RWBY



"Red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest White is cold and always yearning, burdened by the royal test Black the beast descends from shadows Yellow beauty burns gold"

In the world of Remnant, humanity clings to civilization in the face of the creatures of Grimm, a veritable army of monsters and supernatural forces. Only the power of a substance known simply as "Dust" allowed humanity to win the battle for its survival against the Grimm, and even now its creatures are only barely held at bay.

Responsible for defending human civilization from the forces of darkness are the Huntsmen and Huntresses, highly skilled individuals with unique weapons and a mastery of the use of Dust. These guardians are trained in special institutions, such as Beacon Academy in the city-state of Vale.

RWBY follows the story of four extraordinary girls and their friends as they make their way through their training at Beacon, and come face-to-face with not only the creatures of Grimm, but all-too-human threats to the survival of humanity in this dangerous world.

An innovative Web Animation series created by the late Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth, it was heralded months in advance by a series of carefully doled-out trailers ("Red", "White", "Black" and "Yellow"), which built up a remarkable level of excitement and speculation before its premiere in July 2013.

As of this writing it is currently halfway through the third of a projected ten volumes (seasons), which began broadcasting on 24 October 2015. In addition, a video game adaptation based on the series, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse was released on 1 December 2015 on PC as an Early Access "work-in-progress" in Steam.

A dedicated wiki exists for the show, containing a surprisingly vast amount of detail gathered from a wide variety of sources.

(List is compiled as episodes appear, and is subject to constant update/revision.) "Weiss: Are you telling me that this mangy... (the camera switches between Zwei and Weiss) drooling... mutt is gonna wiv wif us foweva? Oh yes he is, oh yes he is! Oh, isn't he adorable!"
 * Abandoned Area: Mountain Glenn, a failed attempt to expand the Kingdom of Vale to the southeast.  It's not clear if the name refers to the entire area, the Ghost City there, or both.
 * Absurdly Sharp Blade: Ruby's scythe, which can effortlessly slice were beowolves in half, chop down old-growth trees, and is capable of decapitating giant monsters.
 * Blake's gunblade Gambol Shroud effortlessly slices through armored security robots and a thick steel train coupling.
 * Action Girl: Pretty much every female character.
 * Alien Sky: Remnant is definitely not Earth, not with a shattered moon in the sky.
 * All Planets Are Earthlike: As seen briefly in one of the World of Remnant shorts, Remnant is a near-twin of Earth.
 * All There in the Manual: Starting in August 2014, Rooster Teeth began releasing World of Remnant videos -- short "history lessons" about the world -- on some of the "off weeks" between episodes.  All of them provide key information, some of which is particularly plot-relevant.
 * Alternate Universe: No argument. A broken moon in the sky, unfamiliar continents, active magic with technology, humanity besieged by hordes of monsters...
 * American Accents: In addition to the "default" accent imposed by being an American production, the two cops investigating the Dust shop robbery in V1E15 have distinct Joisey/Bronx accents.
 * Ancient Tradition:
 * Animation Bump: Overall, Volume 2 is a vast improvement over Volume 1.
 * Any time we see fighting, dancing or other action tends to be visibly better animation than people just walking around.
 * Although by the end of Volume 3, the walking and running animation has improved considerably.
 * Animesque: A deliberate style choice made by Monty Oum when planning the series.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Dust, the "energy propellant".  According to The World of Remnant, it has a thousand uses, from fuelling effects that look like magic spells, to powering tech like electricity, to essentially forming "cartridges" for guns.  It is directly responsible for human civilization and survival.
 * Art Evolution: The design for the beowolves changed between the release of the "Red" trailer and the series premiere in July 2013.
 * Art Shift: The "news broadcast" seen at the end of V1E1 is, or is made to look like, traditional animation instead of CGI.
 * Yang's Flash Back in V2E6 is presented in a completely different art style from anything we've seen before in the series.
 * The World of Remnant shorts use a very stylized, angular silhouette style reminisicent of paper cut-outs.
 * Artistic License Astronomy/Artistic License Physics: According to Word of God, Remnant's moon is not tidally locked the way Earth's is, allowing the shattered part to rotate into and out of view (which is why we sometimes see a full unbroken moon).  However, the general consensus is that a two-planet system like Earth-Moon or Remnant-Remnant!Moon will pretty much inevitably end up with at least one of the component worlds tidally locked to the other over the course of the usual "lifespan" of a solar system.  This of course assumes Remnant has about the same mass as Earth and its moon is similar in mass to ours, that it exists in a universe that (mostly) functions like ours, and that it wasn't artificially constructed along with its moon in geologically recent time.  Some of those assumptions might be safe.  Some... might not.
 * For instance, Remnant's moon is also either much closer to its primary than Earth's is, or much bigger -- in its smallest renderings it appears to have a significantly larger angular diameter than our moon does, and if the largest it appears is not artistic exaggeration it must also have a wildly elliptical orbit. Even if the "huge moon" is exaggeration, Remnant should still have tides everywhere that put the Bay of Fundy to shame.  Maybe it's crumbling because tidal stresses are tearing it apart...
 * Artsy Moon: If you consider being broken into a few dozen pieces "artsy".
 * Ascended Meme: In V2E4, Team RWBY uses some of the Fan Nicknames for the various shipping pairs as names for maneuvers and joint attacks.
 * In V3E2, Jaune tries to direct Team JNPR similarly, but apparently no one else on the team remembered what the combo names were. Or that they existed.
 * Badass Family: The extended Long-Rose-Branwen clan.
 * Bag of Holding: The mailing tube in which Yang and Ruby's father sent them Zwei, a small heap of canned dog food and a can opener.
 * Battle Aura: Demonstrated by Yang in her trailer as part of her fire powers, but also seems to be a visible manifestation of "aura" or a "semblance" in use.
 * Beast Folk: The Faunus, who are treated as second-class citizens.
 * Bellisario's Maxim: Invoked (along with the Rule of Funny) in the director's commentary track for volume 1 when discussing how Weiss and Ruby ended up clinging to the flying Nevermore.
 * [Bifurcated Weapon]]: A frequent feature of the weapons in this series.
 * Big Bad: Although as of Volume 2 this appeared to be Cinder Fall, the end of Volume 3 suggests that.
 * Big Ball of Violence: Ruby and Yang, the first night at Beacon.  Complete with the sound of That Poor Cat.
 * Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Blake's weapons seem to demonstrate this in the "Black" trailer.
 * Blah Blah Blah: Professor Port's first lecture turns into this as the camera focuses on Weiss's growing irritation with Ruby's behavior in class.  We get it again early in V2E3.
 * Blackmail: For about a quarter of Volume 1, Cardin uses  secret to basically turn him into a lackey and dogsbody.
 * Bland-Name Product: During the food fight in V2E1, vending machines for "Dr. Piper" soda (as well as "People Like Grapes") can be seen at the base of the "table mountain".
 * Ruby is holding a "juice box" of milk labelled "Udder Satisfaction" at the start of the fight.
 * Zwei's dog food is "Gentleman's Best Friend" brand.
 * Blank White Eyes: Numerous times in the series.
 * Bloodless Carnage: The closest thing we see to spraying blood are showers of rose petals.  See also No Body Left Behind below.
 * An odd case in V3E6 and E7: We never actually get to see.
 * Book Ends: The Jaune arc late in Volume 1 begins and ends with scenes on a roof.
 * Break the Cutie: What seems to be happening
 * Butt Monkey: Jaune in V1.  Lampshaded when he complains to Pyrrha that he wants to be more than just the "lovable idiot stuck in a tree while his friends are fighting for their lives."
 * By the Lights of Their Eyes: Several times, most notably during the "initiation" sequence early in V1.
 * Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: A mix of averted and expressed.  The obvious werewolves Ruby fights in the "Red" trailer are called beowolves, but many of the other creatures of the Grimm are original and have original names.
 * Cape Snag: Ruby in V1E8 when one of the Nevermore's Feather Flechettes pins her cloak to the ground.
 * Catapult to Glory: The final phase of Ruby's Crazy Enough to Work plan in V1E8 involved firing her at the Giant Nevermore using an immense slingshot improvised out of two stone pillars and Gambol Shroud's ribbon.
 * Chekhov's Gun: "Landing strategies" and the rocket-propelled lockers, by Word of God on the director's commentary track for Volume 1.
 * The rocket-propelled lockers showed up in use in V2E7. And get great use at the end of Volume 3.
 * And why did Ruby's silver eyes merit comment by Ozpin in V1E1?
 * Chekhov's News: In V1E2a, a newscast shows a relatively-peaceful protest by Faunus before it's switched over to Glynda welcoming the students to Beacon. V1E9 introduces (to those who haven't seen the prologue trailers) the White Fang, a not-at-all-peaceful Faunus terrorist group.
 * Chess Motifs: The "artifacts" recovered during the initiation in V1 are oversized chess pieces.
 * The cryptic message "Queen has pawns" Ozpin receives from Qrow in V1E16.
 * The image of a queen that briefly appears on all the screens in the communications tower after Cinder does... whatever she does in V2E7.
 * Chest Insignia: All of the girls in Team RWBY as well as a few other characters have distinctive symbols that are worn or appear on their equipment.
 * Ruby's rose symbol can be seen on her headphones in the first episode, and hangs on her belt near her right hip.
 * Weiss' snowflake is on the back of her jacket.
 * Blake's flower-like whatever-it-is can be seen at the top of one of her thigh-high stockings.
 * Yang wears her burning-heart insignia, partly hidden, on one breast. It also appears on her motorcycle helmet.
 * Nora uses a heart, which appears on her grenades and launcher and as the cutout of her decolletage. She also seems to have a stylized "hammer-in-a-circle" logo -- prominent during her "I'm queen of the castle" song-and-dance during the initiation arc and also appearing behind her silhouette during the closing credits of an episode late in Volume 1.
 * Chew Out Fake Out: Ruby expects Dr. Oobleck to chastise her when he sees that she's brought Zwei along to Mountain Glenn, only for him to call her a genius instead for bringing a useful resource.
 * Chirping Crickets: Tumbleweed variation only, during the first encounter with Penny.  Twice.  Blowing in two different directions.
 * Circling Birdies: When Ruby is momentarily stunned in V1E8, alternating stars and cartoon wolves orbit her head.
 * In the "Yellow" trailer, a stunned Junior momentarily is circled by a ring of hearts.
 * Color-Coded Elements: Definitely present, although not clearly universal, and clearly linked to the Color Motifs.
 * Color Motif: The production team explicitly designed the look of everything in the series around a specific system of colors/meanings.
 * Colourful Theme Naming: As noted under Theme Naming.  Revealed in V2E8 to be a deliberate in-universe political choice among the peoples of the world in defiance of some tyrannical enemy who -- among other things -- sought to suppress and destroy all individuality and artistic expression. Monty Oum encouraged naming OCs and OC teams using this convention.
 * Combat Stilettos:
 * Weiss's boots in her combat gear look to have a four-inch or higher heel. Lampshaded by Ruby in V2E6 when she has trouble just walking in similar heels at the dance and wonders how Weiss can fight in them.
 * In the "Yellow" trailer, Melanie and Militia Malachite wear high-heeled ankle boots.
 * Comic Book: In V2E2, Jaune is seen reading one entitled "XRay Ray".
 * Competence Zone: Realistically averted.  The main characters are supposed to be exceptional individuals, going to a school teaching them to be even more exceptional -- and their teachers are definitely more competent than they are, more than capable of teaching them things they need to know.  Other adults vary, just as they would in the real world.
 * Cranial Eruption: Happens to Weiss after her sister Winter smacks her in the head in V3E3.  Ruby pokes it back in.
 * Crash Into Hello: How Weiss met Ruby.  And how Weiss met Penny.
 * The Volume 1 director's commentary hinted that this might be a Running Gag for Weiss.
 * Cuteness Proximity: Weiss upon meeting Zwei:
 * Cuteness Proximity: Weiss upon meeting Zwei:

"Dr. Oobleck: (commenting on the action at the Vytal Festival Tournament) And yes, Peter, these are certainly some spectacular spectacles on which to spectate on."
 * Dances and Balls: A formal dance in V2E6 is the occasion for several important plot developments.
 * Death World: Remnant.  How humanity ever survived to achieve civilization is a miracle.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Neon and Flint's reaction to their defeat by Weiss and Yang in the Vytal Tournament.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: This line from V3E1:


 * For added Bonus Points, he's manipulating his glasses as he says this.

"Pyrrha: Why didn't you activate your aura? Jaune: Huh? Pyrrha: Your aura. Jaune: Gesundheit."
 * Detonation Moon: Appears to have happened to Remnant's moon at some point.
 * Did Not Do the Research: During early Volume 1 in 2013 Monty Oum got a blast of Internet Backdraft on names and their pronunciations:  "Weiss Schnee", for instance, is more correctly pronounced something like "Vice Shnay", and "Yang" should sound like "Yong".  Oum has offered a Hand Wave for this, pointing out that Remnant is not Earth and their similarity to terms in Earthly languages is a coincidence.
 * Also, Casey Williams for mispronouncing "Super-Saiyin" (sounds like "super-sighin'") as "Super-Sayin'" in "I Burn".
 * Diegetic Switch: Subverted.  In the opening scenes of the very first episode, Ruby's clearly listening to "This Will Be The Day" until she decides to interrupt the robbery of the Dust shop.  After she follows one of the Mooks through the shop window, the music switches from a tinny, "heard over headphones" version to a high-quality version -- until we hear the "click" of Ruby turning off her player and the music stops.
 * Dragged by the Collar: At the start of their initiation, Weiss turns around and drags Ruby off by the collar of her cape when she realizes her only other possible teammate is Jaune.
 * Drink Order: An important part of early character design according to Word of God.  When they figured out that Blake drank tea and Weiss drank coffee, Monty Oum and company felt they were starting to get somewhere.
 * Ruby, by the way, drinks coffee, black, with five sugars.
 * Drop the Hammer: Nora's weapon, which is also a Grenade Launcher.  With hearts on it.
 * Early Installment Weirdness: The "shadow people" of Volume 1 -- black silhouettes used for almost everyone outside of the main cast.  They are replaced with fully-rendered individuals starting with V2E1.  According to Monty Oum at RTX 2014, the shadow people came about because the production staff basically overlooked the need to do crowd scenes until very late in the development process; the silhouettes were essentially a fast-and-dirty hack to keep them on-schedule, and in between Volumes 1 and 2 they were able to take the time to replace them.
 * During Volume 1, episodes varied in length between three and fifteen minutes. If Volumes 2 and 3 are anything to go by, future episodes will all be in the fifteen-to-twenty-minute range.
 * Easter Egg: The "RWBYsaurus", a raptor-like dinosaur which appeared in several silly posts on Monty Oum's Twitter feed, can be seen falling from one of the Bullheads shot by Penny in V1E16.
 * Edible Ammunition/Edible Bludgeon: See the Food Fight in V2E1.
 * Elaborate Underground Base:
 * Elemental Powers: Individual Semblances seem to run along elemental themes.
 * Also,
 * Epic Flail: Son's pistol-chucks.
 * Everything's Worse With Rapier Wasps
 * Evil Laugh: Weiss emits one as part of a rant once she thinks she's figured out how to win the tabletop game the team is playing in V2E2.
 * Torchwick gives one after shooting Ruby in V1E16.
 * Exposition Party: The Remnant-themed, Risk-like Board Game -- called Remnant: The Game -- played by Team RWBY in V2E2 seems like a subtle way to establish some of the geopolitics of the world.
 * Extraordinarily Empowered Girl: Most if not all of the female cast.
 * Eye Cam: We first see Nora through Ren's eyes as he wakes up on the morning of the initiation in V1E4.
 * Face Fault: Not long after team RWBY meets Penny for the first time.
 * Faceless Masses: In Volume 1, just about anyone who was not involved in the action in some way was simply a black silhouette.  However, starting in Volume 2 the "shadow people" (as the Rooster Teeth staff called them) were gone, replaced with fully-rendered individuals.
 * Fairy Tale Motifs/Mythical Motifs/Historical Motifs: Everywhere you look.
 * For example, besides the obvious fairy tale motifs at play with Team RWBY, there's Team JNPR: Jaune=Joan of Arc, Nora=Thor, Pyrrha=Achilles, and Lie Ren=Mulan.
 * Fan Art: Starting in Volume 2, fan art is used under the closing credits for each episode.
 * Fantastic Racism: Towards the Faunus.
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Mostly implied.  Vale seems to be more or less Remnant's "America", complete with Melting Pot reputation.  The names of Pyrrha Nikos and Neptune Vasilios (and the city/state Atlas) suggest a pseudo-Greek culture exists or existed elsewhere.  Jaune's name suggests a similar Gallic culture; likewise, Weiss and Zwei's hint at a Germanic area.  How many of these cultures still exist is hard to say, but World of Remnant 2 indicates humanity is now surviving in just four heavily-defended enclaves, of which Vale is one; these may well all be cultural melting pots with the original homelands completely overrun by the Grimm.
 * Fantasy World Map: Glimpsed in full during the prologue, lingered upon during World of Remnant 2; the vicinity of Vale is seen in more detail on Torchwick's map a couple of times during Volume 1.  Monty Oum allegedly squirted ketchup into a paper napkin, wadded it up, and then unfolded it to determine the basic landmasses of the world.
 * Feather Flechettes: The Nevermore fires its immense feathers in this manner.
 * Finishing Move: Ruby, in the Food Fight in V2E1.
 * First Boy Wins: It's a bit premature given the planned scope of RWBY, but those fans who don't see Jaune and Pyrrha pairing up argue for Jaune and Ruby partly because of this trope.
 * Flash Back: V3E7 (entitled "Beginning of the End") is almost entirely made up of visual and audio-only flashbacks which each explain some Backstory.
 * Flipping the Table: Nora flips over a table full of watermelons during the Food Fight in V2E1.
 * Food Fight: An absolutely epic example in V2E1.
 * Force Field: As Jaune and Pyrrha make clear, one of the effects that Aura can provide.
 * Foreshadowing: Just what is the "big operation in the southeast" to which Torchwick refers during the White Fang meeting in V2E3?  (Revealed in V2E9.)
 * Ruby decapitates a beowolf in the "Red" trailer in exactly the same way she decapitates the Nevermore in V1E8.
 * Funny Background Event: Blake literally climbing the walls of their dorm room to stay away from Zwei when he first appears.
 * Funny Bruce Lee Noises: Ruby makes them while describing her (then-newly improved) combat skills in V1E1.
 * Gainaxing: During their commentary track for the Blu-Ray release of Volume 1, the four female stars allege that both Yang and Pyrrha are deliberately animated at times with the infamous "Gainax bounce".
 * Gesundheit: Jaune, in V1E6:
 * Gesundheit: Jaune, in V1E6:

"Weiss: No. She seems much more coordinated."
 * Ghost City: Mountain Glenn, to the southeast of the Kingdom of Vale.
 * Give Me Back My Wallet: Perpetrated several times in V2 by Emerald, particularly to Emerald and Roman Torchwick.
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars: Weiss's surprisingly subtle facial scar -- acquired during the events of the "White" trailer -- is definitely a "good scar".
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: The bartender in V3E2.
 * Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: When Jaune leaps out to catch a falling Weiss in V1E8, it becomes a classic Looney Tunes "Oh Crap" pause-and-plunge moment.
 * V2E5: After Jaune attempts to serenade Weiss, Ruby realizes that she's leaning into frame at an impossible angle and promptly falls over; she stands back up straight for the rest of the scene while Yang, on the other side of the frame, remains at her own impossible angle.
 * Great White Hunter: Professor Peter Port.
 * Groin Attack: As part of his bullying, Cardin gets one in on Jaune.
 * Earlier, in the "Yellow" trailer, Yang inflicts one on Junior.
 * Nora inflicts one with her hammer upon a member of the team that JNPR is fighting in the first round of the Vytal Festival Tournament, in V3E2.
 * Guns Do Not Work That Way: Certainly not as part of transforming gadgets which are melee weapons half the time.
 * Averted in the "Yellow" trailer, by Junior: using it as a bludgeon is a great way to break your rocket launcher.
 * Hair of Gold: Yang.
 * Hammerspace: Where Ren keeps his gunblades, although it does appear the portals are in his sleeves.
 * And where Cardin kept that box of rapier wasps.
 * Hand Wave: Monty Oum's explanation why some names are mispronounced compared to their source languages.
 * Happy Dance: Nora can be seen doing one after retrieving the artifacts but before the battle with the Deathstalker and the Nevermore during the initiation arc.
 * Heroic BSOD:
 * High School Dance: In V2E6-7.
 * Humongous Mecha: The "Paladin" battlesuit presented in V2E3, several of which were stolen by Torchwick.
 * Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: There's one for almost every pairing, and for ships within Team RWBY they're frequently color-based:  Bumblebee (Blake and Yang), Ladybug (Ruby and Blake), Monochrome (Weiss and Blake), White Rose or Candycane (Weiss and Ruby), Sugar Rush (Ruby and Nora), Freezerburn (Weiss and Yang), Eclipse (Blake and Sun), Arkos (Jaune and Pyrrha) -- just to name a few.
 * Ignored Enemy: Team JNPR does this in the middle of their fight with Team BRNZ during the Vytal Festival tournament when they get caught up in a discussion about names for combat maneuvers.  However, BRNZ is far more determined to continue the fight than most enemies subject to this trope tend to be.
 * Image Song: "Mirror, Mirror" from the "White" trailer and "From Shadows" from the "Black" trailer are very much this for Weiss and Blake respectively.  A snippet of Yang's song "I Burn" finishes up the medley which provides the soundtrack for the "Yellow" trailer, but can be found in its entirety in the Volume One soundtrack.  The odd man out is the "Red" trailer; its music is more an introduction to the entire series than an image song for Ruby; if any song can be said to be her image song, it is probably "Red Like Roses, Part II", which is played during the climax of the fight with the Nevermore, and is also available as part of the Volume One soundtrack.
 * Image Song Cameo: When Ruby goes all Finishing Move on the other participants in the Food Fight in V2E1, music from her fight with the Beowolves in the "Red" trailer plays.
 * Imagine Spot: Weiss plotting in V1E2 how she and Pyrrha will be an unstoppable team together.
 * Incompletely Trained: Jaune.
 * Ruby to a lesser degree -- she's very competent solo, but initially has no idea how to work in a team.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Yang lets loose with one in V2E1 and gets ignored; Weiss tries her hand at the end of V2E4 and gets called on it.
 * Neon Katt. Full stop.
 * Instant Runes: Weiss and Winter's snowflake-like "glyphs".
 * Ironic Echo: Penny's rapid-fire recitation of all the fun things she and Ruby can do together since they are now friends echoes word-for-word Weiss's sarcastic inventory of "girl things" to (not) do with Ruby when they met for the second time at the Beacon opening ceremonies.
 * Ruby picks up on some of this, asking Weiss moments afterwards, "Is this what I was like when we met?"
 * Ironic Echo: Penny's rapid-fire recitation of all the fun things she and Ruby can do together since they are now friends echoes word-for-word Weiss's sarcastic inventory of "girl things" to (not) do with Ruby when they met for the second time at the Beacon opening ceremonies.
 * Ruby picks up on some of this, asking Weiss moments afterwards, "Is this what I was like when we met?"

"Penny: It sure is windy today."
 * Ki Attacks: One way that Aura can manifest.
 * Lampshade Hanging: The tumbleweeds blowing by.
 * Lampshade Hanging: The tumbleweeds blowing by.

"Ruby: (addressing the rest of Team RWBY) Sisters! Friends!  Weiss! Weiss:  Hey!"
 * Like Brother and Sister: Although many viewers apparently see Jaune and Pyrrha shaping up into an Official Couple, the voice actresses on their commentary track for Volume 1 strongly hint that the two are actually forming a very deep and platonic friendship.  (Although this seems to be contradicted by their interactions so far in Volume 2, something clearly forms in Volume 3 -- .)
 * Limited Wardrobe: Although through the end of Volume 1 this trope seemed to be in play, with all we'd seen anyone own being just three outfits (combat wear, school uniform, and sleepwear), by halfway through Volume 2 it was being fully averted, with formalwear, alternate battledress and casual wear, and things like Nora's "BOOP" T-shirt.
 * Little Bit Beastly: Basically what defines faunus.  Different varieties have different "distinguishing features" -- small horns, tiny antlers, tails, and more traditionally pointed ears are common alternatives or additions to the standard "animal ears on top of head" look.
 * Little Miss Badass: Just about every girl in the cast who isn't a Badass Adorable.
 * Machinima
 * Magic by Any Other Name: According the the RTX 2013 RWBY panel, Dust.  Not that it's a surprise.
 * Magical Security Cam: Several instances of footage reused as cam views.  Possibly justified by the (perhaps literal) Magical Computers in use.
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * Mana: Called "Aura", and a known, measurable quality possessed by Huntsmen and Huntresses.
 * Dust appears to be Mana in mineral form.
 * Mana Meter: Actually present In-Universe -- every student at Beacon can check their aura level with their "scroll" (a handheld computer/phone/PDA), and are exhorted to do so when fighting, so they know when to shift to defensive tactics if it gets too low. The aura display appears as a classic colored bar, starting out green, growing shorter as aura is used, and turning red when too much aura has been expended.
 * Meaningful Echo: A non-verbal example:  In the Volume One opening credits, Pyrrha is seen putting a reassuring hand on an uncertain Jaune's shoulder.  In the Volume Two credits, the gesture and emotions are reversed.
 * Meaningful Name: It appears that most of the cast has a name that makes some kind of reference to fairy tales or fantasy/SF literature.  (While at the same time following the Color Motif.)
 * "Remnant" itself. From the very beginning we are repeatedly shown that the four human enclaves are all that remain of a larger civilization destroyed by the Grimm.
 * Mix-and-Match Weapon/Impossibly Cool Weapon: Everybody's got one!  Most combine a firearm of some sort with a melee weapon, and change shape between functions.
 * Son Wukong goes one better: his weapon is a staff that splits into a pair of nunchaku, which themselves are made out of pairs of pistols (which look like flintlocks, but are multi-shot).
 * Blake's Gambol Shroud can be a used as one or two blades for melee, as a kusarigama/sickle-and-chain, and as a gunblade.
 * Pyrrha's spear/rifle and chakram-shield.
 * Jaune seems to avert this; his sword doesn't appear to turn into anything else, even if it is an Ancestral Weapon. His shield, though, folds for convenient storage, and to become his sword's scabbard.
 * Mooks: Torchwick has a small crew of them, and he's not impressed by their quality.
 * Junior's minions in the "Yellow" trailer seem to be the same group -- they have the same black-suit-white-face-and-little-red-sunglasses look. Given that Torchwick is very briefly seen concluding some kind of deal with Junior in the club just before Yang walks up to the bar, it's possible that he acquired his goons from Junior.
 * Confirmed in V2E4; Junior tells Yang that he loaned a group of his men to Torchwick, and that they never came back.
 * Torchwick later is in charge of what seems to be a platoon of.
 * According to Monty Oum at RTX 2014, the beowolves from the "Red" trailer (which were an abandoned early design and thus lack the white armor and spikes possessed by beowolves and all other Grimm in the series proper) are "mook"-level Grimm, and can be slaughtered with relative ease.
 * Motion Capture: Confirmed to have been used for many scenes. However, it's often painfully obvious when it wasn't.  To the surprise of many, motion capture is not used for the fight scenes.
 * Motionless Chin: Averted. In close-ups, chin movements are obvious and clearly synchronized to the Mouth Flaps.
 * Motor Mouth: Ruby, when she gets excited.
 * Nora, all the time.
 * Dr. Oobleck all the time, too, but even more so when he gets excited.
 * My Friends and Zoidberg: From V2E1:

"Weiss: It's not a dress! It's a combat skirt! Ruby: Yeah! [hand slap]"
 * My Hero!: Uttered by Weiss in a totally bored and unimpressed manner when Jaune flubs an attempt to flashily rescue her from a fall in V1E8.
 * Named Weapons: Most if not all of the multiform weapons have names:
 * Ruby named her scythe Crescent Rose.
 * Weiss' sword is Myrtenaster (a old German word for the flower of the myrtle tree).
 * Blake's gunblade/kusarigama is called Gambol Shroud.
 * Yang's "Dual Ranged Shot Gauntlets" are called Ember Celica.
 * Jaune's sword and shield are jointly called Crocea Mors ("Saffron Death" in Latin).
 * Ninja: If Blake's book collection is to be believed, they exist somewhere in Remnant.
 * In V3E1, Nora describes Ren as a ninja.
 * "No. Just... No" Reaction: Blake at the end of V2E4 when Weiss tries her hand at a Bond One-Liner after Torchwick and Neo (No, not that one) escape.
 * No Body Left Behind: Grimm corpses "evaporate" shortly after they are killed. Unlike most instances of this trope, this is used to keep the Grimm mysterious. You can't dissect a corpse that doesn't exist.
 * No OSHA Compliance: Team RWBY's improvised bunk beds don't look safe.
 * No Peripheral Vision: Played with in V1E1. The opponent Ruby is fighting seems to have disappeared -- she looks left and right, but still can't find him. Then she looks up...
 * Noodle Incident: Just how did Ruby and Weiss end up clinging to the Nevermore in V1E8?
 * Not Allowed to Grow Up: Averted, according to Word of God.  The intent is that characters will age in real time with the viewers; the example given by Monty Oum is that after ten years of production, 15-year-old Ruby will be 25.
 * Obligatory Joke: The girls on Team RWBY seem to be consciously choosing to make this a habit.
 * Ocular Gushers: Cascading sheets variant, from both Weiss and Ruby when Yang obliterates them in their Board Game in V2E2.
 * Off-Model: Much of the animation -- at least some of it done by Motion Capture -- is beautifully fluid and realistic. Other moments... not so much.
 * There's one moment in V1E16 where Blake and Son are speaking on the street. The shot is looking at Son more or less over Blake's shoulder and her body is partially obscuring his -- but when he makes a particularly expressive gesture his hand and arm are suddenly, Escher-like, closer to the "camera" than she is.
 * V2E6: Before and during the formal dance, we see that the ballroom floor is beautifully polished to a near-mirror and reflects everything -- except for the dancers.
 * Offscreen Teleportation: Lampshaded twice with blinking dotted outlines where the teleportees used to be.
 * Off With Its Head: Ruby decapitates a fair number of the beowolves attacking her in the "Red" trailer.
 * Ruby killing the Nevermore during the Emerald Forest initiation in Volume 1.
 * Jaune killing the ursa in V1E14.
 * Nora declares "Off with their heads!" at the start of Team JNPR's assault in the food fight in V2E1.
 * Our Souls Are Different: Called "aura".  When "awakened", they provide the humans of Remnant with a variety of powers.  The Grimm, by contrast, are said to be soulless.
 * Personality Powers: The Beacon students all appear to have gifts or talents, and most of the ones we've seen seem to be reflective of their owners' personalities:  Ruby's speed, Yang's fire, and Pyrrha's magnetism, for example.
 * Pie in the Face: Weiss takes a classic cream pie right in the kisser at the start of the Food Fight in V2E1.
 * Pieta Plagiarism: Ruby holding a stunned Weiss during the Food Fight in V2E1, complete with a Big No.
 * Punctuated! For! Emphasis!/Punctuated Pounding: Yang bellowing "I! Hope! You're! Hungry!" as she fires Ember Celica -- one shot with each word -- right down the Nevermore's throat in V1E8.
 * Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Utterly averted by Ruby and Weiss, even if they get picky about terminology:

"Torchwick: Ladies. Ice Queen. Weiss: Hey!"
 * Reckless Gun Usage: The Vale police investigating the dust shop robbery near the end of Volume 1. (Lampshaded by Torchwick's map which notes there are "dumb cops" in that part of Vale.)
 * The Remnant: We are told explicitly by the unknown narrator that all modern civilization is this.  Which is why the world is called "Remnant".
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The King Taijitu, a monstrous two-headed duotone snake fought by Lie Ren in the Emerald Forest.
 * Retcon: In the earliest materials, the planet on which the story is set was called "Vytal", but during the course of production the creative team renamed it to "Remnant".  "Vytal" remains as the name of the festival that is impending at the end of Volume 1 and all the way through Volume 2.
 * Rule of Cool: Appears to be a law of nature.
 * Rule of Funny: Yang's Berserk Button:  she's a cool, laid-back girl -- unless you muss her hair.
 * Running Gag:
 * Volume 1:
 * Jaune getting stuck in trees.
 * Weiss falling over when she runs into someone she wasn't expecting to be in her way.
 * Volume 2:
 * Weiss suffering from My Friends and Zoidberg every time someone addresses the group as a whole:

"Yang: Some girl's in trouble!"
 * Schmuck Bait: Yang's offer to Junior to "kiss and make up" in the Yellow trailer.
 * Screams Like a Little Girl: Jaune in V1E7 when he discovers that the "artifact" he's found is really a Deathstalker.

":1. Characters in RWBY must be:
 * Serkis Folk: Motion capture of the voice performers is used for a lot of the animation; pretty much anything that doesn't look odd or awkward is motion capture. (Except for combat, oddly enough.)
 * Shields Are Useless: Averted by Jaune, whose shield seems pretty awesome even if he doesn't quite realize it.
 * Also averted by Pyrrha, whose shield is rather handy itself. What with also being a chakram and all.
 * Shout-Out: Built on them, and many are rolled into Meaningful Names.  Where can we start?
 * The fairy tale references in and around the girls of Team RWBY: Ruby/Little Red Riding Hood, Weiss/Snow White, Blake/Beauty and The Beast, and Yang/Goldilocks and The Three Bears.
 * It's been suggested that Blake may also reference Puss in Boots. She also has a candelabra that looks like Lumiere during their first night at Beacon.
 * Yang allegedly also references an obscure Grimm fairy tale, "The Golden Bird".
 * The Wizard of Oz references in Professor Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch.
 * Jaune Arc and his tormentor Cardin Winchester.
 * Son Wukong
 * Roman Torchwick, whose name has echoes of "roman candle" (which is what his gun-cane looks like in action), and who looks like he just stepped out of A Clockwork Orange.
 * The White Fang.
 * might be a reference to both Pinocchio and Blaz Blue, and possibly to Inspector Gadget.
 * Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck obviously references Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
 * Professor Peter Port is explicitly described in the director's commentary track for volume 1 as "Peter from Peter and The Wolf grown up".
 * The Grimm are an obvious play on the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales.
 * Ruby snaps off three historical-political ones within a couple minutes in episode 1 of volume 2: "Four score and seven minutes ago", "I had a dream", and "I am not a crook" (the latter complete with Nixon's trademark "V" gestures).
 * Torchwick's battle on the highway with team RWBY in V2E4 starts off with a chase scene reminiscent of a similar moment from one of the Transformers films.
 * Zwei (German for "two") is almost certainly a shout-out to Ein ("one") from Cowboy Bebop; both of them are Corgis, although of different breeds.
 * Pyrrha's throwable shield is highly reminiscent of Captain America.
 * Shy Finger-Twiddling: Ruby during the first time she meets Weiss.
 * Shrouded in Myth:
 * Single Phlebotinum Limit: Dust; it seems to be the only thing allowing humans to have a civilization at all in the face of the Grimm.
 * Slow-Motion Pass-By: When Blake and Son Wukong first see each other.
 * Snot Bubble: Nora while sleeping in the Beacon library, V2E2.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Clearly in play:  Volume 1 is mostly Mooks and low-level bosses.  Volume 2 begins upping the ante with mid-level boss .  And Volume 3 ends by revealing.
 * Spent Shells Shower: The "Red" trailer ends this way.  Also in the "Yellow" trailer when Yang reloads Ember Celica.
 * Spider Tank: Seen in the "Black" trailer as part of the defenses on the train.
 * Stealth Hi Bye: Penny in her V1 appearances, most notably.  Ruby's speed lets her do basically this if she wants.  Other characters manage this when it's funny.
 * Stealth Pun: The crescents on Jaune's shield?  They're arcs.
 * Stepping Stone Sword: While fighting the Giant Armor in the "White" Trailer, Weiss leaps onto and runs up the Armor's sword to attack it close up.
 * Stinger: The finale to each season has  had a Stinger after the final credits.
 * Stock Sound Effects: Construction sounds -- saws, jackhammers, drills, etc. -- in the few seconds it takes them to turn their beds into (dubious) bunkbeds.
 * That Poor Cat during Ruby and Yang's Big Ball of Violence in V1E2.
 * A bowling ball making a strike is layered into the crash made when Ren slides into the tables after slipping on ketchup during the food fight in V2E1.
 * Super-Deformed: Ruby in her first moments on the Beacon campus, as well as the images in her "thought bubble" as she races to find a partner in the Emerald Forest.
 * Super Speed: Ruby seems to come close; Professor Doctor Oobleck definitely has it.
 * Super Strength:
 * And as revealed in V2E4,.
 * Swiss Army Weapon: Most of the weapons we see in the series. The few exceptions include Jaune's sword (although his shield might count), Ren's pistols (which while combining blades and guns haven't yet shown ability to change shape), and Torchwick's cane-gun.
 * Tabletop Game: In V2E2, the girls of Team RWBY play a Remnant-themed game that seems to be half Magic: The Gathering and half Risk.
 * Talking to the Dead: V3E1 starts with Ruby at her mother's gravesite, updating her on the events of the first two volumes.
 * Theme Naming: All over the place.
 * The most prominent theme within the show is Colourful Theme Naming -- allegedly every character has some kind of color reference in their name, for in-universe political reasons. A few examples:
 * The girls of Team RWBY: "Ruby Rose" is obvious; "Weiss Schnee"="Snow White"; "Blake" is an old English word for "black"; "Yang Xiao Long" is Chinese for "Little Dragon of the Sun", but includes characters which can mean "yellow" or "gold".
 * "Jaune" is French for "yellow".
 * Velvet Scarlatina.
 * Although it's never actually given on-screen, the newscaster on the broadcast seen at the end of V1E1 is, according to Word of God, named Cyril Ian (i.e., "cerulean"). His co-anchor is billed as "Lisa Lavender".
 * In November 2013, Monty Oum tweeted the explicit naming rules for RWBY characters:
 * A color
 * Something that sounds like a color
 * Something that means a color
 * Something that makes you think of a color"


 * Further, if a character is on a team, the first letter of their name must fit into a 4-letter acronym which itself must follow the same rules.
 * Another theme seems to be in play with the names of the various schools that we know of: Signal, Beacon, Sanctum, Haven -- all terms for places of safety or guides to the same.
 * The members of Team JNPR are all named for historical or mythological figures who crossdressed at one point or another. For instance, Achilles tried to duck out on the Trojan war by disguising himself as a woman named "Pyrrha".
 * Across teams, we have the historical theme naming between Jaune Arc and Cardin Winchester. (Henry Beaufort, the Cardinal of Winchester, interrogated and presided over the trial of Joan of Arc.)
 * It's suspected that Jaune's seven sisters may be inspired by the Greek Muses, but by the end of Volume 2 this is merely speculation.

"Are we born to fight and die? Sacrificed for one huge lie? Are we heroes keeping peace? Are we weapons pointed at the enemy So someone else can claim a victory?"
 * Theme Song Reveal: It's hard to be sure this early, but the Volume One theme, "This Will Be The Day", definitely seems to be hinting at something.
 * As does the Volume Two theme, "Time To Say Goodbye", especially in the bridge which isn't played as part of the opening credits:


 * The songs from the four Trailers also are clearly implying things; as of the back end of Volume Two, "From Shadows" (from the "Black" trailer) seems to be the most comprehensible, referring (in retrospect) to Blake's history, as well as that of the Faunus in general.
 * Theme Tune Cameo: In the first scene of V1E1, Ruby's listening to "This Will Be The Day" on her player, before it's been used as the theme tune for the first time.
 * Thick Line Animation: It's not consistent across all the artwork, but in general the show has this kind of look.  It's especially noticeable with things like the Deathstalker in V1E8, and character faces.
 * Thigh-High Boots: Weiss in V2E3.
 * Cinder in V2E7.
 * Throw It In: The animators at Rooster Teeth are encouraged to come up with bits of "business" to add to scenes.  For instance, the sequence where Torchwick silently mocks Emerald and Mercury as Cinder reprimands them in V2E1, ending with a mimed throat-cutting, was the invention of the animator who worked on that scene.
 * Toilet Humour: Ruby's scribbled drawing of Professor Port calling him "Professor Poop".
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Definitely in play between Ruby (tomboy) and Weiss (girly girl). Appears also to be part of the dynamic between Yang and Blake, but they seem to swap off on who's who as needed.
 * Too Soon?: Asked by Son Wukong of Blake after making a snarky comment about.
 * Took a Level In Badass:  in V1E14.
 * Tournament Arc: Volume 3 appears to be one, what with the Vytal Festival Tournament being in full swing as the first episode of the volume begins,.
 * Trailers: Starting November 5, 2012, Rooster Teeth released four trailers, spaced eight to ten weeks apart, which each featured one of the four main characters. Combining beautiful animation, non-stop action, Foreshadowing and awesome music, they were responsible for a remarkable level of anticipation and speculation before the series' premiere in July 2013.
 * A single trailer was produced for Volume 2, using material from the first six or so episoides.
 * Trailers Always Lie: Deliberately done in the Volume 2 trailer -- the Ruby/Weiss Pieta Plagiarism moment from V2E1 was included, with all the Food Fight elements removed to make it look far more serious than it actually was.
 * Train Job: The "Black" trailer is about one, which becomes a plot point late in Volume 1.
 * Uncanny Valley: Averted.  Despite being made with Poser, whose photorealistic figures live in the Uncanny Valley, RWBY's animation has its detail level dialed back and its abstraction level dialed up to give it a resemblance to traditional animation, and handily escapes the creepiness factor.
 * Two-Teacher School: As of the end of Volume 2, the only instructors we have seen actually teaching at Beacon have been Professor Port and Doctor Oobleck, despite the obvious size of the school.  Glynda Goodwitch, although referred to explicitly as "Professor" once, appears to be more of an administrator even though she leads a field trip to Forever Fall in Volume 1, and acts as referee for some kind of sparring or combat training late in Volume 2.
 * Vomit Discretion Shot: Jaune, offscreen at the end of V1E1, and onscreen into a trash can at the start of V1E2.
 * Waking Non Sequitur:
 * Nora blurting "Pancake!" upon being awakened, V2E2.
 * Jaune blurting "Waffles!" upon being awaked by Ruby's phone call in V2E12.
 * Wave Motion Gun:
 * To a lesser degree, Coco's man-portable minigun.
 * Web Animation
 * Weird Moon: A moon in pieces certainly counts.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremists: The modern incarnation of the White Fang, but there are hints that they are being manipulated for some sinister purpose.
 * Western Terrorists: The current version of the White Fang is somewhere between Type VII and Type VIII.  They started out as a non-violent Civil Rights Movement for Faunus, but there was a change in leadership about five years before the start of the series, and their methods turned violent.  There are hints that they are being manipulated by someone else for more sinister purposes.
 * What Happened to the Rapier Wasps?: Someone should have gotten stung, but they basically vanished.
 * Wham! Episode:
 * Volume 3, Episode 6, "Fall".
 * Volume 3, Episode 9, "PvP".
 * Volume 3, Episode 12, "The End of the Beginning"
 * World of Action Girls: Most of the females with a name are very capable fighters.
 * The Wiki Rule: As noted in the main text.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The only character in Volume 1 with an "unnatural" hair color is Professor Oobleck, who has green hair.
 * Lie Ren has a magenta stripe through the hair on the left side of his face, but it could simply be dyed.
 * Several characters who make their first appearances in Volume 2 have "unnatural" hair colors, including Neapolitan, Emerald Sustrai and Neptune Vasilios.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: What the current version of White Fang thinks of itself, of course.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Blake's stockings in her battle garb; Yang's stockings in her school uniform.  Both are Rank A.
 * Weiss's "casual wear" revealed in V2E3 has her rocking Rank A stockings and Thigh-High Boots.
 * Weiss's "casual wear" revealed in V2E3 has her rocking Rank A stockings and Thigh-High Boots.