
• Ink-Suit Actor:
  • All the characters are loose caricatures of the related characters. Dan is usually the only one speaking, but the other people involved in the project will pop up from time to time.
  • Mike Rugnetta from PBS Idea Channel makes a cameo appearance in an Extra Credits video to mention a related video on the same topic.
• Invisible Anatomy: This very much depended on the artist in the channel's early years, but the "default" art style typically draws people with floating hands and no arms. (Which occasionally complicates how videos' action is portrayed; e.g. in the "Black Dinner" Extra History episode, a Scottish noblewoman^note shown in the video as Queen Joan, but actually believed to have been Catherine Douglas has dotted lines drawn between her shoulder and wrist, to show how she forced her arm into the brackets of a door in an attempt to keep assassins from getting in.)
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Matt is an excitable, goofy guy who was absolutely stoked to come onto the show! But he's not alone in this endeavor: he brought his cat, Zoey, along for the ride! With various degrees of success.
• The Last DJ: Despite the portrayal of a Sugar Bowl community surrounding them, their criticisms of weaker aspects of gaming make them out to be a textbook example of this trope.
• Literal Metaphor: The art sometimes does this with some figures of speech. In their Uncanny Valley episode, for example:
  *Cut to a picture of Allison chasing James and Daniel with a baseball bat around a bush*
  Daniel: So, enough beating around the bush... Whatever that means.
• Mirror Universe: It's been argued that the show as a whole is a Sugar Bowl take on Zero Punctuation, respectively representing the polar ends of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism in respect to how they view the game industry.
• Mood Dissonance: In the "Open Letter to EA Marketing" video, Daniel reads out-loud the original mission statement for Electronic Arts, a highly idealistic vision for the evolution of video games as an art form. While he's reading this, he shows clips of EA's various cynical ad campaigns that embrace the worst of gaming stereotypes and do little to advance the medium as an art.
• Must Have Caffeine: The second artist, Leelee, might be this, judging from the sheer number of coffee cups in the "Energy Systems" episode.
• Mythology Gag: The first official episode of "Extra Credits", "Bad Writing - Why Most Games Tell Bad Stories" reuses a joke from the first ever "Extra Credits" episode, "Video Games and Storytelling":
  Dan: [W]e are here to talk about (shows this poster◊) these.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; Daniel Floyd is later joined by Daniel Emmons and Dan Jones. Floyd does the narration, Emmons works on Design Club, and Jones helps create the art. This fact was made into somewhat of an inside joke within the fanbase, with Daniel Floyd being referred to as 'Dan Prime', and when Dan Jones shows up, Dan Floyd lampshades this. Ultimately became less apparent once Dan Prime left.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Allison is really good at that. Often borders on horror. Notably, after she left the team - this element of the show in terms of visuals became increasingly uncommon.
• Painting the Medium:
  • The "Awesome Per Second" episode, in which Dan talks about the often-forgotten principle in games that a condensed amount of great is better than a convoluted amount of good. To accentuate this point, the episode is one of the shortest they've done yet but boasts some of their most detailed and in-depth art yet.
  • Played for Laughs in Scott's 2016 PAX video: when he gets to the "audio" step of making an EC video, he asks a cashier for their finest microphone and is turned of by the price tag. He then asks if anyone would notice if he used "[his] old Rock Band microphone." During this line (and only this line), the audio is marred by static and clipping.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation:
  • "Pedagog... pedagodag..." (shows word "pedagogically" on screen) "This word."
  • Scott in one episode has trouble saying the word "palatable".
• Precision F-Strike:
  • In "Art Is Not the Opposite of Fun," Daniel uses this trope while questioning the claim that studying what makes games unique will cause them to become worse or less fun.
    Dan: It's the suggestion that we shouldn't explore games further. That all of this inquiry and study and tampering is going to just ruin our favorite hobby. And that is a claim that needs answering. It makes no f**king sense!
  • In Call of Juarez: The Cartel towards the end.
    Dan: I'm willing to wager there's now at least one person out there who now believes more firmly that Mexicans are stealing our women because of this game, and that is f**king disgraceful. It is a shame to what it means to be a designer, and it belies the responsibility we as a group hold when producing mass media. We can do a lot better than this. We can inform, and educate, and entertain, but failing all of that we can at least be honest.
  • In "Games You Might Not Have Tried (Horror Games)," when talking about The Song of Saya:
    Dan: I apologize, what the f**k did I just play?
  • In Extra Remix - Sixto Sounds, in a less heavy sense.
    Dan: Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to f**king rock out!
  • And in part 2 their Extra History segment about World War I:
    Dan: He would have to go into hiding for a while, but... holy s**t, is that the archduke!?
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Dan occasionally uses this technique in his speeches.
  Dan: Do not Tangle. With the kind of people. Who install Linux. on their PlayStations. Trust me: You are wasting. Your. Time.
  Dan: Never. sell. power.
• Re Run:
  • Almost every episode from the show's run on YouTube was revamped for The Escapist.
  • The "Uncanny Valley" episode they uploaded to PATV was the third time they've covered that topic, once for each incarnation of the show. It was remade from scratch instead of using clips from either of the other versions.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: At the end of "Video Game Lawyers Tackle Fair Use", IRL Matt surprises his animated counterpart by entering the studio because IRL Zoey left the door open. IRL Matt then continues his sponsor message for Nebula.
• Running Gag:
  • Allison's shoulder injury is sometimes rendered as a Deus Ex style cyborg arm.
  • If Dan or Matt ever says "heck", expect a tiny snake to appear somewhere onscreen, a reference to their Fictional Video Game Hecknomancer, where the snake is the mascot.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • The Uncanny Valley episode pokes fun at the show's art and Daniel's narration.
    Dan: Smartass.
  • One episode of Extra Remix had Dan Floyd take a potshot at the OC Remix user "sephfire," which caused a bit of confusion in the comments section until Dan clarified that "sephfire" was his old screen name.
  • When loot boxes are briefly discussed in an episode on competitive gaming ladders as a suggestion for more microrewards, the on-screen loot box declares "It's me! Your favorite guy!" This is in reference to the infamously-divisive episodes of the show discussing Revenue-Enhancing Devices.
• Series Mascot:
  • Sort of, considering the nature of the show; the little green boxed "games" complete with faces and stubby arms and legs that show up in nearly all of the regular Extra Credits videos basically serves as this.
  • invoked The Extra History series has a mascot of sorts in the form of Robert Walpole, who cameos in every Extra History series ever since the South Sea Bubble due the Running Gag of "It was Walpole".
• Serious Business:
  • A large part of the series's message is that video game developers should take their medium as seriously as other media.
  • The importance of balancing gaming with Real Life and the serious consequences of game compulsion was detailed over two episodes, and broke the usual style of the show by having James speak directly.
  • The breakdown of Call of Juarez: The Cartel is absolutely brutal in its treatment of the game, condemning it for multiple sins; it starts with how its lazy design indirectly encourages the killing of black people and gets more serious from there.
  • However, in the episode Toxicity, they urged players who love blaming their teammates for not winning to not treat "winning at video games" as Serious Business.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the "Sharing Our Medium" episode:
    • invoked The "PLAY ALL THE THINGS" pictures are a shout out to Hyperbole and a Half.
    • During the "Be Encouraging" step, there's a guy being very not encouraging and saying "Well, isn't that cute... BUT IT'S WRONG!"
  • And in the end credits of "Let's Talk About Pacing", their encouraging message ended with "Also, Santa is real. And Friendship IS magic."
  • In their second video on Spec Ops: The Line, they show a picture of a Kanassan with the captions "I CAN SEE THE FUTURE!!"
  • Their episode titled "Shiver With Antici-pation — How Horror Games Create A Tension Cycle."
  • In "The Importance of Local Multiplayer", there are a couple of shout-outs to eastern media. To represent each player buying a copy, the Matsuno sextuplets are used. And, as a favourite of the case, Phoenix Wright gives his famous OBJECTION!
  • "Fhqwhgads" is a code word in "D-Day - II: The Secret War".
  • Americans in the april fools Games You Might Not Have Tried is brother America from Scandinavia and the World.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Scott (in the episodes he produces) despite literally working with him, considers James to be this, feeling like he is competing with James for fan attention and comically failing. For their part, both James and the fans enjoy the shorts he's done.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The tone of the series is extremely idealistic: it views the recognition of video games as art as inevitable, treats virtually all developments in the industry as furthering this cause, and views most obstacles in the way as easily overcome.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Dan is definitely not two children in a trench coat.
• Take That!:
  • In "Games You Might Not Have Tried: 16-bit", when Daniel talks about which systems they'll cover.
    Dan: We'll be talking about Super NES games, Sega Genesis games, and [picture of TurboGrafx-16] ...yeah, just the first two.
  • In Scott DeWitt's PAX video, he explains an early animation job that he did. At one point he had to animate a scene where a demon snaps a woman's neck and kills her, and the higher-ups apparently told him that scene was too dark, and suggested a beach ball be added to make it more lighthearted. Cut to a gag slideshow of a beachball photoshopped into depressing photos, such as a poster for The Walking Dead, a screenshot of the corridor in the Silent Hills demo, on the floor in the younglings scene... and the beach ball photoshopped in the reveal trailer for Artifact.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In his personal YouTube channel where he posted his game design presentations before starting Extra Credits, Daniel (or rather his animated self, Cartoon!Daniel) used to express slightly more often (most likely jokingly intended) mean behavior than in during Extra Credits, such as stealing his guest's or James's notes to use them as a script and giving James's email address to the audience despite Cartoon!James jumping onto Cartoon!Daniel's desk and holding a "NO!" sign. In-universe, he didn't escape the consequences, often resulting him to be chased by his target during closing credits. It appears that this kind of behavior was solely intended for comedy. Nevertheless, nowadays Cartoon!Daniel rarely pokes fun of anyone (at least not the staff or guests) and is more often himself a target of jokes.
• Updated Re-release: the Uncanny Valley episode, mk. 3!
  • The pre-Escapist videos (and even some of the early Escapist episodes) are more representative of Floyd's college-requisite Jade-Colored Glasses, and have been incrementally re-made with new scripts and new art whenever Writer's Block sets in...
• Visual Pun: Daniel might say, "Let's dive into why", and it'll show a picture of a person preparing to dive into a Y-shaped pool.
• Volumetric Mouth: In recent videos, when Zoey chips in with commentary, her mouth is often animated to take over her entire face.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The Project Ten Dollar episode ends this way, after Allison threatens to erase Daniel with her pencil eraser for not ending the episode on time.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The URL of the YouTube channel is spelled as "ExtraCreditz."

Tropes that are discussed by Extra Credits:

• Allegedly Free Game: In "Free to Play Is Currently Broken", Dan talks about how free to play games are targeting "whales", or players who spend lots of money on in-app purchases, ignoring players who spend little to no money. This results in games that are devoid of content without spending lots of money, and it alienates players who literally cannot afford to play a "free game".
• Always Chaotic Evil: In "Evil Races are Bad Design", Matt argues that this trope presents problems not only because of the unfortunate implications, but also because it just ruins morality in the game overall. If all orcs are inherently evil and all elves are inherently good, how can they be either if they didn't have a choice? Are NPCs held to different standards to players? What if a player wants to sympathize with these evil races?
• The Artifact: Discussed in "In Service to the Brand", the original BioShock had features which fit the world of Rapture, but in Infinite, those features were included because they were in the originals, but otherwise didn't make sense in Columbia.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: An In-Universe example for their episode in Hatred. They urge the viewer not to buy the game- not because it's evil or will turn you into a killer, but because killing and hurting people For the Evulz isn't an enjoyable activity for most people, and a full-blown sadist would probably only be titiliated by it.
• Boring, but Practical: invoked Discussed in the "How to Play Like a Designer, Part 2" episode in which they explain that "First Order Optimal Strategies" (which require little player effort but give good results such as the "noob tube" or "hundred hand slap") are necessary to allow new players to have a competitive edge and allow them to gain enough confidence and experience to start using more difficult but ultimately even more effective strategies necessary for more difficult levels or matches. He cautions though that any such thing needs to be carefully developed and thought through, as it can create unintentional Game Breakers which might flatten an otherwise expertly plotted difficulty curve.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: invoked Warned against in the "Microtransactions" episode, with a crossed-out picture of Jareth from Labyrinth.
  Daniel: Never. Sell. Power. This is seriously micro-trans 101, but we still seem to have this temptation to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of our players by selling them things that alter the balance of gameplay.
• But Thou Must!: "The Illusion of Choice" discusses how this is pretty much inevitable in most games and showcases a few tricks that game designers use to give the player the illusion that their choices are meaningful when they don't really make that much of a difference in the long run.
• Chainmail Bikini: They're actually okay with the trope being used so long as the player is the one deciding to use it. Once the power level of the equipment becomes intrinsically linked to the skimpiness of said equipment, it's no longer okay.
• Character Derailment: invoked
  • They argue that this happened to Kratos in the God of War sequels, which was only exacerbated by Flanderization.
  • invoked They also argue that this is basically what happened to Samus with Metroid: Other M, stating that Samus already had a workable characterization that emerged from the mechanics and backstory of the previous games, and that suddenly ramming a new characterization down the player's throat made Samus worse for it rather than better.
• Cheese Strategy: In-Universe. They're called "First-Order Optimal" (or Foo) strategies in their "Balancing for Skill" video, with E. Honda's Hundred-Hand Slap as the main example. An experienced player can defeat them (which is the difference between this trope and an outright Game-Breaker), but they're good enough to get you past most AI and unskilled human players.
• Competitive Balance: invoked Discussed in "Perfect Imbalance" in which they, counter-intuitively, suggest that a designer should deliberately introduce an slight element of minor imbalance into play. The idea being that Complacent Gaming Syndrome will set in if everything is perfectly balanced, as players will find the optimal strategies and only play to those. However, with calculated imbalances, players are forced to adjust their strategies as the Meta Game keeps shifting. They recommend a balancing technique of "cyclical balance" as a kind of extended Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, where Element A is obviously powerful, but has an exploitable weakness to a strategy involving Element B, which in turn has a weakness to something using Element C, etc. League of Legends is cited as a good example of this.
• Cosmic Horror Story: In "Why Games Do Cthulhu Wrong", they discuss why video games can't do the cosmic horror genre any justice, at least not without subverting almost everything mainstream video games are about. Video games are usually about presenting the player with a challenge to overcome, and while portraying Cthulhu as such a challenge hits the notes of Lovecraft, it completely misses the music; true Lovecraftian horror is about forces so completely beyond humanity that just seeing one leads to madness, and that are impossible to even fight, let alone defeat.
• Criticism Tropes: Discussed in the "Game Reviews" episode. Analysis focuses specifically on the differences between the informational content of typical movie reviews and the informational content of typical game reviews. The former tends toward more contextual information as to how the film compares to other films, while the later tends toward more descriptive information as to what is in the product. While they concede that the descriptive information is essential, if that is all a video game review is, all reviews end up looking alike and it becomes difficult for a reader to glean perspective. They also briefly touches on the "Four-Point Scale" problem, mentioning that to someone who comes into the hobby from outside of it and is more familiar with rating systems for other works such as movies, game reviews would often seem quite misleading when giving numbers.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • invoked Discussed in the episode "Hard Boiled". They explain why Darker and Edgier tends to happen with video game franchises, taking Max Payne 3 which they had just played as an example. Some of the reasons cited are misplaced ideals that Darker and Edgier makes something seem more Serious Business, assumptions about what a young audience wants to buy, and the game industry's egregious tendency to Follow the Leader.
  • Revisited in the episode "Growing With Our Heroes", which in contrast to the earlier "Hard Boiled" episode discusses some of the positive reasons why people keep being drawn more mature reboots of older franchises. A lot of it boils down to nostalgia factor, wanting to keep our "childish" things rather than discard them, but try to make them relevant to us at a different age. The key difference in whether it ends up being good or bad has a lot to do with why such a thing happened: if it is to appreciate something from a new perspective of experience that tends to work out well, but if it to try making it seem more serious in fear of judgment, then it tends to end poorly.
• Developer's Foresight: More-or-less discussed in Negative Possibility Space.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil:invoked Discussed in the "Piracy" episode. Daniel and James' viewpoint in a nutshell: if it's not available in your country or has been lost in the sands of time, then pirate away. Otherwise, if you like something, just pay for it, and don't be a dick. The episode addresses the flawed arguments on both sides of the debate:
  • For game companies: By releasing their games with annoying DRM, they just provide pirated games the advantage of being free, and giving them the additional advantage of being unrestricted and less buggy, and therefore is not going to help the developers in the long run.
  • For pirates: Any justification you have for piracy based upon the argument that "the game is not worth buying/playing" for whatever reason instantly becomes hypocritical and meaningless once you pirate said game, because by doing so you have just proven that the game is worth playing.
• Downloadable Content: They touch upon the process behind the creation of this, particularly the reason for Day-1 DLC, in their Mass Effect 3 DLC video. They do acknowledge that publishers and developers can abuse this, but state the reasons that sometimes DLC should be necessary to not only keep up the value of the product, but increase the available content in the game, especially in shorter games.
• Escort Mission: Discussed in "Escort Mission - Dragging Dead Weight" episode, in which why they are frustrating towards players and how they can improve on them.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Touched upon briefly in "Amnesia and Story Structure" but taken to its logical extreme in "Narrative Mechanics" where they cite Missile Command as a case-study in how a game can tell a story using only its game mechanics.
• Gender and Sexuality Tropes: Discussed in a few episodes.
  • "Diversity" hints at the several episodes to come.
  • "Sex in Games" introduces the topic, exploring why developers might wish to include sexuality as part of theme or characterization, citing games like ICO as an exploration of intimacy even without sexuality.
  • "Sexual Diversity" uses Persona 4 as a case-study in how including some diversity of sexual orientations can greatly add to characterization in games.
  • "True Female Characters" discusses how to write female characters. It also cements a theme through these episodes that writing a character like this requires thinking about what expectations that character's society places on them, and what aspects of those expectations they choose to embrace and what they choose to reject, saying that someone who rejects every social expectation placed on them is just as stereotypical as someone who embraces every expectation.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: In the Villains 2-parter, they pointed out narrative villains are not supposed to be evil just to make the world worse. Some could be Well Intentioned Extremists, for example.
• In Medias Res: Discussed in the Amnesia episode (see Three Act Structure below), and in the Starting Off Right episode.
• Internet Jerk: Not by name, but the episode "Harassment" lays out some ideas on how these people can be expunged from the gaming community. The later episode "Toxicity" discusses the way people treat each other online, including this.
• The Load: In the episode "Minority", they point to this as one of the bad uses of children in games, comparing it to Clementine from The Walking Dead, who is a useful ally.
• Microtransactions: Discussed in "Microtransactions". They believe that microtransactions can be very beneficial to gamers and to the industry, giving players the option to spend how much they want on games, from $5 to $500, instead of a flat $60 for everyone. The problem with microtransactions right now is how the industry is using them as a free-for-all gouge-fest.
• Monty Hall Problem: Presented as the Cold Open to "How Games Twist Probability", with Matt as the game show host and the viewer as the contestant. Matt assumes that the viewer picks the first door, reveals the goat behind the third one, and then asks the viewer if they want to switch doors. However, the viewer's choice isn't revealed as Matt then explains the puzzle in detail in the episode proper.
• Nintendo Hard: Discussed in the "When Difficult Is Fun" episode, distinguishing what is a difficult-but-fun game and what is a punishing game. Specifically:
  • Difficult but fun: The game consistently follows its own internal rules, provides players alternate options to overcome challenges, and offers short respawn times that allow the player to quickly get back into the action after failing.
  • Punishing: the game breaks its own internal rules, doesn't give a player options but rather forces repetition until the players memorise the correct approach, has challenges that rely on luck as opposed to player skill, and arbitrarily forces players to sit through long waiting periods between reattempts after failure.
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • The topic is touched upon in "Videogame Music". Daniel ponders why gamers are more fond of the old NES themes, despite the better resources available to video game composers these days. Like most topics, he chooses the middle road, stating that there's still great soundtracks being made today, while encouraging composers to stay grounded in their roots and create a strong melody that will endure for years after the fact.
  • Discussed in more detail in the episode "A Little Bit Of Yesterday" where they discuss the popularity of Retraux games and what exactly is that certain something about those older-style games that we are trying to recapture.
• Obvious Beta: invoked Their episode on "Why Do We Ship Buggy Games?" goes into explanations of why this happens. Dan stresses that they are not defending buggy releases, as they tend to be bad for long-term business, but rather details the kinds of situations that put developers in no-win scenarios where it was either a buggy release or something worse.
• Power Creep: Discussed in the appropriately-titled episode "Power Creep" as an issue that tends to subtly sneak into Long Running persistent games, be they Collectible Card Games or MMORPGs. They cover why this issue is ultimately bad for business, bad for the player, and how to mitigate it.
• The Power of Trust: Discussed as its importance between the consumers and the producers of any technology that requires users to share personal information for the sake of functionality during the "NOT a Security Episode" episode.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Discussed in In-Universe for the "Shovelware" video which shows how this trope exploits consumers and the industry from an economical standpoint.
• Race Tropes: Touched upon in the episode "Race in Games". In particular, they look at how the context of race-relations can inform the player about a character, using L.A. Noire as an example. They elected to go for that perspective rather than a "how to write racial minorities" bent because they were concerned that would only lead to stereotypes. They went on to say that many of their suggestions about how to handle Gender and Sexuality Tropes apply to Race Tropes as well.
• Railroading: Discussed in the episode "The Illusion of Choice". For players to feel agency within a game, they must feel like their choices in the game are meaningful, but since any player choice requires extra work from the developers, there is a limit to how much freedom games can give; therefore, games will give an illusion of choice, keeping players on a set path with various tricks to make them think they are the ones in control. It's only bad if the illusion falls apart and the gamers realize they're being herded by the game.
• Real Is Brown: Poked fun at several times.
  Dan: You see, there's nothing inherently wrong with cutscenes. The fault lies in how we've been using'em. The cutscene is a tool; asking games to forever abandon the cutscene is like asking the carpenter to give up his square, or the painter to never use grey or brown... or the game to never use grey or brown. [followed immediately by a picture of Gears of War].
• Science Fantasy: This video theorizes that many of the game we play that we believe are of the Science Fiction genre (e.g. Mass Effect, Fallout, and System Shock) are, in reality, this.
• Sequel Escalation: Discussed in "Spectacle Creep", pointing out how making games "bigger and better" eventually leads to games becoming absurd, and even losing sight of what made their predecessors so successful. This leads to a Continuity Reboot in order to get a franchise back to a more sane level, before spectacle creep sends it back into absurdity.
• Skill Gate Characters: Discussed in "Balancing for Skill." Essentially, these strategies (which can be character selects or something else) provide a lot of power for very little skill, allowing new players to easily conquer the early part of a single-player game or allow some level of competition against veterans in multiplayer (such as Call of Duty's grenade launcher, or "noob tube"). These are necessary to get new players interested and help them feel some sense of accomplishment, but they run the risk of either becoming a Game-Breaker, or of players getting frustrated and quitting when they run up against the limits of the strategy. The video recommends some form of Wake-Up Call Boss as an antidote, preferably early in the game once the player has gotten their feet under them, to force them to learn more tactics and develop their skills. invoked
• Stealth-Based Game:
  • Discussed in "Like a Ninja", which points out the differences between stealth-based games and action-oriented games, and why stealth games are either really good or really bad.
  • They also cover why it's hard to put Stealth-Based Missions in action games, because the core feeling of stealth is overcoming obstacles despite being underpowered and plays out more like a puzzle, while action games tend towards overpowering your enemies through combat.
• Stealth Parody: Discussed briefly at the end of the "Hard Boiled" episode, where they suggest that the Modern Warfare series has become self-aware of how over the top they have gotten through Serial Escalation, and the end text of the episode recommends playing Modern Warfare 3 with the mentality that it is a send-up of modern shooters.
• Surreal Humour:invoked In the episode on comedy games it's noted that modern games aren't a great medium for normal jokes as the creators have no control over the timing needed to make them work, unlike less popular styles like point and click adventures where using items in certain places could trigger a funny animation or dialogue. Instead they suggest developers embrace and even invoke Good Bad Bugs and have, for instance one in 100 NPCs act in a bizarre way or give every gun a 1 in 1000 chance of firing Abnormal Ammo, like cows.
• Technobabble: The subject of an entire episode. They link it to the difference between the extremes of science fiction settings, with hard science fiction on one end and future fantasy on the other, saying that the really inaccurate use of technobabble tends to come when an author cannot commit to a fantastical idea and tries to tenuously ground it with sciencey-sounding language. They then go on to briefly define a few commonly used ideas in physics to give viewers a slightly better understanding of those terms.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: invoked Discussed in "The Hidden Price of Changing a Game", where developers have to balance between following corporate orders and listening to the playerbase when changing certain game elements. It also explains that it's natural to feel resistant to change, but it's also why some mechanics never get improved despite the potential: it costs time and money to teach users new mechanics from the ones they've been used to for a long time.
• Three-Act Structure: Discussed in the Amnesia episode, particularly with video games and their habit of starting in Act 2.
• Token Minority: Mentioned in the diversity episode as a bad solution to accusations that there aren't enough female, black, or other minority groups.
• True Art Is Angsty: invokedDiscussed in the episode "Hard Boiled", where they show that just because Max Payne 3 is Darker and Edgier than its previous entries in its series, doesn't inherently make it more artistic.
• Unconventional Learning Experience:invoked "Tangential Learning", which discusses how games can also have educational merits for showing players factoids they've never seen. A game like God of War, for example, can push someone to look into Greek Mythology in spite of its inconsistencies.
• Video Game Movies Suck:invoked The phenomenon is brought up in the video "Why Are There No Good Video Game Movies". There's no single answer, but the biggest ones are that most people who are currently in the film industry (either executives or creative folk) aren't that familiar with video games, since video games themselves are such a new medium while other properties such as works of literature have been around for decades before being properly put into a film format (citing The Lord of the Rings as an example of this). Also films based on comic series went through a similar Audience-Alienating Era.
• Video Game Remake: "A Generation of Remasters" noted that remakes were becoming more and more common, and discussed the pros and cons of remakes. While it's a good thing as it helps preserve video games and helps new players appreciate the older classics, it is rife with problems. The people in charge of the remake might not understand the fundamentals of the original and screw it up, remakes draw talent away from making new games, and they become a crutch for game companies who see remakes as a safe bet. There is also the cost issue, as any game old enough to need a remake would cost as much as a new game to make.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: In "Balancing for Skill," it's presented as a necessary corollary to the Skill Gate Character. It's good to have an easy strategy to help the player get their feet under them and succeed in the first stretch of the game, but that'll become a Game-Breaker if you can go through the entire game with that strategy. So, the alternative is to provide a challenge that the Skill Gate Characters can't beat, forcing the player to diversify their strategies and get good at the game. invoked

Tropes which Extra History provides an example of:

• Action Girl:
  • Julie d'Aubigny was a duelist through her life, at one point dueling three noblemen at once and defeating all of them.
  • Cheng I Sao, the leader of Pirate Confederation, was able to bring the Chinese Empire to its knees and defeat a far stronger fleet.
  • Freydis from "Wine Land", a female Viking explorer who, at one point, almost single-handedly fights off a group of Native Americans threatening her settlement by terrifying them into fleeing.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: "The Dodo Bird: What ACTUALLY Happened" describes the eponymous bird as "a dawdling dumpy little dolt doomed to be devoured by Dutch deckhands until demographic decline destroyed it within decades."
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: The British Empire and the East India Company formed the first multi-national drug cartel, illegally encouraging the smuggling of opium into China and "pushing drugs on an unprecedented scale". Ironically, they did this to support their own drug habit — namely importing a staggering amount of tea from China, resulting in a massive trade deficit.
• American Eagle: In Hiawatha, the Haudenosaunee united under the Great Law of Peace bury their weapons beneath the roots of a pine tree and an eagle comes to perch on the tree's highest branch. Centuries later, Ben Franklin and George Washington hear the legend from the Haudenosaunee's descendants, and adopt an eagle carrying a bundle of arrows in one of its talons as a symbol of their new nation in honor of the legend.
• And Then What?:
  • After Genghis Khan successfully united the Mongol steppe under his banner, he moved on to conquer neighboring kingdoms to the west, east, and south, since he was a lifelong conquerer who seemed unable to settle down and enjoy the peace he had created.
  • Otto von Bismarck worked his whole life to unite many German-speaking provinces under a single German Empire. Once that goal was accomplished, he seemed to have no real plan and had to grapple with how to actually govern it.
  • After Joan of Arc swiftly routed Burgundian French and their English allies and had Charles VII crowned King of France, she seemed unsure of what to do with herself now that her holy mission from God seemed complete. (Tragically, her next bit assignment leads to her capture, trial, and execution by the English.)
• Apocalypse How: "The Bronze Age Collapse" covers a Regional apocalypse, in which all the great Bronze Age civilizations of the fertile crescent collapse at once.
• Apocalyptic Log: The Signalman in the battle of Saragarhi report to the two nearby forts as the Sikh Officers fight to the last.
• April Fools' Day: Their 2020 video about Grigori Rasputin was actually "Ra Ra Rasputin" narrated in the series' style, with text discussing the Historical Villain Upgrade. They would eventually make an actual series about him the following year.
• Arc Words: Several of the series have a phrase that gets repeated multiple times
  • The Broad Street Pump: You know nothing John Snow!
  • Otto von Bismarck: Bismarck had a plan, Bismarck ''always'' had a plan.
  • Joan of Arc: GET ‘EM!
  • Ibn Battuta: Side trip!
• Armchair Military: The Japanese militarists of the 1930s and 40s are depicted as as ultranationalist ideologues who put their fantasies of conquest and power above any actual long term strategic goals, to the point that they stumbled from one undeclared war to another, undermined their own diplomats, and united much of the world against them.
• Artistic License – History: Defied, in that each mini-series includes a "Lies" episode in which James talks about all the things that were simplified, mistaken, and lied about (as well as telling all the interesting stories they couldn't fit in). However, in some cases, especially those parts of history that are controversial and don't really fit a consensus, the series does lean to one interpretation and bias, which to the credit of the creators, is openly admitted:
  • Played straight with the Suleiman mini-series. The episode with him dying shows him hallucinating all his deceased loved ones (all dead, all as a result of his actions) and thinking he was young again before his life became miserable. While the miniseries was based in part on Suleiman's own poetry and writings, there is no way to know for sure what his last thoughts were.
  • Invoked for the series on "The Battle of Kursk", when the Nazi Swastika was converted into Iron Cross. The reasons for this, as stated at the start is that the Nazi logo is banned in Germany and other parts of Europe, and they want the videos to be accessible and widely exhibited, which is why they made this small compromise.
  • The series on Justinian gives his reign and overall campaign to reconquer and restore The Roman Empire a Historical Hero Upgrade. In truth, these conquests were devastating to Italy, and left Rome a shell of its former self and was the principal reason for its decay and depopulation until The Renaissance. The creators admit that they 'like' Justinian and they do insist that he was a dreamer and too overly ambitious to properly sustain his goals but this does mean that the show sentimentalizes his conquest of Italy and demonizes the Ostragoths (whose opinions, views, and side of the story is left untold).
  • More controversial is their series on The Battle of Kursk, where the first episode suggests that Stalin was rejected from membership with the Axis alliance and it portrayed Stalin for resenting this rebuff, presenting the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not as a treaty of neutrality but as a prelude to an actual partnership between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This neglects the political context of the Pact^note Namely the Munich Agreement, where the Soviet Union proposed a partnership with England and France to check Hitler's ambition, and the former decided to favour appeasement, while granting territory to Germany and Poland, both of them historical enemies to the Soviet Union and Russian, and which Stalin, in typical paranoid style, interpreted as an invitation by France and England to Germany to invade East, and the fact that Stalin, as recent research has shown, used the Pact as "grace period" to rebuild his forces (much as Neville Chamberlain did with the Munich Agreement) and that the main mistake he made was believing that they would invade the Soviet Union at a later date then they did.
  • In Urbino, they blame the decline of the court on an invasion by the Borgia, but the truth is Guidobaldo fled Urbino before Cesare Borgia arrived, and a year later after the death of Pope Alexander VI, Borgia's hold ended and Guidobaldo returned to Urbino now peacefully incorporated into The Papal States. It also fails to mentions that Guidobaldo had supported the Borgia initially only to turn sides (as his father never did). The decline of Urbino had more to do with the fact that Rome envious of other city states for its fame and prestige started to reassert itself in cinquecento (The 1500s).
  • In "The last Samurai", they repeatedly claim that Samurai had the right to kill commoners whenever they pleased. In reality the practice they are referring to had strict conditions and rules, and failure to follow which could result in a Samurai being executed himself.
  • As they themselves admit, they often get flags wrong. Either they use the wrong flag for a specific period in time, or they'll end up using the wrong colors, or even flipping the flag upside down.
  • The "Battle of Britain" episode used much older information that suggested the UK was on the verge of collapse when aerial campaigns against the populace galvanized them and turned the situation around. In reality, the results were much less close. ^note The British vastly overestimated the German air capacity and the Germans vastly underestimated the Royal Air Force; German estimations for fighter capacity were off the mark by a factor of 6 times by September of 1940. The change in tactics to bombing civilians only cemented their fate as it not only gave the populace stronger emotions but took pressure off the airfields, the previous attacks targets.
  • In their "Sack of Lindisfarne" segment, they claim the Viking Age marked "the first time since the Fall of Rome [that] Christendom would contract", nevermind the early Muslim conquests that'd overrun the Christian-ruled territories of the Holy Land, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, North Africa, Iberia, and (briefly) part of southern France in the previous two centuries, not to mention the fact that Britain itself had to be re-Christianized by St. Augustine of Canterbury more than a century after the Fall of Rome.
  • While they admit to conjecture in their segment on the Collapse of the Carolingian Empire, a couple mistakes still stand out:
    • invoked The episode is predicated on the misguided implication that Louis the Pious foolishly and arbitrarily divided his empire among his three sons and thereby set the stage for a millennium of Franco-German conflict in an Anvilicious Does This Remind You of Anything? of the Treaty of Westphalia or the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In reality, however, the borders they show only coalesced after Louis the Pious' death when his two younger sons, Charles and Louis, joined forces against their elder brother Emperor Lothar in a bloody Civil War that succeeded in carving off the (existing) Frankish and Teutonic halves for Charles and Louis but didn't completely destroy Lothar, who kept the leftovers. Thus Middle Francia didn't cause conflict by being "haphazard" (as it's described half-a-dozen times) but rather was made haphazard by conflict.
    • They note that, "We often criticize primogeniture as it [...] leaves women out entirely". Technically, primogeniture only denotes preference by birth order while gender is a separate set of criteria. The British monarchy, for instance, recently adopted "absolute primogeniture", which favours the first-born child regardless of gender.
  • In their series on the sinking of Bismarck they keep calling it the biggest warship on earth. The Japanese Yamato had been launched a year earlier, although to be fair, Yamato didn't officially enter service until after the sinking of the Bismarck, and the HMS Hood was longer, but roughly equal in tonnage and a narrower beam.
  • In the Exploring the Pacific series, they implied that the USS Enterprise in Star Trek was a play on the name of the HMS Endeavor. The fictitious spaceship was, per Gene Roddenbery's own statement, named for an American aircraft carrier.
  • The series on the Kingdom of Majapahit repeats the myth that Europe loved spices to cover the taste of rotten meat. This is a complete falsehood. Anyone who had money to buy spices had the money to buy fresh meat, and while Medieval hygiene standards were less advanced than today, people weren't eating rancid meat unless they were really desperate.
  • In the Second Punic Wars series, it is present as fact that Barcelona's name originated from Hamilcar, who named it after his family, the Barcids. However, that is only one of two founding myths; it is generally agreed upon that it comes from Ancient Iberian Baŕkeno, which predates the Barcids (at least by a few decades).
• Badass Boast: Admiral Yi's response to being informed that the Korean government wants to disband the navy:
  "This humble subject still has 12 ships. However small the number may be, I solemnly swear I will be able to defend the sea if I prepare myself for death to resist the enemy."
• Bad Ass Normal: The Bow Street Constables in "Policing London - The Bow Street Runners" are this. The episode makes it clear they were only a semi-formal police force, all of whom had to work at normal day jobs in addition to fighting crime. The leader of this force, Jonathan Welsh, was grocer in addition to his police duties.
• Badass Preacher: Gantelme, the Bishop of Chartres! Rollo the Walker and his army of Horny Vikings tried sacking the city on the way to Paris, and defeated the Frankish garrison of Chartres. But then the Bishop emerged with cross in one hand, a reliquary in the other, and an army of enraged peasants behind them. The Bishop's wild charge won, routing Rollo's army and derailing his whole campaign!
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Towards the end of the Punic Wars, Scipio Africanus ends up adopting many of the tactics Hannibal had used against the Romans to great effect, including using terrain to attack from a completely unexpected direction (Hannibal had his army cross the Alps in the middle of winter, Scipio besieges Carthago Nova and has his men cross a drained lagoon to attack the one part of the city that wasn't well-guarded), and deploying strong troops on the flank of an army with weaker troops in the middle then having the weaker troops fall back while the stronger flanks pincer the enemy.
• Been There, Shaped History: Following the South Sea Bubble series showcasing Walpole's skill as The Chessmaster, it's become a Running Gag to have him frequently appear in other episodes and manipulate the events in some way.
• Better as Friends: Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin. Their romantic relationship didn't work since he could not get over their Unequal Pairing or his jealous fear that she might leave him for someone else. However, severing romantic ties just strengthened their bond. They became Platonic Life-Partners who cared deeply for and worked closely with each other for the rest of his life, and he even became her wingman!
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: How they view Justinian. He build fantastic monuments and retook Rome for the Roman Empire, but spend so much of the empire's resources that he doomed it in the process.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: In "The History of Paper Money", John Law offered to pardon any French Prisoner who was willing to marry a prostitute and move to the Louisiana Territory.
• By-the-Book Cop: "Policing London - The Bow Street Runners" provides an example the form of the Bow Street Constables, a group of honest and capable parish constables under the command of Constable Saunders Welsh and Justice Henry Fielding. This is notable because it was an era in which the justice system in London was horribly corrupt at all levels, yet this one police force was wholly honest in their dealings.
• The Caligula:
  • Jayanagara proved to be this. He slept with his step-sisters, the wives of his court officials, the daughters of his court officials, the wife of his surgeon, and Gajah Mada's wife. Moreover, the animations very much suggest that these women were coerced as they are shown being extremely uncomfortable with the situation. Eventually he gets assassinated by his surgeon, possibly at Gajah Mada's prompting.
  • The series on Ibn Battuta depicts Muhammad bin Tughluq, the sultan of Delhi during his travels, as outright psychopathic. By Battuta's own account, Tughluq's personality was unpredictable and he had an insanely flippant disregard for those he remotely disliked, torturing and/or executing them in bizarre ways. As much as he was showered with praise, power, and riches for his work at first sight, Battuta acknowledged it was excessive and realized he had to escape from Delhi as he feared for his life.
• Call to Agriculture:
  • General Belisarius does this after finally retiring from the army.
  • Otto von Bismarck takes on managing his family estates after his mother dies and his father proves inept. This is subverted as the government gives him another post and his farming career ends.
• Cardiovascular Love: In "The History of Paper Money - Origins of Exchange":, it's used with Heart Symbols being between a man and a woman trading while "we not only loved to trade" is being said.
• Cats Hate Water: During their series on Majapahit, a dog made out of water is used as a metaphor for the Indonesians' maritime expertise; said dog appears at the end of one episode in the background, prompting Zoey to enter a hilarious chase scene around Matt's legs.
• Central Theme: Each history series has an underlying theme.
  • "Policing London": How do you fight crime while protecting liberty?
  • "Teddy Roosevelt the Trustbuster": Regulating corporate crime when Democracy Is Flawed.
  • "Grigori Rasputin": How easily rumors and lies can shape the perception of a human being.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Sir Robert Walpole, who in the aftermath of the economic collapse caused by The South Sea Bubble pulled all the strings to ensure that the only people punished were those whose ruined careers he could climb to greatness.
    invokedDan: At the last moment, somebody tipped Knight off- It was Walpole, Walpole tipped Knight off.
    Dan: Oddly enough, for some reason, Knight's ledger never made it to prison with him. Who knows where that went- It was Walpole.
  • Walpole is such a Chessmaster that in the Lies episode for every series, James finds some way in which Walpole is connected to the events discussed. They even released "It was Walpole" T-shirts.
  • And then there came Otto von Bismarck. He is able to prevent democracy from taking hold in Prussia, and unite Germany under his rule. Bismark has a plan, Bismark 'always' has a plan!
  • Next came Gajah Mada. He helped save Jayanagara from an uprising by manipulating the capitol city's population to support him against the rebels, and immediately afterwards executing any civilians who celebrated at a rumor that Jayanagara died (a rumor Gajah Mada started to wipe out the rule). Then when Jayanagara was killed by his surgeon, Gajah Mada installed as his successor one of Jayanagara's relatives who appointed him Prime Minister. Using this power Gajah Mada ruled as The Man Behind the Man for thirty years and united all of Indonesian Islands. Not to mention the theory that he arranged and covered up Jayangara's death.
    • Gajah Mada takes after Raden Wijaya. After escaping the Kediri's onslaught of his family, he took shelter in a remote village while building his own small army. Then he sent a message to the invading Mongol that he wanted to play along with their schemes of getting rid of the current ruler of Java (Kediri) and when he's back in throne, he promised he'll be subservient to the Mongol. He joined forces with Mongol to reclaim his capital, but left the Mongols do the most fighting. Once he reclaimed the throne, Raden Wijaya led the Mongol to his village saying that the tribute they sought is there... actually leading them to an ambush by the majority of the army he kept in secret. In one fell swoop, Raden Wijaya not only reclaimed his throne, but also drove away the Mongol while establishing his own independent Empire.
  • Jonathan Wild, thieftaker general of London. He ran the biggest gang in London, making sure to keep all his thieves at a tight enough leash that he could get rid of them at any point, while at the same time presenting a public face as London's beloved crime fighter. This guy was so good at keeping up his façade that the only thing that caused his downfall was someone who didn't need a façade to be popular.
• Da Chief: Justice Henry Fielding, the Magistrate of Bow Street. While his official duty was to examine suspects to decide whether or not to send them to trial. He was noted as being honest and diligent in an otherwise corrupt system, and went out of his way to fight crime by organizing a group of Constables to catch thieves and gang members for him.
• Children Are Innocent: In "Viking Expansion - The Serpent-Riders", the unnamed Norwegian Merchant goes on his first voyage as a youth. He is shown to be uncomfortable with the fact that his father sells Irish Slaves to the Emirate of Cordoba. While he grows up to be a merchant like his father, the narration doesn't say that he trades in the same cargo.
• Close-Range Combatant: A noted weakness of the Japanese navy in "Admiral Yi"; because the Japanese army specialise in land-based siege warfare, their navy consists mostly of troop transports that rely on arquebus fire and boarding during combat, and are vulnerable to the superior long-range cannons of the Korean navy.
• Colonel Kilgore: Chief Tadodaho, who is determined to keep his tribe in its Forever War with the other Haudenosaunee Nations so as to ensure he continues to remain in power.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In the "Admiral Yi" series, Korean soldiers and ships are red, Japanese are yellow and Chinese are blue.
• Confirmation Bias: Discussed as a constant problem throughout history. John Snow, for instance, lived during an era where most doctors assumed sickness was caused by noxious miasma, and they would shoo down his theories about cholera spreading through water. Even if he presented evidence that everyone who got sick had gotten their water from the Broad Street pump, they would just say that there was miasma in the area, and the pump was coincidental.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Despite being consistently outnumbered by the Japanese Navy, Admiral Yi's tactical knowledge allows him to inflict heavy losses, often without losing any vessels himself.
• Cool Train: The Defence of Poland has Armored Train 53 used by the Polish Army, a "steel behemoth" bearing anti-tank guns.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Princess Sophie, a girl with progressive values and ideas ends up becoming the expansionist, imperialist, reactionary serf-oppressing Empress Catherine.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: When Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca Empire, is betrayed by his own men and assassinated, it is said his last act was to draw a cross on the ground in his own spilled blood.
• Crazy Enough to Work: In a last desperate attempt to unify an unstable Brazil, the government forced Pedro II to take the throne when he was still a teenager...and it actually worked!
• Creative Sterility: The Mongols under Genghis Khan. Everything they gained, they gained through conquest. During his reign they produced no significant art, literature, inventions, or scientific discoveries.
• The Creon: Odenathus, the governor of Palmyra who helped to repel an invasion of the Roman empire by the Sassanians. Even though he probably controlled more people and territory than any other Roman noble at the height of his power, was bestowed the ceremonial title "King of Kings" and could conceivably have crowned himself emperor, he considered himself to be just another citizen of the empire and fought solely on behalf of the legitimate emperor and his heir.
• Crossover Cameo: "The Mass-Murdering Mongoose", which is sponsored by Rovio Entertainment, has Red, Chuck, and Bomb make several cameo appearances through-out the episode, which is about how the introduction of mongooses to Hawaii drove many native bird species to extinction.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • The ninja that shot Oda Nobunaga was later found, buried up to his neck, and had his head sawed through over the course of several days.
  • Both Gracchi Brothers end up being murdered in extremely violent ways by the Roman Senate. Gaius' death is especially grisly since it features his head being cut off after death, his brain removed and his hollow skull filled with lead and then the rest of the body is thrown into the Tiber.
  • Haitian slaves who openly disobeyed their masters were subjected to this (thrown in vats of boiling sugar, eaten alive by insects, blown to bits by being tied to kegs of lit gunpowder, and more), so they resorted to more passive-aggressive forms of resistance.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The episode "Palmyra Today", which consists of James describing the destruction of this melting pot's artifacts and architectural masterpieces at the hands of ISIS.
• Culture Clash:
  • The main reason why the negotiations between the Christian Alfred and the Viking Guthrum were such a farce. ([Swear to me on these Holy Relics!] ”What, you mean this box of remains? Sure, whatever.”)
  • Ibn Battutah suffers this during his visit to the empire of Mali, expecting them to be pious Muslims and instead finding their beliefs to be a mix of Islam and pre-Islamic African tradition.
• Cycle of Revenge:
  • In "Kamehameha the Great", Hawaiian Natives murdered a night watchman from the ship Eleanora and stolen a boat. So in revenge for that, the Eleanora rang a bell to signal for trade ... and promptly unleashed a double broadside on the arriving natives, killing hundreds of them. In revenge for that a party of local warriors attacked the Eleanora's sister ship, The Fair American, killing four crewmen and taking Isaac Davis prisoner. This cycle ended when Kamehameha placed Isaac Davis under royal protection in order to keep good relations with the foreigners and gain access to their guns.
  • Discussed in the Genghis Khan series. Over time, Genghis Khan recognized that the Steppe tradition of raids and counterattacks created an endless cycle of raiding, kidnapping, and looting with no clear winner and no way to stop revenge-driven raids, kidnapping, and looting. To stop the cycle, he revolutionized warfare to fully integrate the conquered into Mongol society as citizens with full rights and social mobility so they'd have no desire or means of revenge... or wipe them out entirely if they resisted.
• A Day in the Limelight: Their brief one-shot episodes on figures who they find interesting but who don't have enough material for an extensive series, examples include Odenathus, Mary Seacole (which is a 2-parter), Samuel Ha-Nagid, Federico de Montefeltro, Lindisfarne, Tiberius Gracchus the Elder^note The latter appearing as an extra episode to their five part series on the Gracchi (and written by Mike Duncan Of The History of Rome fame.
• Dead Person Impersonation: When Admiral Yi is mortally wounded during the last battle of the Korea/Japan war, one of his sons dons his armor and takes over the war drum his father was beating, so the rest of the fleet won't be demoralised by their admiral's death.
• Death by Irony: Langley Collyer died after he was crushed to death after accidentally triggering one of the very booby traps he had set to keep intruders out so that he and his brother could be left alone. His death left the helpless Homer stranded, ultimately leading to his slow demise from starvation. For one final layer of irony, the Collyer brothers met their end in the exact way they had fought so desperately to live: completely alone.
• Defensive Feint Trap: A favored tactic of Admiral Yi's against the Japanese navy.
• Defiant to the End: The Captal de Buch, one of Edward III's commanders in the Hundred Years War, spent his final days captured by the French, held in a dungeon because he was "too dangerous" to release. He's portrayed as attempting to strangle his guard through the bars of his cell as this is said.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Japanese army in the 1930s is depicted as being a bunch of arrogant hotheads who started massive wars without a long term strategy of securing their conquests or defending against the incursion of major powers like Soviet Russia or America. Once he becomes Prime Minister, even the militarist Hideki Tojo decides to pursue diplomacy once he sees just how perilous Japan’s situation is.
• Dirty Cop:
  • The Australian police are shown to be this in "Ned Kelly". They look the other way when wealthy landholders steal what is supposed to be government property, then when poor farmers are driven to crime they respond by giving the harshest punishment possible. Ned Kelly later gets imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to three years of hard labor, and when he gets out the police stalk him and his family until he decides enough is enough and turned to bushranging.
  • The "Policing London" examples includes examples of this. Jonathan Wild, Thieftaker-General, was secretly the head of a giant criminal of thieves. He got his throat cut open by a thief from a rival gang after he refused the man's plea-bargain, and his empire was torn apart by his private war with Jack Sheppard, a charming Gentleman Thief who exposes what he is to the public. The third episode in this series talks about Constables and Deputies in London. A large number of these were either outright corrupt or too lazy to actually do their jobs, and even those who were honest were often elderly or had to support themselves with other careers as well.
• Disaster Dominoes:
  • How the Seminal Tragedy of World War I is presented. They make it a point to note that as damaging as Princip's assassination of the Archduke was, it was neither the key action that triggered the war, nor did it make the events that happened inevitable. He noted that the other powers "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot had there not been so much Poor Communication Kills, had there been better timing when messages were sent and delivered, and had anyone made a real effort to avoid war.
  • Ditto with the later Cuban Missile Crisis, averted only at the last minute despite a lengthy series of unfortunate coincidences and failures to communicate mixing with the pushing of hawks on both sides dragging things to the brink.
• Disobeyed Orders, Not Punished: The perpetual headache of the post-Meiji pre-American occupation Japanese government. Their right wing and military are completely out of control, regularly murdering anyone they consider insufficiently nationalistic and manufacturing casus belli to start endless wars Japan has no chance of actually winning. But any attempt to hold these assassins and insolent soldiers accountable invariably provokes enraged reactions from the populace and the rest of the right-wing and militaristic factions within society, so judges and officials trying to hand down sentences or restrain people supposed to be following their orders are risking their lives, and doing so in the knowledge that there might be others further up the chain of command without their moral fortitude who will overturn their principled decisions anyway. The result is what observers cynically describe as "government by assassination."
• Divided We Fall: The success of the First Crusade was as much the result of in-fighting among the Muslim world as it was the result of determination on the part of the Crusaders. To start with, the Crusaders are able to sally forth and defeat a numerically superior and better-fed Turkish army at the Battle of Antioch because all the Turkish officers individually had nothing to gain from winning the battle and would have less power in their government if their boss won, so they all fled at the first opportunity. After that, the other Sunni Muslims on the road to Jerusalem actively supported the Crusaders by supplying them with goods and funds in the hopes that they would give the Shiite Muslims in Jerusalem a severe defeat.
• Dude, Not Funny!: On one episode on the Great Famine, Matt makes a brief pause to remark how "funny" it is that a British PM during said famine was named "Peel" (first name Robert). His reaction makes it look like the team or audience would disapprove of said remark, and even the camera pans on one of the crew with a side eye. He quickly apologies. (Although he would remind us of that coincidence one more time.)
• Early-Bird Cameo: Those who exclusively watch Extra History were 2 months late to finding out Matt was taking over as showrunner, but he gets a brief cameo during the "History of Non-Euclidean Geometry" as recording in a studio.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: They like exploring how certain concepts took a while to coalesce into its familiar shape:
  • Early Christian Schisms explores how Christianity evolved carefully to a more familiar form by exploring and documenting the various divergent and contradictory attitudes rival beliefs and faiths had, each of which was declared as "heretic" by the nascent Christian orthodoxy.
  • The History of Money likewise documents in exhaustive detail how the modern economic understanding of money evolved over the years, going from being backed by pre-existing objects of value to becoming valuable in and of itself.
  • The Articles of Confederation likewise depicts the government of America during and just after the Revolution, at a time when the US Constitution and the organs of the federal government were not even conceived or planned out until circumstances made these institutions a pressing demand.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The episode "The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire - Horror in Manhattan" ends this way. It began with 146 textile workers, most of whom were teenage girls, dying in a disaster. It ended with the passing of laws and reforms that made life better for workers across the country.
• Establishing Character Moment: Early on in the first episode of the Cleopatra series, Matt tells the story of Cleopatra dissolving one of her priceless pearl earrings in vinegar and drinking it to win a drunken bet against Mark Antony. He then cites this as an example of 3 things - the lengths Cleopatra would go to to win, her refusal to let anyone else, even the most powerful men of her era, get the better of her, and how to make an expensive but gnarly cocktail.
• Femme Fatale: Discussed by James in the Lies section for the Justinian and Theodora as well as the Suleiman the Magnificent series. He notes that both Empress Theodora and Roxelana have negative reputations based on chronicles of its time, but he sees this as stemming from the general sexism of the culture and misogyny to women in power, as such he has tried to give both of them the benefit of the doubt. He does admit that it is likelier that Roxelana was Lady Macbeth to Suleiman than Theodora vis-a-vis Justinian. Likewise with Catherine the Great.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: In the Kamehameha series, the artist's interpretation of Mana is a flame inside a water droplet.
• Forever War: As the Japanese Militarism series and multiple Lies episodes discussing Japan's situation in World War II discuss, Japan didn't actually have a strategy for how to win their massive war to conquer all of Asia. They were basically seizing land to get more resources that they needed because they'd already bitten off more than they could chew and needed more resources to hold it, which inevitably meant they then needed still more resources to hold that new territory and started looking at more places to conquer!
• Four-Fingered Hands: All the series in Extra Credits have their characters drawn with four fingers, but in "History of the Board Game", Matt inexplicably grows three more fingers when he holds out his hand like the number four to explain that George S. Parker published six more board games after Banking.
• Frontline General: Inca Generals were expected to be this. It worked perfectly fine when conquering other South American tribes, but when fighting conquistadors with muskets and cannon, it often resulted in the General's death and the army being routed.
• Geo Effects:
  • Scipio Africanus successfully besieges the city of Carthago Nova by having 500 men wait near a lagoon to the north of the city while the rest of his army attacks the west gate. When the weather drains the lagoon, his men are able to cross and attack the one part of the walls the Carthaginians didn't station defenders at.
  • Admiral Yi chooses Myeongnyang for one of his naval battles against the Japanese because its currents have a peculiar property of changing direction every few hours. This confuses the Japanese and causes several of their ships to crash into one another when they try to retreat.
• Going Native: Princess Sophie succeeds in submerging herself into Russian culture. She learnt the language, converted from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy and adopted a new Russian Orthodox name Ekaterina (or Catherine in English) and eventually is so embraced that she becomes Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, giving a speech that promised to protect the Russian people from foreign influence, with the irony that she was German and Lutheran at birth, entirely lost on her and her audience. Incidentally, her husband Peter's downfall happened because he's a Category Traitor, a Russian Prince who is perceived as a Sell-Out who scorns Russian culture in favor of Germany.
• The Grinch: During the WWI Christmas Truce, not everyone was on board with the unexpected truce. One notable example was Corporal Hitler.
• Hanging Judge: Salathiel Lovell, who sentenced John Law to death, is described by Daniel as being one. This also counts as an Informed Attribute because the only defendant Lovell is shown judging really did commit the murder he was accused of, and back then hanging was the prescribed punishment for murder.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: It is speculated that while Rasputin probably didn't have divine healing powers, his praying may have had an important psychological benefit for Alexei: simply by calming both the tsarevich and his nervous mother down with soothing messages of faith, Rasputin made the boy's bleeding far less severe.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • Episode 4 of "The History of Paper Money" has a British businessman named John using a plan involving government debt paying for a new financial institution and inflating the price of an overhyped New World "trading company".
    Dan: Now, if this all sounds kinda familiar for some reason, you're not wrong—something very similar was happening right across the Channel.
  • In the Lies Episode of "The History of Paper Money", James admits that there is still some debate as to whether the US dollar is really fiat currency (currency that isn't backed by anything and that only has value because we agree it does) or if it is just backed by petrol instead of gold (because OPEC will only accept US dollars). James predicts that we will find out once OPEC accepts other nations' currencies as well (if the US dollar is fiat then there will be no crisis, but if it isn't than there will be one).
  • During the second half of the Early Christian Schisms, whenever the disputes appeared to have been resolved, there would inevitably be either someone bringing the problems back, or a new Christian faction showing up to split the church once more.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the Palmyra Today Episode, Dr. Khaled al-Asaad (the head of antiquities at Palmyra) stayed behind during the evacuation of the city to ensure that as many historical artifacts are hidden and/or secreted away instead of running. Because of this he was captured by ISIS, tortured for the location of the artifacts (he never broke, even after a month), and beheaded. He died to save a piece of the shared human heritage.
• Heroic Wannabe: In "Napoleon in Egypt" series, Napoleon and his entourage are depicted as a pack of mall ninjas who trying to cosplay as an ancient Romans and ancient Egyptians while doing ridiculous things.
• Historical Hero Upgrade:
  • The series on Justinian gives his reign and overall campaign to reconquer and restore The Roman Empire a Historical Hero Upgrade. In truth, these conquests were devastating to Italy, and left Rome a shell of its former self and was the principal reason for its decay and depopulation until The Renaissance. The creators admit that they 'like' Justinian and they do insist that he was a dreamer and too overly ambitious to properly sustain his goals but this does mean that the show sentimentalizes his conquest of Italy and demonizes the Ostragoths (whose opinions, views, and side of the story is left untold).
  • A strange in-universe case for Joan of Arc. While she was a selfless hero, Matthew explains she was also primarily interested in settling a French civil war, and mostly fought Bergundian French soldiers. However, 18 years after her death Burgundians' relations with England soured, power consolidated under King Charles VII of France, and the French people retroactively cast her as a universal French hero who only fought the English. To this day, most people don't know that Joan's goal was to resolve a French civil war (and she mostly fought French soldiers), not just to drive out the English.
  • Suleiman the Magnificent in his Extra History series was portrayed with a sympathetic light, largely thanks to his nature as the POV character of the series. Many viewers, however, pointed out that Suleiman's troubles were largely brought about by his Hair-Trigger Temper, and that murdering his best friend, two of his sons, (thus leaving the Ottoman Empire in the hands of Selim II), and unintentionally sowing the seeds for his empire's decline made him too unlikeable a protagonist. (It could be argued that since Suleiman’s wife was the one who convinced her husband to commit those actions as she hated Ibrahim Pasha and wanted her son, Selim II, to be Sultan and saw the others as rivals, she is just as much to blame as her husband, but James is openly skeptical of the sources in question, drawing another parallel between her and the similarly-hated and blamed Theodosia.)
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • An In-Universe Example. The mini-series on Justinian and Theodora mentions that Procopius, the court historian of Justinian, wrote a "Secret History" in which Justinian is depicted as a monster - not a metaphorical monster in the sense that he painted Justinian as abnormally evil, a literal monster in the sense that the historian claimed Justinian could detach his head and summon plague to ravage the Mediterranean. This book was discovered 1000 years later in an archive in a convent, and historians aren't quite sure what to make of it.
  • Rasputin's series is devoted to explaining how, due to circumstances and forces largely outside his control, Rasputin became a dark legend in his own lifetime and long afterwards.
  • Downplayed in the series on Wu Zetian. While it's made clear that she's almost certainly suffered this trope, on account of being China's sole female ruler against the background radiation of some pretty intense misogyny, that doesn't mean she was a good or nice person either.
• Hollywood Tactics: The corresponding Lies episode acknowledges that Joan's tactics were more advanced than Get 'em, but clarifies that the creators not only wanted to avoid being too bogged down in military history after the recent Siege of Vienna episode but were trying to capture Joan's leadership ability and sense of righteousness more than literally describe them.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: "The Thirty Years War" series showcases the titular event as a humanitarian crisis, with the fallout of the conflict being compared to the Book of Revelation and the Four Horsemen specifically. In order, there are Conquest (the domination of Europe between the Catholics and Protestants, with the Calvinists being seen as heretics by both sides), War (the Escalating War between the various nations involved causing increasing loss of life and property, such as the burning of Magdeburg, as militaries continued to grow out of control), Famine (the strain on the European economies, including debasement of currency and food shortages due to theft, sending the majority of the population into poverty), and Death (poor living conditions and the crowding effects of the amassed militaries leading to mass die-offs from infectious diseases).
• How We Got Here: Used in a few series:
  • "Admiral Yi" opens with a shot of the devastated Japanese navy from the battle of Noryang Strait, then cuts to Yi taking a military exam 26 years earlier.
  • "Suleiman the Magnificent" opens with Suleiman as an old man standing on the banks of the Bosphorus, and the first episode is presented as him remembering taking the throne as a younger man.
  • "Mother Seacole" opens with Mary Seacole attempting to bring comfort to a dying soldier in the Crimea, then cuts to Mary's first visit to the city of London in 1821, several years earlier.
  • "Akhenaten" opens with all references to the titular pharaoh being stricken from historical records in a state-wide Unpersoning being carried out some time after his rule.
• Illegal Religion: Pharaoh Akhenaten attempted to unify Ancient Egyptian religion around a single god, Aten, by outlawing the worship of all other gods. This went over poorly with most of the citizens of Egypt, to the point that his son immediately reinstated the old religion as soon as he took the throne and Akhenaten was eventually Unpersoned by a later pharaoh named Horemheb.
• Inferred Holocaust: invoked The last episode of the Punic Wars episode mentions that Rome burned Carthage to the ground, but they don't show it on-screen and they don't go into details (such as that the Romans killed off much of the city and enslaved the survivors).
• Introduced Species Calamity: The Spanish would often leave breeding pairs of pigs in places they explored. The pigs would reproduce so quickly that future voyages would be able to use these pigs to resupply. However, this also damaged many native ecosystems.
• Ironic Death: Part 3 of "Mutiny on the Bounty" reveals Fletcher Christian, the one who started the mutiny on the HMS Bounty in the first place, would ironically be killed during another mutiny on the island of Pitcairn due to tensions fueled by disease, disputes between the surviving mutineers and Tahitian men, and conflicts over "ownership" of the Tahitian women Christian had kidnapped to populate the island. After multiple revenge killings and the massacre of the remaining Tahitian men, Christian was shot dead while tending his crops. John Adams, his former ally in the mutiny, emerged as the only one left.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: While Frederick William loved the military and was prone to hypermasculine posturing, his son Fritz loved music and high culture. This becomes Played for Drama, as the elder Frederick was prone to physically and verbally abusing his son over his "unmanly" habits.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Once it became clear that the Pirate Confederation was falling apart, due to the Black Flag Fleet's defection, Cheng I Sao used her position of power to gain a pardon for herself and her followers (they didn't even have to return their stolen plunder).
• Land of One City: Two examples.
  • Urbino; an Italian city-state whose ruler Federico da Montefeltro turned it into a cultural and intellectual wonderland. When he died, the Borgias invaded the city and snuffed out its influence.
  • Palmyra; an ancient eastern city-state which retained independence from the Roman Empire, saved it from Persian Invasion, and helped prolong its life by centuries. Eventually the city was fully absorbed after Odenathus died and his daughter tried to take on the Roman Empire. Sadly, the ruins of Palmyra and all of its architectural value is being destroyed by ISIS.
• Leave No Survivors: When Ostrogothic forces were laying siege to the city of Mediolanum, they offered to spare the garrison if they opened the gates. When the garrison asked that the civilians inside be spared, "the Ostrogoths made no secret of the savage vengeance they wished to wreak on this town". Sure enough, when the Ostrogoths take the town they kill every man inside and enslave every woman and child.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While Temujin's actions are often violent and barbaric, he nonetheless comes across as more-upright than his competition, who are no less ruthless, but are also treacherous and without his redeeming qualities or vision. Additionally, while Temujin's changes to Mongolian society often benefit him personally, he goes out of his way to protect and lift up those crushed by the system that left him behind as a child.
• The Lost Lenore: Near the end of her life, Julie d'Abigny fell head over heels in love with Madame La Marquis De Florensac. When De Florensac died Julie retired from opera, joined a convent, and spent the rest of her days in mourning.
• Majored in Western Hypocrisy: After Sitting Bull defeated General Custer, white journalists circulated false biographies stating that he was adopted by white people and educated in American and European schools. This allowed white Americans to cope with a white general being defeated by a Native American and maintain their illusion of cultural superiority.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Since a lot of patriarchal societies ran on patrilineal inheritance laws, yet paternity tests didn't exist yet, you can bet this crops up every now and again.
  • Temujin's wife Borte was kidnapped shortly after they married, was raped by a soldier, then gave birth nine months later. While Temujin embraced her son as his own, most others weren't convinced and his legitimacy as heir was never fully realized.
  • Catherine the Great, similarly, had many affairs during her awful marriage to Peter III, and while her son mostly resembled her husband, no one was ever sure if he was her husband's or one of her lover's. (Thankfully, most of Russia didn't care as long as they had an heir.)
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: Because of the huge reverence the Incas placed on their ancestors, dead nobles retained the right to all the properties they owned in life and their descendants were merely allowed to be "stewards" on their ancestor's behalf, and mummified royals would regularly be taken to visit the properties of their relatives.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In the first episode of "American Mass Deportation", Rob spends the Cold Open discussing the legacy of historical mass deportations in the United States, mentioning that there are some who view them as "an instruction manual". As he says this, the animation cuts to a bald smirking man who goes unnamed, but bears a great deal of resemblance to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • In The First Opium War, Charles Elliot (Britain) and Qisan (China) were both sent to negotiate a peace deal and both worked out a reasonable one. Their reward? The former was fired and ridiculed by his countrymen for the rest of his life, the later was fired and sentenced to death (though the sentence was lifted).
  • John Snow spent his life trying to prevent cholera from wiping out London again, and his work proved the link between human waste and diseases. Instead of being recognized and rewarded for this, he was ridiculed and dismissed as a crazy person by the leading scientists of the day (the leading theory was that diseases were caused by "miasma").
  • invoked Yi Sun-sin spent his whole life serving Korea, fighting its enemies, and protecting and avenging its civilians. In spite of this he was often demoted and falsely accused. While he was honored for what he did, that only came after his death.
  • When Temüjin's family was abandoned to starve by his father's tribe, an old man from said tribe attempted to vouch for the family by stating that the wives and children of a warrior should be better cared for. In response this old man was speared to death.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: In "The First Crusade", after massacring the city of Maarat, many of the Crusaders proceeded to cook and eat the people they killed because they ran out of food and were starving.
• Not So Stoic: Dan could hardly be considered stoic, but he generally keeps to his calm and even tone while narrating. While he rarely raises his voice, his avatar is occasionally drawn noticeably annoyed or angry, such as when in the episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, when mentioning how the managers had locked some of the doors so they could check each worker for theft.
• Nun Too Holy: Julie d'Aubigny took monastic vows and joined a convent to rescue her girlfriend from it, starting a fire in the convent as cover for her escape. Subverted near the end of her life, when d'Aubigny joins a convent for real after a later girlfriend died.
• Obligatory Joke:
  • Did you really think they were gonna do a series on John Snow and not make a Game of Thrones reference.
  • Did you really think they were gonna do a series on King Kamehameha and not make a Dragon Ball reference?
  • Did you really think they were gonna do a series on Medieval English kings/knights fighting the French (The Hundred Years War) and not make a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference? (Or two? Or five?)
  • Did you really think they were gonna do a series on Joan of Arc informing French lords that she is on a mission from God and not make The Blues Brothers reference?
• Obvious Trap:
  • In Genghis Khan #4, Temujin is given a note from Ong Khan that reads "Invite to: not a trap".
  • The Japanese Navy tries to lure Admiral Yi into one of these, sending Yi a letter with the co-ordinates of their fleet which appears to be from one of their captains trying to sell out a rival. Yi doesn't fall for it, but unfortunately this gives his enemies in the Korean bureaucracy an excuse to have him tried for treason and removed from his post, and his successor Won Kyon does fall for it when the try the same trick again.
• Perspective Flip: The series on Khosrau Anushirawan is this to the series on Justinian. To clarify, in his own series, Justinian is a Self-Made Man who, with his team of capable companions, seeks to restore the glory of Rome and the unity of the Christian church. In Khosrau's series, however, Justinian is a bigoted, ambitious, Manipulative Bastard who is perfectly willing to crush other nations in the name of his imperial dreams.
• Pinball Protagonist: Rasputin's series focuses more on the environment of late-tsarist Russia than on Rasputin himself, and on how his legend was born from wild rumors and the malicious slander of his enemies. He has little control over the forces that subsume his life, seeing him as a symbol of whatever they, personally, think is wrong with Russia.
• The Plague: While it crops up in the background of several other episodes, memorably in Justinian's, the episodes on the flu epidemic of 1918 chronicle what they call the last modern one... and it's chilling.
  "This is a horror story."
• Precocious Crush: Princess Anna Komnenos has one on Bohemond of Taranto, who tried to overthrow her father Emperor Alexios.
• Pregnant Badass: In "Viking Expansion - Wine Land", a heavily pregnant viking woman called Freydis almost single-handedly fights off a Native American raiding party that are attacking her village.
• Prequel: The episode on Cheng I Sao is this to the series on The First Opium War, as the Chinese Empire continued to neglect its military even after outnumbered and outgunned pirates defeated them.
• Pride Before a Fall:
  • Britain's first attempt to negotiate an official trade agreement with China failed primarily due to the hubris of both The British and The Chinese. Both believed they hailed "from the most powerful and civilized nation in the world, with the most divine monarch", and things went downhill from there.
  • Also, Charles XII of Sweden had proved time and again to be an able field commander, a quick tactical actor, and a brave commander, fighting off countless invasions of his territory, and even pummeling Poland-Lithuania during his wars with them. And then he tried to invade Russia with only a moderate amount of men, and refused to back away even a few miles for supplies because he didn't want to concede the campaign. And that lead him to disaster.
• Prison Escape Artist: Shah Kavadh I. "Alas, though the Fortress of Oblivion continued to have a very very cool name, it also continued to be very very bad at containing Kavadhs."
  • Jack Sheppard, an early 18th century London thief, became famous for this after breaking out of increasingly secure prisons and making London authorities look like chumps. (And London sentiment at the time was very anti-authority after the English government's South Sea Bubble screwed them over.)
• Private Military Contractors: The Urbino Episode states that these are what the city-states of Italy used to fight wars against each other and that Federico da Montefeltro commanded one as a means of bringing money to Urbino.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain:
  • Ned Kelly starts out as a strong kid who saves another boy from drowning, and gets a scarf for it, gets pushed into crime by an unjust system of wealthy landowners and crooked cops trying to keep his family down, tries to keep up some standards by only killing in self-defense and maintaining a rough chivalry and code of conduct among his gang, and finally gets caught after a bloody standoff following an attempt to derail a train to kill hundreds of cops.
  • Temujin starts out as a boy living in the cruel world of the Mongol steppes and scraping by to survive with his mother and siblings. But he murders his brother to gain control of the family, starting down the path that will lead him to massacre millions of civilians across Asia in pursuit of his imperial ambitions.
• Proud Merchant Race: Discussed in the series on the empire of Majapahit, which projected power as much with its control over trade through the Strait of Malacca as through maritime force of arms.
• Pull-the-Trigger Provocation: In "The Seminal Tragedy", as Tsar Nicholas agonises over signing an order to declare war on Germany, an aide de camp approaches him and tries to comfort him with the words "Majesty, we know how difficult it must be for you to decide"... not realising that the one thing the Tsar hates above all else is the idea that others perceive him as a weak, indecisive leader. Hearing these words convinces him to sign the declaration of war that begins World War One.
• Rage Against the Legal System: Ned Kelly goes on one after the the Australian police keep bullying him and his family. Treated as completely justified because the police are shown to be corrupt bullies who serve evil rich landholders at the expense of poor farmers.
• Recurring Location: Whether by creator preference or its importance to history as the crossroads of the Old World, that many named city on the Bosphorus plays a part or is the center of many series in the show.
• Revenge Before Reason: Admiral Yi may have been one of the greatest war assets of the Korean navy and largely responsible for repelling the Japanese invasion, but that doesn't stop his enemies in the Korean bureaucracy from trying to stifle him, get him demoted out of the military and tried for treason.
• Revenge by Proxy:
  • See Cycle of Revenge above, and note that none of the targets of revenge had anything to do with the previous transgression. The civilians killed by the Eleanora weren't the ones who killed the crewman, the four crewmen of The Fair American weren't the ones who massacred the civilians.
  • Also discussed in Cycle of Revenge, this was common in Steppe tradition. Temujin's mother Hoelun had been kidnapped from her tribe and forced to marry Temujin's father. Over 20 years later, her tribe decide to "avenge" her by kidnapping her son's wife, just because she was a young woman from the tribe that kidnapped . (To add insult to injury, they chose not to "rescue" Hoelun since she was an old widow now, and their soldiers raped the girl they kidnapped.)
• Rightful King Returns: After being removed from power, Chetshwayo was reinstalled as ruler of the Zulus by the British; the very people who removed him from power in the first place. The reason he was reinstalled was a combination of his popularity within Britain as an eloquent, civilized king, and that the puppet rulers the British put in power after imprisoning Chetshwayo were fighting among themselves and the British hoped he could bring some stability to the area.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Implied to be why Belisarius disobeys Emperor Justinian and finishes off the Ostrogothic Kingdom, as the end of the Gothic War was shown as happening soon after the Massacre of Mediolanum.
  • Also implied to be the cause for the Battle of Blood River; in the mini-series on the Zulus, they murder Boer men who came to negotiate peacefully and then after they attacked the undefended wagon train where those men's families were. The next Boer wagon train to come that way was armed to the teeth and mad as hell ...
  • Played straight with Admiral Yi, who at the end of the war assaults and destroys the Japanese navy as they attempt to evacuate from Korea. The reason the episode started for him doing this is to punish the Japanese forces for their war-crimes in Korea.
  • Following the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Churchill has a personal order for every available ship in the Atlantic and they follow it as well as transmit it over the airwaves. The order? Sink the Bismarck. Sink the Bismarck. Sink the Bismarck.
• Rule of Cute: Pretty much every single video's artwork is super adorable. Especially this part of a Sengoku video.
• Running Gag: In the Sengoku Jidai episodes,there are two words: Warrior monks. That is all.
  • Heck, even a Freaking "Super Monk" appears near the end!!
  • Robert Walpole and his connections to everything ever.
  • An otherwise wise and intelligent king making the spectacularly boneheaded decision of splitting his kingdom between all of his heirs, who then proceed to grow jealous of each other and destroy everything he created in a civil war. It happens so often that at the end of Kingdom of Majapahit: The Golden Reign, Matt hangs a mocking lampshade on it by singing to the tune of The Itsy, Bitsy Spider.
    The pretty decent king split the crown between his heirs.
    Down dropped his head, and they started throwing chairs!
    Succession crises lead to civil war,
    and the pretty decent kingdom was doomed to be no more!
  • Whenever Admiral Yi is sent to drill his men, he's shown holding a power drill to a soldier's head.
  • Throughout the Viking Expansion series, whenever it introduces a king or a ruler with an unflattering epithet (Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, Michael the Drunkard), it adds "Yes, really."
• Second Love: In "Viking Expansion - The Serpent-Riders", the unnamed Norwegian Merchant that the story follows ends up being divorced by his wife because she didn't want to share the demands of his career. He ends up remarrying, and his second wife is the one who buries him when he dies.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: How Justinian's ambition to rescue the Byzantine Empire ends up. Aside from his code of laws and the Hagia Sophia, almost all he fought for was undone at the very end, and in less than a century all his territorial gains will recede once more and the dream of reviving The Roman Empire would remain a dream.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy: The Opium Wars were this for China, as it marked the first of many cracks in an Empire that had seen itself as stable and prosperous and entirely isolated. The treaties are known in China and other parts of Asia as "the unequal treaties".
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: In episode four of The First Opium War mini-series, Charles Elliot's ship was smashed against a rock. He survived, but had to swim several miles to shore to avoid being imprisoned and perhaps killed by a nearby Chinese ship. He reached the shore, was greeted by British soldiers... and promptly told that he had been fired months ago.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are several, but the most obvious one is in The Broad Street Pump mini-series. Whenever they show a miasma-proponent poo-pooing John Snow's research, they always say "You know nothing, John Snow!".
    • Ned Stark also shows up when they assure us that, yes, his name really was John Snow.
  • In The South Sea Bubble, when talking about Robert Knight adding phony names to his ledger in an attempt to hide the rampant corruption in the British government, some of the fake names he added include Ser Jorah Mormont, Micky the Mouse, and Bart.
  • In the episodes on the Constitution when Alexander Hamilton is introduced they draw him doing the pose from the Hamilton posters.
  • Nelson Muntz shows up during a diagram of the Uesugi taking over the Takeda in the fourth Sengoku Jidai episode.
  • In the second D-Day episode, a image showing King George VI doing a inspection visit and being shown in a movie theater is a direct shoutout to the Gracie Films intro, complete with the shushing woman.
  • Later, when talking about the Enigma codes, the unreadable German message is "fhqwhgads".
  • When Justinian hires an assassin to kill Vitalian, the assassin wears a white cape with a beak-shaped hood and is armed with a hidden blade.
  • Admiral Yi realising the dire straits their costal defences are in is represented by him looking at a music album labelled Dire Straits
  • The Viking Expansion episodes feature a couple of Professional Wrestling shout outs, with cameo appearances by Famous B, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks.
  • "Agincourt" has guest narrator David Crowther quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail, claiming that the French told Henry V that "his mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries".
  • Matthew compares Joan of Arc 's expected role to be like Captain America's: show up in fancy armor, bring supplies, boost morale, and basically be a glorified mascot while the army does the actual fighting. Like Captain America, she's not having it, and charges into the fray. Additionally, Joan got taunted by the English soldiers in a reverse of what happened in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (where it was the French who taunted the English hero): "Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!"
    • When Joan states to be on a "mission from God" upon joining the army, she briefly appears dressed as one of The Blues Brothers.
  • In the "Policing London" series, Matt's line describing Jonathan Wild as "Lord of the Underworld" is accompanied by a shot of Wild standing in front of a werewolf.
  • At the beginning of "The Siege of Vienna", They take a break to explain why they're calling it Instanbul while technically it was still officially Constantinople, while showing an image of Montana Max chasing a camel-riding Plucky and Hamton across the desert with the caption (People just liked it better that way).
• Shown Their Work: In the first episode on the Ethiopian Empire, they make a joke about the King of Norway being mistaken for Santa Claus. This is accompanied by a picture of king Harald V of Norway drawn in his actual likeness (and with his name displayed to the side for those who didn't get it).
• Sibling Team: Henry and John Fielding, who worked together to build London's first police force.
• Slasher Smile: Appears sometimes.
  • The Mongols have these whenever they go raiding.
  • The surgeon who killed Jayanagara was also sporting one before taking his revenge.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: At the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the English were the Slobs to the French's Snobs, with French being the language of nobility and English being the language of the peasants and commoners. This is even displayed in how the two armies fought; the French relied on heavily armored, aristocratic knights, while the English relied heavily on the humble, lightly-armored peasant longbow archers.
• Socially Scored Society: The video "Propaganda Games: Sesame Credit - The True Danger of Gamification" discusses Alibaba's Sesame Credit algorithm, which purportedly analyzed/"gamified" users' online activity and score them. According to the video, users could raise their scores by doing things in accordance with the party line.
• The Sons and the Spears: In Hiawatha, The Peacemaker demonstrates this trope to the warriors of the five tribes to show them that they are better off as allies than fighting amongst themselves.
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • Despite almost single-handedly fighting off a raiding party while heavily pregnant, Freydis from "Wine Land" ends up being scolded by the men of her village for her unwomanly behaviour.
  • A random peasant girl claims to receive visions from God Himself to lead the French army to victory against the English and their Burgundian allies and have King Charles VII crowned the rightful king of a united France? Ha ha! Yeah right. Run back home, girlie. Oh wait, you might be legit? Ehh... just stand there and look pretty. War rooms and battlefields are no place for a teenage girl—hey wait, get back here!^note Admittedly, Joan was a peasant girl with no military experience. Divine mission or not, putting her in charge of a military campaign would be a terrible idea. She was mostly a Hope Bringer, a symbol for the French that God was on their side
• Superweapon Suspense Subversion: In the opening of episode 3 of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as tensions run high between Russia, Cuba and America, Dan describes a Soviet bomber dropping a bomb 20 times as powerful as the one used on Hiroshima ... it's a standard atmospheric test taking place in the Arctic Circle, and was scheduled before the crisis began.
• Symbolic Weapon Discarding: In part 2 of Hiawatha, the Peacemaker orders the former warriors of the five tribes to bury their weapons beneath the roots of a white pine tree as a symbol of them rejecting their war-like past.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: The team has a knack of making some of the most controversial people in history seem relatable. The audience can some to pity Genghis Kahn, Ned Kelly, and Grigori Rasputin while their heinous actions are brought to light.
• Take That!: Their Recently Deleted History series of Youtube Shorts are jabs at bigoted government censorship online in the 2020s.
• Take Up My Sword: In "Policing London - The Bow Street Runners", Henry Fielding basically assembled what was the first real police force in London and did so out of a personal desire to fight crime. The episode ends with him dying of gout and cirrhosis, and with his brother John Fielding taking over his post.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Because of the way military and political hierarchies functioned in the Inca Empire, generals were discouraged from acquiring too much glory during their campaigns, as it made them potential rivals to the emperor and increased the risk of him ordering their execution when they returned home.
• Tragic Dream: Toussaint Louverture hoped to build a peaceful, racially-integrated post-slavery Haiti, and to bind up the wounds of war. Despite his incredible ability, he fell short, partly due to structural problems of an economy designed to be dysfunctional thrice over, partly due to feeling he had to enforce autocratic actions he disliked through military force to keep the fledgling nation together and free, the machinations of France and the other global powers, power struggles among the revolutionaries blossoming into civil war... He'd lost that battle before Napoleon's armies even invaded Saint-Domingue.
• Tragic Hero: Both Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus come of as this. They wanted the best for the people of Italy, but face opposition, betrayal, cruel murder and ultimately the consequences of their actions pave the way for the end of the Republic.
• Two-Act Structure: The "Justinian & Theodora" series has two distinct halves, with the first half ending with the Byzantine Empire finally retaking Rome, and the second half detailing the several disasters that ultimately undid almost all of their progress.
• Undying Loyalty: Admiral Yi Sun-sin was repeatedly screwed over by his own government, falsely accused and imprisoned for crimes he didn't commit, demoted from naval officer to the rank of common soldier multiple times, but still fought and died to save his country. Its little wonder he was called "The Martial Lord of Loyalty" after his death.
• Unluckily Lucky: Ibn Battuta had such a remarkable history of travelling that it's hard to tell if he was Born Lucky or Born Unlucky, ending up in wild positions of power and losing everything immediately several times. The most drastic showcase of this was during his mission by the Sultan of Dehli to China: in just a few weeks, he was separated from his caravan after a bandit raid, robbed, nearly executed, and was left stranded and almost starving to death. Miraculously, he was taken in by a Muslim samaritan who was able to reunite him with his mission... which not only proceeded to disembark on ship without him, but ended up either sinking in a storm or seized and never heard from again, leaving him not only broke and stranded, but a failure in the eyes of the mad Sultan.
  Matthew: You know, I don't think the universe liked Ibn Battuta being rich.
• Un-person: Because of the damage his religious reforms did to ancient Egyptian society and the economy, Pharaoh Akhenaten's name is stricken from all historical records by one of his successors. It's only due to a lucky archaeological find of several intact cuneiform tablets that modern archaeologists even know of his existence.
• The Usurper: Kamehameha the Great. He was prophesied at birth to hold this position, and after the previous king died Kamehameha used his control over the war god to take over the kingdom.
• Villainous Legacy: Robert Moses's racist method of developing urban infrastructure by displacing minority neighborhoods was copied by cities all across America.
• Visual Pun:
  • When talking about Kavadh becoming a Mazdakite a kite with Mazdak's face on it is shown.
  • Any time Dan talks about Yi "drilling his men" in "Admiral Yi", it's depicted as him holding a power drill against a soldier's head.
  • During the April Fool's video about "Ra Ra Rasputin", Zoey and Empress Alexandra ride bales of hay while Matt narrates "hey, hey, hey..."
• War Elephants: Hannibal's famous use of elephants against the Romans is discussed in "The Punic Wars"; Dan notes that given most Roman soldiers had probably never heard of or seen an elephant before they went into battle against the Carthaginians, it's probably the closest thing to a "humans versus monsters" fight that's ever occurred in real life.
• War Is Hell: This series does not hide the horrors of warfare. From the exuberantly high casualty rates to the widespread atrocities, war is shown in its bloody detail.
  • "The Seminal Tragedy", "The First Crusade", and "The Punic Wars" are especially gruesome in their descriptions of war's horrors.
  • It is this mindset that causes Hiawatha (a man who lost his wife and eldest daughter to warfare), Jigonsaseh (a woman who spent years making peace between individual warriors from rival tribes), and The Peacemaker (who convinced his tribe to abandon warfare) to set out to unite the Five Haudenosaunee Nations under The Law of Peace.
  • The Saipan series emphasizes the high casualties suffered by both the Americans and Japanese.
• Warrior Heaven: When Eric Bloodaxe, the last Danelaw King, is killed by one of his own men his family commissions a poem showing him ascending to Valhalla.
• Warts and All: The crew makes an effort to show the Great Men of history with nuance. Frederick The Great is depicted as an enlightened autocrat and brilliant warrior king...who was also misogynistic and antisemitic.
• Wham Line:invoked The South Sea Bubble mini-series ends with The Narrator dropping the anvil on the dangers of letting political power and big money "oversee" each other in the "interest" of common people, and finishes with this:
  Dan: I think it is a good lesson. I hope we learn it someday.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?:
  • ...to surrender all the French lands conquered by England during the Hundred Years War, in exchange for a french noblewoman as a bride and an incredibly vague promise of peace? King Henry VI, that's who.
  • When discussing the political ambitions of Goodwin Wharton, a man who deluded himself into believing he was King of the Faeries, Matt comments on how absurd it would be to elect someone with such extreme and delusional beliefs into a position of power in the modern era, while Zoe gives an Aside Glance to the camera.
• The Wicked Stage: Played Straight with Julie d'Aubigny, who spent years as a singer at the Paris Opera. During her tenure, she dueled and slept with many of her co-stars regardless of gender.
• The Wise Prince: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. He was a supporter of Serbia, which made his assassination by a Serbian all the more horrific in the eyes of The Austro-Hungarians.
• Worthy Opponent: François Capois, also known as Capois the Death, was leading a charge when his horse was blown apart by a cannonball at the Battle of Vertières, then his hat shot off his head when he stood up. Undaunted, he continued to lead the charge. The entire French army cheered and applauded his bravery, and even General Rochambeau, a racist who'd imported man-eating dogs to put down the insurrection, had a horseman ride out to the enemy lines to complement him.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Enforced with Kamehameha the Great and his Law of the Splintered Paddle. He outright stated that every man, woman, and child should be safe to sleep on the side of the road and that anyone who attacked them would be executed.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: In "Wine Land", Freydis leads her group of explorers to murder some rival settlers, but the men from her group refuse to kill the five women in the rival group, forcing Freydis to kill them herself.
• Written by the Winners: An interesting aversion in the case of the Haitian revolution, since the eventual winners, the enslaved peoples who won their freedom, were deliberately kept illiterate by their former owners and couldn't keep records of their own, forcing a bit of detective work in piecing together their history.
• You Shall Not Pass!: The 21 Sikh officers manning the communication post of Saragarhi. When the Afghan tribes rebelled against British Rule, these officers fight them off for as long as possible. Every single one of them is killed, but they take down hundreds of rebels with them and their sacrifice allows Fort Gulistan and Fort Lockhart to fortify themselves and suppress the rebellion.

Tropes which Extra Sci-Fi provides an example of:

• Apocalypse How: An entire set of videos were devoted to examining various fictional apocalypses, and what messages they had for their times, as well as today.
• Art Evolution: Extra Sci-Fi's artwork has also evolved, starting with a more or less Extra History style for humans and humanoids, then mixing that style with a more realistic style for humanoid aliens and monsters, and now currently tends to reserve its classic style mostly for real life figures — though the styles do still mix to the point of having realistic humans mixed with super-deformed humans in the same frame.
• Author Filibuster: On the one hand, Robert A. Heinlein's quasi-libertarian politics show through in his science fiction writing and make for fascinating and influential ideas and topics of discussion. On the other hand, they are frequently perhaps a bit shallow and sophomoric where it counts, such as exploring free love in a manner that, in practice if not in philosophy, basically just lets the male main character sleep around without getting attached, ignoring that the colonists in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress were only able to build their superior libertarian society thanks to a supercomputer built with government funding that they steal for themselves, or presenting and idealizing a government in Starship Troopers which demands harsh government service to earn franchise. And they describe his later work as degenerating into an almost obsessive examination of incest.
• Colbert Bump: Invoked. They are not so subtle trying to do this with obscure but important Science Fiction authors. James completely shamelessly dedicates an entire episode to Lord Dunsany, the forgotten father of Fantasy, up to the point of publishing an edition of his short stories in order to "Save him from Obscurity."
• Dystopia: A video series goes through the origins of the dystopian novel, discussing where the genre came from and how we can interpret it today.
• Fair for Its Day: Invoked.
  • In the Weird Tales episode, they say that Robert E. Howard was an avowed feminist... for the time (1920s and 30s).
  • Their opinion of Isaac Asimov. He was progressive for his time but bits of post-war America culture still influence his works, in particular his belief that obedience to rightful authority is a cornerstone of morality in his robot stories.
  • Pointedly averted with John W. Campbell. They flat-out describe him as a racist and explicitly state that they see no reason to sugar-coat that statement, before going into damning detail about his impassioned defenses of slavery and segregation. They also make no bones about his authoritarian politics and love of Scientology.
• Infodump: The earlier science fiction stories in the first science fiction magazines, before Campbell revolutionized the genre, thought it was important to always use the medium to teach the reader about how the marvelous devices within worked. Unfortunately, this didn't exactly make for riveting fiction.
• New Wave Science Fiction: Detailed in one part of the video series about the early work of William Gibson, and touched on in a few others, as the sea change away from the Golden Age of idea-driven science fiction towards a more literary approach to the genre.
• "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: Invoked. This happens to Isaac Asimov. His ideas were mind-blowing at the time they were released but they were so influential that they seem unoriginal to modern readers.
• Space Opera: Discussed in their video on Asimov's Foundation stories. While the idea of an interstellar empire is laughable in any logistical sense, and psycho-history is essentially ridiculous, the Hand Wave lets the writer explore a great story with great themes anyway.
• Warts and All: Their even-handed video on John W. Campbell. On the one hand, a talented writer and editor who almost single-handedly dragged the genre into the Golden Age, with his exacting standards for science and writing quality and his desire to make it into something meaningful beyond pulpy escapism or a dry vehicle to educate, who pushed forward the careers of many of the science fiction's greatest early masters. On the other hand, a narrow-minded reactionary, authoritarian bigot, frequently enthralled by pseudoscience, who, by using his influence to limit what could and could not be published, based on his personal vision and private bugbears, put arbitrary limits on what science fiction was or could be that the next generation of authors would need to outgrow.

Tropes which Extra Mythology provides an example of:

• Affably Evil: The Alpha Alp from "The Alps - Sleep Paralysis & Night Terrors - European - Extra Mythology" is quite an encouraging and friendly sort for a demon of night terrors, chastisting his fellow alps for taunting one of their own for losing their hat (the source of the Alps' powers), pointing out that they've all lost their hat at one point, and praised another Alp for accidentally being stuck as a human woman and starting a family with one of his targets, noting how those children would eventually become new Alps. And when the Alp who lost his hat decides to leave to get his hat back, the Alpha Alp gleefully proclaims that they would join him to spread terror...after he makes sure to pay his bar tab.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Book of Job is explored with a video subtitled "A Very Bad Tuesday". To hammer it home:
  Matt: And as for God and Satan, it was just kind of another Tuesday.
• The Cameo: Red and Blue make a cameo on December 3, 2018 episode, "Izanami and Izanagi" to promote a crossover for their Jorogumi video.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In "The Alps - Sleep Paralysis & Night Terrors - European - Extra Mythology", the Alpha Alp is portrayed as this. Alps are shown to be bringers of night terrors, nightmares, and sleep paralysis, but the Alpha Alp befriended a Protestant Midwife...who had the misfortune of being born in Wurzburg, Germany in the 1600s, when the German Catholics was using the excuse of witchcraft in order to execute anyone who wasn't Catholic. When his dear friend was one of those killed, the Alpha Alp tormented the bishop who ordered her killed in return, to the point of causing said bishop's heart to burst from sheer terror and hours of psychological torture.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: The Warlock in "Warlocks and Warriors" tells the soldier that the only way to kill him would be to burn his body on a pyre of aspen logs, then kill all the vermin that burst from his body.
• Fire Keeps It Dead:
  • In "Wendigo", the hearts of the wendigo family are burned in a fire to melt the ice around them and prevent them from resurrecting.
  • In "Warlocks and Warriors", a fire of 100 aspen logs is the only thing that can finally kill the warlock.
• Framing Device: Each video is framed as Matt telling two people at a campfire one of the myths.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Singing the chorus of "You're Welcome" couldn't be helped in "Maui", but it was substituted for synonyms for the phrase to avoid being sued by Disney.
• Mood Whiplash: Izanami has just unleashed the Shikome on Izanagi and is going to chase the god out of the underworld.
  Matt: It was then, everyone decided...it was slapstick time~! (cue Yakity Sax)
• Nightmare Face: The Strigoi. Check the page image of the Nightmare Fuel page for the disturbing imagery.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: "Izanami and Izanagi" has Izanagi being chased by the Shikome as Yakity Sax plays in the background.
• Too Dumb to Live: Shown in the "Samson" videos, where it's pointed out how normal, rational people (or, as the videos say, "being good and upstanding gentlemen") would have done to avoid troubles... Oh wait, they didn't! Instead, the cast ends up doing stupid things that screw them over:
  • After Samson reveals his riddle about the lion and the bees, the guests, instead of forfeiting fairly and giving Samson the clothes, proceed to threaten Samson's bride-to-be to burn her house down, which leads to the case below.
  • After Samson hears the answer to the riddle, unfair method it may be, instead of working his ass off to fulfill the deal and give the guests the clothes he made with his own hands, he instead murders multiple men from another town and gives the murdered men's clothes as the prize. This has the effect of his bride-to-be ending up being married off to someone else while he was away.
  • After seeing his wife married off to someone else, Samson could have had the chance to contemplate and think of how he should rebuild his life. But instead, he ties up 300 foxes, puts a torch on their tails, and sets fire to the fields of the bride's family, which spreads like wildfire to other people's fields...
  • The people then gather and eventually realize that this was all Samson's doing, and they know the reason why he did it: Because of his anger at being cheated over and over. Rather than coming to an understanding of Samson's grief and giving him a pass just this time because it was also their mistake, the people instead come over to the bride's family and burn everyone there on a stake.
  • Averted after the people see Samson beating up the Philistines with the jaw of a donkey. The most reasonable course of action from that is to make Samson a judge, and that's exactly what the people do.
  • Finally, to end all Too Dumb to Live moments, we have the infamous Samson and Delilah scenario: After fooling Delilah with Fake Weakness so many times, Samson could have finally put the pieces together that Delilah is trying to screw him over, so he could just dump her and go back to being the judge again. But no, he instead tells his real weakness, leading to his capture and blinding.

Tropes which Side Quest provides an example of:

• Catchphrase: "Argh, dog!" every time Dan gets jumped by a dog.
• Death Montage: Doesn't happen quite as often as you might expect during Dan Plays Dark Souls, but one notable example is when he tries to fight Seath the Scaleless, and repeatedly gets flattened by his tail lash attack, as they edit out all of the return trips back to the boss chamber, only for Dan to die extremely quickly, forcing him to do it again.
  • After Dan completed his playthrough of Dark Souls 2 and Dan Jones was embarking on one of Bloodborne, they put out a complete compilation video of all 115 of Dan's deaths in Dark Souls 1, then soon followed it with another one of all 210 deaths he had in Dark Souls 2.
• Failed a Spot Check: Dan sometimes overlooks something he passes right by. He encourages commentators to let him know he passed something interesting after the fact so he can come back and check it out, but prefers if people avoid spoilers.
  • A particularly strong example is in the Tomb of the Giants, throughout which Dan repeatedly complained that he wished he had some kind of light source. That he did not make the connection to the Skull Lantern he found a few hours earlier in the Catacombs is understandable, that he picked up another Skull Lantern in the Tomb and missed the hint there is less so. Lampshaded by Dan himself in the comments after he uploaded it.
    Dan: Skull Lantern, cool. Already got one, but that's alright [...] I'm tired of not being able to see any— [...] I do not enjoy not being able to see.
    Dan: [later in the comments] If only I possessed some sort of EQUIPPABLE ITEM which happened to double as a light source!
• Rage Quit: Dan was able to stand up to pretty much everything the Dark Souls trilogy could throw at him... until near the end of Dark Souls II he realised that he had to fight his way through the entire final stage of the Dark Chasm of Old (which cost a Human Effigy even to attempt) before he could even take a shot at beating Darklurker. Then he just threw in the towel.
  Dan: All right. I'm feeling prepared to give this one more- [Killed Mid-Sentence] ...OK.
• Rule of Cool: During the #3 play for Bound, Dan says that the artist/animator in him believes strongly in the rule of, "I don't care, it's cool."
• Standard Snippet: The intro to all three seasons features the famous opening riff from Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger"—appropriate for a series that's all about gitting gud while having the crap beaten out of you.