Traitor Tropes

This page is, of course, a homage to the TV Tropes site. Many often-used tropes in fiction show up in the Traitor Games, too, and this page will attempt to list a few examples.

Describe The Traitor Games here.

The Traitor Games are kind of hard to describe, really. They're a variation of the popular 'Mafia' and 'Werewolf' games, combined with a Massive Multiplayer Crossover RPG featuring characters from comic books, TV, film, and just about every other genre possible.

Though the settings and hosts change from game to game, the basic premise remains. The antagonist host has chosen two or three of the characters to be the 'Traitors', who are out to eliminate everyone else one by one. The other players have to find out who they are, and vote to have whoever they believe to be a Traitor banished. Of course, they have very little evidence, especially early in the game, and are likely to banish many innocent players before the game is out.

In order to liven up the game, many other elements are included, including mini-game competitions and boss battles. Some of these are just to encourage role-playing and keep players from becoming too bored if a round goes on too long, while others may involve special prizes that the player might use to gain immunity from elimination, or an extra vote change.

NOTE: Because this page is getting overly large, we are in the process of moving specific examples from specific games to the following pages.

Traitor Tropes Year One, for tropes specific to the first year's worth of games. Traitor Tropes Year Two, for tropes specific to second year games, Traitor Tropes Year Three, for tropes specific to third year games. Traitor Tropes Year Four, for tropes specific to fourth year games.

The Traitor Games contain examples of several tropes, including...


 * Aborted Arc - The 'Organization' subplot was abandoned when its originator realized he could never pull it off. A few other subplots have also been more or less abandoned when their originators leave the games for one reason or another.
 * Affably Evil - A number of villainous characters could fall into this category
 * Action Girl - Many of the characters played by Chris Lang and tangentman could fall into this category. Namora and Namorita also qualify.
 * Alternate Continuity - Many characters, plot points, and even the plot of their own series get entangled into the Traitor Games. Very rarely, you'll see a character otherwise unaffected by participating in a TG. Indeed, a few times some players have specifically mentioned their characters come from an alternate/divergent reality.
 * Alternate Universe - Well, the main divergence being that the players are sucked into a crazy crossover whodunnit game whose rules are a variation of the Mafia/Werewolf party games... (It can also double as quite a few locations).
 * And The Adventure Continues - Many epilogues have the characters go off on other adventures after they return to their home worlds.
 * Badass Adorable - Hit-Girl, after memory restoration in Traitor Game: Enrichment Activity.
 * Bedlam House - Arkham Asylum.
 * Big Bad - The antagonist host, most of the time.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment -- Some contributors, such as Purple Skull and Deadpooligan, contribute big, over-the-top scenes that have little or no connection with the story, don't make much sense, and aren't talked about IC much (if at all) afterward. Still, many scenes, such as banters done by Booster Gold & Blue Beetle or Quantum & Woody, prove to be widely entertaining and gains much positive feedback from the Traitor Game Community.
 * Big No - Darth Vader's infamous Big No from Revenge of the Sith has been parodied here, just like everywhere else on the Internet.
 * BFG - Akira, Dover, and Wolf.
 * BLAM Episode - The Awards Show was intended as this, but didn't quite work out that way.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall - The Warners, Goombella, Team Rocket, Deadpool, Thorpool, Deadpooligan, Psycho Mantis, Dover, The Purple Skull (the character, not the actual poster)
 * Caustic Critic - Bingo.
 * Cloudcuckoolander - RZ's characters in general, excepting Gordon Freeman, Mecha-Talon, Nathan Zachary, and whatever else he's fit into his line-up. Most obvious: Dover, who, at one point, manages to confuse The Mask, and Gordon Frohman. Other examples: Thorpool, Deadpooligan II. Other, other example: Patty Thompson. Hugh Manatee might also be considered this. Also Ragdoll.
 * Also, Haruko.
 * Continuity Nod - Some games are a direct result of events, major or minor, in other games.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome - Many characters, as well as the players who play them, have these. There's just too many to list in this article. The Awards Ceremonies are a way of addressing just a few of them.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny -- The Purple Skull, Schornforce, and Deadpooligan have those. A lot. Thank them. Jeremi tries his gosh darn best as well, mostly failing miserably.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - Ukyo and Meowth's friendship, Love Child and Terri's forgiving the Teens, Charon deciding to take care of his child.
 * Deadpan Snarker - Marvin. Emma Frost. Also, Kyon to some extent. And Bingo, who is inspired by Yahtzee.
 * Depraved Bisexual - Vamp.
 * Deus ex Machina - Occasionally employed when someone is stuck on how to get a character out of a mess, but more often played for laughs or parodied.
 * Plops (and their variants), when present in the game, can grant players immunity, extra votes, and other benefits for good roleplaying (or just Crowning Moments of Awesome and/or Crowning Moments of Funny)
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu - Chances are, if your player is omnipotent, there's always a way for you to die. Such as Anti-Monitor being struck by his own cannon then eaten by a Sun-Eater, or Belldandy babality-d.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him - Many of the Traitor Kills, but most of their victims end up getting better anyway.
 * Dysfunctional Family - The Sunderlands, especially during James Sunderland's epilogue.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending - While things might end on a good note for many of the characters, they're still put through a lot of misery before they get there.
 * Evilly Affable - Vandal Savage. He has little or no redeeming qualities, but he's still very entertaining.
 * Expy - Vision 4.7 = HK-47.
 * Al, agent of Viper, and Fred, engineer of FIRE are clearly Bob and Karl expies.
 * Bingo is Yahtzee without any redeeming qualities.
 * Flanderization - Many of the inhabitants of Purple Skull's Variant Marvel Universe fit into this, and so do Masterbasset's Arnold and Paris. In fact, most 'celebrity parody' characters are indeed the result of taking existing traits and exaggerating them.
 * Follow The Leader - The Convergence Series on Storytellers Circle. Still very active, and featuring some Traitor Gamers.
 * GeorgeLucasThrowback - Golden Days of Yore only featured comic book characters from or modeled after the Golden Age of comics.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere - some 'battle exercises' feature opponents who were not even hinted at earlier in the game.
 * Gratuitous Italian - Beetlebum's characters will randomly speak Italian at given intervals, for no other reason than it was based on a capricious whim. Justified with the Huntress, since she is Italian.
 * Have a Nice Death - And how!. To elaborate, a number of the Traitor kills are very elaborate, and sometimes played for dark comedy.
 * Hoisted By Their Own Petard - Many traitor kills.
 * Anti-Monitor... twice.
 * How We Got Here - Every intro describes how the character is yanked from their homeworld into the current game.
 * Humiliation Conga - A number of Purple Skull's antagonists are subjected to some variation of this.
 * Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain - Team Rocket, and of course Dick Dastardly (but that's just being true to their source material).
 * Jerkass - Many. Vandal Savage, Marvin, Evinlea, Gasmask, Superdick, Bingo, Deadpooligan I, Devil Ray, Master Shake...
 * Les Yay - Lady Noh and Ultimate Spider-Woman. It ends in sex, and we're not making this up.
 * Satan Girl and Powerwoman. (tangentman: Only hinted at. Never happened.)
 * Love Child & Terri Franklin.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters - The overflood of NPCs in Legion, the Time Warp in Limbo Legion.
 * Mean Character, Nice Actor - Since the Traitor Games are basically a Cast of Writers, some of them do have to play the bad guy at times. But many of them are nice people outside the game, and get along pretty well with those playing the good guys.
 * Memetic Mutation - Jimmy Kudo, Batman dying, Guile and Bison.
 * ==I am ELEKTRA! I do not CARE!==
 * DoctorDoom's actual identity was a source of much mockery in the CBR community. Well, with some people. Others just raged and raged.
 * Mood Whiplash -- Kind of inevitable in this sort of thing. Some players will be doing serious bits, others comedic, and the two often come very close together.
 * Never Live It Down -- Peter Parker's Jimmy Kudo only knocked back the Hulk with a soccer ball once, but making fun of that especially ridiculous incident has become a running gag.
 * Less funnier, DoctorDoom being a man has caused much anger in some TG players and CBR posters. DoctorDoom's saying Starscream was a favorite character, and joking about betraying Deadpooligan, are now Funny Aneurysm Moments since many posters feel betrayed and lied to. On the other hand, jokes about DoctorDoom possibly being a man in real life, before the truth was uncovered, are now Hilarious In Hindsight.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero - Efforts to stop The Suicide Jack lead to the return of a slightly-less mad Deadpooligan in 'Custom Made for Calamity'.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot - Quite commonplace. The most obvious? Everyone-with-sinestro-rings, backed up by Mechagodzilla, and the entire gamut of DC supervillains, fighting Cloverfield, King Ghidorah, and Raven's daddy. Yes, it's those sort of RPs.
 * Mecha-Talon. A Velociraptor God of Survival with a jetpack, mechanical arm, and EYE BEAMS!
 * Lampshaded in Traitor Game 33, where in Arcade's Murderworld, Franziska von Karma finds herself faced with literal ninja pirate zombie robots.
 * One Winged Angel - Most traitor games end with a fight against the BigBad (the Host) or its minions.
 * Our Zombies Are Different - Zombies have appeared in several Traitor Games, mostly played for laughs. Radioactive Zombie wishes to host a Zombie Apocalypse themed scenario, entitled 'Traitor Game of the Living Dead'.
 * Otaku - Konata Izumi, obviously.
 * Overmaster.
 * Overused Running Gag - Batmen deaths, 'Knowing is Half the Battle'
 * Cake jokes.
 * CAAAAAAAKE JOKES
 * CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKEEE
 * Personal Space Invaders - The Lawbringers in "The Plop Thickens" and "Whom the Gods Would Destroy".
 * Previously, On... - Another running gag. Sometimes, a stuffy British voice will narrate previous events in a previous TG leading up to the current TG. Possibly intended to parody Anthony Stewart Head's doing this on 'Buffy'
 * Put On a Bus - What happens to most of the characters in the epilogues. Justified in the fact they're headed home or secured for future traitor game usage.
 * Running Gags - Too many to list here, which is why they've been given their own page on this wiki.
 * Sacrificial Lion - A number of crewmen die and Captain Hook's ship is destroyed to show just how dangerous the Kraken is in Traitor Game XXIV.
 * Scunthorpe Problem - Chris Lang ran into this when he tried to repost one of the earlier Traitor Games on a free to use forum.
 * Story-Breaker Team-Up - Difficult to avoid in crossovers like these, clearly. Some characters manage to work in the Traitor Game scenarios better than others.
 * Sunglasses At Night - Albert Wesker, obviously.
 * Squick - Hugh Manatee in a Slave Leia outfit.
 * Morph-Proteus/Satan Girl.
 * Take That - Too many to count. Just a few - Bennett calling Morrison's comics trash, Tommy's hatred of college students on vacation, and, finally, Peter Parker's many events and characters abused, killed, and mocked.
 * The Fool - Poor sweet innocent Ragdoll.
 * The Scrappy - RZ. Justified. Nearly ruining TG XVI, an illegal NPC, having obnoxious text, not reading prior events, and playing who was essentially a /b/-tard didn't help.
 * This seemed to have happened to Kefka as well, which makes Jeremi a sad, sad panda.
 * This is SPARTA - Dover's Spolp loves this. Of course, Dover's spolp resembles Leonidas, so.
 * Those Two Guys - Bob & Karl, of course!
 * Too Kinky To Torture - Ragdoll.
 * Troll - Bingo and Meru
 * Tsundere - Sif. Asuka, though she goes through a Defrosting Ice Queen phase (along with Rei). Reisuka mixes this with kuudere and yandere. Many of tangentman and Chris Lang's heroines are nice people ... except that you DON'T want to get on their bad sides.
 * Lampshaded/parodied when cameo character Nao Yuuki calls DarkWarrior Duck a Tsundere, much to his chagrin.
 * Tomato in the Mirror - Traitor Game VIII's Traitors were really Space Phantom impostors.
 * Too Much Information - Invoked in some of the banter.
 * What An Idiot - Talon and Dover. Master Shake is moving up the ladder.
 * ...Gordon Frohman. At one point, he unwittingly tries to kill himself... but gets knocked out by the doors to a pit that activates a nasty flamethrower.
 * Xanatos Gambit - Way too damn many, ranging from whole games part of a grander scheme, to universe-destroying capabilities, to selling out your fellow traitors.
 * Xanatos Roulette - Some of those schemes have relied on the schemer more or less depending on a character played, or a certain event that could be overturned at an moment (i.e.: banishments).
 * Yamato Nadeshiko - Belldandy.
 * Wolf (Anti-Matter version of The Fox from Wanted) appears to be one, at first, but LesYay turns her... quite loud.
 * Yandere - Reisuka. Crosses over with type-two Tsundere and kuudere. Chiri Kitsu is probably a better example.
 * Yangire - Franz Kafuka, obviously.
 * Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe - Thorpool. Gibson, occasionally.
 * You All Meet In An Inn - The inn being the current area the TGs are hosted in.
 * Yuri Fangirl - Wolf.
 * Yuppie Couple - Many one-post cameos or parodies.
 * Sean Connery often harasses RZ's characters out of the blue.
 * Wangst - Played for (no) laughs with Shinji Ikari.
 * And a bit more successfully with Nozomu Itoshiki.
 * WreakingHavok - Thanks to the powers of Souce's wonderful physics engine, Frohman flies toward various objects.
 * ...And creates an army of Mingebags from the dead clones during the confrontation with Conquest.
 * ZombieApocalypse - Traitor Game of the Living Dead.