Mass Effect 2/Tropes T-Z

'''Please do not add any character tropes to this page. The Characters page for the entire series can be found here; the Characters page for Mass Effect 2 can be found here.'''

The rest of this list can be found at:


 * Tropes A-F
 * Tropes G-M
 * Tropes N-S

"Marab: It's stunning how many people think that light moves faster through expensive fiber optic cables than it does through cheap ones."
 * Tagline: Fight For The Lost showed up on quite a bit of advertising for the game.
 * To a lesser extent, They call it a Suicide Mission. Prove them wrong.
 * Take a Third Option:
 * The confrontations between party members such as Jack and Miranda or Tali and . Don't want to favor one companion's loyalty over another? There are alignment-dialogue options for that.
 * If Zaeed Massani's loyalty mission is done after the Suicide Mission, instead of earning his loyalty through standard means.
 * Take My Hand: Near the end, there is a scene where.
 * Take That: Tela Vasir, at the cheapness of Vanguards.
 * Take That, Critics!: In response to the sequel being "dumbed down"...
 * The video game salesman has a lot of Take Thats, including what may be a dig at EA for their DRM when he informs the player of a special warranty that lets you re-download a game if its copy protection corrupts it. With EA's current DRM problems with Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins, it takes on a Harsher in Hindsight quality.
 * Quite a few salesmen have those. The Saronis Applications clerk has this jab at audiophiles and their expensive cables:
 * Quite a few salesmen have those. The Saronis Applications clerk has this jab at audiophiles and their expensive cables:

"Conrad: I talk to people, you know? Ask them if they have big problems that only I can solve. You'd be surprised how many people are just waiting for someone to talk to them. [Beat] Sometimes I poke through crates, too. You know, for extra credits."
 * There's also a few Take Thats leveled at fans. For instance, on Illium you can find a quarian girl in a bar complaining to her (friend-zoned) turian co-worker about how it's always the same thing when she's dating a human: "Oh, she's vulnerable! She could get sick! I wonder what she looks like under the mask!" Bring Tali with you for maximum awkwardness!
 * The same with Conrad Verner, who basically acts like the player character, but in a Noob-like manner.

"Garrus: You know me. I always like to savor that last shot just before popping the heat sink. Beat Garrus: Wait... That metaphor just went somewhere horrible."
 * An asari is quick to point out that she doesn't trust humans with anything, after all: "You can't even figure out your own religion!". Ouch.
 * If you ran into a few cars in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, you'll comment about the bad controls. Liara will comment about how it's still better than the Mako.
 * Take Your Time: Subverted. . Played agonizingly straight at every other point in time, except at a few points where the next story mission is literally forced on you. Which might be why the subversion is so devastating.
 * The point where Take Your Time stops being a factor coincides with when Shepard goes from being reactive to proactive. It's also implied that the preparations for the Suicide Mission actually take several months.
 * Talking Is a Free Action: Played straight in most cases, but averted in some. QTE cutscenes interrupt talking on a regular basis. Ditto any time Harbinger possesses a Collector: a good weapon and a fast shot can nail him before he's finished his speech.
 * Talk to the Fist: A game mechanic. You can shut up a villain's Hannibal Lecture by shooting him in the face, making the subsequent fight easier.
 * Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: There were certainly awkward moments between squadmates in the first game, but the second features people actively trying to kill each other. Not one person in the whole group completely trusts everyone else. Except (possibly) Shepard. Not until the end, at least.
 * That Came Out Wrong: Garrus, if you're a female Shepard romancing him.

"Mordin: No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive systems, replaced by tech. No soul. replaced by tech."
 * That Was the Last Entry: A few times, but the most heartbreaking example is probably Nef's last journal entry before she goes to meet with Morinth.
 * Theme Naming:
 * Most weapons inside of their families. The most prominent example are shotguns, which are named after swords.
 * Several planetary systems have theme names. Whether they're all given names in alien races, or they're all named after afterlives in Earth religions (go to the Exodus Cluster in the first game to see) or they're all named after characters from the Old Testament; there's also a cluster with all the systems named after physicists, and one system where all the planets are biologists.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
 * The Widow, full stop. A few seconds reading the description of the Widow will reveal that it's an ANTI-TANK rifle. Since you're using a rifle designed to destroy armored vehicles and krogan, on people with regular armor, it's not hard to see how this trope applies.
 * The Cain isn't a nuke launcher, but it may as well be. On lower difficulties, it can take out the Final Boss in one hit.
 * This Is Sparta:
 * WE. ARE. HARBINGER.
 * I! AM! KROGAN!!
 * Timed Mission:
 * The final part of both the Overlord and Arrival DLCs are timed missions. Arrival specifically has several timers, starting at two days, then decreasing to an hour and a half, then five minutes. And if you wait around long enough, they do run out.
 * Also the sidequests dealing with the launched Javelin missiles and saving the falling ship by re-activating its engines.
 * To Absent Friends: A possible conclusion to the Serrice Ice Brandy side quest.
 * Token Evil Teammate: Morinth (if you choose her over Samara). If not chosen, Jack fills this role as well.
 * Tomato in the Mirror: Seems to be subverted and played with, as people expect Shepard to be one of these, considering the game picks up two years after his/her death on the Normandy and subsequent rebuilding by Cerberus. One dialog path has him/her think of this as soon as s/he finds out.
 * Tonight Someone Dies: Used as a warning as well as for marketing purposes.
 * Too Awesome to Use: Higher-end heavy weapons. As heavy ammo doesn't, normally, fill between missions and cannot be purchased at any in-game store, a player usually has a limited amount of ammuntition available throughout the game.
 * Too Dumb to Live:
 * Special mention should go to the warden of the Purgatory, who thought that.
 * "There's only three of 'em."
 * The merc leader at the beginning of Miranda's loyalty mission. After all his talk, a Renegade interrupt will result in Shepard grabbing him and snapping his neck, as they and Miranda take out three other mooks nearby.
 * Go ahead. Sleep with . Dumbass.
 * in Arrival. As Shepard him/herself mentions,.
 * Also, Zaeed can relate a story about how smoking can kill you... apparently, a kid he knew decided to toss a butt near an explosives cache.
 * In Grunt's loyalty mission, Uvenk tries to kill Shepard, Grunt and their squadmate after the three of them survived against or killed a Thresher Maw.
 * Took a Level in Badass:
 * The Colossus. Remember hunting those tanks down for experience in the first game? In the sequel, there is only one. You fight it on foot, and, thanks to its fire support, it can wipe the floor with you if you choose a wrong path.
 * Similarly, the thresher maws in the first game weren't a tenth the fight as the one in the second.
 * Total Party Kill: The absolute worst ending. You do kinda have to work to get it.
 * Tragic Villain:.
 * Tragic Villain:.

"Garrus: I'm better now."
 * Trailers Always Spoil: The "Fight for the Lost" campaign.
 * Trash the Set: The game opens with the Normandy being destroyed. One part of the day-one free-to-new-copies DLC is a visit to the wreck of the ship, and it really exemplifies this trope, going as far as giving flashbacks to what each part looked like undamaged.
 * Tron Lines:
 * The kinetic barriers of several bosses and Elite Mooks look like these.
 * Most armors in the Mass Effect 'verse have a few blue glowing lines on them, signifying the use of Mass Effect Fields, thus Justifying how guns Stick to the Back. The Kestrel Armor from the Aegis Pack DLC, on the other hand, has these all over.
 * Troperiffic/Trope Overdosed: This had to be split off from the main Mass Effect page, because there were so many entries on it that new edits weren't showing up. Then it had to be split again into four pages, as the page originally had over 400,000 characters, and pages over 500,000 made TV Tropes' wiki engine crash.
 * True Companions: Shepard's goal is to take his/her team and turn them into this. In addition, numerous responses from Paragon Shepard essentially boil down to "you're part of my crew." . Also the only reason.
 * Turtle Power: The Krogan have beaks, shells, short stubby tails, and the longest natural lifespan among the spacefaring races: Urdnot Wrex is over 1400 years old, well beyond the thousand-year lifespan of the Asari. They are mentioned as being reptilian, and resemble nothing so much as anthropomorphic tortoises.
 * Tutorial Failure: The Firewalker DLC features on-screen tool tips that give the wrong keys for a number of necessary tasks to use with the Hover Tank (jumping and mining, specifically). This is presumably the result of a minor case of Porting Disaster.
 * Twin Threesome Fantasy: An old human man at Donovan Hock's party has two matching asari on either arm.
 * Two Plus Two Makes Five: Basically, this is how the "heretic" virus works, by altering the geth's logic system to come to a different conclusion. In other words, an indoctrination virus. You are given the opportunity to turn their virus on them. Notably, this subverts the usual Black and White Morality of the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy, as the renegade "kill them all" option can be justified as being more morally correct than brainwashing them.
 * The Un-Reveal:.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: The car chase over Ilium in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC.
 * Unexplained Recovery:
 * What happens with the Unity power, which allows Shepard to revive his/her squadmates if they fall in battle (and only then). Lampshaded by one of Garrus' responses to being revived:

"EDI: ...probing Uranus."
 * If you import a Shepard who did Nassana Dantius' quest on the Citadel, she will be unbelieving that you're somehow alive again when you meet her again. Shepard will respond with "I got better".
 * Shepard can also quote this word for word to Liara in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC.
 * The Unfought: Harbinger, sort of. While he takes over plenty of Collector drones to fight you, he never gets a proper boss fight in his true form or anything. . The Collector General is probably a better example.
 * Universal Ammunition: Justified, as the "thermal clips" are not actually ammunition, but heat sinks that are made to fit into all small arms. While it would make sense for the guns to have the option to wait for the thermal clips to cool down as opposed to being forced to eject the clip and insert a new one, the game doesn't give the option and make it impossible in-game. There's also the power cells, which any heavy weapon, from a flamethrower to an explosive lobber, can make use of.
 * Unperson: Tali states that if her father were found guilty of bringing live geth to the fleet, he'd be written off all Flotilla records and become a bogeyman used to scare children.
 * Unreliable Expositor: The Codex.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Should you choose to recruit . Lampshaded by Anderson if you ask him about with  in your party.
 * Unwinnable By Mistake: Technically, you can put the game in an Unwinnable state if you really try for it. If you go around blowing money on probes and fuel, use them up, and carry on doing this until you've exhausted all the money that it's possible to earn in the game before the Reaper IFF mission, then there's no way you can get to the star system where that mission takes place, making it impossible to proceed in the game. Since there are several million credits in the game though (even without any DLC packs), it's pretty dang hard to actually do this, although enough first-time players reported having made the game unwinnable for Bioware to make sure it couldn't be repeated in Mass Effect 3, where you get free fuel refills whenever you visit the Citadel.
 * Uranus Is Showing: "Really, Commander?"

""Good thing the Reapers are coming to save the galaxy from this particular Shepard.""
 * Used Future: Typically averted through the entire series, but played straight on Omega and Pragia. Omega is the series charging headfirst into Darker and Edgier territory, while Pragia has been derelict for several years.
 * Useless Useful Spell:
 * Both the Bypass Module and Hack Module increase the amount of time you have to hack terminals and bypass locks respectfully. You already have plenty of time to do both without these upgrades and they also cost 30,000 credits each, so neither is worth the investment.
 * Of the 3 Instant Armor bonus powers, Grunt's Fortification is the only one that doesn't benefit from the Tech and Biotic duration and cooldown bonuses that Geth Shield Boost and Barrier receive. If you need one, pick from one of those 2 instead.
 * Values Dissonance: An in-universe example. On Illium, indentured servitude is legal. The player can meet an asari contract broker and a quarian who sold herself into slavery indentured servitude in order to cover a large debt she incurred playing the stock market. While the quarian is not happy about her situation, she is less upset about her status than with the financial troubles which led to this solution. The broker claims humans are prejudiced against slavery because of their poor experiences with batarian slavers, explaining the legal protections provided to indentured servants by their contracts, including strict limits on its length, the duties involved, and how they're treated. The asari representative that the slave was to be sold to, meanwhile, is initially unwilling to buy the quarian's contract because they're anti-slavery one of the few licensed AI-research companies, who have been suffering bad press following the geth attacks in the first game (you can convince them to pay the fine to break the contract and hire her as an ordinary employee, resulting in a PR boost).
 * Vendor Trash: Completely averted. Unlike the first game, there is no inventory whatsoever, so there's nothing to sell. Most equipment is upgraded rather than replaced, and when a new weapon is obtained, it (usually) becomes immediately available to all characters who are capable of equipping it.
 * Verb This: Blasto the Hanar Spectre pulls one of these.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
 * The other side of the Omega-4 relay: ., but you have to travel through a relay that's glowing red instead of glowing blue. Oh, and when you get there, you can see . And don't forget the.
 * In the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC,.
 * Video Game Caring Potential:
 * Considering you can potentially finish the game just fine without doing all the primary quests, but need to do so to ensure everyone survives the end, this game is pretty much entirely based around this trope.
 * Should we even get into minor quest characters and random overheard conversations on top of all of that?
 * This trope is probably best exemplified in-game by the Paragon interrupt at a certain poignant moment in Tali's loyalty mission. It would take a real stoic not to take that option if you know what that is.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential:
 * It is possible to exact petty, satisfying revenge on those "monkeys" (known as pyjaks) that led you on a tedious chase all over the planet Eletania in the first game. On the planet Tuchanka, pyjaks are infesting a settlement's food supplies, and you get to take down as many of them as you want. With a missile turret. For a shop discount and the gratitude of the local populace. Oh, and this time, you don't get Renegade points. So all you good guys of the galaxy, you go and have some fun too.
 * There's also an achievement for watching ten enemies die screaming as they burn. The screams, it must be noted, are quite disturbingly realistic (there's even a minor bug which turns up occasionally where the screams continue even after they're killed). It makes for a very good strategy though because while they're running around screaming, they're not shooting at you.
 * In more psychological terms, you can break off a relationship with a party member at any point... including moments before the two of you would otherwise do the deed. Their reactions vary: Garrus mumbles something about how you're right and that you two shouldn't risk damaging your friendship, while Tali just says "Oh" before rushing out of the room. Kelly tells you that having a one-night stand with Jack is a bad idea, but you can still go ahead and do it, and thus use her like everyone else.
 * Most players try to get everyone through the suicide mission alive. Others... don't. And some intentionally proceed to doom not just their team, but every character and faction they can to the best of their ability just to see how will this affect their playthrough of Mass Effect 3. As commenters on YouTube put it:

"Harbinger: Shepard, you have become an... annoyance."
 * If you take your time with opening the heat exchange valves in the ventilation tubes while your tech specialist is crawling through them in the last mission, their pleas for you to hurry up will get increasingly... desperate. This leads to a Nonstandard Game Over if the player runs out of time.
 * In a very subtle example, Kasumi comments on how it's nice that she doesn't have to travel in a cargo hold and has an actual window to look out of for a change. You can close the blast shield over said window with a conveniently placed button, which has no function or purpose other than to enable you to make her room a whole lot more gloomy and bleak.
 * In the Overload DLC, if you kill a few of the local deer-like fauna, the Hammerhead computer says, "Analysis: defenseless herbivores are no match for guided missiles." Kill a few more and the computer says "The Galactic Humane Society would like to remind you that animals are people too."
 * Fail to get the loyalty of a squadmate like Thane or Tali (by allowing his son to finish the job, or revealing the truth about her father) and see them becoming absolutely crushed. Thane becomes an even darker Death Seeker, and Tali feels completely betrayed by someone she considered a close friend and mentor.
 * Villainous Breakdown: Harbinger, who is normally unflappable, really stats to make it clear how much trouble Shepard is during Arrival.

"Do... these units... have a.... soul?"
 * Violation of Common Sense: . The only reason they succeed is because of the lack of any credible opposition as . This is done to ratchet up the tension for the endgame, and give a sense of raised stakes, but getting to that point is pretty blatant railroading in a series that is normally much subtler about it.
 * In fairness, the reasoning is sound..
 * Justified in that the squad is always deployed in the shuttle... that's why exiting a level allows you to either return to the Normandy or simply swap out your teammates.
 * Visual Pun: The M-300 Claymore is the most powerful per-shell shotgun in the game. Although its model number is M-300, the shotgun model has it printed as 300M. Because of the font, from a distance it can be easily read as BOOM.
 * Voice Changeling: It turns out that, by way of considerable practice, is able to do a perfect imitation of.
 * "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Wakeup call minibosses. The heavy mechs tend to be difficult, but the Collector Praetorians have heavy shielding, fly, and have to be taken down at least three times before they're permanently destroyed.
 * Horizon is one big series of Wakeup Call Bosses. First, you have Harbinger, which is doable. Then you meet your first Scion, an enemy which can pierce cover and requires you to do more than duck-into-cover-and-shoot. Then you fight two Scions at the same time. Then... the Praetorian, who can kill you in the blink of an eye.
 * If you play it early in the game, the end of Kasumi's loyalty mission can count as this. Wave after wave of Eclipse troops and LOKI mechs, while a gunship is shooting its minigun and launching rockets at you... a gunship, mind you, that regenerates its shields after you take them down once. Oh, and did I mention that Kasumi is your only squadmate in this fight?
 * Walk It Off:
 * You now auto-regenerate health, to help take the game in a more shooting-oriented direction. This was possible in the first game, provided you met certain conditions, but it wasn't a viable mid-combat strategy. Justified in that the in-armor medigel systems from the first game have now become standard issue, and improved.
 * You can also walk off your tipsy drunken-ness after a couple of seconds, which may be explained by Shepard's cybernetics filtering out toxins more efficiently than a "standard-issue" endocrine system, as evidenced by a dose of poison in a minor sidequest that should kill a normal person, but merely knocks Shepard out for a bit.
 * The War Sequence: Tali's recruitment mission finishes with Shepard and co. fighting through an endless onslaught of geth, including a Colossus, in order to reach her. And it's literally an army; Kal'Reegar mentions that it's at "platoon strength".
 * Wave Motion Gun: The Thanix Hydronamic Cannon. It's a mass accelerator that fires jets of molten metal at near relativistic speed, reverse-engineered from Reaper technology..
 * Weakened by the Light: You, during Tali's recruitment mission, which takes place on an old abandoned colony orbiting a star that is, for unknown reasons, aging rapidly and putting out too much radiation. Sunlight on this level burns out the shields of you and your party members, so you need to duck into cover and shade to allow your shields to recharge. It doesn't do any damage to your health, but without shields, you die from gunfire very quickly. Averted by the Geth, in said mission. Grunt also averts it because thanks to his Bizarre Alien Biology, he never uses shields anyway.
 * We Are Everywhere: Cerberus.
 * pull this off too, with implications that messing with them on any level is a bad idea, even after their defeat..
 * Harbinger.
 * Wham! Episode:
 * The realization during a sidequest that the Collectors after getting a clearer look at the Cipher from the first game.
 * The moment when is boarded by the Collectors, who get away with everyone except for  and the away team.
 * Arrival..
 * Harbinger's manifestations..
 * gets one when Shepard shows up on Horizon.
 * Wham! Line:
 * Only one other species is known to have this genetic structure:.
 * Only one other species is known to have this genetic structure:.

"EDI: I have detected a signal embedded in the static.."
 * The line that kicks off the Wham! Episode at the start of the final act.

"Shepard: You're threatening to flay people alive now?"
 * What the Hell, Casting Agency?: In-Universe: depending on how you customized Shepard, the actor/actress in that role in "Citadel" (the film based on the events of the first game) may look nothing like him/her.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Pretty much everyone calls Shepard out on working with Cerberus.
 * Player's can give one to.
 * And before that Shepard can say (for some weird reason the line gives you renegade points):


 * In Arrival, you get a huge one from.
 * If the player speaks to him after, Joker will give Shepard an absolutely blistering one (and rightfully so) for.
 * All of this can be subverted or played straight like mad, depending upon.
 * Tali will give Shepard a heartbreaking one if s/he chooses to reveal the evidence discovered on board the Alarei to the quarian Admiralty Board and Migrant Fleet at the end of her loyalty mission.
 * Doctor Chakwas briefly chews you out for.
 * What the Hell, Player?:
 * EDI, if Shepard enters the wrong-sex bathroom.
 * EDI doesn't find launching a probe into Uranus as humorous as the player likely does.
 * What You Are in the Dark: As you will learn in Jacob's loyalty mission,.
 * And accidentally, suddenly exile was a preferable option
 * Heavy implications of this surround.
 * The point of Legion's loyalty mission..
 * When You Coming Home, Dad?: The relationship between . The achievement for his loyalty mission is called.
 * As for less sympathetic fathers, see the trope above this one.
 * Wicked Cultured: Donovan Hock, the antagonist of the Kasumi - Stolen Memory DLC. He even has (what's left of) Michelangelo's David and the Statue of Liberty in his vault.
 * With This Herring: Averted in every way possible... by Cerberus. The Complete Monsters from the first game, who were always Playing with Syringes while bleating about humanity's right to conquer the galaxy. They not only rescue Shepard, they replace his Cool Starship, and practically drown him in money and information, while the Council has decided to suppress and/or discredit the Reapers. They do all this while still Playing with Syringes and bleating about humanity's right to conquer the galaxy, but tone it down a bit while you're around: they know quite well that Shepard is useful to them as a symbol. Turning Shepard to their cause by giving him/her money, information, and all the goodies would be a good place to start.
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: See Jerkass Woobie in the YMMV section. Even after she gets some closure via her loyalty mission, Jack admits that she "still kinda want[s] to kill everyone [she] meet[s]. No offence."
 * Wretched Hive: Several:
 * Omega.
 * Illium, which is as dangerous as Omega but subtler about it. Garrus will describe the many ways one can mess up and regret it on Illium, while Tela Vasir from the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC says, "Illium is just like Omega, only with more expensive shoes."
 * Bekenstein, from the Kasumi DLC. It's described as a human exclusive Illium.
 * Xanatos Gambit: Cerberus is practically built on them.
 * You No Take Candle: The vorcha species speaks like this.
 * You Require More Vespene Gas: Want to construct that new upgrade? Can't. You require more element zero, iridium, platinum, and/or palladium. Especially the platinum.
 * Bioware furthered this with an update that made mining a little faster, then the Lair of the Shadow Broker gave you the ability to earn materials by sending agents on missions, as well being able to buy info on/mine planets with an abundance of a certain material.
 * Your Makeup Is Running:
 * Seen on Nef's mother during Samara's loyalty mission when talking to her about her daughter's murder.
 * Also Jack in her romance scene.
 * You Shall Not Pass: Done in the Suicide Mission when . Depending on your choices, any or all of them might not make it. Before that, when engages in a valiant holding action, with nothing but pistols and assault rifles, to.
 * You Shall Not Pass: Done in the Suicide Mission when . Depending on your choices, any or all of them might not make it. Before that, when engages in a valiant holding action, with nothing but pistols and assault rifles, to.

The rest of this list can be found at:


 * Tropes A-F
 * Tropes G-M
 * Tropes N-S