InFAMOUS (series)



""Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.""

- Abraham Lincoln

inFAMOUS is a game developed by Sucker Punch, known for the Sly Cooper series, released in May 2009. The player takes on the role of Cole MacGrath, average-joe bike messenger in the New York stand-in of Empire City. While delivering a package one day - actually a Super Empowering device called the "Ray Sphere" - Cole finds himself at the epicenter of a vast explosion that rips apart several city blocks.

Inexplicably alive, Cole is found by his buddy Zeke and cared for by his girlfriend Trish, resulting in a two-week recovery period at the hospital. Immediately, it's apparent that Cole isn't so much of a Joe Blow anymore, what with getting zapped by a sparking electric grid that should have killed him, and shooting bolts of lightning from his hands. Notably, Cole does not generate electricity, he can only use it after storing it.

By now, Empire City has been quarantined due to a spreading plague; no one gets in or out and gangs are spreading like wildfire as basic social services are failing left and right. The biggest and most enigmatic gangs taking over town are known as The Reapers, the Dust Men, and the First Sons. The game's open-ended sandbox nature along with a morality system give the player free-reign to decide Cole's actions: help the people of Empire City survive the catastrophe and save what's left, or watch/help it all burn. Things take an immediate turn for the worse when Dallas, a DJ known as "The Voice Of Survival," lets out closed-circuit camera footage of Cole as his package exploded, resulting in Trish resenting him for her sister's death in the explosion, as well as Cole's relationship to the citizens of the city beginning on a sour note.

Cole's lightning powers will develop differently based on the player's morality; some abilities function differently as good or evil, some are exclusive to one path. Likewise, choices will change how citizens react to Cole. Cole can also climb things and traverse rooftops like a certain assassin from the Holy Land/Renaissance/American Revolution or more like a certain kleptomaniac raccoon.

A sequel was released in June 2011. It takes place in New Marais, a Fictional Counterpart of New Orleans, where Cole tries to save a scientist who holds the key to defeating the Beast, who is going on an extended tour down the American East Coast, leaving nothing but death and destruction in its wake. While Cole's character design was initially meant to undergo a major change, a high amount of fan criticism caused Sucker Punch to backpedal and promise that these changes would be less drastic than first planned. The game shows that Cole has gained new powers (including an electrically charged melee weapon), including potentially Ice and Fire powers.

At Sony's E3 2011 conference, Cole MacGrath was revealed to be a Guest Fighter for the Play Station 3 and Play Station Vita versions of Street Fighter X Tekken. inFAMOUS 2 is also currently available for free to Playstation Plus subscribers.

Now with Vampires, as of Festival of Blood.


 * 100% Heroism Rating: People will applaud you, ask you for assistance, take pictures of you, et cetera, if you're on the good side. Being bad gets you booed, have rocks thrown at you, and, if you're terrible enough, people attacking you constantly.
 * Also, if you're good, then in the middle of fights, they might throw rocks at your enemies. It gets really helpful if they manage to stop a rocket-launcher-toting foe from blasting you long enough to blow him away first.
 * But gets annoying when they run right at the bad guy you just tossed an explosive of your own at.
 * 555: Many numbers in the second game use this trope (most notably on the Militia's constant big-screen TV ads). The cellphone number Zeke gives for Cole is 555-0127. (Probably not Cole's actual number, otherwise he might well have spent the final 1/3 of the game inundated with calls from admirers. Or maybe he has his phone on silent.)
 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Though not unheard of in large cities, so Truth in Television, obviously.
 * Acrofatic: Zeke, who mysteriously appears on the ground after Cole free falls from the roof and beats Cole to the mainland after both are stranded out on the bridge. (He swam.) Never has a fat man been so fast.
 * An explanation is produced in the second game: it is shown in a flashback that both Cole and Zeke did urban exploration and freerunning in New Marais after the hurricane, so he's actually had some practice, although nowhere near Cole's level, of course.
 * In the second game,
 * Action Bomb:
 * Some of the baddies in the first game would try to run up to you and then explode.
 * The sequel has monsters that also run up to you and explode, though in a blast of acid.
 * Action Commands: A handful, mostly in boss battles or when draining health from people.
 * All There in the Manual: If you play the two games back-to-back, and don't know about the interquel comic, the second game seems to drop Moya's plot thread with no mention.
 * Ambiguous Situation: Both the "good" and the "evil" paths have reasonable justifications for going down them -- in In Famous 2 at least. In In Famous, you are a monster in the evil path, no doubt about it.
 * Amplifier Artifact: The Ray Sphere Bizarrely, it also works on some animals, implying a similar percentage of them are conduits.
 * And I Must Scream:
 * David from the interquel comic, who thanks to Kessler was transformed into a giant gray monster that sucks out the life force of anyone he touches, and of course has no mouth anymore.
 * Between the first and second games,
 * Between the first and second games,


 * The Antichrist:, obviously.
 * He even has the motifs in his human form.
 * Art Shift: Nearly all cutscenes are drawn comic book style with simple animation.
 * The second game is going to lose the ink spatter effect for a more "watercolor" feel, like this.
 * Artificial Stupidity: The hordes of people that stand right next to an active time bomb (complete with obvious beeping noises) just gawping at it instead of, you know, running away like any sane person would do.
 * Taken up to eleven if you go the Evil route: female civilians will kick you for their attack, and if you're facing them, they will kick you in the crotch. Unfortunately for them, Cole's healing factor apparently also serves as a jockstrap.
 * Ascended Meme: Zeke's Honey Badger shirt in the second game.
 * The Atoner: As suggested in the ending of the first game and later explained in the interquel comics, By the second game,
 * Inverted in the most warped way possible with
 * Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
 * The Behemoth.
 * Bad Powers, Bad People:
 * Good Cole's abilities lean towards nonlethal takedowns and precision. Evil Cole's abilities lean towards "slaughter as many people as possible, as fast as possible, as painfully and explosively as possible."
 * The series' ultimate example, though, is.
 * Bag of Spilling: Downplayed in the sequel, as Cole keeps the "alpha" versions of about half of his old powers. Unfortunately, he still has to absorb Blast Cores to get the other half back, as he blew a lot of his power fighting.
 * Bald of Evil: Every one of the supervillains of the first game, including the female Sasha, and . Evil Cole has Peach Fuzz Of Evil. Maybe being a Conduit makes your hair fall out.
 * Batman Gambit: Kessler's entire plan turns out to be a series of these based on his intimate understanding of Cole. Most notably
 * Beef Gate: A less-obvious version than you may initially notice. Blacked-out parts of the city are incredibly dangerous for two reasons: there are far fewer places to recharge/heal yourself, and bad guys are more numerous there. Whenever you power up a part of the city, you get a new superpower, which means you are unlocking new areas to explore, with the added benefit of a nifty new attack.
 * Being Good Sucks/Better Living Through Evil: Good karma nets you precise, efficient powers in both games, and makes it easier to spare/help civilians in the second. Evil karma nets you flashy, destructive powers in both games, and in the second, it not only lets you kill random bystanders for experience, but gives you short bursts of unlimited ammunition whenever you eat someone's energy!
 * Betty and Veronica: The sequel has two possible partners for Cole; a sensible and down to earth ice-using lady or a wild fire-using chick.
 * Trish and Sasha in the first game.
 * Big Bad: Kessler in the first game,
 * Bigger Bad: The Beast.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * The last line of narration for the good ending is
 * Black and White Morality:
 * Cole's karmic choices play this up for all it's worth. Good choices are about what you expect, saving or sparing lives and generally being a superhero, but Evil choices are almost unilaterally taken as petty, vindictive, and selfish as possible, with virtually no attempt at offering justifications that might excuse his actions as more a shade of grey.
 * Bland-Name Product: Cafe Con Quistador, the coffee shop whose signs litter the streets, and bear an amazing resemblance to Starbucks signs, only blue.
 * Also doubles as a possible Shout-Out to Monty Python.
 * Book Ends: The first thing the player does in inFamous is press Start,
 * Boom! Headshot!: Surprisingly largely averted; even low-level mooks can take a shock to the head, and even at full power, First Sons and Vermaak 88 troops can take at least two. That said, you do get extra experience points for landing a headshot, and levelling Evil powers gives headshots an explosion bonus.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing:
 * Dust Men conduits come in two flavors, both bad news: A Mook Maker with higher-than-normal damage threshold and a rocket launcher, or a telekinetic man who creates instant Powered Armor out of trash around himself and takes around ten minutes to kill. First Son Conduits appear to be this - growing gigantic and soaking up a lot of damage - but they're much easier to kill than Dust Men conduits.
 * The second game has Ravagers, who burrow, fire homing sludge, will bum rush you, and turn out lots of annoying dart-spewing larvae if you don't stay on top of them. Oh, and your normal attack just bounces off their head shields.
 * Once you get Sticky Grenades, Ravagers go from dangerous to mildly annoying (and even that only because they nullify grenades stuck to them when they burrow, so killing them in one barrage is not certain). Particularly as their attack patterns has huge gaps during which Cole can recharge.
 * Vermaak 88's Titans are invulnerable to the bolt attack, need dozens of rockets to the face before you can remove the face shield via Quick Time Event and then another dozen of rockets to the face to finally kill it. They of course don't just stand there and take a beating. They attack you with ice beams, throw several ice boulders at you, can generate ice spikes on the ground which also serve as protective wall, and heal themselves when you leave them alone for a few seconds.
 * Actually, the secret is to attack their arms: they're essentially Dust Men conduits with a quick-time event added in, but you don't need to reveal the weak point to kill them; it'll just take longer. Sticky Grenades are incredibly useful in this regard.
 * Broken Aesop: Infamous 2 has a fair amount of Fantastic Racism in it, with one of the Big Bads being a Strom Thurmond Fictional Counterpart who's constantly bleating that Conduits have to be exterminated for the good of humanity. Just before the final battle with him, Good Cole states that, "powers don't kill people. Oh no, it's the person behind the powers that kill people." So far so good. Except, The point may be that trying to apply normal human morality and ethics to superhumans is going to come up short.
 * Despite that, Zeke himself gets a crowner that doubles as a real tear jerker in the Good ending for both mentioning, and then throwing such things out the window.
 * Dust Men conduits come in two flavors, both bad news: A Mook Maker with higher-than-normal damage threshold and a rocket launcher, or a telekinetic man who creates instant Powered Armor out of trash around himself and takes around ten minutes to kill. First Son Conduits appear to be this - growing gigantic and soaking up a lot of damage - but they're much easier to kill than Dust Men conduits.
 * The second game has Ravagers, who burrow, fire homing sludge, will bum rush you, and turn out lots of annoying dart-spewing larvae if you don't stay on top of them. Oh, and your normal attack just bounces off their head shields.
 * Once you get Sticky Grenades, Ravagers go from dangerous to mildly annoying (and even that only because they nullify grenades stuck to them when they burrow, so killing them in one barrage is not certain). Particularly as their attack patterns has huge gaps during which Cole can recharge.
 * Vermaak 88's Titans are invulnerable to the bolt attack, need dozens of rockets to the face before you can remove the face shield via Quick Time Event and then another dozen of rockets to the face to finally kill it. They of course don't just stand there and take a beating. They attack you with ice beams, throw several ice boulders at you, can generate ice spikes on the ground which also serve as protective wall, and heal themselves when you leave them alone for a few seconds.
 * Actually, the secret is to attack their arms: they're essentially Dust Men conduits with a quick-time event added in, but you don't need to reveal the weak point to kill them; it'll just take longer. Sticky Grenades are incredibly useful in this regard.
 * Broken Aesop: Infamous 2 has a fair amount of Fantastic Racism in it, with one of the Big Bads being a Strom Thurmond Fictional Counterpart who's constantly bleating that Conduits have to be exterminated for the good of humanity. Just before the final battle with him, Good Cole states that, "powers don't kill people. Oh no, it's the person behind the powers that kill people." So far so good. Except, The point may be that trying to apply normal human morality and ethics to superhumans is going to come up short.
 * Despite that, Zeke himself gets a crowner that doubles as a real tear jerker in the Good ending for both mentioning, and then throwing such things out the window.


 * Bullying a Dragon/Too Dumb to Live: People know full well who evil Cole is, and the fact that just getting punched by him can be likened to a taser, yet continue to throw rocks and in some cases, run up and try to punch him.
 * The Call Knows Where You Live: Kessler calls the courier service Cole works for and requests Cole by name to deliver a package. He then instructs Cole to open the package which contains the Ray Sphere causing the destruction you see as you travel the city.
 * Camera Screw: In the first game, if you were so injured the screen faded to black and white, the enemies faded into the background. Averted in the sequel, where they're highlighted for easy location/avoidance.
 * Chain Lightning: Cole's basic electric attack can do this once upgraded a few times, but won't completely damage an enemy. Evil Cole's Arc Lightning is a better example.
 * Charles Atlas Superpower:
 * Cole's climbing skills are not the product of his powers, but of time spent at his hobby of urban exploration. Subverted in that his immunity to falling damage is, and gaining this makes it entirely reasonable that he'd put less thought into the dangers of free-climbing a skyscraper.
 * Although it can be reasonable to expect that his powerup also made him stronger, because a normal person cannot throw Mooks around like that with Good Old Fisticuffs, nor take several bullets before dying.
 * The manual for the first game explains that the electricity going through Cole's body supercharges his muscles, giving him enhanced strength, durability, and a healing factor. There's also something about him using his kinetic barrier to dampen his fall when he jumps off stuff.
 * The Chessmaster: Kessler comes off this way in the first game, but it's subverted in the sequel where a lot of things indicate his grand scheme is much more ad hoc than it first appears,, with nearly disasterous results. For example, , which at best leads to , and fails to give Cole the power needed to fight him by the end of the first game, which almost gets him killed at the start of the second. Hell, Kessler admits himself at one point he wasn't even sure that Cole would live through the initial Ray Sphere blast in the first place!
 * The Chosen One:
 * CIA Evil, FBI Good:
 * Coincidental Broadcast: The various TVs spread across the city will report on your actions (sort of), but only when you happen to be nearby.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience:
 * Good Cole's lightning is blue, Evil Cole's lightning is red, and, his lightning turns black with red, thorn-shaped outlines to signify that he's become irredeemably evil.
 * In inFamous 2, Kuo has icy blue powers while Nix has red fire powers, and which of these two he's more in tune with affects the color of his lightning.
 * Combination Attack: Cole can do this with Kuo or Nix in the sequel.
 * Compensating for Something: Moya discusses this trope in regards to Alden's tower, which is the single highest point on the map. The man did have daddy issues, after all.
 * Conspiracy Theorist: Zeke and The Voice of Survival, the latter of which actually has some points.
 * The Corruption:
 * The Reapers' mind-controlling tar.
 * "The Corrupted" in the second game is the collective name of the various swamp monsters assaulting New Marais. Most or all of them used to be human.
 * The plague in the second game, which was present in the first, has become even more of a threat;
 * Cozy Catastrophe: Any conduit caught in a Ray Sphere blast gains superpowers, while thousands are dead and more are dying.
 * Crapsack World:
 * Subtle, but there are some clues. The Peak Oil scare-poster on Zeke's roof can, at first, be passed off as part of Zeke's conspiracy-theorist ways, but then you see a gas station and notice the price for regular gas is less than fifty cents shy of nine dollars a gallon. The Narm in the acting performance from the woman playing the news anchor on the national news station (the woman, not the Voice of Survival) is clearly intentional and it combines with her Blatant Lies about how awesome a job the government is doing handling the crisis in Empire City when two and a half weeks pass with just a handful of food and supply drops for the sake of appearance. The intent seems to be to paint the news anchor as a full-on government shill, thus giving the player the impression that the government has gone some ways to being an oppressive state.
 * The same news reporter appears in the second game, where a few reports seem to imply she's just doing her job.
 * The gas price is at least plausible considering it's a city under quarantine, which makes gas rare and very valuable. Outside of Empire City could be a very different story. There's still some gas available, seeing how people are still driving around in cars.
 * Blowing up the gas station near Zeke's Roof leads to an Easter Egg where Zeke calls you and, while he, he also implies that people were still getting gas from it. Of course, it's ambiguous to whether they were stealing it or buying it.
 * It gets worse in the sequel,
 * Cry for the Devil: Cole empathizes (somewhat) with
 * Deal with the Devil:
 * Death Seeker:  Nothing in his plan requires him to battle Cole, certainly not one on one in a Mirror Match when he's got basically an army at his command. Indeed, one might think his plan   has a much better chance of success if he doesn't fight Cole to the death. Given this, it becomes obvious in hindsight that   deliberately set up the Duel to the Death so he could die knowing Cole was ready to save the world.
 * Defiant Stone Throw: Targetting your enemies, or you depending on karma.
 * Degraded Boss: Ravagers and Crushers are both bosses the first time you face them. Later on, they turn up as Elite Mooks, and not alone.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: After the first mission, Cole will be attacked by the townspeople. If he chose the good path, Cole calls them out on it.
 * Differently Powered Individuals: Conduits. Apparently, there is a percentage of humanity that can gain superhuman powers if they are stimulated by the neural energy of other humans - though this kills the donors. In inFamous 2,
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: iF2's Karma Trailer. Nix represents the proverbial evil devil on one's shoulder, while Kuo represents the inspiring good angel. It's not clear whether Sucker Punch actually knows that the Latin for "left", Nix's "shoulder", is "sinister". In the ending of the game,
 * Dude, Where's My Respect?:
 * Averted, as whether you're a Hero or Infamous, people will either worship or fear you, but played straight in that many of your missions have you be someone's errand boy. At least Good missions are for a good cause... usually.
 * Played straight in the beginning - even if you cut down the food, the Voice of Survival will blame you for the attack, and nearby pedestrians will throw rocks at you as if you were evil-side. Justified, as people think that you blew up the city. Lampshaded: "Come on, I gave you the food!"
 * Also played straight in the beginning of the sequel.
 * Dueling Games: Prototype came out within weeks of inFamous. Forumgoers tend to be fans of one and not the other.
 * Shades of Console Wars, too. inFamous is a Play Station 3 exclusive. It sold less as a result, but had more critical acclaim.
 * Yahtzee decided in his review of Prototype that since he put them on equal standards to challenge the creators to make pictures of their rival's title character in lingerie. Sucker Punch and Radical took that challenge, with Yahtzee ultimately declaring inFamous the winner though still recommending Prototype as well. Here's the article with the entries. (Brain Bleach recommended, if not required.).
 * Dying Moment of Awesome:
 * Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Though Zeke and Cole are back to being friends as of inFamous 2, Zeke's betrayal of Cole is still brought up several times, and it's clear that Zeke has been working overtime to earn his forgiveness. As Cole says in the intro, he'd do anything to be friends like they used to be. It helps that he's also not a moocher this time.
 * Electric Slide: This is where most of Cole's horizontal mobility comes from -- train lines or rooftop power lines. In inFamous 2, there's also some vertical power conduits on the sides of buildings he can grab to give himself a short launch upwards with. A pre-order power in iF 2 allows him to hook onto enemies and pull them towards him.
 * Eleventh-Hour Superpower:
 * Done with an interesting mechanic.
 * Infamous 2 has a lightning storm roll in on the second to last mission, providing Cole with infinite recharges at any time by draining the storm itself. At the end of this mission, Cole gets back the ability to call lightning bolts from the sky. This power now automatically targets the biggest enemy in the immediate vicinity and is usually enough to kill them in one hit.
 * Elite Mooks:
 * The gangs all have Conduits among their ranks, with powers comparable to, but weaker, than the gang leaders. Reaper Conduits can teleport and create a traveling explosion along the ground, Dust Men Conduits can telekinetically manipulate junk into spawning robots and mecha suits to attack you, and First Sons Conduits have much more bizarre abilities like creating giant auras around themselves or cloaking.
 * Infamous 2 does not have Conduits among the Militia, but they do have guys with high-powered sniper rifles and Heavy-like guys with machine guns. The Corruption doesn't have "elite mooks" so much as loads of minibosses that take a lot of cluster bombs or rockets to die. Vermaak 88 has "heavy" troopers with ray beams who like to create ice columns for themselves to stand upon, and a miniboss form of their own.
 * The End - or Is It?:
 * The End of the World as We Know It: Zig-zagged.
 * Enemy Civil War: In inFamous 2, the three major factions of enemies, but they're dead set on killing one another (and you!).
 * Enemy Mine: In inFamous 2, . Also happens in both endings, where
 * Everybody's Dead, Dave:
 * Evil Pays Better:
 * Many consider the evil powers better (they're much more offensive-based and throw out more projectiles, as compared to the good powers' focus on taking out one target or simply increasing damage), and taking the evil choices makes most missions easier.
 * Festival Of Blood gives Cole the ability to fly as a cloud of bats, for starters. It's extremely useful for map traversal, but powered by the blood of innocents. Cole only has to use it once or twice, but most players will be snacking on anyone nearby, all the time. Staking other vampires will also provide blood, but it's harder, more drawn out and risky, not to mention a little monotonous. Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere, there's no in-game punishment for biting an innocent, and it takes just the press of a button...
 * Evil Tower of Ominousness:
 * Alden's ramshackle tower of junk.
 * The Ice Tower in the second game.
 * Evil Versus Evil: The Reapers, Dust Men, and First Sons are at war over territory. And even if you choose the evil path, all three of them are still your enemies.
 * Eviler Than Thou:
 * Expy:
 * With his Le Parkour movement animations and the flow of the waypoint-centric gameplay, Cole comes off a lot like Sucker Punch's previous hero, Sly Cooper, with Moya taking the role of Bentley. This would also make Zeke "Murray".
 * There is one Vermaak 88 soldier with dialogue, dark suit, breathing sounds, and mannerisms that is reminiscent of Darth Vader.
 * The Extremist Was Right: Kessler's plan consists of If the player takes the second game's good ending, it worked. For the evil version, see Gone Horribly Right below.
 * The creators also recently confirmed that the Hero ending is yet again the true ending and the Infamous ending is more of a "What If?", so at least from a canon standpoint Kessler succeeded in earnest.
 * Not as much as some think. The second game shows that a number of Kessler's actions were counterproductive, and depending on when the RFI was made, completely unnecessary. Some of Kessler's actions had no result, or discernibly purpose, beyond making Cole miserable.
 * Face Heel Turn:
 * The first game:
 * The second game:
 * Faceless Goons: All random enemies keep their faces hidden behind various kinds of masks.
 * Fantastic Racism: Bertrand really hates conduits,
 * Final Boss: Kessler in the first game. His radial groundpound attack can take off half your life points if you don't hover over it (and due to the dust it kicks up, it's not always easy to judge when it's safe to drop down), he flash-steps everywhere to dodge your fire, he spawns grenade-launching robot drones and land mines to harass you, and can create a wall of giant spectral versions of himself at the same time he performs the groundpound. Most of this is justified since he's spent decades researching superpowers and super-technology, and is the final boss, but still, he's annoying.
 * Final Boss Preview: The second game opens with Cole battling the Beast, then retreating to New Marias to lick his wounds and prepare for the rematch. Unusually for the trope, Cole is able to do a lot of damage to the Beast. It's just that the Beast can regenerate fairly easy.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning: Nix, Kuo and Cole, respectively. Also,
 * Flash Step / Teleport Spam:
 * Kessler, rather annoyingly. To a lesser extent, the Reaper Conduits, UAVs, and some First Sons Conduits can even teleport while Invisible.
 * Nix can do this in the sequel as well. Kuo's "flight" is half this; she turns into a wisp of mist that flies through the air at high speed.
 * Most vampires in Festival of Blood, Cole included, can turn into either a swarm of bats or a wisp.
 * Flight: This seems to be one of the more common Conduit powers. A dead drop in the first game speaks of a lab rat that gained flight in a ray sphere experiment, the newscast from the second game reports sightings of an old lady capable of flight, Kuo's ice powers (for some reason) also give her the ability to fly,
 * For the Evulz: Evil Cole, the Beast, and
 * For Want of a Nail: So many tiny things could have gone wrong with Kessler's plan in the first game that it's amazing he managed to get it to work at all. See also Gambit Roulette below.
 * : In the first game,
 * Foreshadowing:
 * In the first game,
 * Kessler is Foreshadowing on legs; while sparse, all of his dialog outside of dead-drop recordings focuses solely on Cole's personal growth. In the dead-drops, he never actually discusses any type of plan we expect the Big Bad to have. Despite John's assertions that Kessler is dangerous because he's a "true believer," he never says what Kessler believes in, but we sure find out at the end. Dead Drops reveal
 * Late in the first game, John White explains
 * Furthermore,
 * John, please say more dramatic things about
 * About 2/3 of the way through inFamous 2, Zeke starts coughing every now and then.
 * Friendship Moment: Cole and Zeke get one in Infamous 2 when they drink beer and watch a movie together. When someone (likely Kuo) tries to call them they wordlessly agree that they'd rather ignore it and just relax. They even pull a platonic Sleep Cute on the couch.
 * Gas Mask Mooks: The First Sons troops in general, usually with air tanks on their backs.
 * : In the second game,
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Subverted. At first, no explanation at all is given for the sudden appearance of the Corrupted in New Marais, and up until they are introduced Cole has spent all his time fighting gun-toting gangs and other super-powered mutants. Later, however, it is revealed
 * A God Am I:
 * Inverted in the sequel's evil ending,
 * Gone Horribly Right: If Cole is evil in the first game, Kessler's plan to succeeds far better than he likely thought possible. It succeeds so well, in fact, that an evil Cole in the sequel  It does "stop" the first one...
 * Gone Horribly Wrong: Moya is afraid of what could happen if terrorists get their hands on the Ray Sphere and start
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars: If you take evil actions, dark patches resembling electrical burns start creeping up the back of Cole's neck to cover the rear of his head. Additionally, burn marks will appear on Cole's clothes as well. Zeke will comment that Cole is beginning to look more intimidating and dangerous.
 * Gotta Catch Em All: Blast Shards and Dead Drops in both games. Stunts in the first, in the sense that they all appear in a list, to be completed as you perform them, one by one.
 * Grey and Gray Morality:
 * Guide Dang It: Looking for all the Dead Drops in the second game? You can only find 28 out of 29 in the main sandbox. The 29th is located Somewhat mitigated in that there's a clue in the trophies about where to find it.
 * Guttural Growler: Cole's gravelly-as-all-hell voice. This is probably so they don't have to record two different entire vocal tracks for Good Cole and Evil Cole, but with Evil Cole, it's more noticable. Changed in the second game; the new voice of Cole is still quite tough-sounding, but he doesn't sound like he's a heavy smoker either.
 * Halloween Episode: The Festival of Blood DLC.
 * Hammerspace: In inFamous 2, Sucker Punch has Cole, during cutscenes, reach behind his back to store and retrieve objects, noticeably blast cores. Presumably they didn't want to waste time animating him putting it in his backpack.
 * Hannibal Lecture: Cole gets this from Alden, Kessler and Bertrand. Kessler is actually trying to get Cole to pull a Shut UP, Hannibal, though.
 * Harmless Freezing: Averted. Freezing an enemy/civilian instantly kills them.
 * Healing Factor: To the point where Cole can withstand toxic gas and hails of gunfire with just a little time to catch his breath.
 * All There in the Manual explains that Cole is more of an energy being than a real human after the Ray Sphere incident, and his natural electrical charge heals his body over time. If he's able to suck up some electricity from a nearby source, he heals much faster, to the point that he is almost impossible to kill if he has access to a constant source of electricity.
 * Healing Hands: Cole can perform some bioelectric trick that heals anything and everything from poisonings to gunshot wounds. In the sequel, Good Cole can learn how to heal groups with a single use of this power, which is very handy.
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * In the first game, after . He gets tossed a good 50 yards for his trouble, but makes it out okay.
 * In the second game,
 * of the second game
 * Hero with Bad Publicity:
 * Subverted. If you choose the "good" path, people will begin to seriously doubt Voice of Survival's claim that you were the one who set off the explosion, and will even put up motivational posters featuring Cole. If you go the "bad" path, you really aren't giving them any reason to doubt him.
 * Doubly subverted late in the game if you catch the final Voice of Survival broadcast, when Dallas
 * And averted by the normal news broadcast, which quotes a government official not painting Cole out as a bad guy, but simply denying that individuals have become superhuman at all.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Cole and Zeke, so much so that they manage to The sequel gives their friendship more screen-time, including one entire cutscene dedicated solely to them hanging out, watching cheesy movies, and completely ignoring the problems they have to deal with for just a little while.
 * Holiday Mode: the standalone Halloween DLC "Festival of Blood", which, among other things, makes Cole a vampire.
 * Horror Hunger: Subverted. Ya know neuro-electricity? The little bolts of lightning in your head that lets your brain send messages to the body that tell it to, oh I don't know, BREATHE. Guess what good Cole can feed on when there are no alternatives... Guess what bad Cole likes to feed on any damn way?
 * Human Popsicle: Enemies finished with ice powers, notably averting a common trend with this trope; frozen enemies are dead instantly, even breaking them out won't save them.
 * Hurting Hero: In the first game,
 * I Just Want to Be Normal:
 * Cole--partially because of the bleakness of the ruined Empire City, partially because he's got all sorts of expectations heaped on him, and partially because even with superpowers, he's still "everyone's errand boy." However, while Cole hates the responsibility that comes with his abilities, he enjoys using his powers, and is often excited when he gets a new one.
 * Kuo in the sequel even more so, partly because her conversion to a Conduit was prolonged and extremely painful. She really does not like being a freak, and simply having powers now causes her to declare that she's "not an agent anymore," which upsets her.
 * I Just Want to Be Special: Zeke, who never shuts up about how he wishes he could have superpowers like Cole; just about every action he takes involves sponging off Cole's abilities, trying to get him to do something with it (like help more people), or trying to horn in on his act.
 * He drops it by inFamous 2, however; partly because he knows he simply doesn't have the Conduit gene for obtaining superpowers, and partly because he actually is trying to be a better friend to Cole.
 * Holiday Mode: the standalone Halloween DLC "Festival of Blood", which, among other things, makes Cole a vampire.
 * Horror Hunger: Subverted. Ya know neuro-electricity? The little bolts of lightning in your head that lets your brain send messages to the body that tell it to, oh I don't know, BREATHE. Guess what good Cole can feed on when there are no alternatives... Guess what bad Cole likes to feed on any damn way?
 * Human Popsicle: Enemies finished with ice powers, notably averting a common trend with this trope; frozen enemies are dead instantly, even breaking them out won't save them.
 * Hurting Hero: In the first game,
 * I Just Want to Be Normal:
 * Cole--partially because of the bleakness of the ruined Empire City, partially because he's got all sorts of expectations heaped on him, and partially because even with superpowers, he's still "everyone's errand boy." However, while Cole hates the responsibility that comes with his abilities, he enjoys using his powers, and is often excited when he gets a new one.
 * Kuo in the sequel even more so, partly because her conversion to a Conduit was prolonged and extremely painful. She really does not like being a freak, and simply having powers now causes her to declare that she's "not an agent anymore," which upsets her.
 * I Just Want to Be Special: Zeke, who never shuts up about how he wishes he could have superpowers like Cole; just about every action he takes involves sponging off Cole's abilities, trying to get him to do something with it (like help more people), or trying to horn in on his act.
 * He drops it by inFamous 2, however; partly because he knows he simply doesn't have the Conduit gene for obtaining superpowers, and partly because he actually is trying to be a better friend to Cole.


 * I Let You Win:
 * Subverted, however, in that
 * An Ice Person:
 * Kuo from the sequel, who will share her powers with Cole if he makes orderly decisions.
 * Also the PMC/"Ice Gang" Vermaak 88, who act like watered down version of Kuo.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
 * Surprisingly averted; most bad guys have very good aim from very far away (even with old Stens) and unless you use cover or sniping ability, they'll whittle down your health remarkably fast. Good Thing You Can Heal...
 * Civilians also have awesome aim with those rocks in both games.
 * Implacable Man: The Beast is so strong that he survives getting half his head blown off by the initial fight. Cole and his friends flee to New Marais, and the rest of the game keeps track of the Beast's swath of destruction as he follows you down the coastline. Every time you pause the game or hit a new story chapter, it tells you how many miles are left before he gets to you.
 * Just having his head blown off? Try.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: All of the standard mooks in the game are capable of sniping at you from on top of a twenty-story building, despite being gangbangers and the homeless instead of trained fighters. Justified with the First Sons, who very likely have been trained.
 * Improvised Weapon: For Festival of Blood, Cole finds himself without his Amp, so he puts a foot through a coffin lid and picks up the large cross that was on it. Conveniently, there's a pointy bit of wood near the "head", so he can immediately commence putting foot to vampire bottom.
 * In a Single Bound: The ice troopers primarily use this to get around; rather than having super-strong legs, they instantly create a small pillar of ice under their feet, launching themselves into the air. Cole can optionally get this power as well; it makes his jump distance nearly triple what it ordinarily does.
 * In Love with Your Carnage: Pretty much the entire reason Nix decides to hang out with Cole is because he's supposedly the demon who destroyed Empire City, to the point where she calls Cole the Demon as a term of endearment.
 * Incredibly Obvious Bug: The surveillance devices are big, out in the open, and constantly flashing red.
 * Incurable Cough of Death: In the second game, the deadly plague sweeping through the city is a major plot point.
 * Instant Armor: Dust Men mecha conduits... annoyingly. While the Golems they build out of junk are about fifteen feet tall, Alden creates one that's so big it takes up an entire bridge (and we don't even see all of it, just the head and forearms).
 * Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence:
 * Despite being able to climb anything that's not made of greased glass, Cole can't climb a chain-link fence. Most of them can be jumped over, and the ones that can't are usually extended from a ceiling to the floor. You can glitch through them quite easily, however. Also, Cole can't shoot through them, or anything metallic for that matter, because his shots, being electricity, are conducted into them. More than one power can get an attack around fences, though...
 * This is lampshaded in the second game, in which you actually get a trophy for climbing over a chain-link fence.
 * Invisibility/Invisibility Cloak: Some First Sons conduits, some drones and the cloaking devices in one of the story missions.
 * It's All Upstairs From Here: The Dust Men's tower in The Warren.
 * Jerkass: Dallas. Evil Cole can be this.
 * Jerkass Facade:.
 * Karma Houdini: Played straight with a number of characters in the original game, but eventually averted with the DC inFamous Interquel comic, which explains the events between the first and second games--
 * Alden, who despite all the crap he did
 * Moya,
 * And pretty much zigzagged by Sasha
 * Karma Meter: Cole gets different powers and responses from the public depending on whether he's good or bad. This is even a part of his Finishing Move, since he can chose to restrain the goons, or suck the life out of 'em. As is almost universal for karma systems, however, your final karma and your ending is ultimately decided by a specific choice as the game draws to a close. Notably, most karma choices don't change the plot all that much, and instead focus solely on Cole's character development. It's frequently debated on whether this is a clever way of making a karma system that makes more sense than in most games, or lazy writing that makes choices pointless.
 * To rectify this, the second game has all the Karma choices, bar one, be an active choice between two missions. Not necessarily different versions of one mission, but usually different missions entirely, in different locations, taken from different people, with different enemies.


 * Kick the Dog: Most of Mary's teachings in Festival of Blood are this, with the notable exception of one that invokes Kick the Son of a Bitch instead.
 * Kill It with Water: Since Cole's body isn't completely immune to electricity, he can be killed by walking into even shallow bodies of water. It is more likely that the reason going into water hurts him is that it conducts electricity, meaning that it is leaving his body, and dissipating into the water. This becomes extremely hazardous in inFamous 2, which takes place in a New Orleans-like city that has an area that still hasn't recovered from massive flooding. Flood Town's full of deadly pools of water which will badly damage you if you're foolish enough to leap without looking. On the plus side, you can fry any enemies who happen to be standing in water just as easily, which is a convenient way of netting easy kills that give extra experience (for the Enviro Kill stunt).
 * Kinda Busy Here: Zeke decides to call Cole to talk about creating merchandise based on Cole, while the latter is in the middle of defending medical supplies from a horde of Reapers.
 * Knight Templar: Bertrand, who wants to get rid of all the Conduit "abominations"
 * Large Ham: Alden would like to take a minute of your time to remind you how much he hates you, Kessler, and pretty much anyone who wants to get his hands on the Ray Sphere. As a matter of fact, there isn't a single moment in his dialogue where he isn't yelling at you.
 * Last Second Karma Choice: In the first game, your final place on the Karma Meter is decided by a certain choice just before the final choice. Granted, the evil option is pretty bad.
 * Late Arrival Spoiler: In a rare aversion, especially considering how much of a huge twist it was, the second game doesn't spoil the fact that
 * Le Parkour: How Cole gets around. Pretty much anything can be scaled, and he can even grind on powerlines. Shamelessly justified in-game; Cole's hobby is stated as urban exploration and pakour. Also, electric forces allow stuff like climbing on various surfaces (see how geckos do it) and stopping him from turning into a pile of gore from a giant heights.
 * Life Energy: The Healing Hands and Bioleech ability rely on this idea. Also, Cole's Healing Factor is justified by having him absorb electricity.
 * Lightning Can Do Anything: Either that, or Cole can do anything with lightning - restraints, Healing Hands, levitation, Deflector Shields...
 * Lovecraftian Superpower: The things in the second game.
 * Made of Iron: Cole takes so many bullets on the average mission that he probably sneezes bits of shrapnel. Perhaps the most explicit example is invoked by Zeke in the interquel comic, when Zeke explains to Trish that Cole was once hit head-on and subsequently run over by a truck. Cole left the hospital shortly thereafter with just a few bruises. Oh, and this was all pre-blast. Yeah.
 * Magic Pants: Averted when.
 * Mass Super-Empowering Event: Since he's at the epicenter of the explosion, Cole gets the brunt of the power-boosts, but the large number of superpowered gang members (and their exceptionally more powerful leaders) that pop up afterwards indicate that it has an effect on those nearby that it doesn't destroy.
 * Meaningful Echo: In the evil ending of inFamous 2, right before

"Laroche: "Well, it took thirty men, seven chainsaws and twelve pickups, but we finally got that monster's corpse of the streets""
 * Meaningful Name: Cole = coal, which is something you burn to get electricity. Kessler is presumably named after the Piccard-Kessler experiment regarding the electrical field of a moving charge. The man who Kuo's name makes sense as following the Good missions maintains the "status quo", which is also Lampshaded by the achievement "Quid Pro Kuo" when you take Zeke's suggestion of freeing the police to save her.
 * Mega Manning: Cole gains a "transfer device" in the sequel that allows him to use some of Kuo or Nix's powers.
 * Mind Probe: Both Cole and Kessler have this ability to some extent; Cole can see vague images in the mind of someone recently dead if he touches them, sometimes giving useful clues, and Kessler can directly implant his own memories into Cole by grabbing his head.
 * More Dakka: Bolt Stream in the sequel, the good-aligned powerup for the regular lightning bolt.
 * Naked on Revival: Vampire Bloody Mary is au natural after being revived by Cole's blood.
 * Name's the Same: Amusingly, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay also featured a superhero fighting crime in a place called Empire City. After that, the similarities end.
 * Never a Self-Made Woman:
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * Cole and John Moya and arguably Kessler also count
 * The sequel has
 * In the sequel when Cole unknowingly sets free the ice gang upon saving Kuo from her underground prison at a plantation
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
 * Vermaak 88 can accurately be described as
 * Zeke calls the swamp monsters "inbred shirtless crocodile freaks."
 * No Blood for Phlebotinum: Late in the game, Sufficient to say, considering what it can do, everyone and their mother is willing to go to great lengths to get the Ray Sphere.
 * No Body Left Behind: The usual enemies vanish when they go off-screen, but it's oh so definitely averted with  remains:

"Ultraguy: He and I should team up. Kevin Butler: Na, Cole's more of an underwear-on-the-inside kind of hero."
 * No Canon for the Wicked: Despite the game's title, the Interquel comic, Word of God, and sequel all say the Hero version of Cole is canon. Though the Sequel does still let you import an evil playthrough from inFamous and makes appropriate, if minor, changes.
 * Word of God recently confirmed that the Hero ending is canon for the sequel as well.
 * No FEMA Response: After the opening destruction, the government occasionally drops food and medical supplies, but no personnel enter the area, and there are groups of soldiers with authorization to use deadly force on anyone attempting to leave the city.
 * Not Wearing Tights: Though, frankly, a lot of the outfits are cooler than tights. Lampshaded in the Kevin Butler Commercial:

"Kessler: Your mother is ashamed of you, she lies, tells people you're a teacher. No one respects a bike messenger."
 * Oh Crap:
 * Cole, on seeing Alden's ginormous trash-golem form: "Holy shit."
 * In the sequel, when the Beast shows up. His first reaction to the destruction and smoke everywhere, is speechless shock, and then, "No... No, no... No!"
 * During the sequel's second-to-last mission, the mooks you're fighting can experience this:
 * Old Save Bonus: If you played the original, iF2 will grant you bonuses based on what trophies you've unlocked in the save file you import.
 * Our Vampires Are Different
 * Paint It Black:
 * If you choose to take evil actions, Cole's skin and clothes become proportionally desaturated, making his flesh ashen and his clothes black and white. In the second game, Cole's amp will also rust over and his tattoos change, along with his shirts.
 * Getting sprayed by the Reapers' mind-control tar makes you temporarily covered in the stuff.
 * Par Kourier: Cole's old job, if he wasn't on the bike.
 * People Of Mass Destruction: Most notably the Beast, but all Conduits count. Cole calls them just that.
 * Personality Powers:
 * Embodied by Kuo and Nix in iF2; Kuo's cool-headed to match her ice powers, while Nix is wilder and hot with rage. However, Kuo is also brittle when under a lot of stress, and Nix has a few surprising moments of warmth.
 * also counts, the corrupting hive lord maggot.
 * Phone Trace Race: A variation, in that John is (justifiably) paranoid about the First Sons pulling this on him. As a result, during his conversations with you, he ends each statement with a reminder of how many seconds he has before he has to hang up to avoid the trace.
 * The Plague: Created in Empire City In the second game, it's learned that the plague
 * Playing with Fire: Nix in the sequel, who will share her powers with Cole if he takes chaotic decisions. She also has oil-based powers: she can create blobs of oil to ensnare her enemies, who can be lit up afterwards, and her main ranged attack is tossing little flaming balls of oil.
 * Plot Coupon That Does Something: The penultimate evil choice in the first game has Cole
 * Power Incontinence: Cole can't use guns because his electric powers will cause the ammunition to explode when he touches them. (You can do it too! Find a turret, then "disable" it by making it explode! Free XP!) Similarly, he openly states that he can't drive a car without blowing it up. Thankfully, it's shown that he can at least touch other people without killing them. Standing on wet ground with him is an instant death, however.
 * Power Nullifier: What the Ray Field Inhibitor does in iF2.
 * Power Trio: Cole, Kuo, and Nix act as the Freudian Trio in the sequel. See the Characters Page to see specifics.
 * Powered by a Forsaken Child: The First Sons' favorite approach to activating conduits involve massive sacrifice of life, torture, and body horror. More humane options have either been scrapped or delayed beyond any good use.
 * Primal Stance: Cole is the latest in a long line of (potentially) morally questionable protagonists who do this.
 * Private Eye Monologue: Cole spends more of the game talking to himself about the difficulties of living in a quarantined city even with superpowers than to other people, and will begin monologuing at any point which affects the Karma Meter.
 * Product Placement: While you're running around New Marais, why not enjoy a 5-dollar Footlong at your local Subway™? (Eat Fresh!™)
 * Prophetic Fallacy: Kessler doesn't actually know why Whether Cole acts on that missing puzzle piece once it's discovered or decides that it changes nothing is the crux of the sequel's ultimate karmic choice.
 * Psycho Electro: Evil Cole.
 * Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Sasha. She isn't the protagonist's ex, but this fact hardly helps. Also causes a mild but notable aversion of Rape Is Ok When It Is Female On Male as she spends the first third of the game telling Cole how much she wants to get in his pants, despite his immediate and vocal disinterest. Goes right back into Psycho territory when it becomes apparent that, during her more insane moments, she The fact that there's a good reason for this just makes it worse.
 * Public Domain Animation: Zeke loves em.
 * Rare Guns: The Dust Men have extremely large quantities of WW 2 Sterling SMGs. The First Sons tote around FAMAS rifles. The Militia use Remington ACR Assault Rifles. And so on.
 * Red Herring: Except the plot wraps up in too short a time for it to happen.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Nix is red, Kuo is blue.
 * Required Secondary Powers: Subverted with Cole; against expectations, he's still vulnerable to electrocution either from enemies or by his Super Drowning Skills. Also played straight, since some secondary control over magnetism might explain how he can glide and land safely from great heights. Played with with Kessler, who,.
 * Ride the Lightning: No need to explain this one! Even one of the stunts is called this!
 * Ridiculously Average Guy: What Cole was before the whole thing started, by Word of God, and a few mentions in the game.
 * Ridiculously Average Guy: What Cole was before the whole thing started, by Word of God, and a few mentions in the game.

"Cole: Oh, I finally get it."
 * Sadistic Choice:
 * In the sequel, the final and end-deciding moral choice is one of these.
 * Schrödinger's Gun: Makes the Sadistic Choice that much more sadistic.
 * Sequel Hook: The first game ends on a massive one, leaving many loose ends very untied.
 * The sequel itself is no exception.
 * Shaggy Dog Story: A lot of peoples actions get shot down in the sequel.
 * All the good you did for Empire City?
 * The Beast spends the beginning and middle of inFamous 2 carving a path through America towards Cole,
 * Shock and Awe: Cole's powers. The basic ability is a simple bolt from the hand. Variations include ball lightning that sticks and explodes a la plasma grenades, and the ability to rain giant bolts of lightning down from the heavens.
 * Shout-Out:
 * Sucker Punch used, among other things, the new Batman movie continuity as inspiration for the look and feel of Empire City. See Sadistic Choice above for a plot point that bears more than a passing resemblance to a scene from The Dark Knight, especially the way it ends, but the game's production timeline compared to that movie's may make it impossible for this to have been intentional.
 * A preorder power for the sequel includes a 'lightning hook' which pulls enemies towards you. Get over here!
 * Speaking of Batman, there's those
 * The game is full of shout outs to Sucker Punch's Sly Cooper series on the PlayStation 2. Sly's calling card is stamped on Cole's backpack (if you zoom in enough) and a movie theater lists Sly 4 on the marquee. Cole's animations and overall feeling while using his Parkour abilities in platforming sections are nearly identical to a Sly Cooper game.
 * Not to mention the fact that there's a mission involving decontaminating fountains tainted with tar. Remind anyone else of the plot of the first chapter of Sly 3?
 * How about near the very beginning of the game? Climbing the large statue in Archer Square to get the food package is rather reminiscent (in the look of the rails/platforms and their layout) of climbing Clockwerk's Death Ray at the end of the first Sly Cooper.
 * If you look closely, Zeke is reading the Thievius Raccoonus in a pre-mission cutscene in the second game.
 * And then there's the theater in the second game with a marquee covered in Parallel Porn Titles - Solid Serpent: The Man, The Movie, Call of Booty, Uncharted Love, Assassin's Need (LoveToo), Hey, Low Reach, No Need For Speed, Epic Hickey, Little Big Unit, Latch It And Skank, and of course, Sly!
 * The First Sons mooks look like Big Daddy cosplayers.
 * ""STOP. SHOOTING. THE THERMONUCLEAR MISSILE, YOU DUMB HICKS!"
 * Possible shout-out in mission 32 to Two Gamers on a Couch, since the entirety of the mission is Cole and Zeke watching a Western, drinking beers, and then Cole absorbing the penultimate Blast Core.
 * In Flood Town in the second game, one can see on a roof written, "I'm starving". The reply written under it is "You can has cheeseburger."
 * In Festival of Blood, there's a point where Cole says "My Vampire senses are tingling". Also, one of the trophies is called Flight Night
 * The trophy Play. Create. Scare. anyone? Double for the fact you need to play user created levels for it.
 * In Festival of Blood, there's a movie theater with movies called L.A. Gore, Red Dead Vampires, Dead Face, Mass Infect 3, and Unstaked: Vampires Deception
 * Also just when Cole tells Zeke he is a vampire, Zeke jokingly asks "Do teenage girls suddenly find you irresistible?"
 * At the start of Festival of Blood, Zeke defends his reading a vampire comic book by remarking that it's a guide to survival.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal:
 * The fight with Sasha will irritate Cole, who mutters "shut up" constantly every time she rambles (which is often). Then you get to knock out her lights for real, in which case, she only contacts you twice afterwards - more if you're evil.
 * In the second game, when
 * Shut UP, Hannibal:
 * The fight with Sasha will irritate Cole, who mutters "shut up" constantly every time she rambles (which is often). Then you get to knock out her lights for real, in which case, she only contacts you twice afterwards - more if you're evil.
 * In the second game, when

"Wolfe: "It's impossible to predict how a Conduit's power will manifest.""
 * Sobriquet: Cole's happy to just go by Cole, but he's unofficially known as "the Electric Man" in-game.
 * The Social Darwinist:
 * Sociopathic Hero: According to Alternate Character Interpretation, . And if you take the evil route, then Cole himself.
 * Space Compression: Empire City is supposed to be a smaller stand-in for New York (with lots of bits of other cities tossed in) with a population of one-and-a-half million before the blast; the map is absolutely tiny compared to this concept, however. Compare the number of buildings on the map to one of the boroughs in a map of Liberty City, for example. Note that this seems to be a deliberate design decision; as a consequence, the city is very easy to navigate even without the aid of Cole's powers, but it still feels massive thanks to some dense urban areas, lots of NPCs on the streets (more than there are buildings for) as well as lots of vertical space to navigate.
 * Space Whale Aesop: Late in the game, while traveling with
 * Spanner in the Works: The one thing Kessler doesn't account for is
 * Sphere of Destruction: The Ray Sphere.
 * Spontaneous Weapon Creation: You can download for free the ability to generate electric "swords" from your hands in order to do more melee damage at the cost of draining energy.
 * Stalker with a Crush: Sasha lives this trope.
 * Stalking Mission: The Missions where you follow the Couriers.
 * Standard FPS Guns: Oddly enough, most of Cole's fantastic electrical powers mimic standard conventional firearms:
 * Melee: The "Knife".
 * Gigawatt Blades: The "Chainsaw".
 * In the second game, the Gigawatt Blades are replaced with The Amp, which is far better at Melee.
 * Lightning Bolt: The Pistol.
 * Precision: The Sniper Rifle.
 * Shockwave: The Shotgun
 * Overload Burst: The OTHER Sniper Rifle (albeit with splash damage)
 * Arc Lightning: The Automatic Weapon (Lightning Gun variation, naturally)
 * Shock Grenades: Grenades (obviously).
 * Megawatt Hammer: The Rocket Launcher
 * Lightning Storm: BFG Kill Sat.
 * Sticky Bomb: There's even a trophy for sticking enough grenades to mooks, called "Oh, You've Done This Before".
 * The Stinger: For Festival of Blood
 * Strawman News Media: USTV is portrayed squarely as Type 2, sheepishly repeating the government's position by blatantly lying about the situation in Empire City, congratulating government aid (when it only comes in the form of a crate of prunes - at least they send in a lot of medical supplies) and denying the very existence of Cole. That it's "USTV" suggests that the news media has been nationalized, on top of everything.
 * Stripperiffic:
 * Sasha. She's wearing a jacket that's not concealing her chest a lot and... Well, apparently, that's all. If it weren't for the tar-like substance she produces and that covers her lower body, she'd be flashing you all the time.
 * iF2 gives us Nix, who wears lots and lots of leather and accessories, to signify her unstable mental state. Ironically, the outfit would actually be rather impractical for a stripper.
 * Kuo wears a standard business suit upon her introduction, and later switches to something a little more... distinctive. She also gets her hair done, and her skin coloring switches to look like some nice makeup. Still not exactly stripper-wear, but sexier than her old outfit. Compare and contrast.
 * Stupid Evil: Some of the evil choices Cole can make are really just evil for evil's sake, and sometimes even come across as highly illogical and requiring much more effort than the good choice. The crowning example is when Cole can choose to either briefly talk to an electrician who has barricaded himself in a room and get him to peacefully stand down, or use his powers to blow open the door and flat out kill him instead.
 * Kick the Dog: In the second game, one of the evil side tasks that pops up when you are walking around New Marais is to beat up street performers simply because Zeke finds them annoying.
 * Sunglasses at Night: Zeke and a few cops.
 * Zeke's might be justified in two;.
 * Super Drowning Skills: Justified in that Cole's powers, being electricity based, go wonky in the water. Dropping into the ocean is an instant death. Cole can actually kill people by standing in the same puddle they're standing in. Avoid 'em if you're doing an Escort Mission. This is an even greater threat in the sequel, what with New Marais being surrounded by swampland. and half of the city being flooded.
 * Superhero: The game aims to get into the "headspace" of what it means to be an ordinary man given an extraordinary ability. Cole played evilly starts as an anti-hero but turns into a Psycho Electro, with his electricity turning from blue to red.
 * Arguably deconstructed; for much of the game, a Good Cole has a distinct Objectivist view of his situation and just wants to get out of the city with his friends and loved ones, the thought that he should dedicate himself to being a superhero just because he has superpowers never crossing his mind, and most of his actions motivated by more personal goals. Essentially, he's closer to what we actually expect an everyman suddenly given superpowers to behave like. It takes, traumatizing him with nothing more than  for Cole to finally decide that he can make use of his situation for the good of others.
 * Superpower Lottery: Stated.


 * Most named Conduits actually won this one.
 * Take a Third Option: Averted. The lack of these is the biggest criticism the series gets, with the karmic choices being outlandishly black and white with no middleground.
 * Take That:
 * Tax Loophole Productions presents "Alone in the House of Blood!" Even its poster gives it condescending reviews, such as "Craptastic".
 * The first game is full of this, but they're carefully placed so you won't notice unless you're right on top of the sign. For example, "Mid-Life Cycles" is heavily advertised, and there's an "outdoorsy" store with the slogan "Clothes for people who want other people to think they're outdoorsy".
 * In New Marais, there are stores called "Red Ring Electronics," an obvious Take That against the Xbox 360. Comes complete with a neon sign that does the full red ring animation.
 * Take Your Time: In the first inFamous, Trish has informed Cole that a box of medical supplies has landed nearby and she needs him to protect it from the Reapers. And Cole gets right on it after doing a few side missions, finding some blast shards, locating a few dead drops, healing (or sucking the life out of) a couple hundred people. Even during missions where the character stresses speed, there doesn't seem to be any reason not to wander around and grab a few things.
 * A Taste of Power: The beginning of the second game has Cole, fully powered, facing off against . He has no energy meter, meaning he can use his abilities unrestricted, and people that have played the first game will quickly discover that his firing speed has been reduced significantly...because he's not firing his basic lightning bolts, but rather unlimited Megawatt Hammer rockets as a default attack. Needless to say, after this first battle, Cole is subjected to the Bag of Spilling, but in an interesting twist, while he does get back most of the powers he had in the first game, he develops entirely new powers first.
 * They Were Holding You Back
 * Took a Level in Badass:
 * This applies to Cole, obviously, as he powers up throughout the game, but it also applies to Kessler, in hindsight. To wit:
 * Visible quite prominently during the final boss fight,
 * Played with again in the interquel comic's finale,
 * Trash of the Titans: The Dust Men create a shantytown in the center of a former park, complete with improvised gun turrets, a moat, and a massive tower built of random junk, with construction equipment and unfastened steel beams everywhere. They apparently suck at engineering, though, because to build most of it, they've been kidnapping engineers and construction workers.
 * Twist Ending:
 * At least twenty tropes on this page would not be here if it weren't for the first game's ending. And they're all in spoiler tags because it's that huge a twist. Thanks a lot, ending!
 * The second game is no slouch with this one, either.
 * Unreliable Narrator: Festival of Blood's framing device is Zeke telling a story about Cole to a hot woman in a bar. Obviously, it's not clear whether he's telling the truth or not. He claims Cole is a good guy, but that could be either from Cole being Good Karma, or Zeke trying to "sell" the story to the woman because Cole was actually evil.
 * Of course in the end we learn.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: Subverted; Kessler does some terrible, outrageous things so that but he doesn't seem to worry about what society ends up as so much as society surviving.
 * Video Game Caring Potential: Sometimes civilians will warn Hero Cole of a crime going on somewhere nearby (A thief, a mugging-in-progress, etc.). If you follow their directions, there is indeed a crime that you can stop, with the reward of the person's thanks and whatever amount of XP you got for taking care of the enemies.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential:
 * All of Cole's non-standard attacks require extra energy, and as such, he must find power sources to charge himself and heal himself (you do also regenerate health, but much slower without a quick charge). In a pinch, he can gain a complete refill of energy by sapping the natural electric charge from the bodies of random people on the streets. Complete with button mashing sequence in which Cole struggles against the horrified potential victim. Using higher-level powers to take out small numbers of weak faceless mooks also qualifies, since all of Cole's attacks basically fry the target to death, and as such, overkill requires a bit of a cruel mind.
 * Thunder Storm... especially if you're bored and evil.
 * "LIVE! DIE! Now LIVE! Now DIE AGAIN!"
 * Made worse in the sequel, with the introduction of the Ionic Charges mechanic. You can spend an ionic charge you've stored up to release a powerful area attack that has a high potential of one-shotting most enemies: the trick is that you can only get ionic charges by defeating bad guys... or cops... or random people passing in the street. Since innocent victims are a lot more plentiful than bad guys during later parts of the game, Evil Cole tends to be a lot more free with his wanton destruction than Good Cole.
 * Each civilian you kill nets you a "Bystander" bonus above a certain Evil karma level. For that matter, even "Good" karma random encounters can be turned around to negative karma: you can Thunder Drop on groups of wounded, trigger the bombs left around the city (or just kill everyone near the bomb and then defuse it), kill the mugging victims AND the muggers, dump grenades on abductees... it's less than surprising that this time around, instead of just one or two guys hucking rocks, civilians will actually gather in large groups and try to beat you to death with their bare hands.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: Moya fills this role Zeke does most of this in the sequel.
 * Walk It Off: Thanks to Cole's Healing Factor, though it takes a good ten to fifteen seconds of avoiding damage for his regeneration to kick in. If he's in a hurry, sucking up electricity from a nearby source heals him to full in a fraction of the time.
 * Walking Wasteland:
 * The Reapers start putting out massive amounts of black plague tar everywhere so they can infect more people, which will either kill them or turn them into more Reapers. The tar is revealed as coming from a single source--Sasha herself. She must be producing gallons of the stuff by the hour.
 * The Beast as well.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: The first time there's a city-wide blackout, Cole nearly passes out. Cole's abilities are severely dampened if he doesn't have nearby sources of electricity to draw on. Fortunately, he can draw energy from his enemies (and innocent bystanders.)
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Alden, even though he's a very old man whose father is most likely dead by the time the game begins.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist:
 * Wham! Line: Cole: "My brain lurched, unable to accept that ."
 * What Could Have Been: Originally, the game was supposed to feature Cole's powers emerging at random, and varying in some way. But it was later decided that electricity worked best as it is an abundant source within modern society. Also,
 * What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The penultimate choices of 2 fall into two categories.
 * What the Hell, Hero?:
 * Lots of this happens if you play an evil Cole, and it's inverted if you play a good Cole, where it all comes from because the only actual goal he's been working towards the entire time is  He views most of the Good choices as being detrimental to Cole's ability to
 * The notable exception is the Sadistic Choice, where Cole and Kessler actually agree on which choice is the morally bad one. Of course, depending on what the player has to say about it, this doesn't mean that Cole will do what he knows is right...
 * In-Game Example: Do something wacky like you would in a Grand Theft Auto game, like, say, blow up a gas station, and Zeke will call you out on it (he doesn't seem to mind, though).
 * Cole himself also does this late in the second game, if he's a Hero.
 * There's a minor one with Dr Wolfe by the resident Conduits near the end. He explains that the RFI could be used to subtract the Beast's abilities, rendering it weak enough for Cole to lay the smackdown.
 * One side mission has Cole keep watch over a captured militia mook, while the cop who gave you the quest hurries off to fetch reinforcements. As soon as the cop leaves, the militia mook spews one insult after another, and you have the choice between ignoring him or frying his defenceless ass. Doing the latter causes the cop to chew you out for it, first with words and then with weapons.
 * What the Hell, Player?: Pressing Start for the first game on a new playthrough initiates the Blast.
 * White and Grey Morality:
 * While there are genuinely good people such as the police force, Trish, and Zeke in the sequel, there are also few malevolently "evil" characters in the series. The majority are only people working for what they believe is right, tragic monsters, and those who have been driven batshit insane.
 * The exceptions, however, are notable for how extreme they are. Bertrand's actions are unpardonable, and neither are those of the First Sons in general. A fully Infamous Cole -- especially in the first game -- as opposed to a Cole who makes some story-crucial Evil decisions, is also among the truly evil characters.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
 * This definitely applies to Sasha. And of course, Evil Cole. Also, David from the comic.
 * Nix from the sequel continues the trend. She just loves to watch stuff burn.
 * Mid and late game good karma missions have you team up with a benevolent member of Vermaak 88. Said member gets stronger with every mission, starting out as a normal mook, then becoming a heavy unit and ultimately a titan. His sanity slips away with every power up, and in the end,
 * Zero Effort Boss: At the end of inFamous 2,.
 * Zero-Approval Gambit:
 * Nix from the sequel continues the trend. She just loves to watch stuff burn.
 * Mid and late game good karma missions have you team up with a benevolent member of Vermaak 88. Said member gets stronger with every mission, starting out as a normal mook, then becoming a heavy unit and ultimately a titan. His sanity slips away with every power up, and in the end,
 * Zero Effort Boss: At the end of inFamous 2,.
 * Zero-Approval Gambit: