The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim



"The Elder Scrolls told of their return. Their defeat was merely a delay 'til the time after Oblivion opened, when the sons of Skyrim would spill their own blood. But no one wanted to believe... Believe they even existed. And when the truth finally dawns... It dawns in fire! But there's one they fear. In their tongue, he is "Dovahkiin": Dragonborn!"

- Esbern, Narration of the teaser trailer.

Skyrim is the fifth entry into The Elder Scrolls main series, released on November 11, 2011 across multiple platforms. It takes place 200 years after the events of the fourth game in the northernmost part of the continent, home to the Nords, as Alduin the World Eater is returning. The people of Skyrim are locked in a bitter civil war between those who support remaining within the Empire of Tamriel and those who wish for independence, united under the leadership of Ulfric Stormcloak. Into this enters what may be the last Dragonborn, a person born with the soul of a dragon, who has the ability to kill the dragons and absorb their souls. Under the guidance of Esbern, one of the last Blades, the Dragonborn must oppose Alduin and defeat him, lest he destroy the world.

The game runs on a heavily modified Gamebryo engine called the Creation engine, complete with all the Good Bad Bugs that Bethesda fans have come to know and love. The soundtrack is once again provided by Jeremy Soule. Skyrim is also innovative in that it has an integrated way to browse and upload mods, which can be downloaded automatically via Steam, something that has never been attempted on this scale before.

The first DLC for Skyrim, Dawnguard, came out for the Xbox 360 in the summer of 2012. The trailer can be found here.

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 * 0% Approval Rating:
 * King Olaf. Solitude has a festival where he is burned in effigy. He seems to have had a better approval rating in the other Holds, but his reign was so long ago that it is hard to say for certain whether it was good or merely not bad enough to inspire annual effigy-burnings. He is revealed to be
 * The Emperor himself, Titus Mede II, though to a lesser degree than Olaf. While not the victim of a effigy-burning ritual like Olaf (possibly because he's still in power), very few people, if anyone at all seems to have anything positive to say about the emperor. Even those supposedly loyal to him are more loyal to the Empire as a whole than they are to him.  The reason for this hatred is because he surrendered to the Thalmor, but when you meet him he comes across as a supremely Reasonable Authority Figure, as well as a perfect example of , so the hatred seems somewhat undeserved.
 * The Thalmor, the fascist High Elf government. The number of non-Thalmor in Skyrim who support them can be counted on one hand. There are quite a few High Elves who dislike them for their extreme ways. The only reason the Thalmor even came to power in the first place was due to the chaos caused by the Oblivion Crisis.


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 * Abhorrent Admirer: Apparently you and  spent a magical evening together while you were drunk. She doesn't handle rejection well.
 * Aborted Arc: If you speak to the Thieves Guild member Rune, he will tell you his backstory and the reason for his peculiar name and you can offer to keep your eyes open in order to help him discover his origins. And then, nothing. It's never brought up again in the Thieves Guild questline and there is no quest having anything to do with Rune's backstory.
 * You can find a shipwreck on the north coast that contains a journal indicating Rune's origin. There's no dialogue option to give him the book or ask him about it.
 * Absolute Cleavage: Several female armors show off a lot of boob.
 * The Forsworn Armor. Granted, it's also rather miniscule for men, but for females it's barely a bikini. One of the Fur variants (the one with the skirt) covers relatively little of the upper body too.
 * Of note is the cook who helps you during a Dark Brotherhood mission, who spends most of the conversation leaning forwards and displaying the care the dev team put into making clothes wrap.
 * Likewise, the Daedric Lords Azura and Nocturnal both wear robes split from shoulders to navel.
 * Aela The Huntress is usually clad in the Ancient Nordic Armor that is comprised of a deep-V halter-top and no back (or sides for that matter).
 * of course, Draugr who were female in life wear the same outfit.
 * Not an armor, but the Tavern Clothes for women has an exceedingly low-neckline that obviously displays a whole lotta boob. Justified as many of the women who wear these are (As the name indicates) tavern workers who are probably wearing the clothes to help squeeze out better tips from customers.
 * And that's just in the vanilla game. Then there's the crapload of skimpy and revealing armor and body mods, some of which can and will take this trope Up to Eleven.
 * Abusive Precursors:
 * Dwemer weren't well-liked by other races in the distant past, and we see a few good examples of why in this game. They twisted the Falmer (Snow Elves) into the morlock-like forms you see today and used them as slaves. Whatever the Dwemer did changed the very nature of their souls: Sentient creatures (like the various races of elves, humans, etc) have black souls. Subhuman creatures and beasts have white souls. Falmer souls are white, meaning that they fall into the second category. All this was done because the Dwemer needed white soul gems to power their inventions, thereby providing a perfect renewable source of energy to power their society.
 * Dragons and the dragon cults worshiping them are another example. Alduin essentially disregarded his divine mandate to serve as the World-Eater and established a vast theocratic dictatorship over early Nord society. The legacy is still felt in modern Skyrim with the draugr ruins scattered across the landscape, as well as the dragon mounds where the bones of the old dragons are buried.
 * Acceptable Breaks From Reality:
 * Death by freezing is non-existent, regardless of race or blood. Even swimming naked in freezing waters topped with ice floes off the northern shoreline have no ill effects. A dungeon even requires you to do explore and loot an underwater ship in just such conditions! Interestingly, the Nords that populate Skyrim do have a canonical inherent resistance to cold that protects them, but that's it. Ironically, the Khajiit, who are covered from head to tail in fur, are the only race to actually complain about the cold, though they have the excuse of being native to a desert region.
 * Ingots of metal only weighing one pound each. All the ingots share similar size in-game, but gold is far more dense than iron and should weigh a good deal more than an iron ingot of the same size. You can then take three of these one-pound ingots and make a 20-pound suit of armor.
 * All currency, even that found in ancient Dwemer or Nordic ruins, is represented by septims to avoid inventory and exchange hassles. Similarly, any lockpick-like item (bobby pins, smith tools, etc.) is just represented by the same lockpick item. For that matter, all locks, whether they're on wooden doors or Chaurus Chitin chests, all have the same wood-in-metal interface.
 * Although the former is neglected entirely for time-saving purposes, since it is not inconceivable for to have currency from ruins represented as trade items (as they were in New Vegas and Morrowind) and sold to merchants.
 * Individual Septims, lockpicks and arrows have no weight, leading to scenarios where you're potentially carrying around with you a million gold pieces, thousands of lockpicks, and a small army's worth of arrows. There's even an achievement earned if you are able to carry 100,000 gold pieces on your person.
 * A minor one, but Venom and Essense looted from Frost Spiders and Ice Wraiths respectively are conveniently stored in vials once looted right from the dead beasts' corpses.
 * Action Bomb:
 * Summon your own with the "Flaming Familiar" conjuration spell.
 * Atronachs and some Dwarven Spiders have the explode upon death variant.
 * Any undead opponent dealt a critical kill hit with the Dawnbreaker, setting any nearby undead on fire or also outright killing them.
 * Action Girl: Any female player character, nearly all female recruitables, and of course Gormlaith Golden-Hilt takes a close-up approach to dragonslaying.
 * Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Each of the Dwemer ruins; Blackreach in particular.
 * Aerith and Bob: The members of Clan Battle-Born: Olfrid, Bergritte, Idolaf, Bergritte, Alfhild, Lars, and...Jon.
 * Affably Evil: Vasha, a Khajiit criminal who you can choose to murder during your initiation into the Dark Brotherhood, is pretty polite for a guy with a sack over his head, talking to his potential executioner, mixing threats with promises to try to get out of it while not showing much in the way of fear.
 * The Ageless: Dragons by nature, ditto for vampires.
 * Airborne Mook: Dragons, when they're not attacking you on the ground.
 * The Alcatraz: Cidhna Mine in Markarth, owned by the Silver-Blood family; prisoners are used as slave-labor in mining the silver.
 * Alien Sky:
 * Tamriel's skies have two moons, which are actually the rotting remains of the god who created the planet. The phases they go through are technically impossible, but the sky only looks that way because that's the only way mortal minds can interpret it.
 * A more pronounced example would be . The sky there looks like a giant Boom Tube with nebula walls and unearthly lighting.
 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us: A couple of faction bases are assaulted by their nemeses during the associated questlines.
 * All Your Powers Combined: Used to dispel
 * Altum Videtur: Subverted for the first time in the series. While Cyrodiil and the Imperials are still expies of the Roman Empire, their names are no longer always Latin-sounding, but also Italian sounding (Adrianne Avenicci being an example). This shows that the language of Cyrodiil and the Empire has changed in the last 200 years.
 * "Pentius Oculatus" means "inward eyed" in Latin. It's one of the few times that the actual language is used.
 * Exclusively Evil: The Falmer, after centuries of enslavement twisted them into hideous Morlock-like beings. They are the only mortal humanoid race with no non-hostile members. Every single Falmer seen in-game is an evil monster who wants to kill and eat you.
 * Bandits as well, they will always attack an approaching Dragonborn with impunity and only a select few are non-hostile at first.
 * Ditto for the Silver-Hand who are Bandits that specialize in werewolf hunting. Unlike a small amount of non-hostile bandits none of the Silver-Hand members are approachable and are all hell-bent on murdering everything they see werewolf or not.
 * Always Check Behind the Chair: Skyrim rewards the explorer who checks behind waterfalls, and pays attention to those little cracks where things can stick out from.
 * Amazonian Beauty: A female Dovahkiin/Dragonborn with the weight slider set to the maximum will most likely be this. Bonus points for being a Nord or Redguard.
 * Ambiguously Evil: While most, the devs have said that more than a few just want to be left alone. As you play through the main quest, you learn that dragon politics aren't nearly as cut-and-dried as you might have thought, and even dragons who follow Alduin generally don't seem to like him much. Indeed, you may now and then encounter a dragon that just flies about overhead, not antagonizing anyone, and then heads off.
 * The dragons that do just fly overhead will generally attack things that are hostile to the player. This is still ambiguous, however, as it's quite possible that the player is evil.
 * And I Must Scream: One Dragon Priest is encountered by unlocking his sarcophagus with two keys shaped like skulls. Nothing suggests he was "dead" before the unlocking or even unconscious (Aura Whisper clearly shows him inside before the unlocking). He was most likely trapped in there since the last war against the dragons, which was a couple thousands years ago.
 * Little wonder he is called Otar the Mad.
 * Annoying Arrows: Played straight with lower-level attackers. Averted with more powerful archers - these can kill even a well-armored player much faster than almost anything in melee. Even dragons. If you think arrows are laughable, just wait until you meet Sigdis Gauldurson.
 * Additionally, archers are the only threat that doesn't give away their location when engaged, meaning a character that can usually bulldoze elder level dragons might just die at night desperately looking for the source of the attack.
 * Most guilty of this are the Draugr Deathlord Archers, whose choice of weapons and ammunition, Ebony Bows and Ebony Arrows respectively, have among the highest damage for Archer weaponry.
 * Anthropomorphic Personification:
 * Alduin, Akatosh and Auriel are all Dracomorphic personifications of different aspects of Time.
 * Daedra (particularly the Princes) are also all abstracts of various concepts, but have a much easier time of rendering themselves unto physical form (but doing so inside the Mundus is a different matter), due to not having given parts or the whole of themselves over to creating the Mundus.
 * Antiquated Linguistics: Most residents of speak in this manner. Most noticeable are the three heroes who
 * Apocalyptic Log: Several dungeons, particularly dwemer ruins, have the bodies and journals of previous adventuring parties scattered throughout them. Choice bits you're likely to read are tales of the group being unable to leave somehow, one or more of their group mysteriously going missing, and odd noises and shadows from the lowest depths they've explored so far. The location Japhet's Folly has the eponymous man's dessicated corpse in its basement, along with a journal that tells about how he tried to create a fortress on the island. The cold and harsh weather drove away most of the people that came with him, and eventually he starved to death. The journal ends with the words "OH GODS HELP ME."
 * Apologetic Attacker:
 * Several ghosts in Rannveig's Fast dungeon, due to being enthralled by a necromancer. "Run! I don't want to kill you!"
 * One of the random lines the draugr occasionally say, "Unslaad Krosis", means "Eternal Sorrow".  uses Krosis as "Sorry".
 * An amusing meta-example from the developers; the dragon lair of Shearpoint also contains a Dragon Priest tomb, and if you don't watch your step, you'll often have to simultaneously fight off him and several hundred tonnes of angry lizard in one of the toughest battles of the game. This priest's name? Krosis.
 * Armour Piercing Question: When  "ask" you to kill , he says that they are right in thinking that it is his nature to be evil, but he struggles daily to suppress it. He then finishes with "What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"
 * Artifact Title: Finally subverted, as it's the first time in the series that an Elder Scroll plays an important part of the main plot.
 * Completely averted with Dawnguard, as the leader of the vampires needs the Elder Scrolls as part of his master plan.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
 * The executions at the beginning of the game are called out: Ulfric Stormcloak (the leader of the insurrection), Ralof (one of his high-level lieutenants), Lokir (who stole a horse), and The Hero (who happened to wander by at the time). This is a little jarring when both factions will subsequently treat you as a career criminal - and while some dialogue options let you establish this as truth for your character, it needn't be so.
 * In the city of Markarth, you meet an Orc in the Cidhna Mines prison by the name of Borkul the Beast. When questioned about why he's in prison, he replies "Murder, Banditry, Assault, Theft, and Lollygagging."
 * "Here's all you need to know: I'm a werewolf. I like killing things. I love Astrid. I hate annoying people. And the color blue gives me a headache."
 * According to Sheogorath, Pelagius was afraid of many things, including assassins, wild dogs, the undead, and pumpernickel.
 * His exact words were "Hated and feared many things" - so presumably he wasn't actually afraid of bread.
 * It was Pelagius. There's a very good chance he was actually afraid of pumpernickel. Or at least suspicious of it. There's also a 100% chance Sheogorath is completely bonkers and about a 75% chance he forgot what he was talking about by the... well, beginning of the sentence.
 * Artificial Atmospheric Actions: There's still some, but it's much better than in the previous games. It was mentioned that it's actually quite hard to make the AI act completely realistic, but they won't talk about nothing but mudcrabs this time. Still, like in Oblivion, you can play the AI for laughs.
 * If you pick up a goblet or sweet roll, they interpret it as "stealing". However, they may only say "Watch what you're doing!" if you jump up on their table and kick all their plates and goblets everywhere. This makes it quite funny if you trash the Jarl's dining hall and they still sit down at the table at designated meal time when all the plates and goblets are on the floor.
 * In fact, the AI only recognizes eyesight. If you put a barrel over someone's head, you can rob them blind and they won't notice a thing.
 * A glitch sometimes causes these. Such as NPCs patrolling the swampwaters.
 * In an improvement to the previous games, starting a dialogue doesn't stop time, allowing for a more fluid conversation. Unfortunately it doesn't stop certain important events such as dragon attacks taking place in the background, either. And the NPC just keeps on calmly talking as the village is being burned behind them. Makes for a Funny Background Event when they calmly talk about the rebellion… and the town guards are shouting "Slay the dragon!" in the background.
 * Or from the guards themselves. If you have spells readied, you'll be told to "Go cast your fancy magic someplace else." The fact that there is a fresh-slain dragon burning up in front of you is irrelevant.
 * You'll get different greetings from guards depending on your status with a given faction. However, as you advance, you'll still hear the old greetings in addition to the new ones. So one guard will be saying what an honor it is to meet the Harbinger of the Companions while another asks if your job as newbie of the Companions is to fetch the mead.
 * Likewise guards can hail you as the Dragonborn, and then immediately tell you they're watching you because you're a Khajiit.
 * They'll do that even if the Dragonborn is a Nord. They're equal opportunity bipolar guards.
 * If you're liked enough with a certain faction, they're willing to overlook certain things, like shooting them in the face with arrows. Another rather odd thing is that for some reason, the AI only considers a few things to be "assault". Using Unrelenting Force on the Jarl will earn you a bounty, but you can light him on fire with a Shout, and he'll greet you like nothing's wrong.
 * Artificial Brilliance:
 * Steal that guy's stuff, and then ambushed by thugs a few days later? Search the bodies, there's a connection.
 * Subverted at times if the grieving party is.
 * Your victim can't get satisfaction from hired thugs? Beware of Dark Brotherhood assassins ambushing you in the wilderness.
 * Arrows become Annoying Arrows in more ways than one. In the previous games, enemies would just dead-zone you or stand there and fire. If you try to shoot them with a bow (or magic) and they know you're there, they will strafe left or right so you'll miss.
 * It can be surprising when enemies block. It can be more surprising when an enemy shield bashes you right when you start a power attack, knocking you to your knees.
 * Sneak into a room with bandits and drop something valuable on the floor, like a gemstone. The bandits will argue with each other over the object, and eventually attack each other.
 * Scare a vampire off by overwhelming force or magical fear effects? They might use an invisibility spell while retreating.
 * Stealing from someone without getting caught may also result in the aggrieved party reporting the theft to the city guards. From that point on, a random guard in that hold will comment that "I know you...." when you pass him, and if you try to talk to him he'll mark you as the thief and try to arrest you.
 * Artificial Stupidity:
 * Allied NPCs have no compunctions about wading into melee combat while you're swinging about a huge, slow warhammer or blasting the area with spells. This frequently results in their death from accidental friendly fire.
 * You can steal just about anything by putting a cauldron on the owner's head.
 * If you can kill the back of travelers fast enough, the man in front will turn around and laments that he will find the killer.
 * When going after the Eldergleam Sap, Maurice Jondrelle is smart enough to ask to go with you for protection to see the Eldergleam Sanctuary. He is not smart enough to avoid running up to any bear, bandit or dragon you stumble across on the way and flailing at it with his bare, unarmored hands.
 * While hostile dragons are formidable enemies with very good AI, it can be exceptionally hard to get a dragon that's not hostile to even attack you. If you're looking to engage a dragon that refuses to engage you (if, say, you want souls for shouts or raw material for dragon armor), then you're going to need to pull off some very tricky shots with arrows or spells . The fact that all of these attacks have velocity (meaning that you have to Lead the Target) and a finite range (meaning that shorter-ranged attacks, like lightning, might not hit the target) makes this more complicated and irritating, and all the more ridiculous given that dragons should be going after you. Despite the fact that you are the sworn enemy of the dragons and are universally hated by every last one of them, they just don't seem to notice you.
 * Some followers will treat all people who draw their swords against you the same way. Good luck explaining to Balgruuf why a 25-septim bounty resulted in the deaths of half his town.
 * Ascended Glitch: The fact that giants knock things really high into the sky, which is now part of a quest.
 * Ascended Meme: Sheogorath's line "Cheese for everyone!" from Shivering Isles is referenced during his quest.
 * Asshole Victim:
 * Most Dark Brotherhood targets, in contrast to some of the targets in Oblivion.
 * Grelod the Kind, a horrible, horrible woman who runs an orphanage. She treats the kids as slaves and tells them all to their faces that they're never going to be adopted because nobody wants them. Small wonder, then, that one of the kids is trying to contract the Dark Brotherhood to eliminate her (and you may feel very little heartache for doing her in). Not only will the children cheer for you upon discovering her corpse,
 * Vasha is a self-confessed thief, murderer and rapist, who is disappointed if a day goes by without the bounty on his head getting bigger.
 * Lurbuk is an obnoxious Dreadful Musician who is flat out incapable of seeing that nobody likes him. Hilariously enough, so many people wanted to have the Brotherhood bump him off that the Brotherhood had to pick an employer via lottery.
 * Ennodius Papius is a paranoid, insane freak.
 * Vittoria Vici
 * Hern and Hert are vampires who prey on travelers that visit their mill.
 * Beitild is a slave-driving forewoman who is an absolute ass to her employees.
 * Alain Dufont is a bandit leader who took advantage of a grief-stricken young woman named Muiri who lost a friend to a serial killer. He robbed the victim's family blind and fled for his life, pinning the blame on her and getting her ostracized by said family. He was so loathsome that Windhelm guards will commend you for ending his life after you've killed him.
 * Safia is a notorious pirate captain who also participates in drug-running with the highly illegal substance Balmora Blue.
 * And fittingly enough, the entire Brotherhood is this should you decide to wipe them all out. Yes, they are Affably Evil to a fault and have a lot of love for each other, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still a pack of gleefully evil assassins who will swap stories over the murders they've committed.
 * Sabjorn, the proprietor of the Honningbrew Meadery. A relatively early Thieves Guild mission revolves around framing him for attempted murder so that Maven Black-Briar can take control. If putting an innocent man behind bars for the rest of his life weighs heavily on your conscience, you can take some solace in the knowledge that the assistant which initiates the scheme had been forced to work as Sabjorn's slave after Sabjorn intentionally loaned him money he knew he'd never get back.
 * Pretty much everyone in the Markarth questline. You can side with the Forsworn who are genocidally racist or the Silver-Bloods who are . Or just burn them all, and let the flames sort it out.
 * Every single Thalmor you kill. All of them. Even Bethesda says that those jerks deserve it.
 * Roggvir, the guard who opened Solitude's gates to help Ulfric escape and was beheaded for it, was this according to Sorex Vinius. Vinius claimed that as a child, Roggvir mocked him for liking a girl, and would humiliate him physically or verbally as much as possible, to the extent that Roggvir once put a beehive in his bed. As an adult, Vinius says, he never outgrew his immaturity, or his cruelty. That being said, others in Solitude, including the man who presided over his execution, consider him to be an honorable man.
 * The Dunmer from the province of Morrowind. They kept Argonians and Kajiit as slaves, and the Empire didn't lift a finger to stop it. Now, the Argonians have seceded from the empire, and occupied Morrowind.
 * Asskicking Equals Authority: Dragons strongly believe in this.
 * Actually, after he can be called upon to fight for you at any time, assuming you're outdoors.
 * Ulfric attempts to bypass Skyrim's political system with this logic by killing High King Torygg, claiming that if Torygg couldn't protect himself, he couldn't protect Skyrim.
 * Granted, this has precedent in Skyrim's history, since he challenged Torygg to honorable combat, but depending on how you feel about Ulfric, that could easily have been a ploy to garner further support from those who follow the old ways or just as an example of how traditional he is.
 * The Atoner:
 * Illia from the Darklight Tower who
 * This can be you too if you wrong one of the guilds. The Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, and College of Winterhold all have quests for making restitution if you wrong them.
 * Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: Dragons seem to exhibit this. Due to their lofty view, they tend to aggro or get aggro'd on by pretty much everything and get distracted from the walking divine intervention attempting to devour their soul and go attack a random mudcrab.
 * Automaton Horses: Well, how's this for starters? The only nods to reality are that the horses cannot gallop non-stop and may die if you ride them off cliffs.
 * Awesome but Impractical:
 * The starter spells. It's understandable that since they are the spells that you obtain at the beginning of the game that they are fairly weak. The fact that they never get any stronger, no matter how powerful you become? Makes less sense.
 * Shouts, contrary to most trailers. While some are indeed useful in dealing with low-level enemies such as Draugr, even fully-upgraded shouts such as Fire Breath barely do any damage to the more dangerous opponents that you're guaranteed to face. Add to that the length of time it takes them to recharge (Call Storm's recharge time is 4 minutes for the first word), and you'd only be able to use a decently useful shout once per fight.
 * With enough Smithing skill, it's possible to make most of the armor reach the max damage absorbing threshold of 567 armor points, all the way up to even 1200, more than twice the max. And all that extra does nothing. You can also count any weapon or spell that you haven't taken perks for. I.E., that Volendrung is pretty slick looking; too bad you only took one-handed and not two-handed, meaning even weak one-handed weapons are more powerful than it.
 * The master-level Destruction spells; possibly to the point of Power-Up Letdown. Its damage potential simply can't justify the facts that it's a two-handed, short-ranged spell with long casting time (approximately 2-3 seconds). And unlike most other spells, you can't move around while casting it.
 * This can be true of a few of the higher level Destruction spells if you bring along a melee-based follower, due to the danger of friendly-fire.
 * In some cases, Followers. They tend to get in the way, make stealth harder by alerting nearby enemies, get themselves killed, and can make it much more difficult to progress through trap-filled tombs and tight-spaced caves because they're too stupid to avoid the traps you tried so hard to evade or are too slow to get out of your way. This extends to Thralls, too; Thrall summons have no time limit, which makes them basically another follower. It gets worse if you also have the Twin Souls perk, which means you're bringing a small army of Leeroys with you and making friendly-fire an inevitability.
 * Flame Atronarchs explode upon death. Unfortunately they attack at a distance, and the explosive damage counts as having originated from you. This means that if one dies, anything around it will suddenly think you've just attacked them, and promptly turn hostile (if they weren't so already). This can cause you to loose followers mid-combat, aggro nearby friendly NPCs, cause bounties to be placed on your head, and other shenanigans. It doesn't help that they're Leeroys as well. And to top it all off, the explosion damage itself is minuscule, barely enough to kill a mudcrab if that even.
 * Certain traps are placed ahead of their triggers so you could not simply outrun them. Unfortunately if you happen to wait at a certain point for your follower to catch up, he/she would trigger the trap, and you'd be the one ending up kissing a spiked wall at Mach 2.
 * Master Level Spells. You do a badass animation as you ready the spells, waving your glowing arms in intricate patterns - while totally vulnerable to everything in sight and standing perfectly still. The rare enemies that really require a scroll to kill will basically instantly kill you as you ready the spell.
 * Awesome McCoolname:
 * All the Dragon names translated are intimidating and scary. Nord sobriquets are no slouch either.
 * It gets into Narm territory when a delicate and voluptuous young flower girl is named Shatter-Shield.
 * Awesome Moment of Crowning: Once you complete the main questline (and ) then when you return to the top of the Throat of the World, you will witness
 * Awesome Yet Practical:
 * There are very, very few combat situation in which FUS RO DAH / Unrelenting Force isn't useful at full power, allowing you to fling even Giants with full power to stun them, or, if you're lucky enough to be facing them on a cliff, damage and outright One-Hit Kill them. It also serves as a great panic button if you get ambushed and don't have time to draw your weapon, throw up a ward, or raise a shield. Likewise, Dragonrend is a quick-recharging, damaging shout that forces dragons to land and interrupts their breath attacks, making even the toughest of dragon battles a cakewalk.
 * Conjured dremora lords. Practical in that they are perhaps the game's best summon, with a good health pool and massive damage output, and awesome in that they're one of this game's main sources of ham and use a huge sword that sets opponents on fire.
 * Dual Wielding the firebolts not only looks cool but with the impact perk and enough magika you can win any duel in the game (including the final boss) without taking any damage.
 * is an awesome combat summon that boasts impressive damage resistance and deals ranged shock damage (think ghost Sith Lord). It also costs zero Magicka and has no cooldown.
 * Maxing out Sneak combined with one handed weapon, all the better if your Smithing and/or Enchanting and/or Alchemy is high, plus the Dark Brotherhood gloves to double backstab damage. You can eventually do 30 times damage with a dagger (especially high damages ones like Mehrunes' Razor or the Blade of Woe, and even more so if you improve them via smithing), killing your opponents before they can attack and usually get a cool finishing blow action shot to boot. Considering how easy it is to grind Sneak, this is practically a Disc One Nuke.
 * At 50 Archery skill, you can get the Power Draw skill, which gives each shot a 50% chance to cause the (humanoid-sized) target to stumble. Considering Archery is ranged, you can shoot arrows very quickly, and a vast majority of enemies are melee-only or magic-wielding, you can kill anything short of giants and dragons with little trouble and enough range between you. Combine it with the skill that cancels the movement speed penalty while you're drawing your bow, and you can dance around your target all day long.
 * Despite its somewhat petty shortcomings, transforming into a werewolf: Gaining the Beast Form power through  proves very useful against most of the brute enemies: mammoths, trolls —   — giants, etc. Even if you are going to face a crowded company of warriors (stormcloaks or legionnaires for example) you can beat and eat them all with the combination of your fearful wolf cry and power attacks. Whole battle scene turns into a feeding frenzy since you have to consume the flesh of the fallen victims during the fight to extend the duration of your wolf form and in the mean time to reboost your hp. As an added bonus, you're immune to all disease.
 * YOL TOOR SHUL, once acquired, is one of the single most damaging shouts in the game, hits over a huge area, and staggers enemies. Good as a support power for a mage whose magicka is low, excellent for a warrior who needs a devastating area effect, and a great panic button for a thief who needs to burn everything and run. Plus, belching out a massive wave of fire just looks so awesome.
 * Most of the Daedric artifacts. Volendruug is a powerful hammer you can get early-game if you can manage to kill a few giants and if you specialize in it, you can use it for the duration of the game (not to mention effectively infinitely charge into enemies with power attacks due to it's effect). The Mace of Molag Bal can help you harvest Soul Gems for either itself or enchanting and can incapacitate most spellcasters easily. The Black Star can be combined with the Mace for infinite charges. The Ebony Mail can harm anyone trying to close the distance and detect nearby enemies for you. Namira's Ring gives you a substantial Stamina Boost and lets you recover HP faster. And so on.
 * YOL TOOR SHUL, once acquired, is one of the single most damaging shouts in the game, hits over a huge area, and staggers enemies. Good as a support power for a mage whose magicka is low, excellent for a warrior who needs a devastating area effect, and a great panic button for a thief who needs to burn everything and run. Plus, belching out a massive wave of fire just looks so awesome.
 * Most of the Daedric artifacts. Volendruug is a powerful hammer you can get early-game if you can manage to kill a few giants and if you specialize in it, you can use it for the duration of the game (not to mention effectively infinitely charge into enemies with power attacks due to it's effect). The Mace of Molag Bal can help you harvest Soul Gems for either itself or enchanting and can incapacitate most spellcasters easily. The Black Star can be combined with the Mace for infinite charges. The Ebony Mail can harm anyone trying to close the distance and detect nearby enemies for you. Namira's Ring gives you a substantial Stamina Boost and lets you recover HP faster. And so on.

"Marcurio: These Forsworn don't even have the decency to dress properly."
 * -|B=
 * Back From the Brink: You can help the Dark Brotherhood, the Thieves' Guild, regain their former glory and more.
 * Also
 * Badass Beard: For the first time since Morrowind, characters with facial hair appear. And you can bet the face fuzz is epic. A screenshot of a bearded Dark Elf fits this trope perfectly.
 * Bethesda boasts that you can give your character one of fifty different beards.
 * It's even lampshaded by M'aiq the Liar who notes that 'everyone in Skyrim is all about beards' and speculates that humans must be compensating for the lack of manes.
 * Badass Bookworm: Urag gro-Shub, the Orc librarian at the College of Winterhold. Don't mess with the Arcanaeum; it's his Berserk Button.
 * On the other hand, give him the from the main quest after finishing it, and you can hear an orc Squee for the first time in TES history.
 * Badass Bystander: Random travelers on the roads may occasionally come to your aid against the wolves, bandits, bears, or trolls that populate the wilderness. Some of them are surprisingly tough (Talsgar the Wanderer is a notable example, at least at low-to-mid player level).
 * During the final battle
 * The Dragonborn during Dragon-Attacks on various towns. The Dragonborn basically drops what they're doing, promptly kills the Dragon single-handedly, then goes straight back to what they were doing like nothing happened.
 * Badass Cape: The from late in the Thieves Guild questline has this.
 * Badass Grandpa: Esbern. The Graybeards are an order of Badass Grandpas.
 * Case in point
 * Badass Longcoat:
 * Thalmor Robes. They look more like a standard longcoat than a robe, which makes sense given the very obvious Gestapo parallels.
 * The various Fine Clothes, as well, can serve as more noble-looking longcoats, especially the ones blinged-out with fur around the collar.
 * Ulfric Stormcloak's clothing includes one of these made of chainmail worn under an animal-pelt cloak. Despite this and the breastplate the clothing seems to include, it only counts as normal clothing if you get a hold of it, despite it looking like it should be light armor.
 * Badass Preacher: A few examples are shown such as Erandur, though interestingly enough the player can become one themselves by working for any of the Temples.
 * Bad Guy Bar: The Ragged Flagon, although since the player can join the Theives Guild, it's more of a Villain Protagonist Bar.
 * Barrier Change Boss: The first boss you fight in the Mage College quest line is a powerful Draugr that keeps shifting between frosty, electrical and fiery forms, and he's pretty resistant to physical attacks, so you'd better make sure you know at least one damage spell of each type when you face him.
 * Bar Brawl: You can "persuade" some NPC characters by brawling with them rather than intimidating or negotiating.
 * You can have a legitimate tavern fight in Whiterun with a man who's pressing his unwanted affections on a shopkeeper.
 * You can marry a woman in that same tavern after you brawl with her and win.
 * Barrier Maiden:
 * Battle Butler: Any of your housecarls, should you choose to take them on your quests.
 * Battle Couple: The Dragonborn is capable of marrying one of his/her traveling companions and going on adventures with them.
 * Beat Still My Heart: In a case of the dev team thinking of everything, if you pickpocket a briarheart from a Forsworn Briarheart, they instantly die and a gaping hole appears on their chests. This is because Forsworn Briarhearts have had their real hearts replaced with the briarheart you have just ripped from their bodies.
 * Becoming the Mask: A wizard sets up a Scooby-Doo Hoax, masquerading as the guardian spirit of a Nordic burial ground to keep superstitious locals from discovering that he's attempting to loot the tomb. After six month of failing to solve a puzzle-locked door, he goes insane and becomes convinced he's an actual guardian spirit.
 * The irony in his attempts to keep the locals away from the burial ground is that the local innkeeper actually held the key to unlocking the door. Unlike a certain other Dunmer however, he probably didn't know about its existence.
 * Beef Gate:
 * Partway through many of the lengthier quest arcs are dungeons that are downright hard. These are apparently designed to encourage the player to go do some other quests and come back stronger later.
 * On top of that, the higher one goes in altitude, the more difficult the enemies become. Low-altitude locales have normal trolls and wolves as the primary hostiles, while higher altitudes have bears, snow bears, ice wolves, and frost trolls, which are far more difficult. Of note are the Forsworn, especially the Forsworn Briar Hearts, at Hag's End, a set of ruins high up on the mountains.
 * Particularly if anything has a "snow" or "ice" variant, expect it to be waaay up the peak of some mountain, and have roughly three times the health of the common garden variety.
 * One particularly noticeable one is the frost troll on the way up to High Hrothgar. If you're not at least level 10, it will probably smash you flat, and if you're not level 15 or higher, it will be a rough fight anyway. Some clever tactics (or a quick summoned creature to draw its attention) can let you get past it, however, and if worst comes to worst, you can just run past it to High Hrothgar and let the Greybeards prove why you should listen to them. (See the Badass Grandpa link.)
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Some of your possible spouses are downright rude to you.
 * Some of them want to marry you after you've beaten them in a brawl. Of course this is Nord culture.
 * Beneath the Earth: The derelict dwarven city of Blackreach, which houses tribes of Falmer, giant glowing mushrooms, still functioning lifts to the surface and other contraptions, a dragon and . Not to mention the Crimson Nirnroot is found there.
 * Beware the Silly Ones: Near one of the first towns you can find a jester who seems to be a textbook Cloudcuckoolander who needs help getting his wagon fixed.
 * Turns out that jester is
 * Bi the Way: Every marriageable character in Skyrim is will marry the Dovahkiin regardless of gender.
 * Big Bad:
 * Alduin, the
 * For the civil war subplot, either General Tullius (if you're a Stormcloak) or Ulfric Stormcloak (if you're a Legionnaire).
 * Also The Silver Hand for The Companions, for the Thieves Guild,  for the College Of Winterhold and  for The Dark Brotherhood.
 * Bigger Bad: In the Civil War story arc, the Aldmeri Dominion is this. While Ulfric Stormcloak or General Tallius are the military leaders of both sides of the war, the Aldmeri are behind everything, and no matter which side you choose in the war, they stand to profit. Either the Empire wins and continues to promote Aldmeri interests within Skyrim's borders, or the Stormcloaks succeed and the Empire is further weakened. In fact, the Aldmeri don't even want the war to end quite yet.
 * Big Badass Wolf:
 * You can become a werewolf, and a couple of people
 * Also, one can not only find these in the wild, but there is an entire cave full of people who use the wolves for pit fighting.
 * Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Normal Trolls resemble Bigfoot, while Frost Trolls resemble Yetis.
 * Big Friendly Dog:
 * Being the external representation of a Daedric Prince's conscience, the talking dog Barbas is naturally this.
 * Skyrim is inhabited by big Irish Wolfhound looking dogs, and most of them are nice towards you, save a few trained by bandits.
 * And more specifically there are Meeko and Vigilance, who can follow and help out the player in a manner similar to Dogmeat in Fallout 3.
 * Bilingual Bonus: Names of Vilkas and Farkas, twin Companion brothers that translate from Lithuanian and Hungarian respectively to mean.
 * Their boss, Kodlak, gets his name from a similar root in Serbian.
 * Jarl is the Old Norse word for "chieftan" and the root of the English word "earl".
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
 * Blessed with Suck:
 * The Greybeards. On one hand, they're masters of an ancient and powerful magic art that takes most people years to study. On the other hand, they're forced to take a vow of silence because of it, or they risk accidentially killing outsiders with a single word.
 * Vampirism. You get cool powers like night vision, invisibility, life drain, and bonuses to stealth and illusion but your stats are lower during the daytime, and to get the really cool powers you have to go days without feeding, which breaks your Masquerade and provokes attacks. To keep it under control, you have feed on people in their sleep, which diminishes the powers and the drawbacks but also has a chance of getting you caught.
 * Improved "lord" vampirism, from Dawnguard, looks a bit more promising, though.
 * Being a werewolf is considered this In-Universe by Kodlak Whitemane, who would prefer to go to Sovngard upon his death, but is bound by his curse to spend eternity in Hircine's hunting grounds instead. A quest involves breaking the curse for him -- and you can later do it for yourself.
 * Blown Across the Room: Similar to Oblivion, gravity seems to have less effect on dead bodies rather than living ones, meaning the kill shot of a bow or spell will shoot the target backwards 5 to 15 feet. The reason for this is that when a killing blow is delivered (and one of the finishing move animations doesn't kick in) the excess damage (i.e. anything that would reduce the target's health below 0) is converted into momentum in the game's physic's engine. So if an NPC with 10 HP left was hit by an arrow which dealt 50 points of damage then the first 10 points of that damage would reduce them to 0 HP, killing them, and the remaining 40 would be converted into 40 points worth of momentum to knock back their ragdoll. This is also the reason for the giants' Megaton Punch (see below).
 * And of course you can invoke this trope with the Unrelenting Force shout at full power. And so can higher-level draugr.
 * Bodyguard Crush: You can invoke this by marrying your housecarl after you become a thane.
 * Bodyguarding a Badass: When you become a Thane in some of the holds you're given a housecarl. What you had to do to earn the title sometimes makes it a clear case of this trope.
 * Body Horror: What happens to
 * Boobs of Steel: As the weight slider increments on a female character in character generation, muscle mass and body frame size increases... and so does breast size.
 * Book Ends: The first and final acts of the Dark Brotherhood storyline begin with a Black Sacrament being performed.
 * Boomerang Bigot: Sybille Stentor, the Court Wizard for the Jarl of Solitude. She sends you on a quest to destroy a "disgusting" nest of vampires, but detect life / detect death and a quick peek at the faction code shows she's actually a vampire herself. Speaking with Melaran at the Palace entrance implies that her condition is a well-kept secret amongst the palace and she gets most of her nourishment dealing with the more "troublesome" prisoners kept in the dungeons.
 * Though it seems her disgust is more of their living conditions, not their vampirism, especially considering the reward she gives you.
 * Bonus Boss: Potentially any dungeon, seeing as how nearly all of them feature a high-level enemy at the end; some are arguably more challenging than questline bosses. Special mention goes to the hidden dragon in Blackreach, triggered by using your FUS RO DAH on the suspended orange orb.
 * Boring but Practical:
 * Smithing. You can get access to the best armor in the game (Daedric and Dragonscale) and get better equipment earlier, as well as improve your regular equipment to ridiculous heights... but you'll either be spending a lot of money or a lot of time getting the materials to level your skill up that high, and none of the perks affect your combat skills directly.
 * Leveling Smithing falls into this as well. You'll be making a lot of daggers and leather pieces, since finding ores and ingots is difficult even if you know where to look, whereas pretty much every animal can be skinned for leather, and daggers are cheap. Jewelry falls into Awesome Yet Practical for being a nice source of income.
 * The Transmutation spell means you'll never need for gold ever again. All it takes is buying Iron Ingots, turning them into silver or gold, then crafting jewelry over and over, proving easy Smithing skills and tons of treasure.
 * This can be extended to most of the non-combat perks. Speechcraft gets you better prices and more store gold, which can easily make you rich but isn't entirely necessary (especially since if you're patient, stores restock their gold daily). Enchantment can have you with 90% elemental resistances and massive stat buffs, but same as Smithing requires lots of time and money. Speech perks start looking a lot nicer when you begin to find gear so nice that most stores can't even afford to buy it.
 * "Skyforge Steel is all the Companions will use. With good reason." Eorlund Gray-Mane speaks the truth: You will likely be sticking with Skyforge Steel for quite a while especially if you acquire it early in the game (easily done since the Companions are in the first big city you will likely visit). Elven-tier damage, Steel-tier weight, Steel-tier smithing, steel-tier price. And your first one is complimentary. The only downside is that the blunt weapons (mace and warhammer) are absent from the lineup.
 * Moreso if you specialize in Greatswords, since you can get your first one for free due to Farkas dropping his sword during his first transformation. If you have decent smithing, this weapon will likely be your only one until you can obtain a Daedric artifact.
 * Simple, brute melee combat is more than enough to overcome any non-scripted challenge the game has to offer, once you max your skills. Only a very few quests require you to be sneaky or use magic. Especially deadly when mixed with a good Enchanting skill; Siphoning life is a popular choice.
 * In the same vein as smithing is enchanting. With a maxed enchanting stat a mage can reduce magika cost of two schools of magic to 0 (and a 3rd to 50%), making the usualy Awesome but Impractical expert level spells fully spammable. Combined with the impact perk in destruction, even the most powerful enemies go down in seconds from near complete safety.
 * For combat, one of the best possible skill sets is decent equipment and a modest Sneak combined with high Archery, One-Handed, Block, and Heavy Armor. With these skills, you can pummel enemies in hand-to-hand while attacking rapidly and taking little damage yourself, snipe out foes that are less easily accessed on foot, and use your bow and sneaking to stealthily headshot anything too tough for the previous two strategies. Certainly not as fancy as dual-casting terawatt lightning bolts and summoning eldritch god-spirits to aid you in battle or using your insanely leveled Sneak to creep straight through your enemies' line of sight and then knifing them in the back for a 30,000x damage multiplier, but it works well against almost anything that doesn't outnumber you ten to one.
 * Marked For Death. Other shouts create fire, throw enemies through the air, call down lightning storms, or slow down time. KRII LUN AUS, however, just hits the enemy with a shimmering wave of energy that otherwise has no outward effect, beyond draining life and reducing armor to the point that a couple hits with a warhammer will drop nearly any boss.
 * Boss In Mook's Leveled Actor Lists: At higher levels, Draugr Deathlords, normally boss-level draugr, are now part of the rank and file. And they've lost none of their stats; Shouts, hard-hitting weapons, damage sponge-level health. Taking over for them in some dungeons (in the absence of Dragon Priests) are their new bosses, the.
 * A better example of a Boss in Mooks Clothing would be bears. No matter what level you are, they will always be a threat if you don't have good enough armour. Some of the fandom consider them stronger than dragons!
 * Bragging Theme Tune: The Skyrim theme song, towards the Dragonborn.
 * Bratty Half-Pint: A lot of Skyrim's children are obnoxiously rude to you. Special mention goes to Braith of Whiterun who tries to pick a fight with you even if you're wearing armor made of dragonskin and covered with the blood of your enemies, and Belkir of Whiterun who sneers you're likely there to suck up to his father.
 * Breast Plate: Full suits of armor have masculine and feminine models. Note that the full armor does fully protect and cover the character, it just has boob-curves. The Forsworn armor is perhaps the most true to the trope, becoming a Fur Bikini for female characters.

"Random guard: Let me guess, somebody stole your sweetroll?"
 * Brown Note: In an interesting twist, the brown note is harmful to eldritch beings and harmless to mere mortals.
 * Bullet Time:
 * The "Steady Hand" Archery perks, which slow time by 25-50% (depending on what rank the perk is at) when using the bow's zoom feature, as well as the "Slow Time" Dragon Shout.
 * You can also invoke bullet time with a block perk: if you have your guard up, and the enemy performs a power attack they slow down temporarily, allowing you, if you time it right, an excellent opening to slash them into ribbons. You can also use the opportunity to shield-bash, interrupting the pending power attack, or simply jump out of the way, if you don't think you could kill them before their attack goes through.
 * Bullying a Dragon: It doesn't matter if you're clad in full Daedric armor with a bloodstained ebony war axe in one hand and the gleam of a lethal fire spell in the other and a storm atronach following you around, Braithe will still petulantly cry that she's not afraid of you.


 * Butt Monkey: The Orcs as a whole. Not even a decade into the Fourth Era, they are forced at swordpoint by the Bretons to officially renounce Orsinium as a province and allow themselves to be assimilated into High Rock. By the time of Skyrim, most Orcs are little more than indentured servants to the Bretons, and those that aren't are forced to live in "strongholds" that are almost universally rundown, destitute and scorned by all.
 * The Dark Elves too, what with Red Mountain erupting, Vvardenfell's destruction and Morrowind being sacked by Black Marsh have left the province pretty much in ruins, even years later, leading to a mass exodus of Dunmer away from their home province. The ones who settled in Windhelm are left second-class citizens, and only one supplicant remains at the Shrine of Azura they constructed after their exodus. Hadvar even notes should you play a Dunmer character at Helgen that the gods really HAVE abandoned your people.
 * But Thou Must!: Completely finishing certain questlines involve following certain paths. For example, finishing the Thieves' Guild storyline involves . On the other hand, the game does not require you to finish any questline at all. In the aforementioned Thieves' Guild quest, for example,   and walk away from the whole thing. The quest would remain technically "unfinished", however.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Wylandriah, the Jarl's mage in Riften, who is so completely wrapped up in her own experiments that she fails to realize that none of what she's saying about them makes sense to anyone else.

""Archery, hmhmm. Smithing, hmm. Don't need 'em, yep, yep. Go to space. Space. Only skill you need.""
 * -|C=
 * Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Skeevers are giant rats. They used to be smaller too. Odd thing is... Giant Rats DID exist in all previous The Elder Scrolls games (and in fact were part of a running joke involving the fighters' guild), and were called such.
 * Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: And yet, the four-tusked mammoths are still called "mammoths".
 * Call Back: The mural for the game depicts several key happenings from the prior games, all supposedly leading up to Alduin's return:
 * The Staff of Chaos being shattered.
 * The reassembling of Numidium, and the resulting Warp in the West.
 * The Red Mountain where Dagoth Ur made base.
 * A gate to Oblivion, the reason for the weakening of the Empire.
 * The in-game book "The Book of the Dragonborn" also lists a prophecy that references all of these.
 * The wandering Khajiit M'aiq the Liar is an endless source of call backs.
 * Sometimes, in combat, Sven (one of the companions you can hire) shouts "This is the part where you fall down and bleed to death!"
 * As with most Elder Scrolls games, the player starts as a prisoner and/or going through a starter dungeon. However, this game ups the ante by leading players to their execution, right up to having his/her head on the chopping block.
 * During the Thieves Guild's missions you can come across.
 * A power you gain during the Dark Brotherhood questline is the ability to summon . You also acquire several artifacts associated with him from his previous appearance, including his horse (who's apparently had a sex change in the process of reincarnation).
 * The quest to decorate the new sanctuary is titled "Where You Hang Your Enemy's Head..."; in Oblivion, the orc assassin described "home" like that.
 * The scene wherein you kill is highly reminiscent of Uriel Septim's acceptance of his imminent death in Oblivion.
 * Emperor Titus Mede II's attire resembles that of Uriel Septim VII from Oblivion (Purpleish blue with red and gold down the front, white fur on the shoulders and at the end of the sleeves). Apparently, this is centuries-long high fashion, because King Helseth in the expansion for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind also wore similar robes.
 * Sinderion (the Nirnroot guy) makes a posthumous appearance during your search for.
 * Discussing the Elder Scrolls themselves: "The greatest thief in the world couldn't lay a finger on them!"
 * One of the random bard instrumentals is a slower, softer version of Daggerfall's shop music.
 * Another reference to Daggerfall are the three guardian nebulae, which made their first appearance during Daggerfall's character creation. Their shapes have remained unchanged.
 * The Imperial Shield and the Imperial Light Shield look closely like the Shield of the Crusader and the Knights of the Nine shield, respectively.
 * The Imperial Legion armors resemble Roman armor, just as it did back in Morrowind.
 * Ulfgar the Unending, from Bloodmoon,
 * You get to kill another Uderfrykte.
 * The final contract for the Dark Brotherhood requires you to sneak into a boat, and make your way from the cargo hull all the way up to the main cabin to assassinate someone there. Just like the very first contract of the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion.
 * When starting the game as a Breton, Hadvar will guess the player is from Daggerfall (which is only one of High Rock's five kingdoms) and how it is rife with political intrigue. Daggerfall is of course the primary setting of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall and much of the plot is spent dealing with and untangling the various court intrigues behind the death of King Lysandus of Daggerfall.
 * When guessing who sent the player, Sheogorath mentions King Lysandus from The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall and Passwall from Shivering Isles.
 * Sheogorath himself makes a comment or two implying that he's at the end of Shivering Isles' main quest.
 * He also tells the player that he shouldn't have left Haskill (his long-suffering Servile Snarker Chamberlain from Shivering Isles) in charge of his realm for as long as he has, and should they ever find themselves in New Sheoth, they're free to pop round to the palace.
 * Also, he's still threatening to use mortal's entrails as a skipping rope.
 * An artifact from the main quest of Morrowind figures in a sidequest of the Winterhold College and can be acquired by the player. Unlike in Morrowind, it can be held without its counterpart, which is not in the game, with no ill effects. Interestingly enough, it still gives a message about you receiving a mortal wound when you first hold it, it just doesn't actually do anything.
 * College of Winterhold players get to visit Labyrinthian during that faction's finale. Labyrinthian was the dungeon in Skyrim where a piece of the Staff of Chaos was held waaaaaay back in Arena.
 * The smuggler ship Red Wave in Solitude shares its name with a magical Cutlass (Redwave) found on another ship in Oblivion (The Serpent's Wake). Coincidentally, the Dark Brotherhood is involved with both the Red Wave and the Serpent's Wake.
 * mention that he once posed as an obnoxious fan to murder the Arena Champion back in Cyrodiil. Does this remind you of anyone?
 * Remember Immortal Blood and how it ended? Remember Movarth, the vampire hunter?
 * One of the books Esbern wants to take with him is the Annotated Anuad, which first appeared in Morrowind
 * The Nerevarine (the player character of Morrowind) is indirectly a part of the main quest: he sent the Heart of Lorkhan away in order to remove Dagoth Ur's immortality, leading to a crazed scholar trying to find it again, leading to him trying to find an Elder Scroll, leading to the Dragonborn seeking out this scholar.
 * One Dark Brotherhood client is named Amaund Motierre. He's a descendant or relative (not clear which) of François Motierre, a client in Oblivion.
 * The quest to find involves working with  a descendant and enthusiast of the Mythic Dawn, the cult which served as the primary antagonist of Oblivion. He keeps a museum of Mythic Dawn memorabilia including the Commentaries on and only surviving page of the Mysterium Xarxes, and his notes on the bloodlines holding the pieces of  note that none of the parties involved were involved with the failed expedition that the Champion of Cyrodiil stumbled upon in the Oblivion DLC quest said artifact appeared in.
 * There is a book giving advice on being a better thief that seems to have been written by the player character from Oblivion.
 * The location where the main character and Ulfric Stormcloak were captured by imperials is given as "Pale Pass". Pale Pass is a pass between Cyrodiil and Skyrim, the Cyrodiil side of which one can visit during a side quest in Oblivion. Oblivion's quest in Pale Past would also tie heavily on the defeat of the Akaviri and their subsequent loyalty to the Reman dynasty - the follow up to those events (Sky Ruler Temple, Alduin's wall, The Blades) would factor greatly in the adventure of the Skyrim PC.
 * There are many references to Queen Barenziah, an NPC appearing in Daggerfall and Tribunal featured in the thieves' guild. Barenziah's crown is the object of a long, long quest chain. The term "Nightingale" in conjunction to Queen Barenziah dates to the events of Arena, where a bard under that name gets the location of the staff of chaos by seducing her. "The Nightingales Vol. 2" reveals he is not Jagar Tharn as previously thought but.
 * Calling Your Attacks: The dragons, instead of simply using breath weapons, use a form of vocal magic related to the "thu'um" magic of the Nords (which, in fact, the dragons had first -- the Nords got it from the dragon Paarthurnax). Meaning that they're not simply shooting fire, ice, and whatnot at you. They are speaking those things into existence, and you get to do it too. (Meaning that instead of shooting fire, they're shouting fire.)
 * The Cameo: Thanks to collaborative DLC from Valve and Bethesda, the Space Core from Portal 2 can be picked up as an item just outside of Whiterun. You can also spot Wheatley from the same game floating about in the Skills Menu.
 * Canon Immigrant: Many concepts in the "Obscure Texts," which were originally posted on the message boards by Michael Kirkbride and others, made it into the game:
 * The idea that the current timeline is but one "kalpa" brought about after the previous one was eaten by a world-eater.
 * Ysgramor and his 500 companions.
 * The concept of "towers" and their effect on the stability of the world.
 * The Dwemer were very much into music and tuning reality.
 * Heimskr recites part of the Obscure Text describing how Talos transformed Cyrodiil from a jungle to a forest.
 * Can't Catch Up: As the game currently stands, all levelable NPCs are locked at the level in which they are first generated (typically when they first meet the player). So, if you meet a Follower at level 1, they'll be stuck at level 1 for the entire game. In the case of Followers, this means they'll rapidly become obsolete once bandits in full plate mail and Ancient Dragons start showing up. Probably the Followers most badly affected by this are Sven or Faendal, since they're found in the Starter Village and thus almost always are generated at player level 1. Lydia the Housecarl is also affected by this (since she's 90% likely to be the 2nd recruitable Follower encountered in the game), but is tough enough that she can actually hold her own against later-game enemies provided you give her good enough weapons and armor. The sole exception to this is J'Zargo, who levels up with the player, right to the cap at 81. You can get around this issue (appropriately enough) by using the Wabbajack; dismiss your follower, zap them with the Wabbajack until they turn into an animal, then wait for them to revert, then have them rejoin you. This resets their effective level.
 * Career-Ending Injury: The infamous "arrow to the knee" incidents, to the guards.
 * Casanova Wannabe / The Casanova: Mikael in Whiterun. He's apparently generally successful but has set his latest sight on a widow single mom raising her daughter. You can offer her to make him back off, which can be done by beating him senseless or persuading him. He'll offer the PC some relationship advice (Women love sonnets).
 * Cassandra Truth: One of M'aiq the Liar's comments is a thinly-veiled complaint about this. Made more funny when you realize he actually is (semi-)right about some things he says.
 * Cats Are Mean: The game features Sabre Cats, quite possibly some of the meanest cats in video gaming outside of Red Dead Redemption. They're large, quick, powerful enough to take you down in a flash at low levels, and they still prove to be a challenge once you've grown your character. Occasionally they team up with bears.
 * Chainmail Bikini: Some types of Light Armor act as this. Justified, as it is light armor.
 * Falmer armor (a Heavy variety) does this as well... a "chitin-mail" bikini, if you will.
 * Chain of Deals: A few times. Especially funny in Cidhna Mine where.
 * Character Customization: Choose between ten races, two sexes and what you want to look like and you're ready to go.
 * Charged Attack:
 * The difference between "Fus!" and "FUS RO DAH!" Every shout has three words, and speaking only one word has a minimal effect, with correspondingly short cooldown time, but speaking all three words has a massive, dramatic effect.
 * "Power Attacks" are melee attacks that occur when you hold down the attack button. They tend to do more damage and can break through an opponent who's blocking, but it burns up your Stamina meter.
 * Archery is influenced by how long you hold down the trigger when nocking an arrow. Quickly firing arrows before fully drawing the bow back will not be as powerful or have as much range.
 * Most spells need to be charged briefly before releasing. Once the dual casting perk is unlocked, charging the same spell in both hands results in a massive boost to the individual spell's power.
 * Charles Atlas Superpower: Theoretically, anyone can use the Thu'um, they just need to be trained by the Greybeards, as Ulfric Stormcloak was. What makes the Dragonborn so special is that he can use it without training, not merely that he can do it.
 * In Oblivion, over encumbering yourself meant becoming immobile; In Skyrim, you can carry hundreds of pounds over your weight limit and still be able to at least walk.
 * Chill of Undeath: All undead enemies resist ice magic, some have a weakness to fire, and almost all of them besides the most basic mooks can use ice magic against the player very well.
 * The Chosen One: The last known Dovahkiin is set to turn the tide against the evil enveloping Skyrim. You are playing as this fabled hero by the way.
 * The Cyrodiilic word for Dovahkiin, "Dragonborn" was used in reference to previous agents of massive change in the past: Saint Alessia, the slave queen who led the revolt against the Ayleids, Reman Cyrodiil, the first real "Emperor" of Tamriel, and then later Tiber Septim, the one who managed to unite Tamriel under one banner again after a dark age since Reman's empire. Additionally, Jauffre referred to Martin Septim as "the Dragonborn" after the defeat/banishment of Dagon; it is, though, unclear whether this became widespread. The PC of Morrowind might also have been Dragonborn,if you trust Azura's word on the matter.
 * Goes Up to Eleven if you do enough different sidequests. You will learn that no matter which group it is, or what the requirements are, your character is destined to be their new Chosen One. (Examples: ) You don't even have to be very good at their respective disciplines (like you did in Morrowind) - just good enough to get by.
 * Chromatic Arrangement: The constellation perks reside in color-coded nebulae. Warriors are Red, Mages are Blue, and Thieves are Green. This matches the color-coding of your health, magicka and stamina.
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder - Likely the player character, especially if they do any Daedric quest.
 * Church Militant/Warrior Monk: The Vigilants of Stendarr.
 * City Guards: As per Elder Scrolls game tradition. Their AI has improved further over Oblivion's dull-witted guards, but they're still prone to some ludicrous behaviour...
 * City Noir: Windhelm has the imagery of the setting down. The city is a maze of streets, Fantastic Racism is allegedly official government policy, and there's a Serial Killer on the loose. Banditry is apparently common in the countryside, and unless the victims are Nords, Ulfric allegedly refuses to assist (that said however, Banditry is fairly common problem throughout Skyrim. So, Eastmarch isn't singled out or anything). Brunwulf Free-winter is one of the only men around looking for ways to change the city for the better. Also, while commerce is still existent in Windhelm, in the Merchant Quarter, Free-winter,  states that the coffers are short on funds, implying that, for Ulfric, the war against the Empire previously took precedence over the proper administration of the hold. Which, while justifiable, has interfered with the Hold's prosperity.
 * It's also revealed at one point that Skyrim's been under heavy taxation since the war ended. So, a state of disrepair is the norm for many cities aside from Solitude. (Whiterun's crumbling walls, for instance.) By comparison, Windhelm's doing surprisingly well, likely because as the capital of the Stormcloak rebellion, it's unlikely the Empire sees any tax from it.
 * Markarth is also no slouch in this respect. It is revealed to be a broken society in which an urban underclass is brutally opressed by a corrupt elite, the architecture is virtual art deco, and there are oh so many dark secrets lurking within its walls. And then there's Riften, a perpetually foggy city of canals whose seedy underbelly arguably houses its most thriving industry.
 * Civil War: One of the central plot points, between the Stormcloaks and the Empire.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience:
 * Imperial soldiers dress in red and Stormcloak soldiers dress in blue.
 * Dragons are different colors based on how powerful they are. Additionally,, whereas Alduin the World-Eater is jet black with red eyes.
 * Contract on the Hitman: gets posthumous revenge not by having his assassin killed but by.
 * Cool Horse: makes a comeback, complete with an awesome introduction.
 * Frost, the only other horse obtained from questing. While he's not invincible like, he's stronger and more aggressive than regular horses, won't hesitate to charge dragons, and has a grandsire named Sleipnir.
 * Cool Old Guy: The Greybeards, Esbern, and Felldir the Old.
 * Special mention must be given to the leader of the Greybeards, Paarthunax: he's, and doesn't even hesitate to try and buy you some time by taking on  himself. In single combat.
 * Although he's not as old as the above examples, Brunwulf Free-Winter is an aging, wary war veteran who happens to be the nicest guy in Windhelm.
 * Even Emperor Titus turns out to be pretty cool. Even if you disagree with the way he runs his empire he does turn out to be the one person in the world who isn't scared of . Which doesn't mean he doesn't respect them... in fact he knows better than his advisors that.
 * Kodlak Whitemane, Harbinger of the Companions, is also rather cool. He takes the Dragonborn under his wing almost immediately and offers heartfelt advice and words of encouragement.
 * Galmar Stone-Fist may be an old man, but he'll kick down those damn walls of Whiterun's with his bare feet anyway. He's also the one of the best warriors in the Stormcloak army aside from a Stormcloak Dragonborn and Ulfric.
 * Cool Versus Awesome: Yes, you can become a werewolf, and yes, you can kill a dragon in wolf form. Have fun!
 * The Civil War is essentially The Roman Empire versus Horny Vikings.
 * Copy and Paste Environments: While it's mostly averted, the inns in the smaller villages generally look exactly the same, save for placement of tables.
 * Could Have Avoided This Plot: According to characters in Solitude, Ulfric's killing of Torygg was unnecessary considering that Torygg looked up to Ulfric and would have been willing to declare independence had Ulfric simply encouraged him. Of course, from Ulfric's point of view, he needed to make a message.
 * Coup De Grace Cutscene: If you have the perks for it. Also, finishing moves which randomly trigger.
 * Special mention goes to one-hit stealth kills. Against a humanoid enemy who's not doing anything special (sitting, doing alchemy, etc), backstabs, at least with a bladed weapon, will reliably trigger the player reaching up from behind, covering the victim's mouth and slicing said victim's throat. Somehow, this works even with a giant shield on one hand and a big glowing Bound Sword in the other.
 * Crapsack World: The empire is falling apart, the Nords are in civil war, Elsweyr and Black Marsh have seceded, and what parts of Morrowind that weren't destroyed following the eruption of Red Mountain and the fall of the Ministry onto Vivec has been invaded by the Argonians. The High Elves have formed their own Empire and aim for nothing less than conquering all of Tamriel and enslaving everyone else (they've already done so with the Khajiit). Oh, and the world's about to be eaten by dragons.
 * The Thalmor plan to destroy the world by wiping out mankind. And they're winning.
 * The Thalmor are pretty much Ayleids MkII. Saint Alessia must be rolling in her grave right about now...
 * Also, if you belong to Dark Brotherhood or Thieves' Guild, random guard often say they know who you and then they will proceed with their routine. And indeed, thieves and assassins often mention of tremendous levels of corruption even in the highest echelons of power in Skyrim and Cyrodiil.
 * Creepy Child:
 * Babette, a cheerful, joke-telling little waif who has the most adorable lisp...because she's a vampire. She even jokes about how her appearance helps her.
 * Aventus Aretino. Though his tone is a perhaps a little too whiny, the fact that he's going through with the Black Sacrament (using his mother's flesh) speaks for itself. Arguably the rest of the kids from the Honorhall Orphanage also count, at least when they're chanting, "Hooray for the Dark Brotherhood!".
 * Given how Grelod treats those kids, though, they can't really be blamed...
 * Nelkir, Jarl Balgruuf's son, at first simply seems to be a little moody or angsty, behaviours we may consider somewhat normal in a child. You later discover however that he's like that because he's discovered personal, corrupting secrets floating around Dragonsreach. It all being  doing sums it all up.
 * Crossover: For the opening of Skyrim's Steam Workshop, Valve released a mod featuring Portal 2's Space Core.


 * Cruelty Is the Only Option: Many of the Daedric Prince quests are examples of this. In order to get several of the artifacts, you have to: beat a man to death twice while he begs for his life, sacrifice one of your followers, and murder and cannibalize an innocent priest. Not all of the quests have these requirements, though, and some have alternate methods of obtaining the artifact. In one case you get it only by not killing the person you're asked to.
 * Cursed with Awesome: There is one --one-- statistical downside to being a werewolf: you can't get the minor "rested" bonus to skill progression by sleeping in a bed. That's it. Immunity to disease and the ability to turn into a 300-pound killing machine are pretty nice benefits for such a downside. The fact that Hircine has claim on your soul after you die helps explain why it is still a curse, although since those thus claimed become his chosen servants and hunting companions it's a matter of opinion more than anything.
 * Cut Lex Luthor a Check: One tribe of bandits seems to be trying to use magic for profit, as they're camped out in an iron ore mine and you can find a Transmute Ore tome in their camp, said spell being able to transform iron ore into silver and then gold. They could be filthy rich if they just didn't resort to a life of crime!
 * Cutscene Power to the Max: At least one instance when Karliah takes you down. You could be maxed out in console with God Mode enabled but she's going to take you down for plot purposes.

"You: Why is this place called the Winking Skeever? Corpulus: Well, as it turns out, I had a pet skeever when I was a boy, and he used to wink. You: You kept a skeever as a pet? Corpulus: They were smaller back then."
 * -|D=
 * Damn You, Muscle Memory!: On PC, when placing items into a container, the hotkey to place the currently selected item into the container is R. But if you're taking items out of the container, the hotkey to take the currently selected item is E, and R becomes "Take All." It's not uncommon to forget this and accidentally take everything inside a container - and if it was the container you use as your main storage, this will probably mean enough weight to make you overencumbered several times over and enough items that it will take you a long time to get them all put back. In most cases you're better off reloading an autosave.
 * The same thing can happen in the console versions of the game, too. For some reason that god only knows, the Equip, Take, Take All and Give buttons never seem to stay in the same place between different sorts of containers.
 * This becomes annoying when dealing with ingredients: the key to take ingredients out of a container becomes, when trying to put them back, the same as the key that is used for consuming ingredients. So, whilst you think that you have put away all of your ingredients, what you have actually done is consumed them, and you will only realise your mistake when you close your inventory and suffer the effects, including severe poisoning.
 * While we're at it, we might as well point out that the keys for changing from first-person to third-person view and drawing/sheathing your weapon are reversed. Ditto for jumping and interacting with objects.
 * And while simply selecting an item takes it out of containers, selecting an item while a container is open will use it (unlike Oblivion, where it put it away). This can range from a minor annoyance (wearing the armour you were giving your companion) to a major one (accidentally eating the daedra hearts you wanted to save for armour, without even noticing). This does not apply to the trade interface, even if you might want it to (e.g. you bought some spell tomes and want to use them, but also want to sell off some of the moderately-expensive skill books you've acquired, and you bought the tomes first so the merchant would have enough money for this). In general, Skyrim's interface is at its most inconsistent since at least Morrowind.
 * A minor but annoying case if you've played Deus Ex Human Revolution on the 360. The default sprint buttons are reversed. If going from Human Revolution to Skyrim, you may try to sprint but instead launch someone over a wall with a FUS RO DAH, and in Human Revolution you may try to sprint but instead toss a grenade into innocent bystanders. Whoops.
 * On PC again: The default controls may not suit everyone's tastes, but you better hope you haven't remapped the controls to anything dangerous and then forgotten about it. This troper tried to make Shift the Shout button for a while, but after accidentally murdering NPCs with flame breath on several different occasions, it was changed back to default.
 * Darker and Edgier: The atmosphere of this game compared to Oblivion. To make a short list; the overall world design is much more Dung Ages than the high fantasy style of Oblivion, two large towns are Wretched Hives, there is much more Fantastic Racism going on, more Gray and Grey Morality, and more bloody/gory bits in dungeons.
 * Deader Than Dead:
 * has his soul destroyed by the Dragonborn to purify.
 * What happens to the dragons you kill ...
 * Deadly Decadent Court: Apparently High Rock's aristocracy is like this, from what Hadvar has to say if you choose Breton as your race.
 * Deadpan Snarker:
 * Corpulus Vinius.

"Belethor: Oh for this wonderful weather, and all the hospitable people. And I just love being surrounded by dragons and petty power struggles. Ah, but the greatest joy is having to deal with the people who ask such questions.""
 * Belethor in Whiterun. Try asking him why a Breton like him is in Skyrim.

"You: Narfi is dead. Nazir: Congratulations. You killed an emaciated beggar in cold blood. You are truly an opponent to be feared."
 * Nazir of the Dark Brotherhood.


 * Nazir even dryly comments on how much of a Deadpan Snarker he is at the conclusion of the first batch of contracts.
 * Dealing With the Daedra Prince:
 * In a side quest, the pactmaking daedra prince Clavicus Vile offers you a deal.
 * Nocturnal also gets in on the act in her sidequest.
 * Hircine indirectly gives you one as well. imbues you with Hircine's power, but as long as you have the spirit of the beast within you, your soul belongs to Daedra Prince of the Hunt.
 * If you listen to what Lucien Lachance's ghost says, apparently the Dark Brotherhood gets a claim on your soul when you die, too. Come to think of it, it's possible to sell your soul to all of these factions at the same time...
 * By the end of the game, you can owe your soul to Nocturnal, the embodiment of nothingness (Sithis), the 9 divines, Shor, Hircine, and possibly a few other Daedric Princes, depending on what you take "Champion" to mean. All in all, you have to wonder who's going to decide who gets your characters soul when something DOES manage to kill them. Although the 9 Divines and Shor are much nicer about it, they're just sort of the "Default Afterlife" for dead people and Skyrim's Heroes.
 * Explore gloriously in this fill of the Skyrim Kink Meme, (Don't worry, it's Safe For Work).
 * Given that Sithis is infinitely older (the interaction between it and another universal concept are essentially what created the Aedra and Daedra in the first place) and presumably much more powerful than anyone else on the list, it probably has the best chance at winning. Assuming it's even capable of caring enough to make a claim.
 * Death by Genre Savviness: is actually smart enough to try to kill the Dovakhiin at the start of the game. Ironically, this actually ends up saving the Dovakhiin; if he'd just let the Empire do their thing, he'd have won (and the game would've been very short).
 * Deathbringer the Adorable: . His name means "Ambition Overlord Cruelty", but he serves as your mentor for a sizable chunk of the game.
 * Death Trap: You gotta watch your step in pretty much every dungeon if you don't want a spiky grate embedded in your face. There is a perk that prevents pressure plates from triggering, but it does not stop trip wires or trapped chests and doors, nor does it apply to your followers.
 * Death Seeker: There's an Old Orc who wanders around Skyrim surrounded by corpses who will ask you for a good death.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Most people you can beat in tavern brawls become considerably more friendly to you afterwards. You can even marry one!
 * Defector From Decadence:.
 * Deflector Shields:
 * The ward spells from the Restoration school block magic spells directed at you. It even forms a glowy hemisphere of light in front of you. It also disrupts a  shout by directing the force around the caster, so if you see a mage throw up a shield like that, don't bother with Unrelenting Force until s/he drops it.
 * The Spellbreaker is a physical shield that projects a Deflector Shields when defending. While blocking, Spellbreaker creates a ward that protects against spells for up to 50 points. At first it may seem weak compared to other more powerful ward spells like Greater Ward which can negate up to 80 points of spell damage. However, it stacks with the Elemental Protection perk which reduces incoming fire, frost, and shock damage by 50% while blocking, and any left over damage will be absorbed by the shield's ward effect. The best part is it costs no Magicka. This makes the Spellbreaker one of the best shields to be used against mages and dragons.
 * Dem Bones: Unsurprisingly, there are walking skeletons in the ruins. And they make a very satisfying clatter when they go flying apart when you kill them.
 * Skeleton Dragons too. Encountered in some dungeons, or if.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Drop a bunch of weapons and armor on the ground in front of a guard. He'll tell you to stop doing it because someone could trip on them and get hurt. Not as in generic "don't do that" words, either; more to the effect of "I saw you throwing those weapons around, keep doing it and I'll arrest you." Alternatively, poorer characters (yes, the game tracks class and income) will notice what you just dropped, and ask if you mind whether they grab it for themselves. Also, using too many Thu'ums in a city will cause a guard to tell you it makes the citizens uneasy and asks you to stop.
 * Similarly, doing something clumsy or wreckless like hitting a sign causing it to swing around. If a guard sees you do it, he'll call you out on it (eg. "Watch what you're doing!").
 * What's more, the sign can swing back and hit you in the face causing minor damage. If you have extremely high HP, this won't be noticable statistically, but you can see bloodstains on the screen as if you were hit.
 * Sometimes if you drop something in a market place, NPCs of low income would try and just take the armor, while other NPCs of higher morality would attempt to stop them, or outright kill them, because it's the wrong thing to do.
 * If you attack civilians while out in the wild and get a bounty on your head, finishing them off will get the bounty removed as there will be no witnesses to your deeds.
 * You can "pickpocket" the Briar Hearts out of the high-level Forsworn leaders, when normally you pull them off their corpses after a fight. In previous games of this sort, this is an unintended bit of functionality caused by the way loot tables and pickpoceting work. In Skyrim, successfully "picking" a Briar Heart kills the Briarhearts instantly. Unfortunately, the dev team didn't think it through fully, and you might getaccosted by hired thugs sent to "teach you a lesson", that were hired by the Briarheart.
 * Much of the landmass of Cyrodiil, Hammerfell and Morrowind is rendered in Skyrim at a very basic level of detail and can be accessed using console commands (The green area is the area of the map that is rendered in Skyrim). This has led to much speculation about future expansions venturing into neighbouring provinces, but it's likely that the landmass was put in for scale for development purposes, and because of the game's huge draw distances and fully rendered map screen - it's automatically generated using heightmaps that could be ported over from previous entries in the series.
 * There are variations in dialogue between characters depending on if you spoke to them before other characters in the conversation got to them. For example, early in the game, if you get to Hadvar's uncle first and talk to him before Hadvar does the conversation goes a little differently; (i.e., "Yes, Player Character told me about the dragon too and I hardly believed it."). People will have comments for if you've already completed their quests before you ask it of them (like getting the Dragon Stone from Bleak Falls Barrow and/or the Golden Claw there before the two quest-givers asked for them, or unique pieces of stealable loot for Thieves Guild sidequests).
 * You can snatch arrows out of the air in mid-flight, and knock arrows out of the air with your own. Nearly impossible to do either of these without the Slow Time shout, but pull it off, and you'll feel like an absolute badass. You can even grab an arrow out of the air, equip it, and shoot it back.
 * Your final reward for the Thieves Guild quest is a choice between three powers given to Nightingales. Previously during the questline, you'll have seen
 * In both versions of A False Front, the enemy general will respond differently if you dress as one of their soldiers vs. dressing in any other armor.
 * During the mission "Diplomatic Immunity", you can disguise yourself as a Thalmor officer. The effectiveness of your disguise, however, is actually based on your race: Beast-races will be spotted instantly due to their vastly different anatomy, humans will be alright at a distance but will get caught if too close and non-Altmer elves can get a little closer. Altmer, of course, have it best, as not only can you walk freely all the way to the Solar, you can actually talk with the guards and order them away from their posts. At no point is this tactic ever suggested to you, leaving it purely up to your own initiative. The only catch is you need the Hooded variant to conceal your face from a distance if you're not Altmer.
 * You can try to read [[spoiler:the Elder Scroll before you are supposed to at the designated point. There's a book called . If you read it, it says that if someone were to read without training, they would not be affected by it at all, and if they have minor understanding of it then it may just blind them a bit. Attempting to read it temporarily reduces your field of vision and nothing else.
 * Sit down in a tavern and the waitress will automatically approach you and ask what you want to drink.** When exploring a crypt with a warrior whose family was buried there, he protests if you start looting, but lets it slide since you're helping him clear out a necromancer living there.
 * By using console commands, you can marry just about anyone, and in most cases it won't break the game, as there's marriage dialogue for every character, including people like Elisif the Fair.
 * Skeletons only get jostled by  because most of the force doesn't actually hit them but simply passes through the empty spaces between their bones. Draugr, which have preserved skin, however, can be knocked back with the full force of the shout.
 * All the children running around the cities? You can play tag and hide and seek with them.
 * Occasionally if you use console commands to kill a character in some way, the guards will eventually ask you if you know anything about what happened.
 * If a giant and a non-hostile dragon are in the same area, the giant might try to ride the dragon; with hilarious results.
 * You have to loot body parts from certain enemies, like the Glenmoril Witches. If the body part is visible, the ragdoll changes.
 * You can shield bash by attacking while blocking. If you're blocking with a torch, this will set the enemy on fire.
 * If you're in the middle of being arrested when a dragon attacks, the guard will say he has more important things to do and run off to fight.
 * If you discard items, bystanders may remark that whatever you dropped is liable to be taken by someone else, if you're expecting to find it when you come back. Dropping weapons in the street gets you yelled at by guards as someone could get hurt with them laying around, and being a dick about the warning gets you a small fine as a bounty for disturbing the peace. An honest bystander might pick up the item, tell you 'be more careful with your stuff, next time someone might decide to keep it for themselves,' and try to give it back to you.
 * Casting Calm or Courage on an NPC is a good way to grind your Illusion skill. However, try casting Calm on Colette at the College of Winterhold; her response will make you feel dirty.
 * Likewise, casting Healing Hands on an NPC will have varied results. On friendly ones that don't react negatively to it (most Khajiis and Orcs will become hostile because they find it insulting), their responses vary from "A healing spell? Are you a priest or something?" to "Thank you" to custom responses. J'Zargo will reply "Ah! J'Zargo feels like he woke up from a nap!", while Farkas responds "Ah! That felt good!"
 * Look in your inventory after you get hit by a barrage of arrows. They apparently stick in you, so you get to keep them. This also happens to NPCs with arrows you fire at them.
 * A quest in Morthal has you hunting down a vampire who's been living in a the town for a while, if you try to confront her and you're a vampire yourself, she says she knows you're one in the same and snidely tells you keep it a secret "that there are wolves living amongst the sheep."
 * You can just bypass Riverwood and Whiterun altogether and go to Windhelm or Solitude, (though this isn't advisable early on) join the Stormcloaks or Legion before even initiating any part of the main quest, and completely take over Skyrim for one faction or another before ever drawing a weapon against a dragon. And yes, the game includes unique dialogue for this eventuality.
 * Upon joining the Legion, General Tulius will recite an oath that the player makes his character repeat to confirm joining up. The pledge swears allegiance to the Emperor, Titus Mede II, however if
 * For the thieving killing types, joining the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood at the same time would be an ideal goal. Join the Thieves Guild beforehand and get acquainted with Delvin Mallory. After you've joined the Dark Brotherhood and received an amulet which Astrid tells you to show off to Delvin, he will remark how you're making friends all over the place and comments on your work as an assassin.
 * Entering rooms through doors results in a Door Opening animation before actually loading the area. You can also close doors that are stuck open this way through the same method. If you click fast enough the door will open and close, and the area won't load.
 * When you first enter Markarth, a small scene will trigger where a visitor to the city will be murdered by an agent of the Forsworn. If you're fast enough, you can kill the agent before he gets to her. Talk to her, and she'll thank you for saving her life and reward you with a piece of jewelry.
 * Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead: Justified. Alduin is more than just the leader of the dragons, he's summoning them, as shown in the pre-Sahlokniir scene.
 * Disc One Nuke: Dagger + Assassin's Blade Perk + Shrouded Gloves = Backstabbing killing machine. Combine it with the Shadowcloak of Nocturnal and you can rip through an entire group like this. In broad daylight.
 * A very simple and quick quest in Riverwood, the very first town you visit, gets you Faendal as a follower. He's a trainer in Archery, so you can pay him to raise the skill, then enter trade and take back the money you paid him. Rinse and repeat and by the time you leave Riverwood for Whiterun you can have almost 50 Archery, allowing you to take three levels of the Overdraw perk for +60% bow damage, in addition to the high damage from your high skill level. Enter Sneak mode for double damage sneak attacks, and any enemy that doesn't see you coming will drop in one shot.
 * Bound Weapons. The spell to summon them can be bought in the first store that sells spells - and even then, almost all spell merchants sell them. They improve your conjuration skill by merely holding them while in the general vicinity of enemies. With a mere 4 perks (easily obtained due to the aforementioned easy leveling of your conjuration skill) they will soultrap on hit (for lots of souls to train enchanting with), do equivalent damage to Deadric level weapons, dispel summon creatures, turn raised ones and have an almost negligible cost in magicka to summon. On top of all that, they are weightless, allowing you to haul more loot. You can therefore enjoy their full benefits before reaching level 10. And they also gain full benefits of the perks that apply to their weapon types (One handed swords, two handed axes and bows). The bound bow, though acquirable later, even create its own ammunition! And the cherry on the sundae: bound weapons are unaffected by the disarm shout. It does not cause them to be unsummoned, and even if it did, you'd need to only summon them again, which is far less troublesome than running around during a fight looking for your precious custom-made sword.
 * Provided you know where to find a Dwemer ruin early on (and there's tons of them), you can forage around a few bits of metal to melt down into ingots. Then with 30 Smithing, easily obtainable (you start at 16 and there's a trainer in Whiterun), you can get Dwarven Smithing and craft yourself Dwarven equipment. The pieces have nice defensive bonuses and can be further upgraded with spare ingots, which you'll have lots of because Dwemer metals forge three or more ingots a piece when melted down. You can then forge a few spare suits and sell them for profit.
 * You can join the Companions early in game, which rewards you with a Skyforge Steel weapon of your choosing (and allows you to buy more as required). It is as powerful as an Elven weapon, and as a bonus is lighter and can be improved with Steel ingots rather than the rarer Moonstone.
 * And to top that one off, after doing only three missions for them, you can become a werewolf, giving you a very nice combat ability, and a form that, when sprinting, is faster than any other form of travel in the game, short of riding a dragon or riding in a cart (and has greatly increased carrying capacity as well, so it can run/sprint even if you were fairly heavily encumbered in your normal form.)
 * You get access to Wolf Armor, which is a special variant of steel that is as durable as plate but only as heavy as regular steel. It can also be upgraded with regular steel ingots. Once, you can also forge Nordic Hero weapons using draugr weaponry; they look like modernized versions of ancient Nord weapons, but have daedric-tier damage.
 * A basic conjuration spell, raise zombie, can allow you to reach 50+ conjuration skill before completing the first dungeon (the golden claw/dragonstone quests). Kill a basic enemy (normal bandits, skeevers, basic draugr), use the spell to raise your opponent, then kill him again (the basic flames spell works fastest for lowest cost). Once enough damage has been sustained, the zombie will turn hostile against you, granting you exp (raised and summoned creatures only grant exp when they enter combat against another creature. This includes the player). Since conjuration gives a large amount of exp per "legitimate" summons, it raises insanely fast, to the point that, if you are using to destruction to kill each enemy both times, your conjuration level will be twice what your destruction will be, or more. Also, if you have an enemy that is aware of your presence, but cannot reach you (locked door, raised bridge, etc), you can summon a familiar (basic, lowest cost summons), then use a bound blade with the necessary perks to unsummon the creature. Repeat over and over until either the creature that can't reach you ceases to be hostile, finds a path to you, or you master conjuration completely.
 * If you're lucky enough to find the Flaming Familiar early on in your quest, and you're playing a mage or stealth character... say hello to your new best friend. All you need to do is invest a skill point into a low-level conjuration skill (which is easy to raise in this game) and suddenly, the range you can summon your Flaming Familiar with is extreme. It has a longer base range to begin with as well. All you need to do is stay a fair distance away, summon it near an enemy, and let it attack and blow up. Oh yeah, Flaming Familiars are basically wolf-shaped fire missiles. And it's an apprentice level spell that normally only costs 30 MP. Even if you're not a mage, it's not that tough to spam and be patient. If you're a stealth character, you need patience anyway.
 * Mjoll the Lioness can be met and obtained at any point after you escape Helgen, provided you made it to Riften without getting killed. On top of being one of only two invincible followers (the other being Cicero, which you only get after serious progression in the Dark Brotherhood questline) her quest has you going through a Dwemer Ruin, which can give you the location of a source of Dwarven Ingots relatively early in the game. Mjoll herself benefits from Heavy Armors and uses both melee weapons and a bow, making her ideal for tanking Dragons early on.
 * Disintegrator Ray: Shock-based spells can be upgraded to eventually reduce their targets to piles of dust if the target is at low health. This is good for one simple reason: enemy necromancers can't revive a pile of dust!
 * Disney Villain Death: Using Unrelenting Force on someone so that they fall to their doom is a very convenient way of getting rid of your enemies, including.
 * It also affords a bit of Loophole Abuse if for some reason you want to kill someone but can't find a way to do it stealthily. Just get them into a place where you can blast them off a high-enough ledge to kill them, their death as a result of the fall will not be held on you. Thus you can literally get away with murder as long as you don't mind paying a 40 gold bounty.
 * Oh, and the physics are a lot less forgiving than they were in the previous games. Remember how in previous games an enemy you knocked over a railing would suddenly teleport back up, or fall 3-5 stories and take only a sliver of damage? Not here. Now even a gently sloping path can mean certain death.
 * Disproportionate Retribution:
 * People put a bounty on you similar to assault for killing a chicken.
 * People you steal from might send thugs after you (the thugs' contract says they don't have you kill you, but the hirer won't mind if they do. Which they try to). Even if you just stole an incredibly cheap book from them and paid off the bounty.
 * The Dragonborn can respond to the clerical error that nearly resulted in your execution by joining the Stormcloaks and driving the Empire out of Skyrim.
 * Divide and Conquer: A tactic of the Thalmor.
 * DLC Hook:
 * The Dog Bites Back: You can invoke this trope against Arondil, a necromancer who uses the undead spirits of women as sex slaves. you can rob him of control of his undead servants, which results in two of his slaves murdering him.
 * Door to Before: A lot of dungeons have passages at the end of the dungeon that will lead back to the beginning of the dungeon. Helps on the backtracking. The most common means of doing this actually makes perfect sense - a door barred from the inside - but ledges too tall to jump/climb to are also common.
 * Double Standard: Called-out by a secessionist at the emperor's relative's wedding. He asks a loyalist what the difference between the Empire's dealings with the Thalmor compared to Skyrim. She claims they had to fight back because the Thalmor were foreign invaders who threatened their way of life. His response? "My point exactly."
 * Downloadable Content: A high-res texture pack was released in February 2012. And now Bethesda has announced a DLC called "Dawnguard", though we don't have much in the way of detail yet.
 * Dracolich: Skeleton Dragons.
 * The Dragon:
 * Alduin's got a literal one.
 * The player character could also be seen as this to Legate Rikke, if they join the Legion. And Rikke is a Dragon herself to General Tullius.
 * for the Dragonborn.
 * After completing the Stormcloak quest chain up to right before the Battle for Solitude, Ulfric himself dubs you as mightiest of the Stormcloaks and as close to him as kin, you are thus dubbed his personal champion; Stormblade.
 * Dragon Rider:, atop Odahviing to find the portal to Sovngarde.
 * Giants will attempt this trope on occasion. With less than stellar results.
 * The Dreaded: The Dragonborn is this to Dragonkind, for a very good reason.
 * The music that plays during Dragon-battles is titled, appropriately enough, "The One They Fear".
 * Dream Weaver: As noted in the in-game book The Dreamstride, the potion Vaermina's Torpor allows people to enter others' dreams.
 * Dressing as the Enemy: You can do this during the "Diplomatic Immunity" quest, where you infiltrate the Thalmor Embassy. Use the console to add a Hooded Thalmor Robe in your inventory and you can get through most of the Embassy without having to fight the guards. This obviously works the best if you're an Altmer yourself. Characters of other elven races, and especially human races must keep their distance from the guards, or they will realize the PC is an intruder. Characters of beast races can't do this at all.
 * Both A False Front and To Kill an Empire gives you opportunities to dress as an enemy soldier or a cook respectively. However the only difference is dialogue options.
 * Driven to Suicide:
 * . She sells the player out to in order to save, but he sends his forces to attack anyway. Badly burned in the attack, she uses the last of her energy to  , acknowledging her failings.
 * Tova Shatter-shield if
 * Dronejam: NPCs have a nasty tendency to block the path in doorways or other bottlenecks. They will, normally, get the hint after several seconds of running directly into them or a gentle shot of Unrelenting Force.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him:
 * Not really characters, but between The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and this game, both lands from the previous two games have changed for the worse. Vvardenfell, the main setting of the third game, has exploded, because it was a volcano and is hit by a huge floating rock (as a decades-later consequence of the game's events, no less). And Cyrodill, the setting of the fourth game is recuperating from being savaged by a war with Nazi elves. This can a bit harsh to longtime players of the series, who helped save both lands and spend countless of hours in them. Though it does well to prove that saving the world doesn't equate to saving the realm.
 * and are both killed off behind the player's back without much of an explanation, and no one really seems to remember about them later on.
 * Dual-Wielding:
 * Any one-handed weapon can be equipped in either hand, allowing for dual wielding or left-handed swordfighting - both firsts for the Elder Scrolls series (though Daggerfall had a rough version). It's partially offset, though, with the default mapping for PC - the right arm is mapped to the LEFT mousebutton, and vice versa. SO, you press the opposite mouse button for the action you want. Also note that weapons in your left hand have a more limited attack palette (i.e. swords will mainly use stabs instead of swings).
 * This also extends to dual spellcasting as well: a spell in each hand. You can also use the same spell in each hand for a more powerful version of that spell, at the cost of a substantially higher cost in magicka - if you're worried about running out, using separate casts to machinegun the spells, without actually dual-casting, is more magicka-efficient, in some cases greatly so.
 * Dude, Where's My Respect?:
 * You could be Thane of Whiterun, a high-ranking member in the Legion or Stormcloaks, Archmage of the College Of Winterhold and a full-fledged member of the Companions, and there'll still be the occasional dick guard taunting you about reporting a stolen sweetroll, never mind the fact that if you did steal a sweetroll and someone reported it, that same guard would be on your ass in a second. Don't expect any parades in your honor after the main quest, either. Oddly enough you do get recognition for finishing the civil war quest.
 * Also with Esbern.
 * Don't try assaulting Thalmor soldiers near any Imperial strongholds, they won't appreciate you attacking them purely out of spite due to an uneasy treaty declaration between them. (If you provoke them into attacking you first, though, the Imperial troops won't raise a finger, and if you're allied with the Empire they'll jump to your defense.) On the other hand, Stormcloaks will happily help you kill any Thalmor you come across if they are nearby; being allied with the Stormcloaks just makes them all the more enthusiastic to bash elven skulls.
 * Averted every time you kill a dragon, leaving any NPC witnesses to stand staring slackjawed in awe... and then played straight once more when one of the guards picks up their slack-jaw and tell you to "stop that... shouting", the very shouting you used to bring the dragon down. Though since those same bystanders will show the exact same awe if it happens again, they apparently don't find it all that memorable.
 * Also when joining the Companions, Vilkas always says to Kodlak that he's never even heard of you, despite the fact you could be Thane of Whiterun after having
 * The Thieves Guild - and there will still be those who treat you like a brand new recruit, and a completely unpromising one at that. The roadside muggings are an exception -- if you are a guild member they'll actually apologize for threatening you.
 * Averted in the theft/friendship mechanic. The NPCs might not be much friendlier but if you do something for them, you'll find you're allowed to take things from their house/store that would have previously been considered theft.
 * Durable Deathtrap: The Nordic necropoli and Dwemer ruins are filled to the brim with these. Though in the latter case, this has been hand waved with the explanation that the Dwemer were so ridiculously advanced that everything they made was impervious to aging, in addition to having maintenance robots still running around.


 * -|E=
 * Early-Bird Cameo: Anyone who played the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind two games ago will be in familiar territory. Solstheim, the island that expansion took place upon, was basically a mini-Skyrim, full of Nords and mead with werewolves and deadly spriggans running about.
 * Elaborate Underground Base: Practically all dwemer ruins. Blackreach used to be an entire city, but it fell into disuse when the Dwemer disappeared.
 * Blackreach and its upper level, Alftand, are a little more than "elaborate". "Absolutely goddamn huge" might be a better way of putting it. Traversing them can take the better part of four hours even if you're trying to pass as quickly as possible, and you have to fight your way through a small army of Falmer, Automatons, and other nasties on the way. Easily five times as big as any of the regular barrows you'll see, they're positively packed with items, and have THREE different access elevators plus three more through various Dwemer ruins. There's a reason why
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Subverted in Sheogorath's daedra quest. At first it looks like you're supposed to win such a battle with the help of an atronach (Fire Atronach beats Ice Atronach, who beats Storm Atronach, who beats Fire Atronach) but then it turns out that the battle will actually go on infinitely until you.
 * The Empire:
 * The Aldmeri Dominion; they've taken over territories and have their eye on the rest of the world.
 * The Cyrodiilic Empire once again. A great deal of conflict in the game comes from the fact that a foreign power controls Skyrim, and that they can and will make decisions that the provinces don't like. But much like in Morrowind, the Empire is shown as being more tolerant than the provinces.
 * Empty Levels: The removal of stats actually makes this much less of a problem, as the leveling-up system in previous Elder Scrolls games made these in combination with the Level Scaling, easily resulting in characters with a couple ridiculously high stats and others that Can't Catch Up. It still happens with the Level Scaling (making stronger opponents appear when you may not have the gear to face them) and is entirely possible to make yourself unable to stand up to any of the enemies by using all your perks for stuff that's not useful in a fight, but nobody would actually do that.
 * Not to mention, when you level up, the game actually doesn't block you from continuing until you pick everything at the level up menu when you decide to do so. Accidentally read a bunch of skill books and gained a level in skills you don't use, and don't have enough invested into the trees you do use? no problem - just level up, pick the health/stamina/magicka boost, then get back to the game and pick that perk when it's available.
 * Perks and skills that don't directly help in combat are still very useful in supporting you in preperation for combat. A character who never puts anything into weapon skills or magic can still be a beast simply because they've got so much money and such advanced ability in support skills that they have extremely powerful equipment with advanced enchantments and an endless supply of potent potions and poisons. It doesn't matter if you haven't put any perks into one-handed weapons when your sword is two-shotting bosses even without using infinite smithing/alchemy/enchanting loops.
 * The End of the World as We Know It: Considering the main villain is also known as 'the world eater,' many people have made the obvious assumption.
 * See Crapsack World above for details on exactly how the "World as We Know It" has ended. Natural disasters in a remote province or two, political unrest in a few more provinces...
 * Enemy Chatter: It seems the bandits of Skyrim mostly share a common tragic backstory in which their Da told them to go to a college but they were too dumb to figure out which college, and now they need skooma--the imported stuff--just one last time. Occasionally one comes across more unique chatter, such as a disgruntled mage in the Ilinalta's Deep dungeon complaining about having to work a forge.
 * Enemy Mine:
 * During a questline in Markarth, you can choose to ally with the Forsworn, who normally act as enemies. If you do, you get enchanted versions of their armor. When their leader says goodbye, he warns you that from now on, you should watch out for the Forsworn, meaning the alliance is over.
 * Can happen when fighting dragons. Since they're free-roaming and hostile to everything that moves, the player can happen across them fighting anything from bandits to Mudcrabs to giants (which have a good chance of killing a low-level dragon on their own!) and team up with the dragon's prey to kill the marauding beast. Though once the dragon's dead, all bets are off...
 * In Blind Cliff Bastion you are able to team up with a hagraven to take back her tower from another hagraven.
 * Epic Fail: While doing contracts for the Dark Brotherhood, you get one for a bard that is apparently so bad, and so many people want him dead, that Astrid had to use a lottery to pick a client. At least, that's what Nazir tells you when he gives it to you.
 * Equal Opportunity Evil: Just like Oblivion, the Dark Brotherhood is by far the most evil organization you can join in the game, and also the most diverse. Its members include a Nord, a Dunmer, an old man, a child vampire, a former Shadowscale Argonian, a Redguard, and a werewolf.
 * Establishing Character Moment: Most any time you enter the lair of a major faction leader, like a Jarl or the Thieves' Guild or Ulfric or Tullius, you find them involved in conversation with their advisers and can get a good idea of what they're like by hanging back and eavesdropping.
 * Eternal Engine: Dwemer ruins are full of robotic golems, pumping pistons, hissing steam and scrap metal.
 * Eternal English:
 * Eternal Recurrence: The Nords believe in this. Alduin eats the world, and the next cycle begins.
 * Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: One tribe of bandits has the leader's uncle as a guard at the entrance to their cave, even thought he's blind and not that bright. One of the bandits outside has a note on him from the leader lecturing his men about playing tricks on his uncle and threatening them with imprisonment if they don't leave him alone.
 * Another bandit leader sends money and letters to her father even though he always sends the money back while urging her to leave banditry before it gets her killed.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Thrynn, one of the Thieves Guild member was once a bandit. He said it was good life until the day when he raided a caravan, his leader ordered him to kill the defenseless women and children For the Evulz, he refused and killed him instead.
 * One resident of Riften, when asked about the Thieves Guild, denounces them soundly as a bunch of lawless crooks, while noting that even the Dark Brotherhood has rules that they abide by.
 * Every One Remembers the Stripper: A new book in Skyrim is one of the few in Elder Scrolls history to be a sequel to a book from another game. It has survived both the Oblivion Crisis and the destruction of Vvardenfell. That book is "The Lusty Argonian Maid".
 * Everyone Is Bi: All eligible marriage candidates can be wed regardless of sex and/or race, though this could easily be a case of Even the Guys Want Him or Even the Girls Want Her as most NPC couples are hetero. Maybe the Dragonborn is just that appealing.
 * Everything's Deader with Zombies: Draugr.
 * You can revive anything killable as a zombie with the various Undead Raising spells. However they look exactly the same as how they died, the only difference is how their corpses dissolve into dust upon death (one version of the spell prevents this, effectively giving you a second, immortal follower).
 * Evil Is Deathly Cold: Vampires in Skyrim usually make their home in icy caverns and/or ice-covered fort ruins, and are fond of using frost magic. Draugr are also known for hitting you with a frostbite blast from their hands. Of course, the native Nords are all highly resistant to cold damage; they're used to dealing with this crap, apparently.
 * This is actually a Call Back to existing canon, which established the clan of vampires living in Skyrim as having an affinity with frost. They also have the power to phase through ice and frost, though it's never demonstrated in-game.
 * Dragons can use ice breath in addition to the more traditional fire breath. The higher level dragons seem to prefer the former, such as with Frost Dragons.
 * Evil Is Hammy: In addition to slicing up your foes with their big ole daedric greatsword, conjured dremora will slice the ham.
 * Alduin also counts, as does Sahloknir.
 * Evil Is One Big Happy Family:
 * The Dark Brotherhood actually lives up to their name in this game. They tell stories, they joke with one another, they tend to each others' wounds, and they definitely care about one another.
 * Played straight by the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild, who both know of each other and will contract with the other when they need something done.
 * Evil Pays Better:
 * Though, in the former rout, it is possible to take the dagger in any case. So that may offset it somewhat.
 * For a certain perspective of evil, The Black Star quest requires you to find Azura's Star, an artifact belonging to one of the few benevolent Daedric gods that is a reusable soul gem, but can't hold Black (humanoid) souls (which are always "Grand" souls, the strongest type of souls available for enchanting or weapon recharging.) The reward for returning the star to Azura's worshipper gets her as a follower and lets you keep the star. On the other hand, you can complete the work of an insane necromancer by taking the gem to his student and turning it into the Black Star, which holds humanoid souls but gets you no follower. Black Soul Gems to hold humanoid souls are rare, so this item is also far more useful. You can also recharge your weapon any time by killing any humanoid enemy while soul trap is active, making all lower types of soul gem after Grand and Black Soul obsolete. The "necromancer" only went insane and all necromancy after Azura reacted to experimentation on her artifact with a curse of insanity, however, and the Student considers that to be the evil act.
 * Expecting Someone Taller:
 * When you're meeting up with you can say, "I was expecting someone...taller."
 * One of the Companions also says that he expected the new Harbinger to be taller, once you finish the Companions questline.
 * Exposed to the Elements: You can find bandits wearing little more than a loincloth in the middle of a snowstorm. If the PC is female, they can fall into this as well by wearing forsworn armor or hide armor, which doesn't really cover the chest at all.
 * Hide armor doesn't particularly cover a male PC's chest either.
 * Extreme Omnivore: One way you can discover one of an ingredient's uses in Alchemy (more with a Perk) is to eat it. Fair enough when its plants and berries. Bug parts, weird-but-technicaly-edible animal parts and potentially poisonous mushrooms, ok, weird and a bit risky, but the effects wear off and don't really hurt you in the amount you use. Teeth and horns of various animals, the toe of a dead giant, or the oil that lubricated ancient Dewmer machinery? Falls squarely here and requires considerable application of Fridge Logic to suspend disbelief for (i.e. you would have to grind up horns and teeth to be able to ingest them without choking).
 * Eye Scream: One of the finishers for 1H swords on dragons is to climb onto the head of the thrashing dragon, and then stab them right in the eye.
 * Face Death with Dignity:
 * A Stormcloak soldier at the beginning of the game volunteers to be the first to be executed and uses his last words to condemn the Imperials. The other Stormcloaks probably would have followed in his suit if a dragon hadn't shown up.
 * Also at the beginning of the game, Ralof says this almost verbatim to the luckless horse-thief, Rokir of Rorikstead. Rokir disregards this advice, and gets a few arrows in the back for it. If he'd just gone along, he might well have survived after all...
 * At the end of the civil war quest chain, if the player supports the Empire,
 * Topping them all though, is  whom you must kill at the end of the Dark Brotherhood chain, if you choose to join them. After welcoming you warmly and saying that this is just how things work, he would then calmly turn his back towards you, ready for his fate. He did ask for a final request, which you can fulfill or not: to kill whoever it is who commissioned his death. Even then, he does not expect it of you; he asks it as a favor, nothing more.
 * The Old Orc. He is too old to take a wife or become chief, but not too old to serve in battle. He refuses to die of old age (saying that to keep something past the point it is useful is unseemly, even more so if it is one's own life), and thus sets out across Skyrim to find a good death. He says he has received a vision from Malacath that he would die a glorious death at a certain point in Skyrim, and waits there for someone (possibly you) to deliver it.
 * The Old Orc. He is too old to take a wife or become chief, but not too old to serve in battle. He refuses to die of old age (saying that to keep something past the point it is useful is unseemly, even more so if it is one's own life), and thus sets out across Skyrim to find a good death. He says he has received a vision from Malacath that he would die a glorious death at a certain point in Skyrim, and waits there for someone (possibly you) to deliver it.


 * -|F=
 * Face Heel Turn: The High Elves, who not only seceded from the Empire, but also forcibly conscripted the Wood Elves into their new nation, manipulated the Khajiit into vassalisation and threatened to destroy the Empire unless they banned the worship of Talos because, partially due to their believed superiority, they don't like the idea of a human ascending to godhood, and also because his removal is necessary for their goals of escaping Mundus.
 * Fake Crossover: An official mod places the Space Core into the game as an item. When you put it into the game, the poor guy falls from the sky, which makes one wonder if this really is a Fake Crossover...
 * Fantastic Drug: Skooma is still around, though it doesn't have negative effects like it did in Morrowind and Oblivion; it's not even really illegal! One quest also features the more potent "Balmora Blue", which is illegal--and is supposedly priceless, what with there not being a Balmora anymore.
 * Fantastic Racism: The Elder Scrolls was always subtle with this, but for Skyrim, this is taken Up to Eleven.
 * Most prominent is racism between Men and Mer. The Thalmor view the human races of Tamriel as inferior upstart savages, and seek to Kill All Humans. And the men aren't exactly fond of the elves either.
 * If someone ever gives a reason for siding with the Imperials over the Stormcloaks in the civil war sidequest, this is often the main reason given. The Stormcloaks have very strong racist tendencies and they do not hide this fact. This darker side is easiest to see in Windhelm. Dunmer are forced to live in the filthiest, poorest part of the city, and abuse from the local Nords is an almost daily occurrence. The Argonian dock workers are paid a tiny fraction of what the Nord workers are paid, and are not permitted to live within the city walls, and are physically beaten if they try to. Ulfric Stormcloak will send guards to root out bandits if a Nord village is attacked, but won't lift a finger to help Khajiit caravans when they're harassed. On the other hand, they tend to make exceptions if it would be beneficial - non-Nord characters can ask when joining and be told that it's loyalty that matters rather than blood.
 * The two beastmen races get this the worst, by several lengths. Argonians are oppressed and hated throughout Skyrim, and if you choose Argonian, you can be sure that they won't call you by that name, preferring less charming terms such as "lizard". Khajiit will also be subjected to racial slurs, often stereotyped as thieves, drug-addicts and generally lowly scum. This makes clawing the offenders to death much more satisfying.
 * As for Orsimer, they're regarded as little more than disgusting, ugly brutes.
 * Even though the Player Character is the Chosen One, they don't entirely escape the racist abuse. This is sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional, but always very awkward. For example, playing as an Orc, to hear Lydia swear undying loyalty to you in one breath and then say, "Die, you Orc filth!" to an opponent of yours in the next sort of makes one wonder...
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The 4 main human races have direct, real world counter-parts:
 * The Empire is heavily based on the Roman Empire; the Imperial Legion armors have even taken on a much more Roman-like appearance this time around to reflect this, comfortably familiar to players of Morrowind.
 * Nord culture is an amalgam of various Germanic cultures, especially Scandinavia, but with some Anglo-Saxon elements. The ancient Nords seem to have had a little bit of ancient Egypt sprinkled in their customs for a good measure, with elaborate mummification and entombment methods you get to witness close hand in approximately half of the dungeons in the game.
 * The Bretons are mixed. Those from High Rock are based on the French, especially in terms of names (Montiere, Mirabelle, etc...), while those from The Reach in particular are essentially based on the Celtic British, complete with a King Arthur figure in Red Eagle. Of course, Bretons is the french name for the people of Brittany: as in the Celtic part of France.
 * The Redguard are based on Moorish peoples of northwest Africa. Even down to their curved swords. Curved! Swords!
 * The Khajiit are pretty much based on Middle East Asians. Their new voice also gives that feel.
 * The Dunmer are very Jewish when one looks at the lore and history, despite their British Accents.
 * The Argonians are harder to classify, but have a certain Southeast Asian or Pacific Islander feel, given their homeland, treatment by the people of Skyrim (particularly in Windhelm), and skill in guerrilla warfare.
 * Fast Forward Mechanic: There is a wait function, allowing you to wait for a number of hours of your choice. The current time should be somewhere at the bottom-left corner of the box.
 * A Father to His Men: General Tullius of the Imperial Legion. He seems to be based on Julius Caesar. Ulfric Stormcloak and Galmar Stonefist are this as well, as they love their men dearly. And in return are deeply respected by their men.
 * Fauxshadow: Maurice from the Blessing of Kynareth quest practically screams sinister with his appearance, voice and mannerisms.
 * Fetch Quest: The game is filled with these. The "Radiant Story" system was built for this. It does, however, usually have the decency to point to locales you have yet to visit, making the journey as bountiful as the destination when you clear out a new dungeon.
 * Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three archetypal builds are present even without classes, as each skill is one of six in each purview. In the astrological lore of the series, these three are the names of three "Guardian" constellations in the zodiac which "watch over" lesser constellations devoted to these three builds. The new skill tree system's visible appearance is a direct callback to this, with the three "Guardians" as huge nebulae over the warrior, mage and thief skill trees that appear as constellations in the sky. (The old constellations like "The Atronach" and "The Shadow" have been moved to the standing stones dotting Skyrim).
 * Many of the Jarls have one of each archetype (though "thief" may be a bit of a stretch, that is the constellation that includes Speech) for advisors: The Housecarl for the more strength-at-arms-tinted advice, the Steward for the voice of discretion, and the Court Mage for advice on any arcane matters.
 * The three heroes of Skyrim also fit into this trichotomy.
 * Final Boss Preview: The is actually Alduin, trying to kill you.
 * You actually get at least three encounters with him before the actual final battle. The third one
 * Finishing Move: Born from the popular Oblivion Game Mod "Deadly Reflexes", Finishers have become part of the game's source code. Every weapon in the game has at least two finisher animations for every enemy type in the game.
 * Particulary satisfying is one of the unarmed Finishers,
 * Fire-Breathing Weapon: While its predecessor Oblivion only featured spells that fire a single bolt of elemental energy, Skyrim also features spells that fire a stream of energy. These tend to require less magicka than the other variety, but deal less damage.
 * In addition, the player can learn to breathe fire(and frost) in the same way the Dragons do.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning: Destruction magic has you covered for all three. Tactically, they have different uses: fire is cheapest and does after-burn damage, ice drains stamina and slows enemies, and lighting drains magic and is a Hit Scan projectile.
 * Fluffy the Terrible: Grelod the Kind.
 * Foe-Tossing Charge: The top level tier for the Block perk tree allows you to go baddie bowling if you sprint with your shield up.
 * Foreboding Architecture: Gets especially obvious in nordic ruins. Yes, the sarcophagi will bust open dramatically the moment you try to take the loot or the MacGuffin, and yes, the Frostbite Spider will drop down through the giant hole in the ceiling.
 * Foreshadowing: Bethesda loves to use this trope regarding in-game books.
 * There's a copy of "Nightingales: Fact or Fiction" right next to Mercer Frey.
 * There's a copy of "Wabbajack" in the Blue Palace bedrooms.
 * Certain dungeons have the spirits of people who've explored the dungeon before you (most notably the Labyrinthian). Their corpses and subsequent "visions" shows you just how not to approach the next room.
 * Near the beginning of the game, the Greybeards called out to you using the dragon word "Dovahkiin".
 * For the Evulz: The ghost of acts like this, often advocating murder for petty reasons.
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampires:
 * Nice vampires are few and far between, being only
 * The guests at
 * Fungus Humongous: Blackreach has glowing mushrooms that reach all the way to the top of the cavern
 * Fur Bikini: The female version of Forsworn armor.
 * Fur Bikini: The female version of Forsworn armor.

"Heddic's Volunruud Notes: I should have hired those sellswords in the first place. Perhaps there's no need. This place is just a tomb, after all, and there are no obvious signs of habitation. It isn't as though the thousand-year dead will mind if I have a look around."
 * -|G=
 * Game Breaking Bug: And what Bethesda release would be complete without them?
 * A patch that made the DRM for Skyrim actually require Steam to be running to play (as intended from release) also unleashed a host of stability problems and fan rage.
 * The 1.2 patch that was released broke all elemental resistances, allowing, for example, Flame Atronachs to be killed by fire attacks. This also applied to players, meaning those who relied on their resistances to tank damage such as melee warriors, mages or unsneaky thieves... are now magical Cannon Fodder. Disease resistance has been screwed too, so you'll get diseases even if you're a werewolf.
 * The 1.2 patch made dragons fly backwards.
 * At launch, the PlayStation 3 version had a save issue that would cause the game to bog down the more you discovered and larger the save got. When the majority had been discovered, the game was nigh-unplayable. This still has yet to be rectified, though a patch is in the works.
 * And of course, there's still the odd glitch that locks the player out of an entire questline.
 * 1.3 had an unintended effect in that Werewolves' Beast Form now essentially has no armor value, making the form basically useless.
 * Patch 1.5 tried to fix the infamous Nav Mesh bug that caused NPC's to stop moving in custom made areas. Instead of fixing it, it made the game horrendously unstable for mod users. Bethesda released another patch afterwards that reverted these changes.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation:
 * For a race that was dying out, the dragons seem to have an awful lot of reinforcements.
 * The player's race almost never affects NPCs' dialogue, even though racism against non-Nords is a major theme in the game. For example, the Khajiit traders are forbidden from so much as stepping inside city walls, but a player Khajiit can buy a house and get married without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow - and you can do this before you are even acknowledged as the Dragonborn.
 * Characters that are wounded in gameplay-combat can be healed back to full in an instant with your "Healing Hands" spell. Characters that get wounded as part of the plot--not so much. Apparently you're just lucky none of those arrows you heal away so easily hit you in the knee...
 * Certain plot threads are handled separately, which leads to odd situations where doing quests in certain orders leads to facepalming dialogues. Like while doing Thieves Guild quests the player is told by Maven Black-Briar that she has Dark Brotherhood contacts and she'll sic them on you. Thing is, if you completed the Dark Brotherhood Questline BEFORE doing the Thieves Guild.
 * Skooma and Moon Sugar are narcotics. You will even meet addicts to the stuff. But in game, they have no negative effects on you, nor does consuming large quantities of them.
 * At a certain quest, the player gets stabbed and passes out. An NPC will tell them that a certain paralytic venom kept them from bleeding out. In combat, the player never "bleeds out" at all, and in fact he regenerates. In fact, the player may very well be immune to poisons to begin with!
 * A lot of the jarls are worried about dragon attacks, namely in the fact that a lot of the structures in their city are flammable. In the game itself? Not so much. In fact, the structures are apparently so sturdy that they can withstand the force of a dragon landing on it... the same dragons that shake the earth otherwise.
 * Children cannot be killed in gameplay, in spite of the fact that there are several instances of minor storylines that involve children being murdered (offscreen, of course).
 * The Skeleton Key. When  uses it, it can open anything, including the sliding puzzle doors you need claws for, and , which requires two keys to open. When you use it, it's just an unbreakable lockpick.
 * The Vigilants of Stendarr make a big deal about how they murder daedra worshippers or anyone who so much as looks like they're involved in something daedric on sight. And yet you can run circles around while wearing the Ebony Mail, the Masque of Clavicus Vile, Spellbreaker and Dawnbreaker, and they won't so much as bat an eye.
 * Gangsta Style: A sneaking archer will hold, draw and fire his/her bow sideways.
 * Gay Option: You can marry any marriage candidates, regardless of what character you're playing as. All the prospective love interests don't care about race either.
 * An attempt at handwave mentions how harsh the Nord style of life is in Skyrim, and people don't have time for nonsense such as "romance".
 * Gendered Outfit: Every outfit in the game has a male and female variant. Armor becomes a Breast Plate when fitted onto a female character, and regular clothes have vastly different appearances between the sexes.
 * Gender Is No Object: You might occasionally hear otherwise, but gender makes very little difference when it comes to profession in this setting, both for the player character or for the non-player characters. The Companions, the manliest men in the game, have some womanly women with them, the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks have both ranking-officer and grunt-level women, Jarls can be either men or women, and so on. There are plenty of other, more important things to be bigoted about in this setting (usually Fantastic Racism).
 * Genre Blind: The situations in which you stumble across dead bodies often suggest that this trope is the reason why.

"Diary: I saw some kind of grey creature behind the old gate over there! Perhaps its a new automaton we haven't cataloged. Oh, this is so exciting! I'm moving my bedroll down here, see if I can get another glimpse."
 * Heddic is possibly topped for sheer idiocy by the diary of a High Elf found in the glacial ruins of Alftand:

"Guard with an arrow sticking out of his arm: "Huh. Guess I was just hearing things.""
 * The game rather brutally punishes her for her blindness by having her be the only member of the archaeological dig taken alive by the Falmer.
 * Genre Savvy: When you tell Fralia Gray-Mane her son is alive but he can't return home, she asks how she can be sure he didn't die and you're telling her what she wants to hear. Considering such a lie is possible in many quest-based RPGs including this one, good question. Fortunately you have a way to prove it.
 * The first thing Alduin does after coming out of his exile?
 * Several traps have their triggers set several feet before the actual trap. Trying to rapidly sprint across them (whether intentionally or unintentionally) will still result in being hit by something. In addition, this is set up so that it will only trigger the trap when trying to enter the dungeon, not going out.
 * Gentle Giant: Subverted. Now, giants aren't necessarily hostile, per se. They don't attack people willy-nilly, and some can be reasoned with. But they won't hesitate to crush anyone that gets too close to them or their mammoths.
 * Get Back Here Boss: The dragons can be this to a melee Dovakiin until.
 * Some enemies (especially high-level Draugr) will suddenly remember that they're 800 years late for work and take off towards the exit of the dungeon you're currently in.
 * Get It Over With: Rather than wait for last rites, one of the Stormcloaks waiting with you to be executed interrupts and claims, "I haven't got all morning!" He is immediately executed. Literally a minute later, a dragon attacks and the rest of the prisoners flee. If he had just waited until the priest was done...
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Check out Haelga's bedroom some time.
 * The Embershard mine near Riverwood is home to a bandit gang. One small corner of the mine has a set of floorboards over the ground around a small hole dug to hold a bucket.
 * Take a close look at the statues of Dibella you occassionally come across. They have faint nubs on their bare breasts. Despite this, even Azura, who has been depicted as a classical-style nude in the past three games, is covered up now.
 * It is possible to come across a tent somewhere in the wilderness - inside are two bed rolls, many red mountain flowers scattered over the beds, two pairs of boots, two creme treats on a silver platter and a lot of empty wine bottles. Hmm, wonder what happened there...
 * Ghibli Hills: Falkreath Hold. The only settlement there (besides the ruins of Helgen) is the hold capital itself, the primary industry seems to be logging, and the land itself is unspoiled, teeming with forests and trees, and sparsely populated.
 * Giant Enemy Crab: Mudcrabs, naturally, but not just the ones that annoy you every time you come near a river. Just southeast of Rorikstead, there is a mudcrab-infested pool of water that appears to be ridged on all sides with rocks. On closer inspection, it turns out the "rocks" on one side are the corpse of a mudcrab bigger than everything except mammoths and dragons!
 * One of the add-ins featured in the Skyrim D.I.C.E. 2012 video included an arctic crab roughly half the size of Whiterun
 * Giant Spiders: And we mean "GIANT". As in "bigger than freaking grizzly bears".
 * Glass Cannon:
 * Werewolves. They can not wear armor, use potions, or perform restoration spells while in beast mode. They can, however, paralyze and stagger any enemy, rendering even ancient dragons helpless, if they enter melee range. Outside of melee range is where one good archer will do them in.
 * Dual-wielders. Potentially double the damage output of a sword-and-board fighter and can take perks that increase their attack speed, but are incapable of blocking.
 * Glowing Eyes of Doom: The vampires in Dawnguard have these while human, and the Dragonborn can acquire them as well if they contract their strain of vampirism.
 * A God Am I: It's eventually revealed that Alduin is actually, but he pretends to be an aspect of the Dragon of Time after he decided to exploit a misunderstanding. Well, maybe - given other available facts it is possible  doesn't exactly mean he isn't an aspect of the Dragon God of Time...
 * God Needs Prayer Badly: Exploited by the Thalmor, who have outlawed the worship of Talos with the apparent intention of weakening him by depriving him of worship.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: A quest you can get in Solitude has you.
 * God Was My Co-Pilot: Your drinking buddy in the quest A Night to Remember turns out to be none other than himself.
 * Godzilla Threshold: Relying on the Dragonborn to save the world can become this: your character can be the leader of the thieves guild, the Dark Brotherhood, have completed every Daedric quest that involves betrayal, torture, murder, and cannibalism, and have slain hundreds of innocent people before slaying even one dragon and being summoned by the Graybeards. And they'll still teach you to use the voice, despite the fact that you're evil enough to be be measured in Kilonazis and will obviously abuse the power, because you are the only hope the world has.
 * Lampshaded by the Greybeards in conversation. Whilst they are constrained by the Way of the Voice to use their Shouts only for divine purposes, the Dragonborn is under no such constraints. Since your power is directly granted by a gift of Akatosh himself, any use you choose to put it to must therefore be divinely ordained. No matter how depraved your actions, in the end you're on a Mission From God.
 * Gold Fever: Bandits can be fooled into killing one another if you drop a gemstone into the area they patrol; they squabble over it, then come to blows. Another case of The Dev Team Thinks of Everything.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Producer Todd Howard said that they would leave in any bugs or glitches that were funny as long as they didn't break the game.
 * One bug found during development featured chickens reporting the player's crimes to guards. Sadly, it would have made the game unreasonably difficult to players who weren't aware of it, and so it was removed.
 * Shortly after release, it was discovered that you could safely steal stuff as long as you placed a bucket over the head of nearby NPCs so they couldn't see you do it.
 * The Giants' national sport - adventurer-ball.
 * We can now add another fun one.
 * Various clipping and animation bugs can cause a leader to begin dancing during an important speech.
 * If you are on friendly terms with a faction like the Dark Brotherhood or the Companions, you can take quite a few free shots on them without them going hostile. This leads to some odd scenarios where you are happily greeted by someone you just shot three arrows into
 * Turns out if you have the time and resources, you can perpetually enchant items to have ludicrous properties. All you need to do is jump between consuming fortify enchanting potions and foritfy alchemy equipment that you make yourself. In the end you can have things like 1101% reduced destruction magic cost, 265,400 health and/or weapons that deal 14410 fire and 14410 frost damage. You can also crash the game with a stack overflow doing this too much.
 * It's a bit more complex than that. The alchemy/enchanting loop stops when you reach +29% to alchemy and +32% to enchanting. More extreme enchantments require the abuse of a bug in the restoration potions.
 * The thieves that randomly spawn in Riften sometimes do things that break their AI, and then they spend a few minutes just keep taking their weapon out over and over
 * One fairly regularly reported situation is that the player's in-game spouse seems to be cheating on them (suspicious people may be found in the player's house when they're left alone, etc.), which has at some point been acknowledged by the developers. In some cases, it's merely down to lingering scripts associated with a specific spouse, as is the case if you marry Camilla Valerius - Faendal, a suitor of hers at the start of the game, will continue to stay close to her even if you move her out of Riverwood.
 * The Oghma Infinium book normally vanishes after choosing one path from it by reading it once for upgrading your stats (i.e. it's supposed to be one-time use only). But this bug involving the use of a bookshelf prevents it from vanishing, letting you read the book repeatedly to Level Grind as high as you want for free. See Irony below.
 * The Hidden Chest glitch, which often has respawning (after a certain time period) loot (resulting in infinite gold and other supplies if you're patient). The most notable one being this one in Dawnstar, which is invisible, and can only be found if you sneak, and its contents refresh (though with random quantity) every 48 hours ingame.
 * These hidden chests are actually Merchant chests, their contents match up to a certain merchant's inventory. The one in Dawnstar for example, belongs to the Kahjiit traders on the outskirts of the city.
 * Children have been seen swimming through the air in the town of Morthal.
 * The Good Jarl:
 * Balgruuf the Greater, Jarl of Whiterun. He’s well loved and respected by his people and is always courteous and grateful to the Dragonborn, regardless of their race. He’s also the only Jarl to remain neutral during the Civil War, not wanting the war to destroy his hold or his people.
 * Brunwulf Free-Winter, the nicest guy in Skyrim, who replaces Ulfric Stormcloak as Jarl of Windhelm if the Empire wins the civil war. Within hours of assuming his post he meets with the local dark elves and promises to develop and renovate the ghetto-like Grey District they've been forced to live in. He also retains most of Ulfric's court staff since they know their jobs well enough and offers lodging to the Jarls that were deposed for supporting the Stormcloaks. He then takes charge of Windhelm and doesn't lose that sense of modesty or approach-ability.
 * Good Old Fisticuffs: You can choose to "brawl" with some people in lieu of persuading, bribing or threatening.
 * Khajiit are the only species that get a +15 boost to unarmed combat, because they're cat people and have claws. Argonians get a much lesser boost - they have a higher base unarmed damage, as do Khajiit, but not the additional damage boost from the Claws passive.
 * The Heavy Armor perk "Fists Of Steel" boosts your unarmed damage by the default armor rating of worn gauntlets. If you're a Khajiit on top of that, your fists are lethal weapons.
 * Unarmed Badass Viking!
 * Great Offscreen War: The recent Great War against the Thalmor provides backstory and motivation for much of the game.
 * Green Hill Zone: The game appears to begin in Falkreath Hold, a relatively peaceful region home to a vibrant boreal forest, as opposed to the harsher tundra, swamps, and glaciers of northern Skyrim.
 * Grey and Grey Morality: The Legion and the Stormcloaks. The Legion's trying to hold the Empire together, but they're willing to kill unlucky bystanders (i.e. you), are believed by the Stormcloaks to be intimidated by the threat of another war with the Dominion, and to maintain the peace sacrifice Nord customs including their primary religion. The Stormcloaks want to be independent and restore the Nord customs, but their leader killed a young and innocent king to begin the war, although, and some engage in Fantastic Racism against any non-Nord races, with the Stormcloak capital of Windhelm by far the worst offender. This racism spreads with them - if Whiterun is taken by the Stormcloaks, a Cyrodilic blacksmith there notes that she'd probably be out of business if she wasn't married to a Nord.
 * There's an added element of importance to the civil war that goes beyond simply whose beliefs dominate in Skyrim. If the Empire wins, the political situation stabilizes and the Empire can resume rebuilding to face inevitable Thalmor aggression more effectively, and possibly repel a second assault and ultimately reestablish the old pantheon. But if the Stormcloaks win, free and open worship of Talos can resume immediately in Skyrim.  The Stormcloaks may be able to reunite fractured elements of the Empire like Hammerfell and Morrowind and reforge the Tamrielic Empire under Ulfric into a stronger force than the old Empire. Regardless however, Ulfric does make it a point to take immediate steps to ensuring Skyrim is self-sufficient by increasing the power of its army.
 * On another front, the Forsworn and everyone else in the Reach. The Forsworn are bloodthirsty Breton guerrillas who esteem hagravens and murder anyone unlucky enough to run into their patrols... and they've also been enslaved and persecuted by the rulers of Markarth and the Silver-Bloods. As one Forsworn says, there are no innocents, "just the guilty and the dead."
 * If you eavesdrop on some of the random bandit tribes you find, it turns out some of them are normal, rational people. One cave is full of vampires leading to the shrine to a daedric god, who laughs when you get there the vampires came to him seeking a cure for their condition, and he thinks it's poetic irony that you happened by to kill them. You will find yourself questioning the morality of your actions a lot the deeper you go.
 * The Blades and the Greybeards. The Blades want to defeat Alduin and the dragons but they aren't very nice to the Dragonborn, while the Greybeards are mentor figures but invoke You Are Not Ready to explain why they don't just teach the Dragonborn every Shout they know when the player first meets them. The two are also not fond of each other - the Blades hire you to kill Paarthurnax for being a dragon, and Delphine says the Greybeards fear the Shout's misuse and so do not use its power for good, but all power risks being abused and their knowledge is worthless if it isn't being put to use. By contrast the Greybeards consider the Blades meddlers in things they don't understand and that their mission to serve the Dragonborn is a lie they use to hide the fact they want to control the Dragonborn.
 * The Dark Brotherhood will come off as an antagonistic force and none of the quests you do for them are anything close to good, but you can't help but feel sorry for Astrid, who seems to just want to hold together and provide for her surrogate family (the implication being that their primary means of income is death) and is initially horrified by the Nightmother's decree to go assassinate the Emperor.
 * Grim Up North: Skyrim itself is this to the rest of Tamriel. Like Morrowind, it does have more geographical diversity but still, it is mountainous and very cold.
 * Played straight, as Skyrim becomes nastier, in regards to weather and terrain, the farther north you go.
 * Groin Attack: This is one of the finishers you can perform on a Dwarven Centurion.
 * The Guards Must Be Crazy: Pick any humanoid opponent, not even necessarily a guard. From stealth, shoot them with an arrow, then avoid being detected when they come looking for you.
 * The Guards Must Be Crazy: Pick any humanoid opponent, not even necessarily a guard. From stealth, shoot them with an arrow, then avoid being detected when they come looking for you.


 * Guide Dang It: Natch. For instance:
 * In the quest Blood On the Ice, the quest arrow and journal only points you to one person so you can accuse who you think is a murderer.
 * Unlike Oblivion, Skyrim states your Armor Points instead of your damage absorption. The thing is, it's still using the Oblivion system where you can only ignore a max of 80% damage, which equates to 567 armor points. You can literally craft steel armor that's strong enough to reach it with a buffed max Smithing skill.
 * In one quest, you're framed and confronted by corrupt guardsmen and given the choice to either go to jail or fight. The only way to complete the quest and get the best loot is to go to prison; all fighting does is get you a nasty criminal fee.
 * To clarify on the Oblivion Walker achievement, you only get it for having 15 daedric artifacts, not just completing the quests. Which means if you chose alternate endings to some of them, have fun making an entirely new character or reloading a very old save. Clavicus Vile's quest is the worst offender, because unlike the other Daedra whose quests offer multiple artifacts, only one of them (the Masque) counts towards the achievement, meaning you absolutely must finish the quest in that way to get the achievement.
 * Another offender is Vaermina's quest, which forces you to choose between either the Skull of Corruption or a decidedly non-Squishy Wizard follower. The easiest way to get the achievement if you want Erandur instead is to save Vaermina's quest for last, save your game before you get the Skull, get the achievement, and then reload
 * To get the Gauldur Amulet, it is necessary to join and complete a few quests with the College of Winterhold first, otherwise it is not even possible to get into the building. Neither the College nor anyone in it has anything to do with the amulet.
 * You are unlikely to find all the recipes for the Atronach Forge in the Midden under the College of Winterhold unless you savage the population of rogue mages throughout Skyrim and pick up all the randomly dropped recipe notes... or look it up online or in a guidebook.
 * In the main questline, the Greybeards send you to a dungeon where, in order to progress, you need to lift a gate using a pressure plate and get through it before it closes. The only way you'll get through it in time is to use your Whirlwind Sprint shout. However, the fact the Greybeards teach the shout to you before sending you to the dungeon serves as a subtle nudge.
 * The main Thieves' Guild questline has a series of bonus items you can steal and sell to Delvin for profit.
 * The No Stone Unturned quest, which involves collecting 24 "unusual gems" (aka the Stones of Barenziah) which are scattered all over Skyrim. There are no clues ingame as to where each one is, and chances are you'll find at least one by accident. Their locations are fixed, but vary from caves and tombs to people's homes  to places of high restrictions like a Jarl's quarters (which require you to sneak in really well unless the said Jarl made you a Thane). One is even located inside the

"Havdar: "Dragonborn" huh? Was it your ma or your pa that was the dragon?"
 * -|H=
 * Hammerspace: The player and NPC's which can s/he can pickpocket. The player can carry dozens of broadswords and battle-axes and still sprint. Some NPC's can have their entire inventory removed via pickpocket save for one item. If caught, the NPC may draw a weapon which was never in their inventory.
 * Handicapped Badass: Hakon One-Eye.
 * Harmless Freezing: The Ice Form shout freezes opponents and does some frost damage, but they thaw relatively unharmed in about half a minute.
 * Headless Horseman: You may encounter a headless horseman's ghost riding along the roads at night; he's harmless, though, and can't be interacted with. If you manage to follow him, he'll lead you to  which is likely where his mortal body is buried. Going there on your own will often result in you finding him already there (occasionally, even during the daytime).
 * Healing Factor:
 * Argonians are partially immune to all disease and can recover to full health with their Histskin ability.
 * Spriggans with their ability to recover all their health in an instant.
 * Trolls will quickly (though not instantly) regenerate any damage done to them, unless you Kill Them With Fire.
 * Here There Be Dragons: A mural shows a lot of dragons breathing fire on the humans down below.
 * Here There Were Dragons: Fans that pay attention to the background lore raised some eyebrows when their presence was confirmed, as dragons were said to be an endangered species few in number, kept alive by the Empire only in return for helping them in war. The game eventually explains this and the fact that they're returning is mentioned from the start;
 * Heroic Mime: Normally you talk to people but you can play completely silent throughout the Dark Brotherhood storyline.
 * He Who Fights Monsters:
 * Skyrim marks the return of werewolves.
 * A book on Oblivion has an introduction that is also a Shout-Out to the quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, saying "He who enters Oblivion allows Oblivion to enter him."
 * In the Laid to Rest quest in Morthal, the player discovers that a clan of vampires is planning to conquer the city. Their leader is Movarth, who was first mentioned in Oblivion in the in-game book Immortal Blood as a vampire hunter who fell victim to the author who himself was secretly a vampire.
 * He Who Must Not Be Heard: Three of the four Greybeards cannot even whisper as their voice has enough power to cause earthquakes. Arngeir, thus, speaks for them.
 * High Dive Hijinks: The "Bard's Leap", which consists of a bridge leading up to the edge of a waterfall. You do the math.
 * Hit Scan: There are three types of destruction spells: fire, frost and shock. Fire is the cheapest and most damaging, while frost has additional negative effects on the enemy. Shock, being the most expensive and least damaging, would look like a loser... except its attacks hit instantly, negating the need to Lead the Target and making it much easier to hit flying/fast targets.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: In one quest dungeon, you can release a trio of captive vampires, who will ignore you and run into the next room to kill their captors.
 * Hollywood History: You get to participate in creating a bit of this for Solitude. The copy of Olaf and the Dragon you find is too badly damaged to present to Elisif so you suggest to the bard that you can make up the missing parts. The Bard basically goes along with whatever you suggest if it sounds cool. ("Olaf was the dragon. What a twist!")
 * Home Run Hitter: It is in your best interest to make sure giants never get within melee range. At least not for more time than is needed for a quick swipe on your part.
 * Honey Trap: In Morthal, there's a female vampire who seduced a man into being her guardian while she and her Master, Movarth, plan the town's destruction. Her seduction is so thorough that if you try to convince him that she's evil, he'll fight you to the death before letting harm come to her. With the way she dresses, it's not hard to see how the poor guy got hooked in.
 * Honor Before Reason: Pretty standard fare for any traditional Nord. They fancy themselves a Proud Warrior Race, with customs and laws that they won't bend for anybody. In fact, this is pretty much what started the war, especially since there's proof that the Thalmor were manipulating things from the start.
 * Played even more straight in regards to dragons. On two separate occasions (first in a flashback with Alduin and then with Odahviing), humans have lured dragons to an obvious trap just by calling its name with the Thu'um. The dragons see this as a challenge, and will come straight away.
 * In Odahviing's case, he says he was specifically curious about the Dragonborn, the one who had bested Alduin (however temporarily), but he may be rationalizing.
 * Horned Humanoid: Orcs apparently have some of this going on.
 * Horny Vikings: The hero can opt to be the classic "horned Viking".
 * Hot Amazon: Most of the female companions, including Lydia, Aela (see below), and Mjoll the Lioness, among others.
 * Aela the Huntress. Seriously, she has both the looks and the attitude. And that armor she wears? Made of dragonskin, according to fluff in the game, so it's heavier and tougher than it looks by a large margin. Ancient Nord Armor, for those interested.
 * The Dovahkiin, if you so chose.
 * Improbable Species Compatibility:


 * Of course, dragonness is recessive, so it's a logical conclusion.
 * Hotter and Sexier: Nothing terribly explicit, but there's definitely a lot more blatant sexual references and suggestive dialogue than Oblivion and Morrowind.
 * Hot Springs Episode: A watery area in Eastmarch near the border of Whiterun consist of naturally heated water, and at the south eastern tip of it is a permanent camp set up by a few hunters who lounge in the hot water with all their armor taken off and set aside. Subverted though in that there's no quest involved here, and it can be visited any time. It does however make for some Video Game Perversity Potential.
 * Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: A certain stable master outside of Riften did this when he was drunk one night. It didn't end well.
 * Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Hircine has you hunt down a Werewolf that stole from him.
 * Hybrid Overkill Avoidance: Lycanthropy and vampirism are mutually exclusive, with vampirism being a disease and werewolves having total immunity to all diseases.
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: Coming out second best in a fight? Just scoff down 6 bowls of soup, 9 salmon steaks and 4 cheese wheels - you'll be fresh as a daisy. Don't worry, your foe will wait.
 * Notable in that entering the items interface completely pauses combat, so you can eat that four hundred kilograms of Eidar Cheese in less time than it takes your opponent to swing his sword.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Like Oblivion, the encumbrance/fatigue mechanic attempts to avert this, but the PC is still capable of carrying several armor pieces and weapons, as well as other items, all at once.
 * Hypocrite: Several Khajiits, notably caravan boss Ri'saad and Nord trader Ysolde, will lament that the Khajiits are not allowed inside cities, because "some" are thieves and the Nords have unjustly stereotyped them all... Except that every Khajiit in the game, except walking Easter Egg M'aiq the Liar, are thieves or involved in illegal activities. Generic Khajiit appear as bandits and Dark Brotherhood assassins. Even J'Zargo, of the College of Winterhold, confesses to being a thief upon first meeting him.
 * Paarthurnax calls the Dragonborn out on this, regardless of if you are playing as a heroic figure, by being of the same kith as the Dragons, you possess the same urge to destroy and conquer as they do.


 * -|I=
 * If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten: To join the Dark Brotherhood, you have to figure out which one of three potential victims has a contract on their head, and murder them. After you've done the deed,
 * I Gave My Word: Many Nords believe in this, particularly shown with Ulfric Stormcloak.
 * Paarthunax comments that  suggest this might be unusual, however.
 * I Know Your True Name: Played with. Twice in the game dragons are summoned from anywhere in the world by speaking their names as a Shout, but not because it holds any power over them, it's because to speak a dragon's name as a Shout is considered a personal challenge, and humans being humans, they of course accept. Eventually.
 * I Love the Dead: Arondil's journals implies that, after being kicked out of Dawnstar, he discovered that he was a necrophiliac. After initially being hesitant to indulge in his urge to screw the dead, he apparently gave in.
 * Far worse than real necrophilia, however, since he is having sex with their souls and just not their dead bodies!
 * The topper is, there are Red Mountain Flowers (Read: Rose petals) scattered on and around his bed, in which you find a sleeping female ghost.
 * There's more. Since these female ghosts are under his thrall, it means they're being held against their will. And you factor him having sex with them in such state, it amounts to rape. And considering being under thrall can also mean they are still conscious and aware of what's happening (like the Apologetic Attacker ghosts located at another tomb), it's no surprise that if the player breaks his hold on them by stealing a particular soul gem, they go berserk and kill him.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Namira's followers have... exotic tastes.
 * Impossible Thief: With the proper perks, you can pickpocket the armor people are currently wearing as well as the weapon they are currently holding. With the Shadow Warrior perk, you can even do this while they are engaged in combat with you, causing enemies to become naked and unarmed as they are taking a swing at you. You can also pickpocket the briar hearts from Forsworn Briarhearts, and they die. Meaning you actually stole the (magical replacement) heart out of their chest.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: The Falmer don't have much better or worse aiming with their bows than any other enemy, which is pretty damn impressive considering they're all blind.
 * This may be Justified, given that the game states right out that the Falmer have adapted to their loss of sight, but the degree to which it has been done is not given. They may benefit from heavy use of this trope, or may have honed their non-sight senses over the millennia to the point where they can smell your breath and hear your heartbeat.
 * Actually, the extent of Falmer senses zigzags a bit. If they don't know you're there, you can sneak up on them just like any other opponent (muffled footwear helps a lot), with the main difference in stealth mechanics being that you can backstab them from the front since they can't see you. If they do know you're there, then they act much like any other enemy in terms of knowing where you are. However, the level of Super Senses required to fire an arrow at a muffled moving target from long range would make it impossible to even come close to backstabbing them, so this may come under Acceptable Breaks From Reality.
 * Indo European Fantasy Language: The Tongue of Dragons. Seeing as how the series usually averts this, it was probably done because it needed to double as a Cipher. It also has nearly no case-marking at all. Although it seems to be almost entirely monosyllabic, and that it doesn't differentiate or past, present and future tense (although considering the nature of Alduin and the dragons, that makes a fair amount of sense). It has the excuse of apparently being created by a composer, rather than a linguist.
 * Fictionary
 * The written form is interesting, in that all its runes can be easily carved with claws of one dragon forepaw simultaneously.
 * Infant Immortality: Though rarely, child deaths occur in the storyline - a man in Morthal has recently lost his child as well as his wife to a house fire, and in Falkreath a little girl was mauled to death by a werewolf. However, it never happens onscreen, and children are invincible to any of your in-game attacks.
 * Infinity+1 Sword: The Dragonbane, potentially. It changes attributes depending on your level when you find it, and at maximum strength it has the same base power as a Daedric weapon, does 40 extra damage to dragons, and 10 shock damage to everything else.
 * Valdr's Lucky Dagger. It has a 25% critical hit chance, but doesn't count as an enchanted weapon for purposes of spells and the like. Combine it with Elemental Fury, which at level 3 fully doubles attack speed, and you'll quickly slice apart most anything in seconds. And for stealth characters, sneak attacks and critical hits are separate multipliers, so with Assassin's Blade it does 30x normal damage, on top of whatever other damage-boosting perks you have.
 * Informed Attribute: Balimund in Riften says he feeds his forge fire salts so the flames burn hotter, and it's common knowledge among Whiterun and the Companions that something about the Skyforge makes the steel it turns out stronger. Forging weapons in these two forges offers the same weapons with the same stats as any other forge, though the Skyforge blacksmith forges unique weapons from it.
 * Informed Flaw: Walk up to a guard, any guard at all. Some time you're bound to hear them say "I used to be an adventurer like you... then I took an arrow in the knee". In no way, shape or form, does this inconvenience their patrolling or even fighting skills. Presumably it just made them more averse to taking risks rather than being a permanent injury.
 * This line was included in the game as a reference to the lack of any armor covering the knees.
 * Insistent Terminology: The description of High-King Torryg's death. Pro-Stormcloak characters are quick to point out that Torygg was killed in a duel that met the requirements of Nord tradition while pro-Imperial characters consider it to be murder and argue that Ulfric's use of the Thu'um prevented it from being a fair fight.
 * Insurmountable Waist High Fence: There aren't many of these, but Skyrim is a little bit more forceful than its predecessor in keeping you from going where you shouldn't - no more jumping over city walls, for example.
 * Most of the offenders in this trope have been avoided, though. Especially fences can be gleefully jumped over.
 * If you use cheat codes you'll find that some walls have an invisible barrier that extends some distance above the actual wall (the Thalmor Embassy for example, which you're supposed to infiltrate as a party guest), but if you jump high enough you can get in and break the quest.
 * Interface Spoiler: Dragon Shouts are captioned for players with subtitles on in the same way that any other utterance is, with the name of the dragon shown as well. Which can rather spoil the main questline if one happens to catch the name of.
 * being more than she lets on can be spoiled if one has the subtitles on, if one returns with the Dragonstone to Dragonsreach and finds her talking with Farengar.
 * Quest objectives are always indicated on the map, even if there's no way the player character could know where the next objective is. However this falls under Acceptable Breaks From Reality, as many quests otherwise would be Guide Dang It quests due to how obscure their objectives would be.
 * Internal Retcon: The Thalmor have arranged it so that they look like the ones who stopped the Oblivion crisis, not the Champion of Cyrodiil, at least within the Aldmeri Dominion. It's unknown how well this has taken.
 * According to various books written outside the Dominion, Martin is mainly credited with stopping the invasion and the Champion has all but faded from memory.
 * Interspecies Romance: Play as a Bosmer or Khajiit, and get married, as there are no available spouse of either of those species. This will almost inevitably be the result. Whether human/elf relations count is up for debate.
 * In story, Faendal, a Bosmer, is in love with Camilla Valerius, an Imperial. Also, Karliah (Dunmer) and Gallus (Imperial).
 * There's also Bolli, a Nord in Riften who owns the fishery there, and his wife Nivenor, a bosmer who married him for his money and will proposition any male Dragonborn who speaks to her, regardless of race.
 * Vantus Loreius, an imperial, and Curwe, a high elf, two minor NPCs in a farm near the Whiterun/Pale border. They're involved in the minor sidequest where you may encounter Cicero transporting his "Mother" in a carriage that busted its axle right in front of their farm.
 * You can come across a couple near some mountains.  The man is a dark elf and the woman is a human, and they were in the middle of eloping.
 * In the Hood: Most of the hoods in the game seem designed to invoke this, obscuring the wearer's face and hiding their eyes.
 * Intoxication Ensues:
 * Invulnerable Civilians: Averted, like all Bethesda RPGs. Towns are part of the world map, and are all potentially subject to random monster attack. This mostly manifests as dragon attacks. Unlike Fallout 3, though, monster spawn points no longer occur inside or near the towns themselves, so it's less likely for a Deathclaw to wander into town and murder everyone (although some of the smaller settlements do have monster spawn points very close by and therefore potentially subject to monster attack).
 * I Own This Town: Maven Black-Briar basically controls Riften, the Silver-Bloods by and large own Markarth, and Kjeld may as well run Kynesgrove. The latter two hold their sway by virtue of owning the mines their respective cities depend on for their prosperity, and the former because of her close contact with the Thieves' Guild, the Jarl of Riften, and the Empire. In Maven's case, while the Silver-Bloods.
 * Irony: There's a Game Breaker bug involving Hermaeous Mora's Daedric quest. Upon completing it and gaining the Oghma Infinium, the player is allowed to gain five levels in any one skill tree of their choosing (Thief, Mage, Warrior). However, by opening a bookshelf, reading it in the menu, picking a class, and placing it on the shelf, the player can pick it back up from the shelf, not choose a class, return it to their inventory, and repeat this ad infinitum until they're maxed out in all stats. Bethesda has tried to patch this bug out a few times, with little success. So that's right--the Daedric Prince of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know was the catalyst of a Bug the Player Was Not Meant to Use!
 * I Surrender, Suckers: Nearly dead opponents will frequently plead "I yield! I yield!" but don't fall for it. They're only hoping for a breather so they can murder you as soon as relent in your attack.
 * Spriggans in particular can restore themselves to full health, though they don't bother pleading in any comprehensible language. Also, see Reviving Enemy below.
 * Also  You are tasked to hunt him down through his blood trails, and finally you find him lying on the floor and bleeding. You have the choice to spare him or kill him, after he explained his reasons, and that he had no more fight left in him; his fate is in your hand. And then you chose to attack him - at which point he immediately stood up, and gave up a decent fight before going down.
 * It Amused Me: Pretty much the only reason behind the mess you find yourself in during Sanguine's Daedric quest. In fact, that quest is so strange and crazy one would think Sheogorath was involved, rather than Sanguine.
 * It Got Worse: According to the plot it has indeed gotten worse during the 200 year gap between Oblivion and Skyrim.
 * Keep in mind that Oblivion involved an invasion from a hell realm with demons erupting out and causing mass death and destruction... those are now seen as the 'good old days.'
 * It's Up to You: Averted, in the Civil War storyline, anyway. If you delay, your side can and will take control of cities without you, although confusingly they will act as if you were there.
 * It Got Worse: According to the plot it has indeed gotten worse during the 200 year gap between Oblivion and Skyrim.
 * Keep in mind that Oblivion involved an invasion from a hell realm with demons erupting out and causing mass death and destruction... those are now seen as the 'good old days.'
 * It's Up to You: Averted, in the Civil War storyline, anyway. If you delay, your side can and will take control of cities without you, although confusingly they will act as if you were there.


 * -|J=
 * Jackass Genie: Clavicus Vile takes an unholy glee in twisting whatever somebody wishes for to the greatest possibility of homicide possible. Somebody asks for a cure for their daughter's Lycanthropy? Give 'em an axe. A group of vampires want an end to their undead misery? Have somebody appear and slaughter them all. Somebody wants an end to the Civil War plaguing Skyrim? Do absolutely nothing and let the dragons kill both sides of the fight. The only thing that keeps him honoring a deal at all and not just killing everybody is Barbas, the manifestation of his conscience.
 * Jerkass: A fair number of characters qualify, what with Fantastic Racism abound. Rolff Stone-Fist certainly does - you know you're dealing with a Jerkass when their Establishing Character Moment is plain old Fantastic Racism. Fortunately, you can beat the crap out of him.
 * Jerkass Gods: The Daedric Princes again. In fact, the Molag Bal's quest, while named "House of Horrors" is anything but scary (unless you are really that afraid of the Forsworns), and only there mainly there to show you how much an asshole Molag Bal is (and of course Logroff is also a jerk too). Mocking Molag Bal at the end is optional.
 * Journey to the Center of the Mind:
 * Justified Tutorial: Quite a lot of them in rapid succession, but broken up into logical portions. Shortly after the dragon interrupts your execution by roasting the garrison, you're ordered to run for it (movement tutorial), followed by jumping off a ruined tower into a nearby inn (jump tutorial). You run inside the keep with a companion who tells you to arm yourself (inventory tutorial), you fight off some hostile enemies in the basement of the keep (combat tutorial), you find a storeroom and search it for potions (looting tutorial), you see some goodies locked inside a cage in the torture chamber (lockpick tutorial), and near the end of the caves leading out there's a sleeping bear you can either sneak past or stealth-attack with a bow (sneaking and/or bow tutorial).
 * After making good your escape, you can follow your cohort (either one of the two you can side with) to the village of Riverwood, where the local Blacksmith can offer to teach you some basic metalworking skills if you ask for work (Smithing tutorial). Failing that, the smith at Whiterun walks you through the process step-by-step.
 * You can also get an alchemy tutorial at the inn in Riverwood or at the apothecary's shop in Whiterun, and an enchanting tutorial when you talk to the Jarl's wizard in Whiterun.


 * -|K=
 * Kamehame Hadoken - Combining two of the same Destruction spells into one, overcharged shot, right down to the pose. Lightning Storm and Incinerate especially invoke the Trope Namers in performance.
 * And this sound mod even adds a very hammy attack call that literally invokes the trope.
 * Kangaroo Court: In the opening, the Imperial Captain orders your execution even though you aren't on the convicted list. This alone gives the player plenty of motive to side against the Empire. Note that in this case, there isn't even a "court" involved; the Empire is executing everyone involved (be they Stormcloak, random horse thieves caught in the cordon, or roaming Dovahkiin) without bothering with a trial.
 * In the Empire's defense, they caught the player in an ambush meant for the leader of the Stormcloaks, so it makes perfect sense that they would mistake you as one of them. Hadvar, holding the aforementioned list and telling the captain you aren't on it, also clearly dislikes the decision, says he's sorry to you, and assures you your remains will return to your homeland. Once, Hadvar helps you through some stages of the initial tutorial, and is one of two options as guide through the majority of the tutorial that follows.
 * Should you choose to follow Hadvar, during the journey back to Riverwood, he will state that he believes your aid in helping him escape Helgen alive is more than enough to earn you a pardon, despite his belief that you were still wrongfully arrested in the first place, even vowing to straighten the matter out with General Tullius and vouch on your behalf if you wished to join the Imperial Legion.
 * Karma Houdini: The Black-Briar family. Their head, Maven, is connected to the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood and the Empire, and runs a powerful mead-brewing plant. She's so rich and powerful she's untouchable by authorities, and the Thieves Guild mentions that anything that occurs in the city only does so if she allows it. If you side with the Empire she gets named Jarl after they conquer the city, and she even says the title is a formality and that she's always been the one running the city. Said city, Riften, is a Wretched Hive, since even the city guard are in Maven's pocket. The Houdini part is that she's marked as essential, so you can't kill her, and there's no quest to bring her to justice. The worst thing you can do to her is steal a horse, and she genuinely doesn't care about that; if you choose to rat out the man who asked you steal it, she'll tell you to go on with the theft.
 * The rest of her family isn't as horrible but are still carrying out her will. Special note though goes to Sibbi, who is in prison for a measly eight months because he killed his fiancee's brother. Why? The siblings found out he was having an affair and confronted him about it. Then when you visit him in his nicely furnished jail cell he tries to hire you to find his fiancee and kill her too.
 * Karmic Death: The Imperial guard captain mentioned below is the first NPC you get to fight and kill if you go with Ralof. It stands to be ironic as well that you're now the one sending her to her death.
 * Ulfric Stormcloak used a Dragon Shout to kill High King Torygg in the backstory. If you side with the Imperial Legion, you are given an opportunity to kill him. While Tullius gives you his sword to do the deed, you are perfectly free to shout Ulfric to death if you wish.
 * Katanas Are Just Better: The Dragonbane is a unique weapon with the unique enchantment of doing bonus damage to dragons, and is very obviously based on katanas.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: You can steal but the game makes a distinction between stolen and taken goods. Stolen goods are harder to resell (you need a fence) and if you're caught by anybody, it will add to your bounty and often get you attacked. The friendlier you are with a particular character, the more goods you can take without it being considered stealing.
 * Keystone Army: Mild case. Sometimes you'll find a Necromancer leading around a couple of bandits. If you kill the necromancer, the bandits all fall over, dead.
 * Kick the Dog:
 * A quick glance around the bases of the Silver Hand will clue you in that they don't just hunt werewolves, they capture and torture them, then display their remains as trophies. They also seem to have a hatred for normal wolves as well, as many can be found gruesomely slain in their bases.
 * Dragons are hostile to everyone, including neutral wildlife like elk, foxes and even rabbits, and will descend from on high breathing fire and ice to murder them if you stay out of their sight when they approach.
 * Kick the Son of a Bitch: Aventus Aretino says hello, Grelod. Goodnight.
 * When you first meet the other members of the Dark Brotherhood, Babette is a telling a story about luring a pedophile into a dark alleyway and feeding on him.
 * Kill It with Fire: Still the most effective way to kill trolls. Shoot/hit with enchanted weapon, fwoosh with destruction magic, heck, shout fire at them, and their Healing Factor gets negated. Keep the heat on them though...
 * It's also, by far, the most damaging of the three types of magical damage (not least because enemies set on fire take not only damage over time, but additional damage from any source, most definitely including more fire), plus a whole lot of creatures are vulnerable to it, particularly draugr and vampires (and draugr are one of the most common enemies in the game, so...)
 * Oil Slicks are abundant in early dungeons, so if you're clever enough to shoot them with fire, it can often kill several enemies at once. The slick burns for quite some time and deals moderate damage without you having to cast the spell, so you can just jump in and start slicing people. This can be a very effective way to clear a whole room of hostiles, even if they're not undead.
 * Kill It with Ice: Ice destruction spells, doing damage, slowing foes, and depleting the target's stamina. Unfortunately, this can be a little Awesome but Impractical as a mainstay offensive spell, since undead (a common enemy type) are resistant to cold, as are Nords (who are understandably over-represented in the region of Skyrim,) leaving only certain subset of enemies vulnerable to it.
 * Klingon Promotion: Stronghold Orcs choose their leaders this way.
 * In fact, when you visit an Orc chieftain, he expounds that he got his position by challenging his father in open combat. He's waiting for the day that one of his sons will do the same, and succeed. An Orc Wise-Woman adds that Malacath firmly believes in this.
 * Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Nord mages. Onmund at the College and Farengar Secret-Fire in the Whiterun court have to put up with this attitude. Conversely, Thalmor soldiers get this treatment from their mage ruling class too, never mind that even a grunt Thalmor in armor knows attack magic.
 * Kneecapping: Try counting how many guards used to be adventurers like you, then took an arrow in the knee.
 * Knight Templar:
 * The Guard Captain in the opening orders your execution despite not being listed, purely on the basis that you were captured with the Stormcloaks (the other soldiers seem to think it's a bad idea, but can't do much about it).
 * Arguably the Silver Hand.
 * Definitely the Vigilant of Stendarr, who despite serving the god of mercy, believe that Vampires, Werewolves, and especially Daedra are inherently and irredeemably evil, and deserve nothing more than death.
 * In their defense, they are generally correct on that. And they reconcile their faith with their methodology by arguing that as said creatures are merciless towards mortals on average, they are thus enemies of the God of Mercy.
 * Meridia, while one of the least evil of the Daedric Princes, is apparently a hardcore undead hater.

"Stendarr Vigilant: Stendarr have mercy, for the vigil has none to spare."
 * -|L=
 * Language of Magic: The Dragon language.
 * Large Ham: The priest of Talos at Whiterun, who spends the whole day preaching to the town and Chewing the Scenery
 * Dremora lords too. If you have the perk to summon two of them, you better be ready for a hamfest.
 * Subverted by General Tullius. Complete the Imperial Legion quest and he will give a rousing speech to his troops celebrating their victory, followed by muttering "I hate giving speeches".
 * Esbern in the trailer, particularly when he slips into Trailing Rs. "And when the truth finally dawns...it dawns in FIYAAAH!"
 * Like many modern representations, Dragons are creatures of ham, prone to sparta-ing.
 * And just like he was in Oblivion
 * Lethal Chef: Part of a Dark Brotherhood quest has the player become this.
 * Lethal Joke Item:
 * Leave No Witnesses: One option you have. Commit a crime within sight of a law-abiding citizen and you get a bounty added to your head. Kill the people who saw you do it and the bounty disappears.
 * Left Hanging: The political plotline is considered by both leaders to be a mere distraction before the inevitable second Great War, but that story peters out after one side wins the civil war.-
 * Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Fair hand-to-hand brawling is an actual mechanic in this game. Many towns contain someone looking to brawl with you if you put up a wager, always with the rules of no weapons or magic, just fists.
 * Subverted if you specialize in heavy armor and have the Unarmed Combat Boost. Turns this into a Curb Stomp Battle.
 * Also subverted in that you can use healing and other defensive magic, just not destruction spells or weapons.
 * Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Said word for word in the Mage's college after an experiment with another student's spell turns the PC into a string of different animals - after turning them green the first round.
 * Level Grinding: You can buff your Sneak by attacking Ralof/Hadvar in the bear cave at the beginning - he's a critical NPC, so he can't die. Be warned: this will take forever because the leveling is based on how much damage each attack does.
 * A bit quicker: due to a glitch, you can get your Speech to 100 by repeatedly asking for the Black-Briar Meadery bartender's opinion of Maven (the Persuade option never goes away).
 * Level Scaling: The scrappy mechanic from Oblivion is back, but it's done in the much better received manner of Fallout 3. Essentially, each type of enemy has an average of somewhere between four or five types. Once you reach certain thresholds, the new higher level enemies appear as bosses, the old bosses become mid-bosses, the old mid-bosses become Mooks, and so on. There are no enemies that scale past 50, so you are free to widen the gap after that mark. Still, there are some enemies with set levels, so be careful if you think you're going to go on any low-level challenges. One thing that makes it easier in Skyrim than it was in Oblivion is the elimination of stats beyond Health, Magicka, and Stamina; you can no longer gimp yourself by failing to level up the right skills as you go, although perk selection can still leave you at something of a disadvantage if you opt for noncombat perks early on.
 * Level Up Fill Up: but only when you go into the Skills screen and choose an attribute to increase. It can be to your advantage to ignore a level-up early in a fight, and process it later on when you're in rough shape.
 * Light Is Not Good: Like the Daedric Princes, several of the Divines are portrayed in a darker light.
 * The Vigilants of Stendarr, despite being knights of the god of mercy, gleefully murder any man, woman or child that so much as looks at a Daedra, much less consorts with one.


 * If your character is male, then a group of Dibella priestesses strong arm you into a quest by threatening you.
 * The most notable priest of Mara.
 * Alduin, the Big Bad of the game, is  an "aspect" of Akatosh. The explanation is fragmentary at best. One fan theory says that the dragons are "fragments" of Akatosh based on a line from a developer in-Universe text, and that he was the first to split making "sons" of Akatosh just the way they explain it to humans.
 * Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted. Dedicated combat builds are far deadlier in terms of raw damage output than spellcasters, while the Destruction tree, supposedly dedicated to damage-dealing, does not scale at all with your skill level and its spells get progressively more Awesome but Impractical at higher expertise levels (especially the Master-level spells). Magic does give you a great deal of flexibility and utility, but by far the easiest way to beat the game is to dress up in heavy armor and swing a big stick.
 * Conjuration scales much better -- you get the overwhelmingly powerful ability to summon two things at once later on, and necromancy naturally scales up as long as you have more powerful things to revive. And its master level spells last forever (or until the summon / undead is killed, at least), which makes them Awesome Yet Practical since you can cast them far in advance.
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: Transitions can take a long time between the overworld and city locations, or when exiting buildings, and for some bizarre reason the length of the load screen seems to depend on which image is displayed while you wait. Further, all versions of the game experience longer loading times as you progress because the save file keeps track of objects, like dropped weapons, loose arrows, etc., that accumulate as you play and aren't deleted.
 * Loophole Abuse: If a guard ever tries to arrest you for crimes, often you have the option to bribe them or talk them out of it, or submit and pay off the bounty or go to jail. Alternatively, you can just press the Escape key to exit conversation, and most of the time they'll just let you leave.
 * If you somehow knock someone off a high ledge and the fall kills them, guards and the bounty on your head only register it as assault on your part, you aren't blamed for the death. Provided you can get them in the right place to kill them by the fall, you can use Unrelenting Force (FUS RO DAH) to kill NPCs for a measly 40 coin bounty, then can loot them freely. As a bonus, this also means the loot items don't count as stolen and can be sold to normal merchants.
 * Lost Forever: I hope you remember to grab the Stone of Barenziah while you were at the Thalmor Embassy cause you ain't going to be able to go back there again. To add insult to injury, if you collected 23 stones but miss that one, you're stuck with carrying a whole bunch of non-redeemable Plot Coupons with no option to remove them from your inventory, aside from cheating to clip your way back inside. If you identified them as Stones of Barenziah before picking up more than one, none of them stack.
 * This was fixed in the 1.4 patch. The stone now appears in Reeking Cave, a short tunnel that you travel through during your escape, and you can reenter it.
 * Conversely, if you found all of them before getting them identified, the quest won't properly progress, so you still can't turn them in. At least then they only occupy one line in your inventory.
 * A Word Wall containing part of the Call Storms shout is located in the final dungeon of the main quest. If you didn't get it before  too bad; there's no way to get back to the dungeon.
 * The Nahkriin Mask can also become Lost Forever if you forget to loot it from Nahkriin's remains or if you  since, again, the dungeon becomes inaccessible after the main quest. To further add insult to injury, if this happens, it will also become impossible to obtain the Konahrik mask, since getting it requires you possessing all 8 Dragon Priest masks.
 * If you summon the ghost of after joining the Dark Brotherhood, be careful against enemies who can use the Disarm shout. If you drop a weapon which is better than the one  is using, he'll take it, and since he cannot be looted after death, there is no way to get it back.
 * The second part of the quest centerd around is triggered by your character leveling up. Doing the first part of the quest at level 81 (the maximum level) will stop the courier from visiting you and may prevent you from doing the quest.
 * Louis Cypher: Keep a look out for one Sam Guevenne.
 * Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Block skill has a lot of surprising utility once you level up its perks. Among the most useful is one that grants you a resistance to magical damage when blocking, so your shield-guy can stand up to dragonfire now. Another lets you charge opponents with your shield and bash them out of the way. Still another slows time if an enemy starts a power attack (which will slam through a block if it lands) while your shield is up; see Bullet Time above.


 * -|M=
 * Magic Pants:
 * Fun fact: dead werewolves often seem to have "ruined trousers" in their inventory, when looted....
 * Magical Society: The College of Winterhold is the primary Magical Society and can be joined by the player, but the  also make a few appearances during quests that involve the College.
 * Magitek: Dwemer technology is half "steam engine," half "magical Golems," evidently, as nearly all of their robots run off of soul gems rather than conventional power sources (and the steam appears to be generated magically).
 * The Dwemer have developed technologies that have reality-bending powers (or outright reality-breaking powers in the case of Numidium), so much so that they can use magitek apparati to Just casting magic is a quaint thing to them, but they were extraordinary enchanters, and that's the part that makes the "magi" in their Magitek.
 * It's actually implied by some writings that the soul gems are not involved in the basic operation of Dwemer animunculi. Those soul gems are linked to the shock attack of non-worker spiders, and may otherwise be involved in high-powered attacks, but whatever makes the animunculi move has never been unraveled by anyone since the Dwemer vanished.
 * Meaningful Name: Vilkas and Farkas, two of the Companions, whose names mean  Also, a mad skeever (rat) controlling mage you encounter is named "Hamelyn"
 * The inn in the first town you encounter is named The Sleeping Giant Inn.
 * Mega Manning: A variation. You learn Words of Power simply from hearing someone speak it or reading it on Word Walls, but you can't "decode" them without using the knowledge in a dragon's soul. So it's a two-part deal: steal their voice weapon, then steal their ability to use it.
 * Make Me Wanna Shout: "Dragonshouts", the highlight of the game, and of your character, the Dragonborn. In the franchise's expansive lore, it's also known as the Thu'um, the power of the Voice. A variety of alternative magical effects invoked by shouting words in the ancient Dragon language; to use a computing metaphor, you're using root-level commands to reality to achieve these effects. Here's a list of all the shouts.
 * IIZ SLEN NUS: Ice Form. A shout that flies through several foes, freezing all of them in the shout's path.
 * FO KRAH DIIN: Or the regular variety of frost breath, sans freezing them where they stand, more akin to Fire Breath below.
 * RAAN MIR TAH: Animal Allegiance.
 * KAAN DREM OV: Calms them so they don't fight at all. Useful for dealing with angry bears or wolves.
 * FUS RO DAH: Unrelenting Force. A basic shout, its effect simply staggers or completely bowls over whoever you shout it at. Already has reached meme status since it was the first shout whose words were revealed to us. Awesome Yet Practical, since strategic use allows you to bowl your foes right over ledges and such. However, it requires full power to truly blast someone off their feet. Lower strengths will send them reeling but not off their feet, but are still enough to interrupt a dragon's breath attack.
 * One Bonus Boss capable of FUS RO DAH use it from a distance. Expect to spend half the fight airborne.
 * ZUN HAAL VIIK: Disarm. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * TIID KLO UL: Slow Time. Allows you to go to town with a melee weapon, or to easily dodge deathtraps.
 * LAAS YAH NIR: Aura Whisper. Allows you to see the energy of other beings, even through walls, and detects any form of mobile creature, alive or dead (unlike spells of the same effect, which discriminate). Surprisingly long range and short cooldown (though not short enough to maintain constantly). Very handy for sneaky types, and also useful at determining if there's an ambush in the next room. Indispensable in draugr ruins for figuring out whether those coffins have active undead waiting to hop out or are really empty.
 * WULD NAH KEST: Whirlwind Sprint, which allows for a sudden yet brief burst of speed. Useful for bum-rushing a Squishy Wizard, dashing through a pendulum blade gauntlet, or crossing over drops too long to simply jump over (with careful aim).
 * ZUL MEY GUT: Throw Voice. Throws a projected voice that utters off a quick infantile insult, distracting guards to where it originated from.
 * YOL TOOR SHUL: Fire Breath, creating a burst of flame across a wide swath that does a ton of damage and staggers most enemies. Even just the first word has the range and width of FUS RO DAH at full power, with a staggering effect, and hits with enough whammy to make most bosses sit up and take notice.
 * SU GRAH DUN: Elemental Fury. Increases the rate as which you swing your weapons to truly ludicrous speeds. Doesn't work with enchanted weapons, though.
 * JOOR ZAH FRUL: Dragonrend. Since Dragons have no concept of transience, the three words that make the shout (Mortal, Finite, Temporary) are like Kryptonite to them when used in Thu'um. Utterly confused by the words they hear, dragons promptly faceplant into the ground. Also useful for interrupting dragon breath attacks even moreso than Unrelenting Force due to its quick cooldown at the first tier of the shout. This is also
 * FEIM ZII GRON: "Become Ethereal". Renders you completely immune to all harm, but you can't hit enemies either. Deathtraps, foes... not even Fall Damage will hurt you. Attacking will end the effect prematurely; you will never feel the "can't hit enemies" restriction beyond that.
 * ODAHVIING:
 * STRUN BAH QO : Is that dragon flying too high for you to score a hit? No problem, Storm Call turns the weather to your advantage and strikes the dragon down with lightning. (And anything else nearby, for that matter, use responsibly).
 * LOK VAH KOOR: An inversion of the above, clearing away clouds, fog, rain, snow, or anything else so you can see clearly. Do it at night and odds are you'll also summon an aurora as well
 * KRII LUN AUS: "Marked For Death." Weakens armour and life force periodically.
 * FAAS RU MAAR: "Dismay". Causes enemies to flee.
 * SLEN TIID VO: Alduin uses this one to resurrect the dragons. Only Alduin can use it... At least, for now.
 * VEN MUL RIIK: Conjures a thick fog around the landscape. Again, only Alduin uses it.
 * FIIK LO SAH: What could have been used as a sort of decoy attack to get pressure off of you ends up being just an unplayable shout used by the Graybeards to produce target practice dummies for your Thu'um lessons from them. Oddly, there are still player voice files for the shout in the game's content archives.
 * Not a Thu'um Shout, but while you're a werewolf, hitting the "Shout" button causes you to let out a blood-curdling howl that makes enemies around you run away in fear. Useful for crowd control while a werewolf so you can better focus on savaging your foes one at a time.
 * Malevolent Masked Men: Dragon Priests.
 * Master of None: Using only two words in Unrelenting Force is completely counterproductive. Fus staggers your enemies and has a quick recharge time. Fus Ro Dah sends your enemies flying and has a slow recharge time. Fus Ro makes them take one or two steps back and has a somewhat long recharge time.
 * Megaton Punch: Giants. Mainly because of the sheer amount of damage their clubs do to low level players. See the entry on Blown Across the Room above for more infomation.
 * Melee a Trois: Dragons have a tendency to charge into the middle of existing battles and attacking everyone. The other two sides usually put aside their differences to deal with the massive fire-spewing immortal god-monster assaulting them, but not always.
 * Memetic Outfit: the horned helmet worn by the PC in the trailer.
 * Mercy Kill: If you kill a bandit who has been raised from the dead by a necromancer, he will thank you as he disintegrates.
 * This is one way to view.
 * Mickey Mousing: The gameplay trailer matches cuts of action to music in a dramatic, manly fashion.
 * Mighty Glacier: Dwarven centurions. You can outrun them without even having to sprint (unless you get caught in its steam cloud), and their only ranged attack is fairly easy to dodge from a distance, but they resist magic, arrows bounce off their armor (if not completely harmlessly), and that's not taking into account their huge HP pool. And if you try to fight it head-on, you'll have to dodge everything perfectly or be willing to down a ton of potions, since its hammer and axe hit quite hard and the steam blast hurts a LOT.
 * Miles Gloriosus: The eponymous braggart in the song Ragnar the Red, who meets an untimely end at the hands of an unimpressed shield maiden.
 * Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: A fortune teller in town says she might tell your fortune by several standard methods (Horoscopes, card readings) and then chuckles and mentions Trepanning.
 * Mind Rape: Dragonrend does this to dragons by forcing them to experience mortality, something their minds literally cannot comprehend.
 * Mind Screw: The nature of Alduin.
 * Also, in-world, Dragonrend. Basically, you're telling the dragon that they're, "Mortal, Finite, Temporary", something that they don't have a word for or understand in their own minds since, before man, they've never had to deal with the concept of life ending for them. What it does is mindscrews the dragon so badly that they don't have the mental capacity to fly, or Shout, for a few seconds.
 * You can accidentally get  arrested, if the player doesn't catch the subtle clues and goes straight to the authorities,
 * Money for Nothing: It's quite easy to make a fortune, simply loot everything and every one you see and know how to exploit the crafting system to make items more expensive than the materials used to make them. However, ingredients can be found in the wild, crafting materials can be mined for, and every equipment piece in the game aside from a handful of unique items can be forged, and those unique items can have their effects duplicated on crafted weapons. All you'll really need to buy regularly are potions, soul gems and ingots for crafting, and they're dirt cheap, and if you want player housing it's pretty expensive to outfit your homes with all the extras, but those are one-time purchases. Eventually the problem will come up that merchants just don't have enough gold to pay you for all the loot you want to unload on them, forcing you to travel from town to town selling off your stock.
 * Monologuing: It's common for an enemy to walk up and announce their intention to kill you. Sometimes, you can end the conversation quickly and kill them before they're even done speaking.
 * Monster Sob Story: The book The "Madmen" of the Reach is one for the Forsworn. Whether or not it justifies their long list of atrocities depends on the player.
 * Money Spider: Rarely, animals will have jewelry and gold coins in their carcasses. Yes, this includes the frost spiders.
 * Dragons drop valuable Bones and Scales, which are some of the most expensive loot in the game. In addition they usually carry coins on them...as well as armor. Three guesses at how the dragon got them, and the first two don't count.
 * Moon Logic Puzzle: The dwemer machine holding . Two buttons rotate a large globe on the ground with various rings and lenses on it, a third button rotates lenses hanging overhead, and a fourth button which can only be pressed when the alignment of the pieces are right and unveils the objective item in the machine. Attempting to understand what is actually happening as you press the buttons will likely just confuse you, you understand you have to align something, but what and how? The game developers appear to have assumed you won't understand and will just be pressing buttons at random, because that's actually the way to do it.
 * More Than Meets the Eye: Many characters. Some are not human despite looking human, some have murderous tendencies while being seemingly innocent on the outside. Babette appears to be a young girl but is.
 * Mugging the Monster: Unsurprisingly, the many thieves, robbers, bandits, and brigands of Skyrim share the traditional RPG thug deficiency in being able to tell that the guy they're about to accost is in fact, walking on a road made of the bodies of everyone s/he has mangled, even if they are wearing armour made of dragon bones and carrying a bloodstained greatsword. One random encounter even includes a dialogue option that says "I just don't have time for this." in response to getting mugged. Yes, you can essentially tell the muggers that you're too busy to be robbed right now. They attack anyway.
 * Mundane Utility: Dragon shouts are devastating against your enemies, but they can also be used to do things like freeze animals to make it easier to hunt them or knock objects off shelves and out of sight so you can steal them, or disarm traps by remotely triggering them. Or go fishing.
 * Unlocking all doors is apparently only the most simple use of Nocturnal's Skeleton Key. In the right hands it could be used to unlock metaphorical locks such as the ones that limit human ability.
 * The "Become Ethereal" shout lets you fall off of cliffs without taking fall damage.
 * Further evidence: You see it being used in such a manner in Markarth in one of the promotional vids before the game launched.
 * You can use the "Slow Time" shout to catch arrows out of the air, skillfully dodge deadly attacks by dragons and giants... or you can just use it to make potions last longer instead (normally fortify skills potions last for 30s, only enough time to enchant/craft/enhance one or two items unless you're fast. With a full duration slow time, you can extend that into nearly twice as long with no penalties since you are not slowed while browsing the menu)
 * Unrelenting Force is a mighty tool to destroy enemies, but it serves an equally useful purpose in that it can be used to swat butterflies out of the air to collect their wings.
 * Aura Whisper lets you locate your enemies to sneak around them or determine if the next room is filled with dozens of hostiles. It also lets you find people you're looking for in large buildings.
 * Dwarven ruins can be filled with flame vents set up to roast unwary intruders. However, bandits in Raldbthar have discovered another use for them: cooking.
 * One of the shouts the Greybeards use is Bex, which harnesses the awesome power of the Thu'um to open and close doors and gates.
 * Murder, Inc.: The Dark Brotherhood.
 * Murder Is the Best Solution: After you kill Grelod the Kind, one of the orphans notes that so many problems can be solved by killing just one person, and that the possibilities are endless.
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: Some Nords still loyal to the Empire, or at least the idea of it, shade into this: they hate the policies forced on them by the treaty with the Thalmor, acknowledge the Empire is not what it used to be and that they've suffered for their loyalty, but "the Nords have never been fair-weather friends".
 * My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
 * Even some high elves have an antipathetic attitude towards the Thalmor: a senior legion officer presiding over a camp near Riften is a high elf, and finds the Thalmor to be detestable.
 * The player can be any of the elven races without gaining favor or alliance with the Thalmor, and he or she can just as easily be a Nord serving the Empire or a Stormcloak-aligned Imperial. In fact, most of the playable races lack their cultural baggage from pre-Skyrim lore so the player will often be the odd one out of his or her people. This is pointed out directly when some non-Nord races ask Ulfric about whether the Stormcloaks will accept them - the line is something about how Skyrim is home to more races than just Nord and loyalty is what's important. Too bad his townspeople didn't get the memo.
 * Mythology Gag: It is heavily implied by Sheogorath that
 * There is also a book that gives help on thievery that has apparently been written by the player character of Oblivion (assuming that person completed the Thieves' Guild storyline).
 * M'aiq the Liar shows up... for about the third game in a row. He's a random encounter on the road, and will make commentary about some of the newer (or weirder) elements of the game. Listen to his sweet lies here.
 * There is also a book that gives help on thievery that has apparently been written by the player character of Oblivion (assuming that person completed the Thieves' Guild storyline).
 * M'aiq the Liar shows up... for about the third game in a row. He's a random encounter on the road, and will make commentary about some of the newer (or weirder) elements of the game. Listen to his sweet lies here.

"Random Bandits: Mead, mead, mead. Would it kill 'em to get a beer now and again? Stupid bees and their stupid honey..."
 * -|N=
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast:
 * Alduin, the World Eater.
 * Dirge and Maul, two thugs employed by the Thieves' Guild.
 * One of the followers is named Ghorbash The Iron Hand.
 * All the named Dragon Priests, in Dragon language at least: Hevnoraak (Brutal), Krosis (Sorrow), Morokei (Glorious), Rahgot (Rage), Nahkriin (Vengeance), Volsung (Horror/Air Horror), Vokun (Shadow), Otar (well, Mad), and Konahrik (Warlord).
 * All named dragons.
 * They call Molag Bal the King of Rape for a reason.
 * Natural Weapon: Khajiit slash enemies with their claws when fighting unarmed. Particularly satisfying after a bandit hurls a racial slur at you.
 * A Nazi by Any Other Name:
 * Eugenics, fascist government, perceived racial superiority, purging of undesirable population elements, goal of total hegemony, secret police, contempt for non-aggression pacts... The Thalmor, rulers of the Aldmeri Dominion, are pretty much Nazi elves. Not to mention that their robes have a certain SS/Gestapo vibe to them. Their ideology goes beyond demanding the genocide of humanity and demands the removal of the potential of humanity ever existing, as it imprisons spirits on Mundus (It Makes Sense in Context). They might actually be right about that... but they might also be wrong in it being a possible goal.
 * The Stormcloaks are a little subtler about it, but the parallels are there. Their attitude toward the Empire and the White-Gold Concordat is very similar to the Nazi's stabbed-in-the-back narrative, and they're not at all pleasant to the Dark Elves, who realistically couldn't have had anything to do with the Empire's defeat but don't have a powerful nation-state to back them up like the Thalmor do. Argonians also cannot live in Ulfric's city, because the guards will beat them to death if they try to live there. Less subtle once you find out more about Ulfric Stormcloak, and how he feels he fought for nothing in the war and wants to see Skyrim restored to its glory days. He's also a pretty charismatic guy and gives a hell of a speech.
 * The Need for Mead: Naturally, being a fantasy Norse-like culture, there's mead abound. Skyrim has two major brands of mead, Honningbrew (brewed near Whiterun) and Black-Briar (brewed in Riften), and a generic "Nord Mead". In one sidequest, a group of drunks lambast you if you favor Black Briar Mead over Nord Mead. If you share bottles of Honningbrew instead they will be overjoyed and give you a magical amulet as thanks. Jarl Siddgeir of Falkreath on the other hand hates Nord Mead calling it "local piss" and asks you for a bottle of Black Briar to prove your worth.

"But really. A horker, some twine, three wood elves, and a hatchet? Points for creativity, if nothing else."
 * Nerf/Obvious Rule Patch : Some of the skills got their abilities split, moved around or removed entirely from previous games. Mysticism was removed entirely and its relevant spells put in other classes. Alteration magic (which was mostly "mobility magic" in the past) has no lockpicking spells and the only mobility-enhancer it has is water-breathing, but armor spells were buffed and the school also gained light spells (formerly the province of Illusion), while Conjuration loses the ability to summon Bound Armor and daggers. Speechcraft and Bartering got merged into one skill, while Pickpocketing got separated out of Sneak into its own skill.
 * Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer on characters seemed to depict General Tullius as an Obstructive Bureaucrat who didn't pay any heed to his subordinate's advice.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the Companions' questline, after Luckily, this is all fixable.
 * To explore the dwemer ruins beneath Markarth, you first have to get through a nest of frostbite spiders. At the end of the nest, guarded by a huge spider, you find a dead legion soldier, with a note on him describing an expedition that delved deep into the ruins.
 * In "The Blessings of Nature", if you choose to manipulate the Eldergleam in order to access your destination
 * In "The Forsworn Conspiracy," choosing to  will likely end with
 * Bringing the mysterious artifact from Saarthal back to the College of Winterhold
 * One regarding someone other than you - if you escape from Helgen with Hadvar, in Riverwood you can ask Alvor what he thinks of the war. He explains that before the civil war, the Thalmor had nearly no presence in Skyrim and the Empire didn't really enforce the ban on Talos worship, so people just worshiped at home instead of at temples. It wasn't until Ulfric made a big deal of him and his men worshiping Talos that the Thalmor felt the need to crack down and start arresting people.
 * Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Alduin inadvertently saves the Dovahkiin's life.
 * The Night That Never Ends: The apparent goal of the lead vampire in Dawnguard.
 * Ninja: The Dark Brotherhood armor has a distinctly ninja-like vibe to it this time around. Kinda appropriate when you think about it.
 * Ninja Run: Sprinting while dual-wielding any one-handed weapons becomes this.
 * No Arc in Archery: A very subtle aversion. While most players have been trained by other games that arrows fire in a straight line, in this game, if you do this you may often find yourself missing. It's actually a good idea to aim a little bit down so that when the arrow does arc a bit, it won't fly over them; unlike in most games that do have arcing arrows (like, say, Oblivion), the arrow is not fired directly at your cursor, but somewhat above it. For long ranged shots, you need to aim at or slightly above your target, as arrows realistically fall due to gravity as they fly.
 * No Hero Discount: Averted in a sense. While being a good person doesn't net you a discount when it comes to purchases, merchants will allow you to take some items off their shelves without considering it stealing, and they regularly restock.
 * No Kill Like Overkill:
 * Some quests have an optional rider of "wiping out X" where X is the enemy faction. Some have bonuses that can later be used (such as obtaining more Glenmoral Witch Heads) while others are entirely up to you.
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries: The Argonian females, again, as evidenced by Lizzle-Bob.
 * Also, Flame Atronachs and Spriggans. Flame atronachs have the excuse of being daedra, to which different sexes are nothing more than a mortal contrivance and they simply choose to take a female form because of their whim (as is the case for daedric princes too).
 * No Ontological Inertia: Zig Zagged. Attacking summoners and necromancers plays this straight: their zombies and/or atronachs will vanish or disintegrate. However, unlike in Oblivion, where the gates vanish after banishing Dagon,  Justified in that
 * Noob Cave: Helgen Keep and the adjoining caverns. Several locales around Riverwood are also toned down in difficulty.
 * Noodle Incident: Unlike the previous games, this time we know why and how the player character ended up being imprisoned, but now it's unclear why the player character was crossing the border into Skyrim, nor is there any set canon on whether or not the player ever did anything more illegal than just being around a bunch of Stormcloaks. (Dialog at a few points will let the player decide this, but it's just for flavor.)
 * There's a bard named Talsgar wandering the wilderness. If you find him, you can ask him for speechcraft training, but he'll refuse, saying something about an incident with a roguish lad and the daughter of a prominent thane.
 * During the college of Winterhold questline, you have a conversation with the archmage that begins with you telling him you have important news about the excavation at Saarthal. He responds 'Please don't tell me another apprentice has been incinerated, I don't have time for this...'
 * Noodle Implements: After winning a staff in a drinking contest, the guy you made the bet with leaves you a note saying he needs a hagraven feather, giant's toe, and holy water to fix the staff.
 * The Dark Brotherhood likes to sit around and talk about their various assassinations. One is mentioned, and when the brother involved doesn't elaborate on his method, whoever he is speaking to comments on it.


 * No Sell: If you hit an atronach with a destruction spell of its elemental alignment, it just stands there. It doesn't aggro, it doesn't stagger. You get a notification that it "resisted" the attack too.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: There are a couple dungeons where someone had already gone through and killed some of the enemies inside... you almost always expect some kind of noise to happen (or to run into a bandit or Draugr) and it seems really unsettling when they're all gone.
 * The Lost Prospect Mine has shades of this; a depleted gold mine with absolutely nothing of note to find anywhere aside from an old miner's journal which describes how a miner was roped into working an old mine with a friend. The journal then goes on to mention that the author went into town to pick up supplies only to return to find no trace of his friend before berating said friend and leaving the journal behind to guilt him. This at least implies that there was something... odd about the mine. A deeper examination of the mine reveals the truth:
 * Notice This: Nirnroot doesn't just glow, it chimes.
 * No True Scotsman: Heard on both sides of the civil war. The Stormcloaks believe that the Empire is weak, that no true Nord would surrender to the Thalmor Dominion or agree to the White-Gold Concordat, while the Imperial-allied Nords believe that Skyrim has always been a loyal part of the Empire and no true Nord would be only a fair-weather ally.
 * Not So Different: General Tullius and Ulfric Stormcloak are on opposite sides of the Civil War, but both hate the Thalmor and the White-Gold Concordat, which bans the worship of Talos, one of the main reasons Ulfric rebelled.
 * This is also exemplified by the bard songs "Age of Agression" and "Age of Oppression", sung by bards in pro-Imperial or pro-Stormcloak holds, respectively. The song tunes are identical and both songs have parts where the lyrics are the same.
 * Try saving before the peace treaty and take different dialogue options to favor the Empire or Stormcloaks, and make note of how often the two sound just like the other between dialogue trees.
 * Paarthurnax points this out to the Dragonborn, as s/he has the soul of a dragon and therefore is driven by the same urges as all dragons: to hurt, kill, dominate, and destroy. Takes on an extra-vicious edge if you've been indulging in Video Game Cruelty Potential by that point.

"Mirmulnir: "Dovahkiin!? No!""
 * -|O=
 * Obfuscating Insanity: Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone of Hjalmarch hold/Morthal city.
 * Obvious Beta: While not to the level of Daggerfall, this game is close. For starters, it has many, many broken quests, wonky user interface issues (especially in the PC version), is very poorly optimized both CPU and GPU wise, the PC version requires a fanmade EXE patch to curb most of the CT Ds by extending the memory allocation cap (This has been fixed in an official patch; it now is large-address-aware by default), and the console version can suffer dramatic save game bloat and subsequent crashing/corruption issues. The game also has bad default settings, including a default field of view that gives many players motion sickness.
 * The earlier patches also introduced some additional serious glitches, including the notorious "Backwards-Flying Dragons".
 * Offing the Offspring: Done in a very twisted and tragic fashion, by a certain man in Morthal. Turns out Ironic because children can't be killed in the game.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome: "Hold on, Dovahkiin! Prepare to see Skyrim as you never have before!"
 * Off with His Head: Happens to one unfortunate Stormcloak. Almost happens to you before unwittingly saves you by attacking the town, causing the execution to be interrupted right as the headsman is poised to swing. You can also watch another beheading when you first enter Solitude.
 * There are perks in the one-handed and two-handed trees that let you decapitate your foes.
 * Oh Crap: "Never shoulda come here!"
 * Also with the very first dragon the Dragonborn will slain.

""A CHALLENGER IS NEAR!""
 * Ominous Draconic Chanting: A rare heroic version in the Dovahkiin's/Dragonborn's theme songs: Sons of Skyrim and One They Fear, as well as Watch The Skies which alternately plays when a dragon attacks.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: The Thalmor are attempting to unmake the Mundus. Read a semi-canon archived post (second from top) from Michael Kirkbride one of the more cryptic Elder Scrolls writers. "Erase the upstart Talos from the mythic". How do you erase a god? You stop belief in him. The Thalmor are attempting to do so by banning Talos worship. And Talos is all that's holding the world together. Note that from an Altmer, Bosmer, and possibly Redguard (though the Redguards wouldn't like the "Remove Man not just from the world, but from the Pattern of Possibility" part) perspective, this is not a bad thing, as to them Lorkhan (Shor) and his creation are evil.
 * In the College of Winterhold guild quest line,
 * Only Smart People May Pass: Subverted with the combination locks on the claw-operated doors in Draugr barrows. One of the books you can read in-game contains speculation as to why these puzzles were made so easy (the combination is engraved on the key itself). The answer, according to the author, is that the combination is there in order to ensure that the door is being opened by a sentient being, rather than a mindless undead - the doors aren't there to keep people from getting in, they're there to keep things from getting out.
 * Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Erandur slips between an American and Australian accent. This may be deliberate, as he's hiding a Dark and Troubled Past.
 * Orphanage of Fear: Honorhall Orphange, run by Grelod the Kind.
 * The Order: The Imperial Legion. And you can join it again!
 * The Blades, too. Though unlike in Oblivion, you can't join them, as the Order proper has long since fallen apart and almost entirely died out. Plus they are nominally supposed to serve you, as their purpose is to serve a Dragonborn and you are the last Dragonborn (not that this oath of "service" stops them demanding that you kill, and refusing to talk to you or help until you do). Though you can help rebuild the Order by recruiting new members for them after a certain point, and have them accompany you on Dragon-slaying missions.
 * Opposed Mentors: In Skyrim you have the choice of being backed by The Greybeards (who are Actual Pacifists) and The Blades (who want to slay every single dragon in existence). In the end
 * Our Demons Are Different: And with Large Ham to boot!


 * Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragons, who rather than have the usual Breath Weapon, speak their abilities to reality. So they say the Draconic word for "fire" and fire appears.
 * You've got your standard garden-variety Black Dragons, blue Frost Dragons, which are more sinister-looking, green Blood Dragons, which kind of look like iguanas, bronze-colored Elder Dragons, which look bulkier than the other dragons, and the most powerful of all; red and black Ancient Dragons, which have thick armored plates instead of scales.
 * Beyond the visual, Dragons are like Tolkien Elves, who will live for as long as Time itself lasts, to the point where the very idea of mortality is incomprehensible to them.
 * Our Dwemer Are All The Same: Played with, as per Elder Scrolls norm. While the Dwemer were reclusive master smiths who lived underground, did not get along with most elves, and had long beards, they are also currently extinct, were master steam engineers - a trait more commonly associated with gnomes these days - and were actually a subrace of elves themselves. They also weren't particularly short; they got their moniker of "Dwarves" from giants, not men.
 * Our Elves Are Better: Aside from the High Elves, Wood Elves and Dark Elves, there's also the Orcs/Orsimer (the suffix mer meaning "of elvish descent"). They still act like regular fantasy Orcs, though.
 * The Thalmor are firm advocates of the general better-ness of elves. Nobody else listens due to the way in which they espouse this sentiment. Including many High Elves. It helps that the Thalmor are also firm advocates of the general better-ness of High Elves, and have a very strict definition of what a true High Elf is.
 * Our Ghosts Are Different: After a certain point in the Dark Brotherhood questline, the ghost of Lucien Lachance from Oblivion becomes a summonable companion. He has been dead for a little over two centuries, but apparently he fully retains all of his memories. This is likely an attempt to please the fanbase, given the fact that he's an immensely popular character, especially among fangirls.
 * Our Giants Are Bigger: Giants are enormous humanoids about three times the size of humans. They are roughly comparable to cavemen, and form camps with mammoths, which they apparently use as both pets, guard animals, and a source of milk and cheese. Giants are generally peaceful unless you intrude into their camps, though you periodically get bounties on giants that have been stealing cattle or raiding farms. Otherwise, anyone provoking a giant gets exactly what they deserve.
 * Alternatively, you're attacking a peaceful giant, who would never attack you if you just left it alone.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: They're mostly the same as vampires in Oblivion, but they prefer ice and cold environments. You don't see any examples of them hiding underneath frozen lakes to reach up and snatch you in this game like you read about in Immortal Blood, but you do usually see them launching ice-blasts at you with magic when they don't suck your hit points out directly.
 * The first piece of DLC, Dawnguard appears to be vampire-centric and also seems to give vampires a more monstrous bat-like form akin to a werewolf transformation.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: As with Morrowind, they're the more wolf than man variety. If you become one, you can transform regardless of the time of day and stay transformed until you stop feeding on humanoids.
 * Our Zombies Are Different: No, they're not zombies, they're Draugr. And they're cursed with undeath for having served Alduin the first time around - at least, some of them (others may have origins closer to what was indicated in Bloodmoon, the game that introduced them). (In this series, "zombie" usually refers to magically revived corpses by necromancers.) Draugr are closer to Mummies than zombies in many ways, as they are artificially preserved and haunt cursed tombs, and many have magic powers of their own (including Shouts).
 * Outside Context Villain: Alduin. Skyrim was just at the end of a long and bloody civil war when bam, the king of all dragons shows up out of nowhere.

""Sometimes life puts you in difficult circumstances you didn't choose, but being happy or unhappy is a choice you make, and I've choosen to make the best of things that I can.""
 * -|P=
 * Paper-Thin Disguise: A quick look around the room and it's pretty obvious which of the corpses lining the walls are going to stand up when you pass by.
 * You in the Dark Brotherhood storyline. Because the chef you're impersonating is an aloof mysterious figure that no one has ever seen (because he's an Orc) you can show up as any race, dressed in anything from Daedric Armor to a Jester's Outfit and no one will question it. Your assistant will only ask that you put on a chef's hat to cook (even though you're just telling her what ingredients to add.)
 * Physical God: Alduin takes the form of a dragon,
 * Physical Heaven:
 * The Place: Takes place in Skyrim, natch.
 * Plant Person: Spriggans are a hostile bear-summoning variety. They're often found in certain wooded groves, can turn nearly invisible (or turn into swarms of bees), and when near death, revive themselves to full health with magic (something they did back in Daggerfall, too. "Spriggans die three times.") In this case, at least if you kill them quickly you avoid the revivification.
 * Point and Click Map
 * Police Are Useless: In regards to you at least, there may as well not be any guards in town. As long as you don't commit any major crimes like murder, guards can be bribed through use of a perk or your membership with the Thieves Guild, and if you're Thane, you can pull rank to get them to leave you alone. If you've committed a minor crime like trying to break into a locked house or stealing a potion, you can just convince them you aren't worth the time. Walking around town while you have a small bounty will prompt mutters of "wait, I know you" from guards you pass, but none of them will actually try and apprehend you.
 * The Pollyanna: Shahvee who despite living in the docks of Windhelm, with the Nords being intensively racist towards her race, being paid a pittance for her work, is very cheerful and upbeat. In her own words "There's nothing to be gained by being miserable."

"FUS! RO-DAH!"
 * Powered by a Forsaken Child: All active Dwemer automatons in Skyrim are powered by filled Soul Gems.
 * Power Glows: All enchanted items have a colored glow around them.
 * Placebo Eureka Moment: Talking to Wylandriah, the Riften Court Magician, shows that she's having trouble developing a soul extraction apparatus. By acting like you know what you're talking about by using "metaphors", she quickly Magi Babbles her way to a solution.
 * Pragmatic Villainy: Members of the Thieves Guild tend to abstain from murder and strongly encourage you to do the same in their quests. Not because they have anything against it, but because it's bad for business. They leave that sort of thing to the Dark Brotherhood unless it's an in-house issue.
 * Previous Player Character Cameo: In the daedric quest "The Mind of Madness", Sheogorath mentions that he was present during the Oblivion Crisis (and mentions knowing Martin as well), which implies that the player character from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is still effectively the Daedric Prince that you meet in the quest. Strangely, Sheogorath appears and speaks with the same voice and mannerisms as the original Sheogorath from the Shivering Isles expansion, either due to Rule of Funny or to resolve that game's own Character Customization, which is similar in scope to Skyrim. Alternatively, this may be an example of Becoming the Mask and/or Becoming the Costume, where the role of Mad God comes to override the character's original personality and appearance.
 * Or it may be an example of Gameplay and Story Integration: Sheogorath canonically has access to a staff of powerful transformative magic - That would be the Wabbajack. Who says it can only be used on opponents?
 * It should be noted that some of this Sheogorath's speech leans towards being good rather than pure chaotic as his Morrowind or especially Oblivion appearance suggests. Namely, he wants the player to  and one of his followers, a deranged old woman, refers to him as blessed Sheogorath implying he's a mix of the old and new. Sheogorath is still crazy but he's relatively more a good crazy.
 * Proud Warrior Race: Several.
 * The Nords are the most prominent example, the game being set in their homeland. Part of the tension between Skyrim and the Empire comes from the Nords seeing the Empire's surrender to the Thalmor as a cowardly betrayal.
 * The Orcs are also like this, with special mention going to the old Orcish warrior you can find standing by the road, surrounded by dead sabre cats, waiting for someone to give him a "good death."
 * The Redguards are also supposed to be one, although this isn't as thoroughly explored. Their pride in warrior ways seems more focused upon skill with weaponry than bravado or testing how much punishment they can take.
 * To note, there is various bits of Lore that infer that the destruction of the Redguards original homeland of Yokuda may have been caused by rogue members of a legendary band of warriors who were so skilled with swords they "cut the atomos" in a war with "Left-handed elves." Magic Nuke indeed.
 * Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Fully upgraded dragon shouts have enough emphasis to send enemies flying through the air and even slow time.

"Braithe: If only he'd kiss me, then I wouldn't have to beat him up so much."
 * Puppet King: The Jarl of Riften (the hyper-corrupt home of the Thieves Guild) is pretty clueless about the state of her town. Her own adviser is in deep with the Guild, and the Guild gets most of its work from the local mead-brewing dynasty.
 * Puppy Love: A one sided variant between the two children Lars Battle-Born (who is meek) and Braithe (who is belligerent). In the latter's words:


 * -|R=
 * Ragnarok Proofing: The dwarves have been gone for several thousand years, but their Death Traps and robots are still working perfectly fine. There is an explanation for that: the Dwemer bent/changed the laws of physics to make their materials impervious to wear, tear and corrosion, plus some of them (specifically the little worker spider-bots) are designed to repair one another. Destroyed spiders can sometimes be seen to drop ore, implying they collect new materials where necessary for upkeep.
 * Railing Kill: Extremely common due to the number of ledges, catwalks and balconies and the physics engine. It can get slightly annoying having to jump down a mountainside or into a pit to loot the body.
 * Randomly Generated Levels: Some of the sidequests will randomly generate based on your playing style, like setting the target of the quest in a dungeon you haven't explored yet.
 * Rape as Backstory: Implied with.
 * See also:.
 * Rated "M" for Manly: In particular, the Nords, who are big, burly and mock the player if they favor magic. Even the ladies.
 * If you're Imperial and wearing heavy armor, Nords will say you "clang like a kitchen and should stay in one."
 * Walking around in elven armor or with an elven weapon gets you a lot of flak from Nord guards who prefer steel. Wearing elven gear while being an elf gets you even more mockery.
 * The very idea of plot is Rated "M" for Manly: a god of destruction returns and sends forth dragons to eat the world. You slay them. You gain powers by eating their souls. And it's all set in the land of fantasy Vikings.
 * And the theme song, which is more features a male choir going "Hoo! Ha!" And singing a song about how the Dragonborn is awesome.
 * Normal magic has you studying and using mana to cast spells, along with hand gestures. Thu'ums just has you shouting at reality itself, and reality listens. And you power it with the souls of slain dragons, in their own tongue. If it was any manlier you would grow hairs on your chest every time you used a Thu'um.
 * Reality Warper: Dragons (and, by extension, the Dragonborn) have the innate ability to use the Thu'um, or Shouts, a power that causes magic-like effects through speech alone rather than spells. Dragons in Skyrim don't breath fire or cast a fire spell; they simply command fire to appear.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Elves naturally. Also vampires with special mention going to a 300 year old vampire assassin who takes advantage of looking like the ten year old girl she was when she was turned.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite their reputation, the Empire actually has a fair few of these: General Tullius, Legate Rikke, and Jarl Elisif of Solitude are all reasonable and professional figures. Jarl Balgruuf the Greater of Whiterun is one as well.
 * Ulfric's replacement, should the Imperial Legion win is basically in running for some "Best Human Being Alive" award. He's kind, decent, polite. Within hours of getting his new job, he's already met the dark elves of the ghetto-like grey quarters to work on plans to renovate the Grey Quarters, and is trying to find a way to let the Argonians into the city without increasing the town's already huge racial tensions. And that's along with his plans to rebuild Windhelm's economy and reputation following the war. He even keeps most of Ulfric's staff on hand since they know their job well enough, and offers lodging to the deposed Jarls who were supporting Ulfric.
 * Rebel Leader: Ulfric.
 * Madanach.
 * Reclining Reigner: The default model pose for anyone sitting on a throne.
 * Which means that it may double as a Slouch of Villainy for Jarls of opposite factions depending on whose side you're on.
 * Elisif the Fair is the only Jarl who does not sit on her throne like this.
 * Let Jarl Balgruuf educate you.
 * Red and Black and Evil All Over: Daedra and by association Daedric equipment. Also the Dark Brotherhood uniform.
 * Red Eyes, Take Warning: Maybe. The Dunmer aren't evil as a race, but their red eyes are the result of evil. Long before the events of Skyrim, the Tribunal, a trio of Physical Gods, broke a sacred promise in order to obtain their divinity. The goddess Azura punished them and their entire race by giving them the dark skin and red eyes they now have.
 * Red Herring: You'd think that Ulfric's ability to use the Voice would imply a stronger connection to the plot about Alduin and his dragons trying to eat the world, but it never really comes up. It's just something he used to get victory when he challenged the last High King to a duel. Though Imperials and Stormcloaks have the expected opinions on the matter,
 * It is worth noting that despite not being totally involved in the main quest, Ulfric will gladly tell you all you he knows about the Greybeards and your destiny as the Dragonborn if asked. Which is significant when compared to how little information on them you get from only other Jarl with some tangential involvement in the chain, the Jarl of Whiterun.
 * Delphine initially suspects that are behind the appearance of the dragons.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ulfric is brash, prideful, and aggressive. Tullius is calm, caring, and defensive; which is ironic seeing as though the Empire wears red and the Stormcloaks blue. Even then, the game makes strides proving they're Not So Different.
 * Red Shirt: When you go to, the people on the Dragonsreach balcony are you, the Jarl of Whiterun, his adjutant, and some nameless guard. No points for guessing which one gets snapped up and spectacularly flung into the distance on first pass.
 * Regenerating Health: Your health bar will slowly refill--emphasis on slowly. This is so you don't have to waste your precious health potions between battles; it's not really meant for recovery in the middle of one.
 * However, use of the Healing spell in one hand and a weapon in the other can produce the standard health regeneration effect.
 * This also seems to apply to all humanoid NPCs as well. Possibly a fix for the issue seen in Fallout 3 and New Vegas where caravans and traveling NPCs would slowly run out of health and eventually die due to fighting minor enemies over the course of several days.
 * And the Argonian special ability, Histskin, multiplies their health regen by 10, bringing them up to Healing Factor levels.
 * There are also several enchanted amulets, rings and the like which will boost the speed of your health recharge. And though you can only wear one example of each type of clothing at a time (i.e., one ring, one pair of boots, etc.), the game has no problem letting you wear multiple pieces/accessories that all have the same effect, thus making the overall percentage benefit a cumulative one.
 * Re Lex: The Dragon language is a Re Lex of English.
 * The Remnant: Multiple.
 * The Dark Brotherhood is all the way down to a remote sanctuary in a Skyrim forest, and they're short a Listener. Without a Listener, they don't know about any of the contracts that come from people praying to the Night Mother, the Dark Brotherhood's patron saint and bride of Sithis. They've had to abandon the five Tenets, the only rules the Brotherhood has ever had, and actively go out and look for people seeking their services, just to survive.
 * The Thieves' Guild is reduced to a leaky old tavern in falling-apart sewer ruins, surrounded by gutter-trash; they've lost every single resource and connection they'd ever had; they've lost the fear and respect they once had, instead being looked on as little more than thugs pretending to be civilized, and they're one flash of interest by the guards away from extinction.
 * The Blades have been all but wiped-out in the 200 years since the Oblivion Crisis. During the Great War between the Empire and the Aldermi Dominion most of their members were hunted down and killed by the Thalmor. Only a handful managed to survive the war and any remaining members live in hiding as they are still being hunted by the Thalmor.
 * The Empire itself is only a shadow of its former glory, with only three provinces remaining under its control. Three (Summerset Isle, Elsweyr and Valenwood) have seceded and have become part of what is now the Thalmor Dominion while the other two (Black Marsh and Hammerfell) have gone completely independent (Black March has also expanded north, conquering a fair quantity of what is left habitable in Morrowind). Out of the three provinces that the Empire still controls, only High Rock has been untouched by either war or natural disaster.
 * The Dovahkiin can further this decline by helping the Stormcloaks throw out the Imperial Legion and assassinating the Emperor


 * The Forsworn are little more than guerrilla warbands while their king is imprisoned and used to control the Forsworn.
 * The Renfield: Cicero. Vampires found in dungeons will usually have thralls on hand as well.
 * Retirony: Players can invoke this - Bandits and similar criminal NPCs will sometimes mention their hopes to buy a secluded island and retire.
 * Revenge Before Reason:  It gets even worse when you remember that your success is all that stands between the world and complete annihilation--and the Blades KNOW this!
 * Revive Kills Zombie: Not as such (healing spells do not affect undead), but both the Turn Undead spell effect (which causes undead to flee) and the Necromage perk (that makes spells more effective against undead) belong to the Restoration school of magic.
 * In a weird twist, if you are a vampire (and thus undead) yourself, the Necromage perk actually makes all of your buffs 25% stronger, including healing spells.
 * Reviving Enemy: Trolls and Frost Trolls will fall prone and appear dead when they have a small slither of health but continue regenerating their health... (although the fact they don't get knocked back's a bit of a giveaway). See I Surrender, Suckers for some honorable mentions.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Subverted: the game opens with the Empire appearing rather overzealous in their desire to execute members of the rebellion, and most of the PC's fellow prisoners are rebels, giving the player a far better initial impression of the Stormcloaks. However, as the game goes on, it becomes quite apparent that the Stormcloaks aren't as good as they seem, being rather racist, and there's several doubts cast on their leader, Ulfric Stormcloak, and his true goals in starting the rebellion, while the Empire is shown to not be completely irredeemable but flawed. The situation soon turns into a Grey and Grey Morality situation.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised: The Forsworn, though despite spending most of the game trying to kill you on sight, they're still arguably more sympathetic than their enemies in Markarth. They'd probably be more sympathetic if their modus operandi wasn't "Murder everyone we don't like because we once ruled this place thousands of years ago."
 * They also consort with Hagravens, conduct sinister blood rituals, and will attack the player on sight even if he or she has sworn to fight for their cause. All in all, not a nice bunch.
 * Riddle for the Ages: The Headless Horseman. Who is he? Why does he haunt the night? What does he want? The game offers no answers.
 * The game does offer some small clues. If you follow the horseman, he eventually leads you to Hamvir's Rest, a very remote graveyard located at the foot of the mountains southeast of Morthal. There's little of interest here, but on the northwest side of the graveyard is a tomb with an axe, a helmet, and a skull beside it (quite unusually, this skull cannot be picked up by the player), implying that this is where his remains are buried. The horseman occasionally speaks, and has unique dialogue; if he does not reach Hamvir's Rest before sunrise, he may comment, "Such an abrupt end to our game".
 * Road Cone:
 * Sheogorath's dialogue implies that he is
 * The player found 100 nirnroots for Sinderion, according to
 * Given that, it can be implied that
 * Romance Sidequest: The player character can get married if they so choose.
 * Fourth Date Marriage: Taken to ridiculous extremes. So long as you've spoken to the priest in Riften about marriage customs and have an amulet of Mara, you can get engaged to someone after having known them for all of an hour, and your sole interaction with them being beating them bloody in a bare-knuckle brawl. Most of the marriages are bit more complex than that, though some simply involve a fetch quest. The priest of Mara explains the custom: in the land of frigid blizzards, hungry trolls, tempermental giants, unpleasant undead, insane bears, and an endless supply of vampires, bandits, wizards, and wizard bandit vampires, the people of Skyrim don't really value long courtships - aside from the inherent lack of romanticism, one might easily kick the bucket before the courtship is complete. If you like someone, you tell them, and if they care enough about you, marriage ensues.
 * Rouge Angles of Satin: The game's conversations and book texts contain a number of errors of this nature. The "unofficial patch" mods list pages and pages of corrections.
 * Rubber Forehead Elves
 * Less so than in previous games, though--elves look much less human than they used to, with elongated skulls and strangely shaped and colored eyes.
 * Running Gag: M'aiq the Liar wanders the lands of Skyrim, telling tall tales as usual.
 * The Lusty Argonian Maid now has a second volume.
 * Your sweetrolls are still being stolen.
 * Fishy Sticks return, this time as a form of meditative stance used by... Sheogorath.


 * -|S=
 * Sadistic Choice: You encounter this trope multiple times.
 * The Scapegoat: in the Forsworn questchain in Markarth.
 * Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Thalmor are a fantasy variant. See A Nazi by Any Other Name above.
 * Scenery Porn: Par the course for a Bethesda game. Someone most definitely put a lot of work into the sky textures this time around. The water physics have also vastly improved. Case in point, this timelapse video. For a nice view, go to an iceberg in the middle of the northern sea, use Clear Skies, and marvel as you can see from Winterhold to Solitude.
 * Visiting Blackreach for the first time. You can spend a lot of time just trying to take in the sheer size of this cavern.
 * Eldergleam Sanctuary deserves a special mention too. It's a small grove inside a cave that demonstrates some of the game's most beautifully ambient qualities.
 * Head up toward High Hothgar (or possibly other mountainous areas) on a clear night - both the steps and the courtyard are ideal. Watch the pretty aurora and the twin moons creep majestically over the mountain peaks. Sky above, voice within, indeed.
 * Slave Revolt: The Argonians have occupied the province of Morrowind, where they were once kept as slaves by the Dunmer, and seceded from the empire (which didn't lift a finger to help them escape from slavery in Morrowind).
 * Schmuck Bait: There are many booby-trapped pedestals in dungeons throughout the game, and soon you'll learn to be distrusting of any goodie you see resting on one. However, at least once the Schmuck Bait trope gets subverted. In the quest to get the Jagged Crown back, there's a pedestal with a worthless iron dagger on it. Picking up the dagger triggers the pressure pad on the pedestal, but instead of firing some poison darts it makes a hidden passageway open up with a treasure chest beyond.
 * Meta-wise, there's the Dark Brotherhood questline, which can only be started by proving you're a person of questionable morality to begin with. You have to break into a young boy's home, trick him into thinking you're someone you're not, and kill someone in cold blood (arguably someone who deserves it). While it was possible to accidentally be contacted by the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion, there is no chance of it being an accident this time.
 * In the same questline you can pull it on one of your Imperial targets. You're supposed to stealthily kill him and then plant evidence on him of being an assassin. But if you have a good pickpocket skill (or are willing to save scum till it works) you can simply tell him you're going to kill him and the Emperor and then kill him in the open as long as the guards see him attack you first. And if the guards are stormcloaks, they'll merrily hop in and help you kill him.
 * One dungeon contains a word wall with a trap door rigged to send you plummeting down into an evil necromancer's lair. Another dungeon reverses this equation by having a lethal spike trap guarding a chest which is revealed to contain only useless junk. And beneath the spike trap?
 * There are a number of other places where a prominently-displayed item must be picked up to continue; in other places it's just helpful. Most if not all of these are placed to be very sure that the player won't be stuck without a key ability - for example, in several (linear) quests for the College of Winterhold, tomes of Flames and Frostbite will be provided just to make very very sure the player has access to fire and frost spells at the appropriate times.
 * Schrodinger's Gun: A very early one whose effects can be seen immediately at the beginning of the game. During the chaos of the dragon attacking the garrison at Helgen, you could run into the keep with either a Stormcloak lieutenant or an Imperial lieutenant. If you're with the Imperial, the keep is full of hostile Stormcloaks, if you're with the Stormcloak, it's full of hostile Imperials (including the female captain that ordered your execution without trial).
 * Also seen in the side quest In My Time Of Need. Some hired Redguard mercenaries have been sent to Skyrim to capture a certain Redguard woman, who is a wanted fugitive in Hammerfell. She tells the player that the mercenaries were hired by the Thalmor, who want her dead for speaking out against them. The mercenaries, on the other hand, tell the player that this woman betrayed Hammerfell and her hometown to the Thalmor during the war, leading to the city's defeat. The game doesn't really reveal who is telling truth, so it's up to the player to decide who to believe.
 * Scooby-Doo Hoax: Subverted in the Shroud Hearth Barrow sidequest. The "spirit" haunting the barrow is a treasure hunter who's invented a potion to make him look like a ghost to scare everyone away while he works out how to plunder the tomb...but after six months without finding a way in, he's gone crazy and thinks he really is a guardian spirit. However, the barrow is actually full of Draugr and skeletons... but they're deeper in than where the treasure hunter was.
 * Screw Destiny: An interesting example since no one is certain whether or not it's The Hero doing this or the Big Bad. Paarthurnax muses on the possibility that Alduin is the one acting against destiny by trying to end the world before its time. The vagueness of the prophecy concerning Alduin and the Dragonborn doesn't help matters. Throughout the game the Dragonborn always has the option of saying s/he doesn't care about destiny whenever someone brings it up. Despite being The Chosen One of destiny.
 * This is an actual element of the setting; there are certain individuals who are born who do not have destinies at all. These individuals are able to dramatically change history simply by existing. To date, all player characters in The Elder Scrolls series have been such. You can actually read a "Book of Fate" in Windhelm that is supposed to be a magical artifact that tells something about the future of whoever reads it, and that certain individuals only see blank pages because they have no fate. (its not clear if this is the truth or if the owner of the museum involved is just talking out his ass, especially as said owner is .)
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The reason for the Nords' rebellion? Outrage over the White-Gold Concordant, which outlawed the worship of Talos and basically made the Empire the Dominion's bitch.
 * Dragons will, on rare occasions, retreat when fighting the Dragonborn if they take enough damage.
 * Having a high stamina meter will let you do this in a pinch. Especially useful in for mages and in the event of a bear attack.
 * Can also be pulled off by the player if there's nearby door or passage that transitions to another area, and the enemies are too dumb to follow.
 * Dragur and other undead run away from the player when you use the Scourge of the Undead scroll. This also means that they can run right out of area and into the next one, or disappear completely.
 * Screw You, Thalmor!:
 * 'Tis a strong-willed player indeed who can resist the urge to run through, shout down, pincushion-ize, or incinerate the smug arrogant Thalmor one encounters on the roads. The Thalmor were designed to be hate-able.
 * Its not just restricted to the player, either. Walking into the center of the Jarl's court in Markarth, striding up to the Thalmor representative there and beheading him and his companions in full view of the entire court? You get charged forty septims for assault. The Nords really don't like the Thalmor.
 * Second-Hour Superpower: The Dragonborn gains the ability to use their first Shout only after completing one (relatively easy) dungeon and slaying one dragon (with significant back-up) in the storyline missions.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: The Dragonborn's defeat of Alduin is only temporary, as confirmed by Arngier. Alduin is, in fact, a god, and therefore will return at the end of the world, meaning all your efforts have only extended the time til the end of the world. The difference is that it will occur when the gods plan it to, not when the caprices of a power-drunk domineering dragon entrusted with that task call for it.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: Skipping the very first quest of the game that, among other things, unbinds your hands and allows you to pick up objects and interact with people. Link.
 * Sergeant Rock: Legate Rikke of the Imperial Legion.
 * Serial Killer: You need to catch one in
 * Serious Business: Mead in Skyrim is serious enough that there's a budding criminal empire based around it.
 * Implying that someone doesn't drink mead aka a 'milk drinker', is a fairly serious insult in Nord culture.
 * Shining City: Solitude, the Imperial capital of Skyrim, as far as Nord standards go. The seat of the High-King, a place of wealth, culture, and power, and a thriving merchant hub.
 * Shockwave Stomp: Giants and Frost Atronachs will do this to stun people. Giants do it with their clubs. Frost atros do it with their club-shaped arms. In each case, they're trying to pound you into the ground, not slamming the ground just to stun you; the shockwave is merely the result of a near miss (and a reminder, especially in the case of giants, that you really, really don't want to get hit).
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story: A remarkably short example: you find a roughly circular area where everything was torched. In the middle, a spell tome of fire cloak. Next to it, a burnt, doubled over corpse. This is one of four apprentices of the Mage College in Winterhold who recently left to perform experiments in the field. The other three can also be found; one as a corpse surrounded by skeevers, with a few scrolls of fury and calm (perhaps he tried one and found it too much a success to try the other), and the other two as (respectively) a frostbitten corpse and riddled with arrows, both as a result of failures to find ways to keep mead magically chilled.
 * In the icy, Arctic-like wasteland near Winterhold, there is a skeleton with its leg caught in a Bear Trap. Another skeleton is sitting next to it, looking towards the trapped one.
 * Shoplift and Die: While shopkeepers will draw weapons and attack (and report you for crimes) if you do take stuff in front of them, they finally don't put steal-able items in front of them so you don't accidentally bump the mouse or the analog stick and the game interprets this as theft. On the other hand, if you do steal from them and don't pay with your life... they might send thugs after you to "teach you a lesson", telling the thugs on their contract they don't have to kill you but the hirer doesn't mind if they do. That's right, the victim may try even harder than just attacking you to ensure you will die for theft even if it was something incredibly small and you paid off your bounty! Sometimes they'll even send thugs after you when there were no witnesses to prove it was you--or when they're dead!
 * Shout-Out: Numerous.
 * Slave Race: The Falmer spent many generations as slaves to the Dwemer, before rebelling and warring with them until, for unrelated reasons, the Dwemer all disappeared.
 * The Falmer have no qualms with giving the same treatments to humans. Human slaves can be found in the Falmer stronghold of Blackreach.
 * Smash Mook: Giants. All they can really do is swipe at you, stomp on you and hit you with their clubs, but you really don't want to be on the wrong end of those clubs.
 * Smug Snake: Thonar Silver-Blood. Even makes him no less unsympathetic, and seeing him get explosively atomised by Forsworn magic is immensely satisfying.
 * So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: On occasion, a quest will prevent a follower from tagging along. Sometimes, the follower will just announce that he/she will be waiting where you found them but sometimes, the follower just won't be there when you go through a door or talk to a certain person. This can be maddening if you have them carrying something important for you, like a weapon too heavy for you to carry or specialized gear you bring for specific situations. Also, it's not unheard of for the game to "lose" them. It's possible for followers to "die" on the way back to the meeting spot or to get glitched someplace else, which is the final nail in playing this trope straight.
 * Soft Water: Played with. Landing in water will break your fall to some extent but don't expect a quarter inch of water to save you from dying from a long fall. It has to be deep enough for you to swim in at least, and maybe even deeper if you want to survive longer falls.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: At the end of Sheogorath's quest: "Feel free to keep the Wabbajack. As a symbol of my... Oh, just take the damn thing."
 * Space Compression: With a little bit of Thriving Ghost Town. Major battles are fought by dozens of men rather than, say, hundreds, and the cities aren't exactly huge. These are mostly Acceptable Breaks From Reality, though, and pretty par for the course for an Elder Scrolls game by now anyway.
 * Spanner in the Works: You. Multiple times.
 * Thieves Guild:
 * Civil War:
 * Spell My Name with an "S": If you have subtitles enabled, a lot of characters' names are misspelled. Special mention goes to Sanguine's mortal avatar, whose last name has been spelled "Guenvere", "Gueyenne", and even "Guinevere" when it's supposed to be "Guevenne".
 * Spikes of Doom: Everywhere. You can't swing a dead skeever without hitting a spike trap in some dungeons.
 * Spikes of Villainy: The daedra and daedric armor. Falmer and Forsworn equipment are also pretty spiky and evil-looking; the Falmer don't seem able to make huts that aren't covered in spikes. (But then, the Falmer do make everything out of chaurus chitin, and chaurus are spiky by nature.)
 * The Squadette: Gender makes very little difference in most professions, but standard nameless town guards or Imperial/Stormcloak soldiers have about a 1:7 ratio of women to men.
 * Sssssnaketalk: Averted! Argonians have a slight rasp to their voices, but otherwise speak completely normally this time. They don't even mutter "The prey approaches!" anymore if they don't like you. They sometimes hiss in combat, but it lacks words.
 * Stealth Based Mission: Ideally, most of the Thieves Guild missions are set up to be completed by stealth and guile rather than brute force; enemies are often much stronger than you can take on in multiples at your current level and are better off backstabbed or avoided entirely. However, as Black-Briar herself puts it, all that matters is results, so you could run around in the open stabbing enemies if you feel like it.
 * Stealth Pun: Orichalcum is now associated with Orcs.
 * Stop Helping Me!: Barbas can be a potential companion, and makes for a reasonably effective tank, especially as he cannot be killed. However, he stays extremely close to you, often pushing you around, and as long as he's in your party you can't do anything stealthy, and he reports crimes you commit. Seeing as how he's Vile's conscience, and he wants to be reunited with him, this makes sense.
 * Storming the Castle: The second main plotline (the Civil War) culminates in you doing this to your opposing faction. Also, the good path of
 * Story-Driven Invulnerability: Alduin. Also happens for many, many others, either for the whole game or until their parts are done. This is particularly vexing after the civil war plot is resolved; you are as-good-as-told to find the remaining enemy camps and wipe them out, but each one will be overseen by an "Essential" enemy leader who cannot be killed.
 * Stupidity Is the Only Option: One quest that involves tracking down the corpses of a fallen expedition into a dwemer ruin includes the objective to find and activate the dwemer defenses, namely their golems, which you then must fight to escape. However, justified -- in a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment, the player killed the giant spider that was stopping the falmer from invading Markarth from below, so reactivating the defences is necessary to prevent this from now happening.
 * In both the Companions' quest and the College of Winterhold quest, you have to activate something that would lock you into the room with no way to get out without a scripted scene. There is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid this, as the only way to proceed is to use the event flag to open the doors to go further.
 * Same with the Thieves' Guild / Nightinggale questline, where
 * This ties in nicely with Story-Driven Invulnerability for some questlines. In the Winterhold quest you encounter May also count as You Can't Thwart Stage One.
 * Succession Crisis: The death of Skyrim's old High King led to this. The High King is supposed to be elected from among the nine Jarls, but with a civil war going on nobody is willing to convene the Moot to hold the election.
 * Suddenly Voiced: Later
 * Suicidal Overconfidence: aside from what we've grown to expect, occasionally NPCs will try to pick a fight with you, accepting which starts hand-to-hand combat. While all this is by no means unusual, said NPCs will pick fights with you even after it becomes known nationwide that you're the Dragonborn - which means you've killed at least one huge dangerous dragon. This doesn't seem to faze them. They'll also attempt unarmed challenges with a Khajit character, even though Khajit have huge claws.
 * Gameplay and Story Integration: . It is also likely that dragons understand some amount of the language spoken in Skyrim and switch between this and their own language when speaking to humans, as many people unfamiliar in a language often do.
 * Summon Bigger Fish: As noted above under Stupidity Is the Only Option, clearing out one dwemer ruin of the falmer that would invade the connecting city requires the player to activate the dwemer golems, which will them wipe them out. The golems, at least, will stay in the ruin.
 * Gameplay and Story Integration: . It is also likely that dragons understand some amount of the language spoken in Skyrim and switch between this and their own language when speaking to humans, as many people unfamiliar in a language often do.
 * Summon Bigger Fish: As noted above under Stupidity Is the Only Option, clearing out one dwemer ruin of the falmer that would invade the connecting city requires the player to activate the dwemer golems, which will them wipe them out. The golems, at least, will stay in the ruin.

""M'aiq carries two weapons, to be safe. What if one breaks? That would be most unlucky." "M'aiq is very practical. He has no need for Mysticism." "It does not matter to M'aiq how strong or smart one is. It only matters what one can do.""
 * -|T=
 * Take a Fourth Option: In the quest "With Friends Like These..." you are locked up in a cabin by the Dark Brotherhood and may only leave when you kill either a Khajit assassin, a Nord mercenary, or an insufferable old noblewoman. Or all three.
 * Takes One to Kill One: The only way to permanently kill a dragon is for another dragon (regardless of whether it has the body of a mortal or that of a dragon) to devour its soul.
 * Take That Player: M'aiq the liar reappears once more.

""Nords are so serious about beards. So many beards. M'aiq thinks they wish they had glorious manes like Khajiit." "M'aiq loves the people of Skyrim. Many interesting things they say to each other." "M'aiq saw a mudcrab the other day. Filthy things.""
 * Take That Us: In addition to telling off fans, M'aiq even takes cracks at the developers.


 * The scatterbrained court mage of Riften may babble that "once, you could find calipers all over Tamriel, but not anymore!" Which is yet another thing M'aiq can comment on as well.
 * Take Up My Sword:
 * Take Your Time: No matter what you're doing or how urgent it seems to be, you can put it on hold and go off and spend months of game time doing something else. Delphine will wait patiently for you to attend a party while you're busy working your way through the ranks at the Thieves Guild or the Mage College. The only thing that seems to be time sensitive is how long your followers will wait for you before returning home.
 * Team Pet: Lis the frostbite spider, in the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary.
 * Teleport Spam: One draugr Bonus Boss does this.
 * As does Orchendor, the priest of Peryite at the end of The Only Cure.
 * So does when you fight him.
 * Unless you have a spell that dispels the guy's magic. It's a simple invisibility spell, but he uses it to appear as though he teleports.
 * Temple of Doom: The Nordic tombs and Dwemer ruins.
 * Theme Music Power-Up: Sometimes when you fight a dragon, the main theme starts playing. When you defeat the dragon during themesong, it seems like this trope.
 * Theme Tune Cameo: A variation. The lyrics for "Dragonborn" can be found in-game in the book Songs of Skyrim, along with a translation.
 * Ironically, the tune that goes with the lyrics has been lost to time in-universe. You know, that tune you have probably heard a hundred times over.
 * They Walk Among Us: Plenty of examples. You can be talking to a character and have no idea that you're conversing with a vampire, werewolf or daedra. There are ways to root them out, such as casting Detect Life or going into quests which expose them, but going by appearance, sound and behavior, you'd never know.
 * Thieves' Guild: It's not doing well in this game.
 * Third Person Person: The entire Khajiit race.
 * Time Skip: By far the largest one so far. With Oblivion taking place only forty years after Arena (the very first game), the previous four games were extremely close together in the Elder Scrolls timeline.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Many bandits and criminals who get involved with the Dragonborn. Here are examples:
 * Arvel the Swift in Bleak Falls Barrow is probably the first user of this trope you encounter. After you save his life and free him from the web he's encased in, he'll refuse to hand over the Golden Claw. He'll run recklessly ahead into a cave that at this point has proven to house all sorts of dangers, and potentially pisses off someone who was skilled enough to kill a Giant Spider. Even if you don't kill him, he'll inevitably awaken all the Draugr up ahead, who will happily do the deed themselves.
 * In Ravenscar Hollow, you find a raider in a cage who begs you to free him from the Hagravens who imprisoned him. After dealing with the Hagravens and freeing him, he attempts to mug you. The one who just took on three Hagravens. As he wears noting but rags. And he doesn't attack you until he's said he's going to.
 * Similarly, the mad necromancer in Rannveig's Fast smugly explains how he's going to kill you while slowly walking away with his back to you. The number of players who let him finish his speech is likely very low.
 * Following the Thieves Guild storyline, some bandits in come under this.
 * The random 'your money or your life' type of thieves you encounter in the wilderness. Sometimes they see you fight and kill a dragon and then decide its a good idea to attempt to rob the person who just killed the most dangerous being of Skyrim.
 * You can tell them that they're literally not worth your time. Despite seeing what you could do, they get mad and attack you anyways.
 * A female dark elf in a dungeon asks you to help her get the way cleared for her in a dungeon, and makes you do all the work. The dungeon is full of undead and dangerous traps, and she has only basic clothes and maybe a low grade dagger. After you clear the path for her, she rushes into the main chamber, shouting "It's my treasure! Mine!", and runs right into the most deadly trap in the dungeon. And the "treasure" would have been pretty much useless to her anyways.
 * One of the wizards at the college attempts to recreate the circumstances that led to the extinction of the dwemer... and vanishes from reality.
 * Took a Level In Badass: All races, especially Bosmer, Argonians and Khajiit.
 * Mudcrabs are bulkier, hardier, hide buried in riverbeds before bursting out to attack, and can inflict noticeable damage this time around.
 * Finishing moves and Dual-Wielding make conventional combat significantly more brutal than before and offensive spells now include Sith-style chain lightning, setting yourself on fire to burn anyone who gets close, and hurling yard-long icicles that impale people!
 * Took a Level in Jerkass: The Altmer (high elves) go from snobbish and stuck up to truly astounding levels of dickery, even before you include the Great War and the White-Gold Concordat. For example, they've annexed the nation of the Wood Elves, making them into indentured servants, and made the Khajiit's nation into a vassal. Also, if you kill one of their kind, just one, even if he just tried to destroy the world, they'll put out a hit out on you.
 * That describes the Thalmor, the government of Alinor/Summerset Isle and the Aldmeri Dominion. Altmer not hailing from the Dominion tend to be slightly less dickish, if for no other reason that they aren't true Altmer to the Thalmor.
 * The Blades. There are only two in game, but for people whose purpose is to serve the Dragonborn they have an odd tendency to treat you as a lackey, making demands and presenting ultimatums unless you follow those demands.
 * Town with a Dark Secret:.
 * You've also got the Forsworn, who are totally not killing people in the street
 * Trauma-Induced Amnesia: A priestess claims that the Dovahkiin has repressed meories of  Whether or not this is true is up to the player to decide.
 * Treacherous Quest-Giver: Many.
 * Treasure Map: You can filch some off bandits, leading you to hidden chests.
 * Try Everything: One of the two ways you find out an alchemy ingredient's properties is tasting it to learn the first property. The other way is by combining it willy-nilly with whatever else you have on hand; the game helps you with this by keeping track of combinations you have already tried and greying them out.
 * Twenty Bear Asses: Temba Wide-Arm goes halfway towards a literal example, requiring you to bring her ten bear pelts.
 * -|U=
 * The Un-Reveal: Your initiation into the Dark Brotherhood consists of you being presented with three hooded figures, you're told one of them has a contract for their death and must carry it out, deciding which one you think is the one with the contract. However, you're never told who it actually was and you succeed regardless of who you kill, as the test was about your willingness to carry out the order and not who you slayed. Given that you're allowed to kill all three and they all have reasons for others to want them dead, it's entirely possible all three had contracts, or even none of them. This is the Dark Brotherhood after all.
 * Unexpected Genre Change: The Thieves' Guild has a few missions in which stealth (the lynchpin of a Thief-type character) is not the main focus. Of note is the mission "Dampened Spirits", which is basically you going into a cellar to eliminate rats. You're not sneaking or breaking in (in fact, you have to get permission from the proprietor to even begin the quest) and combat with the spiders and skeevers which infest the underground caves is almost impossible to avoid. Even worse is the Wake Up Call Boss at the end of the level, Hamelin, who is difficult to sneak on because alerting his pets alerts him as well, and at low levels, he can kill you in a matter of seconds.
 * Ungrateful Bastard:.
 * Unperson: The Thalmor are attempting to do this to Talos (and by extension Shor/Lorkhan). The ramifications have Apocalypse How - Metaphysical Annihilation severity.
 * Unstoppable Rage: The Orc racial power, Berserker Rage, doubles weapon damage and halves damage received.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nothing weird about that guy walking around with a ghost who talks loudly about how they are off to murder and how they both work for the Dark Brotherhood. Even if said ghost and its master are currently walking through a town populated entirely by.
 * Averted with the Thieves Guild armor, which many guards will remark on and say they recognize.
 * If a dragon attacks a city and kills a person other than a guard before you defeat it, everyone focuses on the dead person, and not the fact that you.
 * Averted with some of the unique or high-end pieces of equipment (e.g. daedric artifacts and dragon bone armor); people will sometimes comment on them when you walk past.
 * Including daedric artifacts that cannot be seen on the Dovahkiin for reasons of being a reusable soul gem.
 * Unwinnable by Design: Can happen if you waste too much time in the prologue, as after a certain amount of time elapses from when you start following Hadvar and heading for the Helgen Keep, the dragon will single you out and start attacking you and you only, which can result in a short and brutal execution as your hands are still bound and he can position himself in such a way that the only escape is through him. Be especially quick when in front of the Keep, as the dragon will land there and immediately torch you dead should you not run the hell away inside the keep.
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy: Makes sense when you think about it. Alduin is there to kill the Dragonborn (i.e. you). Once he figures out which one of the scurrying mortal meatbags is his target…
 * Useless Useful Spell: Averted in general. Just about every perk, spell, and shout has its uses, including seemingly useless ones. Deadly Shield Bash, for example, is not very useful compared to killing things with your dedicated weapons, but for mages who use shields it turns them into an effective backup weapon if magicka runs out, and can serve as a workable backup for fighters who find themselves on the wrong side of a Disarm shout. Similarly, Elemental Fury is not terribly useful for someone with an enchanted weapon, but some particularly nasty weapons (i.e. Valdr's Lucky Dagger) don't count as enchanted.
 * Useless Useful Stealth: Averted with a vengence in this game, in response to criticism to Oblivion. With a character focused on Sneaking, you can avoid setting off traps in dungeons, make no noise even when running, make less noise regardless of armor weight, execute silent combat rolls, and take advantage of the highest damage multipliers in the game. (Bows will do three times normal damage, one-handed weapons six-times, and daggers fifteen times as much!) If you master pickpocketing, you can sneak up behind someone and steal all their armor and weapons without them ever noticing you. When combined with other perks, such as Silent Casting, Illusion spells, and the ability to set Rune traps and conjure minions from several yards away, you can take care of threats without even being in the room. And even if you are caught, the Shadow Warrior perk allows you to run away, take a knee, and force the enemy to lose your location.
 * The Usual Adversaries: Bandits. Almost everyone sends you to fight bandits eventually. There's almost always bandits involved.
 * Playing the trope even more straight are the Falmer, hideous blind mutant morlocks that hide underground (usually in Dwemer ruins). They're Exclusively Evil, and just plain stinky and nasty in general.
 * The Usual Adversaries: Bandits. Almost everyone sends you to fight bandits eventually. There's almost always bandits involved.
 * Playing the trope even more straight are the Falmer, hideous blind mutant morlocks that hide underground (usually in Dwemer ruins). They're Exclusively Evil, and just plain stinky and nasty in general.


 * -|V=
 * Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The Silver Hand is a group of werewolf-hunters who don't discriminate between the non-evil werewolves and the ones that threaten villagers. They're also really brutal to the werewolves they do capture. One of their bases is essentially a werewolf skinning and tanning facility. For that matter, they're also hostile to you even if you're not a werewolf. If you wander into one of their forts by accident, they'll kill you anyway. So they're basically bandits who like killing werewolves for sport, rather than because it's the right thing to do.
 * One of the common insults enemies use on you if you're a Khajiit is "You'll make a fine rug, cat!" - The Silver Hand apparently follow through.
 * Vendor Trash: There's a lot of useless items scattered all throughout the game world that you can pick up and stash in your inventory. Pretty much any object that you could realistically pick up with one hand, you can take along with you. You can sell them off to willing merchants, though the majority of these things are worth no more than a few coins (even if, realistically speaking, said items should be quite valuable, such as silverware.)
 * You can also make vendor trash. Alchemy recipes that provide both harmful and beneficial effects are generally useless in combat (i.e. a potion that buffs a magical school but drains magicka) but still sell pretty well. Anything enchanted with petty or lesser souls only really serves to boost the sell value and to train enchantment, even with high-level enchanting.
 * Vestigial Empire: Ever since the Septim dynasty was killed off in Oblivion's main story arc, the Empire has almost totally collapsed in on itself. After two hundred years of turmoil, only the provinces of Cyrodiil, High Rock, Orsinium and Skyrim remain under Imperial rule (and Morrowind, but just how much of a Zoidberg that is is unclear).
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Oh my, yes.
 * You can steal from NPCs or even kill their friends and family and they'll send thugs or assassins, or come after you themselves. You're free to retaliate as you wish.
 * As long as they aren't marked essential to quests, you're free to kill anyone you like, any way you like, and with decent Sneak you can do it in the middle of a town without getting caught. A particular Butt Monkey for this abuse is the Talos priest in Whiterun, connected to no quests, has no significant purpose, but he's quite noisy and never shuts up. So, take cover behind the fence at the Companion household so you're out of sight, take out your bow...
 * Or with high enough sneak, creep up behind him and impale or decapitate him.
 * Sacrifice your spouse to a demon god.
 * A mod that allows the killing of children makes this even worse.
 * There are bunnies in the game. Yes, they are cute and harmless. And, yes, you can still kill them. There's even a player stat called "Bunnies Slaughtered"
 * What's a good way to level up Conjuring and Destruction skills at the same time? Raise corpses or summon familiars... and kill them yourself.
 * You can continuously heal and burn people (most notably the Torture Victims in ), leaving them in agony but unable to die.
 * Three words: Fus. Ro. Dah.
 * Demonstrated rather well by an X-Play segment called "Wake-Up Call at the Riverside Inn", where the player wandered around the inn and Fus Ro Dah'd all the sleeping patrons.
 * And of course let's not forget blasting your follower off of cliffs. Happy landing, Lydia!
 * It's mentioned that giants are peaceful beings who will leave you alone as long as you do the same, just keep your distance and don't bug their mammoths, and some in the wild will just look at you then continue on their way. However, alchemy levels up faster the stronger the potions you make are, and Giant's Toe is one of the most potent alchemy ingredients in the game. Furthermore mammoths are some of the very few non-human creatures who yield Grand Souls for enchanting. You can figure out the rest yourself.
 * Characters flagged as essential can't be killed. That means that you can just keep on hurting them as much as you want, so long as you're willing to pay the trivial forty septim penalty for assault. Nothing like announcing your arrival in Solitude by locating Erikur and setting him on fire. Again.
 * Video Game Caring Potential: Certain quests requires you to go out and find closure for people (usually by finding the corpse of whoever it is they're looking for). These are entirely optional and have no bearing whatsoever on the story, and many of them have rewards of little value. Other quests can play out differently depending on your response or (in the case of Blood On Ice) what you do.
 * A good example is Finding Reyda, where at the end you can either flat out tell Narfi how his sister has died and destroy what's left of the poor man's hope, or lie to him and let him hope that he'll see his sister again. Your response has no bearing on how the quest plays out, so whether you want to kick the man while he's down or lift him up is entirely up to you.
 * Or the player can join the Dark Brotherhood and put poor Narfi out of his misery.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: Some players have trouble grasping the difference between knowledge of something and understanding of it. This concept is necessary to understand how shouts are learned and how Dragonrend works. It's all built on the philosophical concept of qualia.
 * Villainous Rescue: The dragon at the beginning shows up just in time to save your character from being executed.
 * Visible Silence: At one point, after freeing, your response to one of his lines is "..."
 * Also, "(Remain Silent)" is still a speech option in the Dark Brotherhood questline.

"And the scrolls/have foretold/of black wings in the cold/that when brothers wage war come unfurled!/ALDUIN/Bane of Kings,/ancient shadow unbound,/with a hunger to swallow the world!"
 * -|W=
 * Was Once a Man: The Augur of Dunlain is a talking vortex of magic connected to some sort of place it can summon shades from. It also is able to sense intent and see through time to some extent. The Augur was once a student of the college who was overzealous in his pursuit of the deepest arcane lore.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: The concept of mortality and temporary. See Brown Note above.
 * We Are Everywhere: What the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild end up becoming. The Thieves Guild will gain agents, fences and allies in every major hold, and part of your job throughout the questline is to put the fear of God into people by breaking into their houses, framing them, or destroying their assets. And in the Dark Brotherhood, you single-handedly prove that no one, is safe from them, and to drive the trope home, random guards will whisper "Hail Sithis" as you pass them.
 * Welcome to Corneria: The guards have enough possible lines that they tend not to get repetitive on normal encounters walking around, but actively speaking to one can rapidly get repetitive, especially when every guard in Skyrim will tell you that they took an arrow in the knee.
 * And then there's the shopkeepers, who you will speak to repeatedly. "Some may call this junk, me I call them treasures."
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Thalmor, at least to non-Dunmer elves. Altmer and Bosmer view the creation of Mundus as an act of malevolence by Lorkhan. After all, Mundus is a cruel, harsh land and the cause of all mortal suffering. To them, escaping Mundus is escaping suffering. However, the Thalmor seen in the game generally seem to care only about Elven superiority, suggesting that this is not public (or that they don't care for destroying Mundus), even to most Thalmor themselves.
 * Wham! Episode: Arguably the entire game. Let's recap.
 * And on the other hand, . On the other hand, it's highly debatable if the latter two actions are at all good.
 * What Did I Do Last Night?: One quest starts this way when you wake up in a temple in Markarth after being challenged to a drinking contest in an entirely different city.
 * An entirely different city over a hundred miles away after proposing marriage, stealing a goat and selling it to a Giant to pay for the ring, and molesting the temple statuary while making as big a mess as possible. If you wander for a while, you'll meet a guy who you offered 10 000 gold for going into a bandit camp to steal a hat.
 * Considering the fact that your drinking partner was, there's a very simple explanation for this.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: When Dragons fight each other, they're really just having an intense verbal debate... in a language that creates fire from nothing and can slow time, just by saying the words for 'Fire' or 'Time'.
 * What the Hell, Player?: The Greybeards will call the player out on, especially after all the help he gave. The Greybeards will also refuse to help the player any further, seal the entrance to their fortress with an unpickable lock, and if you manage to get out onto the courtyard while one of them is meditating, they might hit you with a Thu'um shout and throw you off the side of the mountain.
 * A couple followers will say this whenever you do something they disagree with and can even abandon or attack you (or both) if you do something particularly heinous.
 * Jarl Balgruuf will deliver this if you side with the Stormcloaks and sack Whiterun.
 * All of the Jarls you overthrow in the war will give you this treatment if you visit them in exile. Their kids and housecarls are all there too. This does get noticeably weird when you do drop off bounties they hired you for. You are a good-for-nothing traitor one line and then suddenly it's a pleasure doing business with you the next.
 * Paarthunaax actually gives a surprisingly subtle one to the player if you chat with him about the nature of being a dragon. He notes that dragons have an innate desire to dominate, kill, and destroy, and that being a Dragonborn, so do you. You feel those same urges to conquer and kill and steal and amass power too.
 * Who's Laughing Now?: The situation between Morrowind and Black Marsh. The former has been raiding the latter for slaves for centuries, but now that Red Mountain has erupted, devastating a large portion of Morrowind, Black Marsh is now invading them.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Frostbite Spiders for Farkas in the final Companions story quest. He points out that this is due to a close encounter with them in an earlier quest.
 * Wicked Witch: Witches appear as enemies, but Hagravens fit the typical description a tad better. The Glenmoril witches arguably count when you learn what they did.
 * With Lyrics: The theme tune of Skyrim is essentially (in the words of the creators) a "barbarian choir singing to the Elder Scrolls theme in the draconic language" (with an English version of the song also written for the audience's benefit), supposedly the prophecy of the Dragonborn:


 * Wizard Duel: If your skill with magic gets high enough, a "challenger" will appear at some point in a civilized area and challenge you to a Duel to the Death with magic. But there's nothing to stop you from simply FUS RO DAH'ing him over Castle Dour or drawing a warhammer and crushing his skull the instant the duel begins. Or even better, just running away and letting the guards deal with him. Apparently no one warned the challenger that Nords take a dim view of someone tossing fireballs inside the hold walls....
 * Wizarding School: The College of Winterhold.
 * A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Occasionally you will come across a group of bandits or thugs dressed as Imperial Soldiers claiming to be in some special operation and demand a "fine" for intruding into a "restricted area" (i.e. their modus operandi for robbery). You'll know their jig is up by the hesitancy of their words, or better yet, . Another clue are some.
 * Worf Had the Flu: If you choose to  you can later hear some guards say that they could have done the same thing but they were sick that day.
 * The World Is Not Ready: What the Monk from the Psijic Order says about  Apparently the Psijics are keepers of such things.
 * Worthy Opponent: The first dragon you fight will actually compliment about the bravery of the Dovahkiin and how noble it is to be brave before the final moments of his life.
 * If you choose to kill, her final words to you are to compliment you on your skills.
 * Wreaking Havok: Use the Unrelenting Force shout in a room full of loose items (tankards, food, etc.). Go on, it'll be fun!
 * Bones from defeated skeletons will bounce off the floor and damage you if you sprint into them.
 * Extra-fun if you shout all three words, as you can include people and creatures in that list!
 * Enemies ragdoll when they die (or get hit with enough force, like a destruction spell with Impact or FUS RO DAH) and can get knocked around by objects, including swung weapons. Thus, sideways swings with weapons that kill an enemy can knock their bodies aside, even off ledges and over railings. Nothing quite like literally batting an enemy out of your way with a warhammer.
 * Guards (and presumably anyone) can be clubbed by a giant and launched into orbit. video proof.
 * Dawnbreaker, a sword that you receive as a quest item, has the power to cause an explosion that throws literally everything (items, enemies, people, dogs) around in a blaze of insanity.
 * The bones of dead dragons will go flying when hit with a fireball, firebolt, or resurrect spell.
 * Go on, use Courage indoors. It is a non-damaging buff spell, and yet the area of effect makes things fly off the shelves.
 * Wrestler in All of Us: One of the two hand to hand finishing moves is a chokeslam
 * The 1.5 patch added in several more finishing moves, including a suplex, a three-quarter nelson choke and what appears to be a powerbomb. Apparently the Dovahkiin has been watching Monday Night Raw.
 * Wretched Hive: Riften, home of the Thieves' Guild. You know you're gonna need a shower from the filth that permeates the city when the first thing that happens upon approaching the entrance is you getting shaken down by a guard excising a "visitor's tax". (Incidentally, the Thieves' Guild is damn near extinct. The place is so much of a hellhole that the corruption continues anyway.)
 * Markarth, a mining town run by the corrupt Silver-Blood family and former site of a native rebellion whose surviving members imprisoned in the mine totally aren't murdering people in the street in broad daylight.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: The Stormcloaks initially believe that the Dragon at Helgen is controlled by the Legion, while the Legion believe that the Stormcloaks woke up a Dragon to aid them in the war. Both believe its far too much of a coincidence that it showed up right as Ulfric was about to be executed. The Blades think the dragon was awakened by the Thalmor and meant to prolong the civil war by saving Ulfric's life. All of them are wrong. It showed up because of you.
 * The moment you enter Windhelm, you see a few locals accusing an innocent Dunmer of being a spy for the Empire, simply because she's a Dunmer. It's intensely racist, but looking upstairs in the New Gnisis Cornerclub (a Dunmer-run Tavern) reveals the owner actually is an Imperial spy (or just collects Imperial memorabilia).


 * -|X=
 * Xanatos Gambit: The White Gold Concordat. The Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion ended with the Thalmor government demanding that the Empire ban Talos worship throughout the Empire. If the Empire refuses, fine--the war would continue and it'd end with a Pyrrhic Victory for either side. If they agree, they piss off several of their outlying human nations (especially the Nords of Skyrim) and ensure civil war throughout the Empire for decades, keeping it weak. This is explicitly outlined in several Dossiers you can steal in the main quest (especially the one on Ulfric Stormcloak) in which the Thalmor say that they don't want either side to win the war just yet...not until they've weakened themselves considerably.
 * The Skyrim Civil War itself is this for : if the Empire wins,  . If the Stormcloaks win,.

"Guard: Orcish armor? Used to have a set of that. Ugly and strong, like those who forged it."
 * -|Y=
 * You All Meet in a Cell: As per Elder Scrolls tradition, but this time you actually do learn why you're imprisoned. You accidentally stumbled into an Imperial ambush while crossing the border, being mistaken for a rebel Stormcloak.
 * Of course, now the Noodle Incident becomes "why were you crossing the border?" instead of "why were you thrown in jail?" Also, both Imperials and Stormcloaks will assume you were a criminal before then, but both sides will pardon it. General Tullius will say he's sure it must have been a misunderstanding (and it's hard to tell if he's being serious or just deadpan), but Ulfric Stormcloak seems convinced that you were a hardened career criminal before that ambush.
 * The comment from Hadvar for your selected race does give one option to fill in blanks for most of the races (and some later dialog trees, unrelated, give you options to choose from about your past). To wit:
 * Argonian: You're believed to be an emigrant from Black Marsh to work in one of Skyrim's maritime industries.
 * Breton: It's surmised you are on the run from a badly executed court intrigue plot in High Rock.
 * Dark Elf: Morrowind has gone to hell, and you're fleeing for a hopefully better alternative.
 * High Elf: You're either a stray Thalmor, or considered an anti-Thalmor emigrant.
 * Khajiit: Thought to be a trader who got themselves in trouble with their badly timed border crossing.
 * Imperial: Like the Dark Elves, Cyrodiil has gone to hell (or has been implied to be not much better than Skyrim), and you're implied to be seeking a relatively better (or at least different) alternative.
 * Nord: Left ambiguous, but you have apparently decided to return to the land of your birth, at the worst possible time.
 * Orc: You're thought to be a member of (or wanting to join or rejoin) one of the Orc strongholds in Skyrim.
 * Redguard: Much like the Argonians, you are surmised to either be a sailor from Stros M'kai (the setting of Redguard) or a mercenary looking for work in Skyrim.
 * Wood Elf: Thought to be an emigrant from Valenwood for reasons unknown but possibly related to the Thalmor occupation.
 * You Fool!: Arvel the Swift says this to Dovahkiin after being rescued from a spider web...by the Dovahkiin, who will have inevitably killed most of his buddies and the giant poisonous spider that was about to eat him. He'll typically get maybe three steps before the Dovahkiin blasts/bashes/bellows him to death and loots his body. Failing that, he'll run straight into a room full of zombies and Hilarity Ensues. Even if he miraculously escapes the zombies, the pressure plate-activated, spring-loaded spike grate will kill him for sure.
 * And if that doesn't kill him either, he runs straight into a corridor of swinging axes!
 * That might also be a case of Death by Irony.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Standard operating procedure among the Daedric deities. Odds are before their quest ends you'll be killing some of their followers because they decided you're more worthy of their attention. One of them does so, then sics some enemies on you as a parting gift.
 * Not counting the Daedric Princes, many of the people you previously helped will try to pull this on you. Arvel The Swift is probably the first (if the Draugr failed to kill him), others include  in Lagashbur,   in Solitude, and   which also doubles as He Knows Too Much.
 * Your Head Asplode: Among the more brutal finishers in the game is the werewolf's double-claw power attack, where they lift the poor target off the ground and pop their head like a grape.
 * You Know I'm Black, Right?: Some people in Windhelm tend to talk vaguely about "damn Dark Elves and Argonians" ... even if your character is a Dark Elf or an Argonian. And bordering on Too Dumb to Live when playing as an orc specializing in heavy armor;


 * Your Soul Is Mine: Done by you. The central concept of being The Chosen One is that you can absorb the souls of dragons to grow in strength. You can also learn the Soul Trap spell or enchant items with the same ability, allowing you to draw the souls of slain enemies into soul gems.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Empire sees Ulfric Stormcloak as a vicious, racist extremist who abused his Thu'um ability to murder Skyrim's High King, while the Stormcloaks see him as a valiant hero, fighting to protect the Nord way of life and deserving of the crown, who legitimately defeated the prior High King in a lawful challenge.
 * Taken even further with the Forsworn, who want revenge for the massacre of their people at Markarth and independence for the Reach, but were seen as terrorists by the Stormcloaks.

"Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin Naal ok zin los vahriin Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal Ahrk fin norok paal graan Fod nust hon zindro zaan Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal"
 * -|YMMV=
 * Alternative Character Interpretation:
 * The Empire of Tamriel ranges from the last bastion of goodness against the Aldmeri Dominion, to an oppressive foreign power that doesn't belong in Skyrim, to a fractured shell that deserves to collapse until someone worthy can reunite the continent.
 * Is the Emperor a craven appeaser, who doesn't care what happens to his people as long as he can hold some power for himself? Is he a good man and a political realist, who signed the White-Gold Concordat to buy time for the Legion to recover? Is he simply an unremarkable person in an age that demands heroes?
 * Is Ulfric Stormcloak a revolutionary hero who wants to restore Skyrim to its former glory, a power-hungry tyrant interested only in taking the throne, or a Stupid Good rebel who doesn't realize the long-term consequences of his actions? Just how controlled was he by ? Is he the kind of guy who thinks that, for anyone who died fighting the Thalmor, it was their own fault for being too weak and un-Nord-like to survive?
 * Amaund Motierre.
 * Paarthurnax. Is this a case of Blue and Orange Morality, or perhaps of a forsaken namesake?
 * This trope also counts for Paarthurnax' arch enemies, the Blades. Are they indeed the heroic order they used to be, or are they just an embittered remnant of an age long gone? Is their hate for Paarthurnax reasonable or are they just too narrow minded to see beings can change?
 * The Graybeards. Indecisive wishy-washys who sit out every conflict, or guardians of a power that's too dangerous to let be abused? Or overly cautious guardians of a power that is too dangerous to let be abused but too useful to not use at all?
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced:
 * DLC was announced on May first, 2012.
 * The announcement of the new engine, and its features, caused plenty of praise. For starters, talking with NPCs no longer freezes the world, and the person you're talking with still goes around their business and walks around, in addition to more detailed talking animations with full motion and better facial expressions.
 * Holy Shit! What is this? Forged in God's very flames!
 * The Oblivion-style level scaling isn't going to be used.
 * Played for laughs on the InsideXbox show SentUAMessage. After getting lots of questions about Elder Scrolls V, the two hosts are glad the questions about it are gonna be over when the game comes out... Then one of them brings up the fact that people will be asking about Elder Scrolls VI right from the get go.
 * M'aiq the Liar is still alive after two hundred years, and will serenade you with his sonorous falsehoods all you like should you find him.
 * After completing a few Dark Brotherhood quests,
 * The much larger pool of random lines and voice actors (and the fact that said voice actors are not keyed to a particular race and gender, mostly) severely reduces the incidence of Talking to Himself and Welcome to Corneria.
 * Beards. They're baaaaaack!
 * Predictably, M'aiq snarks about the fanbase being happy they can give their characters beards.
 * With the 1.5 update, Lydia can now be married.
 * A beta patch for the 1.6 update has been released, featuring the ability to fight on horseback. Players have been wanting to do that since Oblivion!
 * The Dawnguard announcement trailer and other material. Frost Giants, dragons that can dive under ice, master vampires, crossbows, spears, and a fascinating slew of new locations (including Oblivion!). In addition, there are also new perk trees, including ones for both werewolves and vampires, as well as options to change character appearance, new Thu'um shouts, and dragonbone weaponry.
 * Anticlimax Boss: Bethesda Boss Syndrome hits twice in during the main quest. The only plot relevant Dragon Priest (extremely powerful undead sorcerer) is easily the weakest of them all and Alduin only appears to differ from the elite Ancient Dragons by having a few more hitpoints. Its even worse during the final battle, since you are assisted by
 * At the end of the Thieves' Guild questline, a big deal is made about how powerful is and why you won't be able to fight  alone. But the final battle ironically ends up as a one-on-one fight against someone who's no different than any regular old mook aside from the ability to briefly turn invisible.
 * Base Breaker:
 * The Civil War campaign is the catalyst for a few of these. Jump in any forum topic about it and expect to see a Flame War. Are the Empire the last, best hope for ensuring humanity's prosperity and survival against the genocidal Thalmor, or brutal oppressors holding on to a shadow of their former glory and crossed the line trying to appease the Thalmor? Are the Stormcloaks a bunch of heroic freedom fighters pushing a brutal empire out of their land and the Only Sane Men who know the only real way to deal with the Thalmor, or are they a bunch of bull-headed, racist idiots that are unwittingly giving the Thalmor exactly what they want and ultimately are just as bad as the Thalmor?
 * The Thalmor are hated for the most part. However, they also have a small but vocal fanbase that thinks that they're within their right to do all the terrible things they do and admire them for a multitude of reasons: for consisting of lots of good looking High Elves, fancy robes, and for being very efficient conquerors.
 * Cicero. He does have a pretty big fanbase who finds him adorable and hilarious, but he also has lots of people who loathe him and see him as obnoxious and absolutely irritating. Astrid also gets this, with half the fans liking her for her strong family values and understand her reasons for and half loathing her for not following the Five Tenants and for seeing her as an unlikable control freak. It seems that there's no middle ground for either of these characters.
 * Beam Me Up, Scotty: The famous quote from the guards actually goes "Then I took an arrow in the knee", not "to the knee" as it's often quoted.
 * Best Level Ever: Blackreach. An absolutely huge underground cavern (approx. four square miles) home to an abandoned Dwarven city and some of the most unique and breathtaking environmental design in the entire game. It even comes with it's own Bonus Boss! You'd have to spend several hours exploring the vast compound to find everything, but you'll love every bit of it.
 * Broken Base: Winning the Game & Developer of The Year awards at the Spike VGAs - You either thought they were deserved, or absolutely dumbfounded that the team which released a game that was borderline unplayable on one of the formats it was released on won these awards over other deserving titles & developers.
 * Complete Monster: The Thalmor as a whole are certainly this, with stand-out examples being Elenwen and Ancano.
 * As usual for the Elder Scrolls, it's possible for your character to be such a monster that he/she puts the Big Bad to shame.
 * One of the named Dragon Priests (Rahgot) Another one by the name of Hevnoraak had a very compelling voice and used it to gather a group of followers, and used his voice to torture them, knowing that they'd have no way to fight back due to his voice's strength.
 * In the Thieves Guild questline, turns out to be this.  He also tries to   And to make things worse, he's damn proud of the things he does and sneers at the notion that thieves can have standards when it comes to villainy.
 * Arondil, a necromancer living north of Dawnstar has been kidnapping women and murdering them so he can resurrect them to use as a zombie harem.
 * Another nasty necromancer is Sild the Warlock, who makes his home in an abandoned crypt that he turned into a torture chamber. He lures adventurers in with promises of treasure but instead traps them in a cage and slowly burns them to death. When they die, he raises their spirits to be used as guardians for his lair, and they're entirely self-aware and anguished by this fate when you battle them. And to make things worse? His journal reveals that he's trying to find ways to drag out the torture process before he snuffs out the lives of his victims permanently, and makes a note at the end saying that it feels very sweet to take the life of another person.
 * Thonar Silver-Blood of the Forsworn Conspiracy and  quests is slowly revealed to be one. It's one thing that he's the wealthiest man in Markarth and morally ambiguous enough he uses prisoners to mine the silver that makes him rich, but it really starts hitting when it's relieved that he's  He's even knows he's enough of an asshole that you probably don't mean it when you take the dialogue option to
 * The infamous Wolf Queen Potema Septim makes an appearance in the game from beyond the grave, and she's just as monstrous as she was in life.
 * Creepy Awesome: Cicero. The guy is like a male Harley Quinn. Really, the Dark Brotherhood in general is this.
 * Crowning Level Of Awesome: Blackreach. It's an abandoned Dwemer City stuffed to the gills with beautiful scenery, tons of buildings, interesting enemies such as brainwashed humans who serve the Falmer, a unique dragon summoned by Fus Ro Dah-ing the giant orb on the ceiling, and even a stray random giant wandering around down there. There's also the fact that the game has a nice little callback to Oblivion, as not only can you find Sinderion, but you get to go on another Nirnroot gathering quest only with the objective being to find Blackreach-native Red Nirnroot.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome:
 * The main theme, Dragonborn. Yes, they're singing in the Dragon language. Lyrics here.
 * Try to listen to this theme without imagining yourself standing in a Norse lord's hall.
 * All hail the glorious dead.
 * Let's just say the whole damn soundtrack and be done with it. They've even gone and lifted some Crowning Musics Of Awesome from the previous games without so much as a remix.
 * Hell, even the 40-minute plus piece titled "Skyrim Atmosphere" is really, really good.
 * Under your voice they will cower!
 * It's got the usual remixes of varying quality, but this one stands out, combining one of the tavern songs with the main theme... and the singer's voice is about as beautiful as the graphics in the game.
 * Another, by the same singer.
 * When it comes to remixes, this takes the cake.
 * Another cover of the main theme...with an electric violin.
 * "Far Horizons" is just gorgeous.
 * This singer portraying an entire Draugr choir and actually singing in Dragon language, complete with acoustic effects and drums to fit the dark chilling atmosphere, is just beyond words.
 * Here's a gorgeous vocal and guitar cover of Tale of the Tongues
 * One They Fear is a song that has got many a player killed, simply because they got so pumped while it was playing that they attacked the dragon in question head-on.
 * The music they play when you learn a Word of Power or slay a Dragon and absorb it's soul. They gave you your own Theme Music Power-Up for this game.
 * Degraded Boss: Dragons. At the beginning of the game every time you encounter a dragon it feels like an adequately epic battle, especially with the music that accompanies it. By the end of the game(or some levels into it, considering that this game doesn't actually "end") you will be able to force dragons to the ground and kill them with a few hits in under 10 seconds before the music even has a chance to kick in. They become more of a nuisance than an epic battle. At least until you start meeting the Elder and Ancient Dragons.
 * Demonic Spiders:
 * Chaurus. They take forever to kill, spit poison, and will kill you pretty much instantly if they get close enough to melee.
 * Giant Sabrecats. 900 pounds of pure muscle and feline fury coupled with a nasty disposition and a tendency for creeping up on you from behind, and even later in the game they can do tremendous amounts of damage (early on they pretty much kill you in a couple swipes). And they are insanely fast for something the size of a bear, too. Given how they are basically sabretooth tigers, it makes sense, but it gets a little ridiculous when Sabrecats are scarier than dragons.
 * Pretty much all of the enemies you find inside Dwemer ruins are this. The spiders due to them being very strong for their size and ambushing you from pipes, the sphere guardians due to them being very hard to outrun and hard to take down head-on, and the centurions due to their sheer strength ad toughness, and their steam blast
 * Bears. Huge aggro radius that's hard to avoid, runs nearly fast enough to keep up with a sprinting horse, takes as much hurt as it can dole out (IE: a lot) and always ends up in the middle of the damn road you want to travel down. Unlike wolves, which howl pretty much as soon as they're aware of you, the bear slothly gets up from its nap silently, by which time you've probably already wandered into its aggro radius. And they're freakin' everywhere. After Unrelenting Force, your most used shout will be Kyne's Peace because of them.
 * Or Animal Allegiance.
 * If you are a warrior type, mages that use the Ice Storm spell fall into this category. Ice Storm is a spell that damages your health and stamina, robbing you from your ability to do Power Attacks. It also slows you down, turning you into a sitting duck. To make it worse; the spell has a huge area of effect, increasing your chance to get hit by it.
 * Hell, mages in general are this in the higher levels. Since spells are damage-locked and not affected by armor (Only magic resistance, and they're still tough with it), you're able to be quickly pulverized by powerful spells, and are essentially screwed if you run into a group of them without any way to pick them off from a distance or with stealth.
 * Elder and Ancient dragons. Just when you're powerful enough to be convinced that Blood and Frost dragons aren't any more of a threat, these bastards show up and start two-shotting you. Hitting them with Dragonrend just puts them on the ground, where they can more easily kill you. (It helps to bring a shield along, especially enchanted ones like the Spellbreaker, to defend against their breath blasts and bites, if you don't mind giving up the use of two-handed weapons.)
 * Spriggans are ridiculous. They can appear seemingly out of nowhere in forested areas, and they're more than capable of killing you fast by either quickly draining your health with insects or tearing huge chunks of your health out with their claws. And once you get them down to low health, they're able to quickly fully restore their health making you have to wear them down all over again. Oh, and did I mention that they can summon bears as well?
 * Forsworn Briarhearts must be fought with extreme caution. They're able to quickly rip huge amounts of health from you with their powerful dual-wielding attacks, and they're more than happy to leave you as a sitting duck with the aforementioned Ice Storm spell. And they rarely appear alone, so even if you're able to defeat the Briarheart, his weaker but still formidable lackeys are more than capable of picking you off.
 * Disappointing Last Level: The penultimate dungeon consists of the same Draugr enemies you've seen in every ruin and tomb up to that point, the only catch is this time you have no follower and the dungeon is a lot longer. Depending on how much you've leveled, this can mean either a swarm of standard Draugr, or Scourges who may have shouts (and will destroy your stamina with frost spells) and Deathlords who do have shouts and, on top of that, take lots of abuse before going down. Given that dungeons aren't even that long, and the Disappointing Last Level of Morrowind... it's an improvement.
 * Discredited Meme: Youtube commentors got absolutely sick of the "Arrow in the Knee" jokes as early as a month after this game came out!
 * Readers on the Skyrim board at GameFAQs have also become sick of the Toeh meme spawned there.
 * Disc One Nuke: Transmute, an Adept-level Alteration spell that turns iron ore into silver, and silver ore into gold, can be found pretty early in the game if you know where to look, and can be used to make absolute boatloads of money by transmuting iron into gold, then making jewelry and selling it.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Despite all that the quest/story designers did to make you want to hate the Thalmor (see A Nazi by Any Other Name )... some people still inexplicably like the Thalmor, and not in a "love to hate" way.
 * Many players feel that the Forsworn are misunderstood freedom fighters working for a just cause to overthrow a government that demonizes them, and wish that they could join them in the Civil War. Hmm...perhaps it's the raiding, genocide, and implicit rape, cannibalism, and Cruelty Rich Leather they practice that explains why it's not an option.
 * Speaking of the Civil War, expect around half of the player base to do this for the side they support while invoking Ron the Death Eater on the other. While either side could objectively be viewed as the "right side", they do not come without their flaws either
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * Lydia, again. Most were very disappointed when a minor (and fixable) bug prevented players from marrying her. (Fixed in the 1.5 patch, or by mods on the PC before that.) Bethesda seemed to pick up on this, and ended up fleshing out Lydia's personality more with the Dawnguard and Dragonborn to where she's not only more of a smart-ass than she was in the vanilla game (which was only present in one line of dialogue), but to where she warms up to you the more you travel with her.
 * The Spectral Assassin, in other words,
 * Paarthurnax, due to him being The Mentor and one of the two friendly dragons. Several players have tried to slaughter the Blades for even suggesting killing him.
 * Brynjolf of the Thieves' Guild. With his accent, friendliness, and tendency to affectionately call your PC lass/lad, so many players were disappointed to find him unmarriable.
 * Vilkas and Farkas of the Companions, but especially Farkas for being good-looking and a total sweetheart of a man. Happily, you can marry them. Aela is also pretty popular, can't imagine why. And like with Vilkas and Farkas, she's also a marriage candidate.
 * If the kink memes are anything to go by, Ondolemar, Ancano, Nelacar--really, almost any named male High Elf, likely because of their height, attractiveness, fashion sense, and Bastard Boyfriend-ish attitudes.
 * Cicero is also one of the most loved characters in the game, due to his hilarious dialogue and his sheer hamminess.
 * Among the Jarls, Balgruuf the Greater is quite well-loved among the fanbase. That tends to happen whenever you're a Reasonable Authority Figure of a Jarl who takes threats to your hold seriously. His respect for the Dragonborn and being likely the first Jarl you meet also helps his case.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Astrid, Matron of the Dark Brotherhood.
 * Alva, scantily-clad vampiric seductress extraordinaire.
 * Not a perfect example due to being a Daedric Prince (Their morality is vastly different from Tamriel's sentient species), but Nocturnal is certainly this due to being
 * Even among those that absolutely hate them, a lot of people find the Thalmor in general to embody this due to being sharply dressed and consisting of a lot of very good-looking Altmer in their ranks.
 * And there's the female Forsworn for their choice of clothing: incredibly skimpy Fur Bikinis
 * Fail O'Suckyname: Vekel the Man may have the stupidest sobriquet ever.
 * Fountain of Memes: The entire game.
 * FUS RO DAH!!!
 * I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow in the knee.
 * WHAT IS THIS?
 * Game Breaker:
 * The Windshear, a unique sword found aboard  causes unfailing stagger to EVERY enemy. Even Alduin. This effectively makes melee fighting anyone or anything with one on one combat a guaranteed win.
 * You can create some ridiculously overpowered equipment if you have maxed out the enchanting and smithing skills with the skills' respective perks.
 * According to the Skyrim wiki, your follower is able to pick up a giant's club (as you can't do it yourself). They will be able equip it and and thus be able to inflict over 200 points of damage...The trick is actually finding one, however. This is likely to be patched out, if it hasn't been already.
 * Max Enchanting plus the relevant perks lets you craft a set of equipment that reduce the mana costs of two magic schools to zero, letting you cast spells from those two schools for free.
 * Max Conjuration plus perks lets you summon two Dremora Lords at once. For reference, ONE Dremora Lord can kill a Giant in around three hits. This would not be a Game Breaker if it weren't for the fact that there is a trivially easy way to level Conjuration: Cast Soul Trap repeatedly on a dead body. Or merely hold a bound weapon in your hands with some hostiles in the area.
 * Max Smithing and its perks lets you build and upgrade the strongest possible weapons. You can even upgrade some of the unique artifacts like the Mace of Molag Bal and Spellbreaker. Meshes well with Max Enchanting too.
 * Add in Alchemy and you can boost your Enchanting and Smithing skills past the 100 limit. Make a potion that boosts the effectiveness of Enchantments, then enchant a few armor pieces with Fortify Alchemy to boost the effectiveness of your brewed potions. Repeat ad infinitum, then make a few Fortify Smithing potions, add the enchantment of the same to some armor pieces, then upgrade your equipment for weapons that do over 100 damage a hit, without any bonuses, and armor pieces with the same in defense, body armor maxing over 200. Then you can add on to them your choice of enchantments, two for each armor piece plus a ring and necklace. Make yourself immune to magic, immune to Frost, Flame and Shock, double the regen rate of your stats or more, etc.
 * You can speed the process along by making Fortify Restoration potions, which, likely due to a glitch, enhance the capabilities of your other enchanted equipment after taking it off and putting it back on again. Making a full set of Fortify Alchemy equipment and then performing this loop can lead to potions so strong they loop around into negative numbers after a few iterations. Make some Fortify Enchantment and Smithing potions once you're at the apex and even your pathetic starting equipment and a few petty soul gems can be made to one-shot anything in the game. And the ingredients for Fortify Restoration aren't even rare.
 * Once again the Skeleton Key makes Lockpicking a joke. It just requires a lot of patience. You have to give up the very next quest after getting it, and it's only acquired near the end of the Thieves Guild questline, but there's nothing stopping you from taking your sweet time getting around to it. There's a Lockpicking perk with the same effect, so once you've had your fun with the Skeleton Key and leveled up enough, you can finish the quest and not lose a stitch.
 * The Oghma Infinium. It adds 5 skill points to all six branches of a relevant skill tree (Thief, Mage, Warrior), for a total of 30 points overall. However, there's also a glitch that allows players to level all the way up to 81, and you can acquire the Infinium at any point after achieving Level 15.
 * The Shadow Warrior perk, combined with the damage-boosting sneak attack perks makes you capable of literally walking up to an enemy's face, crouching for a second, and immediately attacking. Shadow Warrior not only makes the player invisible for a second, but completely erases the "Detected" status, making the sneak attack multipliers work even against an enemy standing right in front of you. This means you can one-shot every single enemy in the game if your weapon damage is high enough. If you're using a dagger (and why wouldn't you be, with the 15x sneak damage buff from the Assassin's Blade perk) you'll also usually get the hilarious effect of you teleporting behind your enemy to slit their throat before they can finish saying "Where are you?"
 * Max Illusion perks and vampirism. Vampires gain an extra 25% effectiveness to Illusion (even if the stat is already maxed) and the Vampire Seduction ability (with Stage 3 vampirism). With this combination, your character can offset every Illusion resistance in the game, and according to the UESP wiki, there is no character capable of defending against it.
 * The Impact perk, which allows you to stun any opponent if you double cast a projectile spell, effectively nullifies all possibility of you taking damage, should you stock up on enough mana potions because of the length of the stun. The only exception is other mages with tough wards.
 * Combining all the needed Smithing perks and the appropritate skills of an Assasin (eg the Assasin's perk and the Back Stab enchantment, which further boost a weapon's damage while sneaking), you can One-Hit Kill any unit, even Dragons! And if your Sneak skills are at maximum with all the needed perks, you can possibly sneak up to any unit even in broad daylight, and right in clear view of them, and strike them dead in on swipe, and no one will notice.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Apart from getting a 40/40 from Weekly Famitsu (the very first western game to get it), Skyrim seems to be growing in popularity in Japan.
 * Conversely, quite a number of western gamers like the Japanese dubbed voices of the game (which for the PC can easily be had by a simple language change), particularly that of.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: When you're infiltrating the skeever caverns under the Honningbrew Meadery, you're probably expecting a boss enemy guarding the nest, and you find.
 * Goddamned Bats:
 * Necromancers. It isn't that they toss frost spells or summon skeletons, that's easy. It isn't that they come in packs, though that is more worrisome. No, the frustrating thing about necromancers is that they can revive each other. And you always seem to miss one.
 * Not to mention, low level Draugr. They're easy to kill but they tend to appear in large numbers making them annoying to fight, and the loot they drop isn't really anything special.
 * Wolves are fairly weak, even at the start, and even if they ambush you (which happens a lot) they don't do much damage. What puts them in this category, however, is that they transmit Rockjoint, which will cut down your melee damage by 25%. And it's almost impossible to stop them from getting at least one hit in, so you'll be traveling back to town a lot to get it cured (unless you stock up on "Cure Disease" potions).
 * Good Bad Bug: Wouldn't be a Bethesda game without them. From ragdoll hilarity to physics gaffes to invisible hats that you can wear with other hats, the game has it all!
 * The Saber Cats seem to be the defining example next to Giants.
 * Who stole the courier's clothes?
 * Enemy NPCs continuing their yell "YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE!" after you've cut their heads off in mid-sentence.
 * Crossed with Gender Bender: Male Dunmer Dovahkiins' grunts sound like those of female Dunmer in Oblivion.
 * Normally, killing a chicken (with a conventional weapon) will earn you a bounty. Doing the same by running it over with a cart will not (as seen in this video at around 5:30).
 * Hell Is That Noise: Wait....that sounded like wind...rushing past a giant pair of wings? By Akatosh, that's a dragon!
 * Was that a roar? Oh fuck there's a red dot BY AZURA, TO ARMS! A DRAGON!
 * Are those bees? SWEET TALOS THOSE ARE BEES!
 * Did I hear a clicking sound - CHAURUS BY MARA THAT'S A CHAURUS GET IT AWAY!
 * Hmm, was that another clicking sou- BLESSED KYNARETH, IT'S A FROSTBITE SPIDER! KILL IT KILL IT!
 * Hmm... Was that a growl I just heard o- BY YSMIR IT'S A DRAUGR!
 * Was that a "whoosh" soun- SWEET STENDARR IT WAS! FIREBALL!
 * What was that clattering noi– GREAT BOETHIAH, A FALMER ARCHER! RUN!
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: An in-game book describing the events of Oblivion takes special care to mention that it was the Mythic Dawn, and not the Dark Brotherhood, who assassinated Uriel Septim. The author even points out that it would have been suicidal for the Brotherhood to have taken out a contract on the Emperor, since it would have brought the whole of the Empire's forces down on them and destroyed them.
 * Informed Attractiveness: Carlotta Valentia in Whiterun, who claims to get "a lot of attention from men". She's not unattractive but far from being someone men would be falling over themselves to get to.
 * Maybe her late husband bragged about how amazing she was in bed.
 * If you come across the book "A Gentleman's Guide to Whiterun" by Mikael (the bard in the Bannered Mare, and one of the men who's after Carlotta), he states in it that she is a "magnificent beauty".
 * Internet Backdraft: The Civil War storyline. Debates regarding how and why one side is better than the other can quickly get rather flame-hot and passionate. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that this is how people often react with one another when discussing similarly broad Real Life disputes.
 * It's Short, So It Sucks:
 * Some of the games' major subplots could be finished in an afternoon, and the main quest will take about 20-30 hours. Given that only one or two of these hours is Disappointing Last Level compared to others in the series...it's probably a bit better that they didn't decide to lengthen the story. Once you finish however, there's a ton of sidequests quests, ranging from questlines like the College and Companions to just retrieving an item for someone, and there's also finding all the Words of Power. Even if you don't have a quest to do, the game world is just so deep that you can pick a compass direction and head off into the unknown, you're bound to come across a new tomb or cave you haven't explored yet. Thus, if you're planning to plumb the game for all it has to offer outside the two main story quests, you're going to be spending a lot of time in Skyrim.
 * Because of the new random quest system, there are fewer scripted storyline quests for all the questlines compared to previous Elder Scrolls games, thus it can feel a bit jarring to be proclaimed a trusted and veteran member of your guild and their Chosen One just shortly after joining. These sorts of Pacing Problems are particularly obvious with the Companions questline, where one gets to join their Circle of most trusted veteran warriors literally after the initiation and then doing one more quest.
 * Memetic Badass:
 * Lydia quickly became one. Though housecarls in general are pretty tough, Lydia is the one almost every player has. She can survive being hurled off a mountain.
 * Giants, too, due to a Good Bad Bug that lets them knock players into space with their clubs.
 * Ysgramor, in-universe. He can eat soup with a fork.
 * Horses.
 * For most people, slaying a dragon is the most awesome thing you can do in your life. For the Dovahkiin, it's all in a day's work.
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * This piece of concept art was mistaken by many people to be depicting the player facing a bear with tentacles coming out of its lower half (due to mammoths having four tusks in-universe). Tentacle bears are bound to come up in any discussion about the game. It's a bear eating a mammoth, in case you're wondering.
 * "FUS RO DAH!!"
 * In particular, the first glimpse of "FUS RO DAH!" from the trailer, always preceded by the "But there's one they fear..." narration and followed by the game's theme song, is steadily becoming a Youtube Poop trend.
 * "VOICE AT-TACK!"
 * Weightless Carrots. This has become the rallying cry of those who decry the constant Ruined FOREVER mentality over the most inane things. Because someone actually did complain about them at one point on the Bethesda forums.
 * Ascended Meme: The carrots now weigh .1 pounds.
 * Attacking Lydia, Dragon Shouting Lydia, siccing Lydia on a dragon, watching a giant launch Lydia into the air. And then, watching Lydia get back on her feet.
 * People don't want to be sword.
 * "Then I stripped the corpse naked and threw it in the river." has rapidly become the standard ending to any story involving bandits, Thalmor agents, or anyone else a player fights.
 * "I used to be a [insert occupation] like you... then I took an arrow in the knee."
 * DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!?!?
 * Hating this phrase rapidly became the new standard and even mentioning is bound to draw vitriol.
 * "A guard might get nervous, a man approaches with his weapon drawn..."
 * "Have you seen those warriors from Hammerfell? They have curved swords. Curved. Swords."
 * Physics? Bitch, I'm a horse.
 * NPCs believe they can kill dragons with their bare hands.
 * They're not dragons, they're Wyverns
 * Mondegreen: The lyrics in the trailer were initially thought by some to be English, but are actually in the language of dragons:

"Dragonborn, Dragonborn By his honor is sworn To keep evil forever at bay And the fiercest foes rout When they hear triumph's shout Dragonborn, for your blessing we pray"
 * Which translates to:

"For the king! For the king! For the sons of Skyrim! For our land! For our home! For the Empire's blood! For the Nords! For the gods! For the sole single son! Our king, our king who'll dawn with victory!"
 * Hilariously, as one Youtube commentor pointed out, it's also possible to mishear it as a spot-on Stormcloak anthem!

"Says the Lord Fucking cool Oh my God Me gusta"
 * Also, this bit of misheard lyrics, by many a youtuber, from the trailer (starts just after the fus ro da) and they couldn't be more true:

"Player: "Interested in me, are you?" NPC: "Well, yes. Why wouldn't I be? Are you... interested in me?" Player: "Yes. Yes I am." "
 * Moral Event Horizon: Whether or not various members of the various factions cross it and if so, when, is probably a subject of huge debate...but one thing is for sure: If the player is out for One Hundred Percent Completion (and sometimes even if they aren't), the Dragonborn is GOING to cross this. It's only a matter of which completely irredeemable act is performed first, to catapult the Dovahkiin into Complete Monster territory--the Namira, Boethiah, Molag Bal, Mehrunes Dagon, Mephala, and a smattering of Dark Brotherhood quests are all good candidates.
 * And of course the Thalmor started the game on the wrong side of this. But if you want a specific moment, them delivering the severed heads of every Blade in their territory to Emperor Mede on his birthday certainly counts.
 * Delphine crosses it when she . Esbern at least has the excuse of being paranoid and isolated for a big portion of his life.
 * Erikur crosses this when he gets a Bosmer slave girl sent to Elenwen's torture chambers for not returning his affection.
 * crossed this whenever he
 * For Jaree-Ra and Deeja, there's them slaughtering the entire crew of the Icerunner despite promising the Dragonborn that they would help get them to safety. Hell, them trying to dupe naïve, unsuspecting people into committing atrocities like this also arguably counts.
 * Most Annoying Sound:
 * Get used to hearing enemy NPCs tell you that YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE!
 * Heimskr, who might be considered something of an Expy of Cromwell, the preacher from Megaton in Fallout 3. Even the wiki has a list of ways to stealth kill him to shut him up.
 * Cicero in general can be absolutely OBNOXIOUS to some, thanks to lacking any kind of indoor voice and always screeching at the top of his lungs when talking about the Night Mother.
 * When you summon the Spectral Assassin, he blabbers on and on and on and on and ON and ON about topics relating to the Dark Brotherhood, rather unbecoming for someone who was an expert assassin in life.
 * "Do you get to the Cloud District very often? Oh, what am I saying, of course you don't." If you like to spend a lot of time in Whiterun, be prepared to have Nazeem say this every time you pass him by. Every. Time.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: When the barbarian choir starts singing, something awesome is always going to happen.
 * When you kill them (And it's easy to do, they go down in about one shot), skeletons make a delightful clattering sound when their bones hit the floor.
 * Narm:
 * The marriage dialogue.


 * The werewolf ritual's Special Effects Failure. The arm is lifted, a dagger runs across it, and SPLAT! The basin is instantly half-filled with blood.
 * All NPCs have combat lines that relate to their position and race. Normally this isn't a problem, but hearing Lydia yelling "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" while fighting mud crabs is a bit narmy.
 * Among the things guards can say to you is "You're like me, eh? Don't fancy those clunky two-handed weapons." They can say this while they are holding two-handed weapons. They can say this when YOU are holding two-handed weapons. This goes for any skill with high levels, no matter how non-obvious it may be ("Best offense is a good defense, right?" (the message for a high skill in heavy armor) when you are not wearing any heavy armor at all, etc.). Also, guards' Mood Whiplash towards you, such as first of all greeting you as the Dovahkiin/a Companion, then going straight to being suspicious of you, such as "Go fiddling with any locks around here, and we're going to have a real problem".
 * Though the commentary on skills when you don't have the equipment to match could be justified by your reputation.
 * There is a lot of overlap between helping out an NPC via a favor or misc quest, and possibly going against them in another sidequest. For example, after completing both Taking Care of Business and his misc quest, the waiter at the Riften inn will be admonishing you for defeating in a brawl/intimidating the innkeeper one moment, and singing your praises for helping him make his wedding ring the next.
 * is a preteen girl who is Really Seven Hundred Years Old. Taking this into account, Bethesda wrote her (appropriately creepy) lines like those of an adult woman. However, since they had to get an actual 10-year-old for the voice acting, a lot of them just sound like... well, a ten-year-old girl reading lines written for an adult woman. This is noticeable especially when she struggles with the pronunciation of "alchemy reagents".
 * Nausea Fuel: Peryite's quest, "The Only Cure". You can meet a passive Afflicted early on, which indicates to you that The Virus in this example rots your skin somewhat. In the quest itself,  Oh, and the condition is a "blessing" according to Peryite.
 * , where you slaughter a man in cold blood on a rather disturbing-looking altar and then shovel gobs of his raw flesh into your mouth with your bare hands. Then speaks to you and congratulates you for your actions. Notable in that, if you want One Hundred Percent Completion, doing this is mandatory.
 * If, on the other hand, you're not out for 100% completion, you can kill every last one of the cannibals and
 * Paranoia Fuel:
 * Dragons can attack you anywhere where the sky is visible. Even inside cities. Half the time your only warning that a dragon is about to attack is when it suddenly roars and drops down on you. The other half of the time, they don't even do that. Even in the courtyard of the mage college, in the middle of a thick snowstorm.
 * A specific plot instance is
 * When you kill Grelod the Kind, the kid gives you the reward, all's well and good, right? Wrong. A courier shows up with a message from someone. I wonder who it is? Whoever it is was pretty eager to get it to you, apparently. So you read the note. Wanna know what it says?  Sleep tight.
 * Um... You may want to rethink
 * In barrows, the mummified corpses that rise up to attack you and the ones that just sit in their tombs and sarcophagi look very similar. In an early playthrough, it's almost impossible to be sure which ones are undead and which aren't. It gets better as become more savvy and level up, but then you run into the problem of enemies and sarcophagi that don't "trigger" because your Sneak is too high, and suddenly find yourself surrounded because you made just a tiny bit of noise...
 * During the quest "A Cornered Rat," you might notice an oddity in Riften; there's a Khajiit named Shavari wandering around the city proper, something you won't find anywhere else. Other than that, she doesn't seem very noteworthy, doesn't have much to say, and isn't particularly friendly. But if you pay special attention to her, you'll notice she's both watching and following you from a safe distance.  You can also
 * Spriggans appear literally out of nowhere, right next to you, and hit hard when they do. As a result, you'll never feel safe in wooded grottoes.
 * Porting Disaster:
 * While the Xbox and PC versions are relatively stable for a Bethesda game, the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim is plagued with massive slow-downs, almost to the point of being unplayable. This is especially frustrating for gamers who utilize larger saving files, since they will have to wait for Bethesda to release a patch, although it is unclear how effective the patch will be.
 * While the PC version does not suffer many technical problems (well, no more than the Xbox version -- this is an Elder Scrolls game, after all), the UI is very console-adapted, to the point that it has caused problems with using a mouse for many users (as in, the game doesn't properly register that you clicked on something). Bethesda has said they have no intention of modifying the UI themselves, but luckily this is one porting problem that can be (and already has been) fixed by modders.
 * Ruined FOREVER:
 * Skyrim will no longer have attributes. This has caused some fans to completely forsake the game due to the "dumbing down." Historically, they've said that for every Elder Scrolls game, so make of it what you will.
 * As it turned out, it might've been a good thing. Eliminating attributes also largely eliminated Empty Levels.
 * The addition of relationships and marriage has also caused some to cry foul, declaring it unnecessary fanservice and a waste of resources that should have been used to bring back all of those Morrowind features that Oblivion didn't have...
 * The removal of classes, which hardly anybody used anyway.
 * The removal of class creation appears to be what bugged most fans, as now players have almost no amount of character customization beyond physical appearance and minor skill buffs/powers. In addition, the removal of major/minor skills makes very little sense when the community presented the idea that both major and minor skills could simply contribute equally to leveling, while major skills would start higher and level faster (much in the way of the standing stones).
 * People are still complaining about the lack of polearms. For reference, out of the five games in the series, only Morrowind had polearms, which were extremely unpopular due to them being horrendous weapons (two handed weapons that did less damage than most one handed weapons).
 * The fact that you're pretty much required to play the game on Steam. Although this a much less common issue now, since Steam's been well established and doesn't have any of the bugs it once did (not to mention the automatic patching being a godsend for a series and genre known for being full of glitches on launch). Strike that, there was an update released on Nov 21st that now makes the Launcher-bypass execution that didn't require Steam running to now require it.
 * You can now only equip one ring at a time. While admittedly fairly minor, it is pretty hard to justify.
 * The Scrappy: Heimskr due to his endless preaching about Talos. Makes it even worse when he loses his house and thus preaches more. He is one of the two things both Imperial and Stormcloak sympathizers agree to hate.
 * The Thalmor. They're generally hated by everyone. As one fan put it, people hate the Nazi elves more than the world-eating dragon. If the general NPC attitude towards them is any indication, this was likely intentional.
 * Delphine and Esbern. Forcing the player character to serve as their errand boy as well as did not win them love from the fans. Delphine gets this more than Esbern due to her very pronounced Jerkass behavior.
 * Maven Black-Briar is also reviled among many people of the fanbase. She's a crime lord who is more-or-less solely responsible for Riften being a scum-filled hellhole, and she goes out of her way to talk down to others and make their lives miserable in general. And unfortunately, she's not like Nazeem where you can simply run her trough with a greatsword or obliterate her with various Dragon Shouts, she's essential, and to make things even more infuriating, . All in all, there's absolutely no way to humble her, call her out on what she does, kill her, or anything to get rid of her, which makes her among the game's most loathed characters. Hell, her entire family counts for this due to their rather repugnant attitudes and untouchability (Except Sibbi, who can be murdered in his cell with exploits). Ingun escapes this for her polite demeanor and lack of her family's trademark assholish behavior.
 * Lots of Jerkass characters in general for their insufferable attitudes fall into this. Including such lovely specimens like the infamous Nazeem and his over-inflated ego, Mercer Frey for his unabashed Jerkass behavior even for a guild full of thieves, and child abusing old crone Grelod the Kind.
 * Most children are also hated due to the fact that they tend to go out of their way to be as obnoxious as possible.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: The broken-as-hell yielding system. In Oblivion, all you needed to do to yield was block and press a button, which the enemy would recognize and guards always accepted. In Skyrim, you need to put your weapon away and just stand there like an idiot. Most of the time it doesn't work, meaning guards will keep trying to kill you for a forty-gold bounty, no matter how many times you try to surrender.
 * Marriage. Despite being an interesting new aspect of the game with great potential, many people have taken issue with it. Courtship is easy and short. The dialogue with your spouse is rather boring and often buggy, and you can't have any meaningful interaction with them apart from setting them as a follower, talking about various banal topics, or buying items. The only benefits it offers are certain status buffs, a source of income, and a free follower. It's become enough of a problem that there are numerous mods to improve marriage, including ones that allow you to marry more characters.
 * Sidetracked By the Golden Saucer: As before with Elder Scrolls games, you can spend so long reading books.
 * And as with a lot of freeform exploration games, it is absurdly easy to get sidetracked while en route to a quest. Something as simple as stopping to investigate a curious landmark while en route to another quest site can result in the player ending up on the far side of Skyrim engaging in another quest-line entirely unrelated tot he first one.
 * Squick:
 * Awesome yet totally horrid is a werewolf's double-swipe power finisher, where they grab their foe, lift them off the ground and pop their head off like they're crushing a grapefruit.
 * Wear the Ring of Namira around and guards will comment on how rotten your breath smells and ask what you've been eating.
 * Take That Scrappy: Nazeem is so despised that many Youtubers have made montages and "sending him to the could district."
 * As well as a mod that literally deletes him from the game.
 * That One Boss:
 * The Ghost of Sigdis Gauldurson at the end of the Forbidden Legend quest. He's a Doppelganger boss where you have to play whack-a-draugr to find the real deal, they're all archers (and hurt a LOT when they hit), and each one, doppelgangers and all, pack an Unrelenting Force shout powerful enough to send you flying. Even if you whack a few of the doppelgangers, the remainder will shout you onto your ass and you take forever to get back up, meaning he resets his doppelgangers all over and you probably didn't land a single hit. By which time you'll be frantically restoring whatever health was lost when you were a sitting duck getting pincushioned by arrows after being shouted over.
 * Still, you can own him easily by hiding behind a pillar and shooting him with a bow
 * You even have to fight Sigdis twice during the quest. And the second time he is part of a Boss Rush along with his brothers.
 * Those Eight Dragon Priests! They make Alduin look like a pushover! (Except for Nahkriin.)
 * One of them even ambushes when you when you're trying to learn a new word of power after killing a dragon.
 * May Talos have mercy on your soul when you wake said Dragon Priest while still fighting the actual dragon.
 * Aside from leveling up, some good ways to deal with them include sniping (for stealth types), shield bashing (for melee types), and ganging up on them (for those who like using summons and followers).
 * Malyn Varen can be pretty nasty. He sics three Daedra enemies on you before fleeing to his chamber, and they're fond of powerful fire spells. If you're unlucky, all three of them will gang up on you at once. Hope you brought some fire resistance and healing potions.
 * The single fastest way to beat him is to not let him flee. Pull a Shut UP, Hannibal and shoot him with a poisoned arrow.
 * Malkoran is considered this not because of his shades, it is because of his extremely powerful frost spell that can potentially kill in one hit (Confirmed at Level 26) even in the lowest difficulty.
 * If you have the Ice Form shout, it's an excellent counter against him. Put him on ice, and before he has a chance to recover, beat the crap out of him.
 * Morvarth has several vampire servants that can cast powerful ice spells and heal themselves as well. Combined with Morvath's own powerful spells and tendecy to decapitate in melee, many players will be seeing the same loading screen over and over again.
 * That One Level: Shimmermist Cave. Falmer infested areas are pretty tough in general, but Shimmermist Cave stands out in particular as it's a Falmer lair you very likely will visit at a very early level. It's one of the earliest Companions' quests you can undertake, and since the Companions are easily joinable in the very first major city you go to, it's very likely for an unprepared, very underleveled player to head right into a hellhole stuffed to the gills with nastily tough Falmer, who use all sorts of poisoned weapons and annoying ice spells. And for particularly unlucky players, CHAURUS will spawn there as well instead of Frostbite Spiders which are far more appropriate enemies for a low-leveled player to fight. And in case if all this weren't nasty enough, you get a surprise Dwemer Centurion that you can barely damage and in return can very likely slaughter you in one hit in the same room as the Falmer leader you need to take down in order to complete the quest. Thankfully, the Centurion doesn't need to be taken down as well.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: To some, the Civil War plotline was underutilized. The in-game story clues and documentation reveal a long and complex backstory involving war and political intrigue between many nations and factions leading to the start of the civil war. The war itself has distinctive factions with heaps of Gray and Grey Morality associated with them, many ways to interpret all sides, and an overarching conflict with the Thalmor. However, the civil war itself takes a backseat to the main quest centering around Alduin, and while the civil war questline is one of the largest in the game, it generally involves similar missions across Skyrim, just in different locations depending on faction. You can actually discuss this with the head of the Bard's College in Solitude, who comments that the war in Skyrim is just another war in history, and that kings and empires rise and fall regularly, but that the conflict between the Dragonborn and Alduin is something much more unique and noteworthy.
 * Uncanny Valley:
 * The new engine attempts to solve this issue, with the faces be a vast improvement over previous games.
 * The new characters also attempt to carry on their daily duties while glancing at the player if you speak to them, while this is normally fine sometimes it can break in crowded areas such as a tavern when multiple NPCs think the character is about to start a conversation, as a result, everyone stares at the player every time they look up from what they're doing.
 * Someone made a mod that makes the horses in-game look like they came from My Little Pony. The results look like someone tried to render a My Little Pony realistically. And what happens when you try to render a cartoon realistically? Yep. You'd be right...
 * Speaking of mods, witness Miku Hatsune methodically slaughtering enemy mooks, with a straight face, in Bullet Time. Even being  doesn't stop her.
 * Now watch her do the same with a pair of leeks. Yep, stabbing people to death with leeks.
 * And now Luka Megurine has joined in the fun as well, with even more frightening efficiency.
 * Adults have very distinct appearances. Children, clothing aside, look like clones.
 * Worse, many of the animations for children weren't properly rigged. When a child NPC does something like sit down on a chair, or uses an Alchemy station, their dimensions will stretch out and make them the same size as the adults.
 * Clothing especially, with the children. They only seem to have one outfit, based on their gender. Even Babette, who you think would look more like she belongs
 * If you (for some reason) strip a character naked, you'll notice their feet look like mittens with lines engraved for their toes.
 * Unfortunate Implications:
 * Once you get married, no matter what type of life your spouse was living and what type of person they are, at your request they'll move into your home halfway across Skyrim and spend the rest of the game being a homemaker who runs what could only be described as a junk shop and dotes on you when you come home. Though it's not an issue if you marry a follower since your husband or wife will still follow you and help in combat despite being married.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome:
 * New screenshots of Khajiits and Orcs
 * While this screenshot contains some amazing Scenery Porn.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: Hamelin, the guy squatting in caves underneath the Honningbrew Meadery. Up to this point in the Thieves Guild questline, your jobs have been burglarizing, extortion, pickpocketing, and arson--usually with specific instructions not to kill anyone or cause more harm than is necessary. Then WHAM!, they hit you with this guy. Surrounded by an army of skeevers and spiders, Hamelin boasts impressive fireball spells, has resistances to several types of damage, runs at a stunningly fast speed and is nigh impossible to sneak to or past at lower levels (if you alert his "pets", you alert him as well). There is absolutely no warning that this guy is part of the mission, making it highly possible you didn't bring the right gear with you. Good luck with that.
 * It's even lampshaded. The guy who hired you for the job KNEW about him, he just didn't want to scare potential recruits away. Would YOU have taken the job, if you knew what you were in for?
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Ysgramor could eat soup with a fork.
 * Dual-wield pickaxes. Mine like a boss!


 * -|Trivia=
 * Actor Allusion:
 * One can't hear von Sydow's narration and not think of King Osric from Conan the Barbarian.
 * Vladimir Kulich is once again playing a Viking leader
 * Mercer Frey, the leader of the Thieves' Guild, is voiced by Stephen Russell, the voice of Garrett, the infamous protagonist and master thief from the Thief series of games.
 * General Tullius is a gruff no-nonsense officer who is practical-minded and does deep down care about his men and Skyrim itself. A trait he shares with one of Michael Hogan's other roles as Saul Tigh in Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. Unlike Colonel Tigh however, Tullius doesn't seem to have alcohol problems. He also looks extremely similar to Captain Bailey, another one of Hogan's roles. He's found inside Castle Dour, and Hogan is known for playing dour characters.
 * A repentant holy man who once acted like a monster and betrayed his friends, who's voiced by Keith Szarabajka.
 * Complete the Companions quest line, and listen to Athis address you as the Companions' Harbinger. Sound Familiar?
 * Using the exact same voice he used for Captain Apollo Diomedes. Sadly, there is no BROTHER, I AM HIT!
 * Paarthurnax teaches the player one of the words of fire breath. He's also voiced by Charles Martinet.
 * Doing It for the Art: If you no-clip past the borders of Skyrim, you'll find you can walk all the way to Morrowind and Cyrodiil. They're not at all detailed, just height maps with generic textures and a few landmarks (like the White Gold Tower), but they're still there... even though you'll never be able to reach them without cheats or, theoretically, Game Mods.
 * Much of it is there for a reason: it can be seen from some point within Skyrim's actual area, without any use of no-clip or game mods, and so needs to have height maps with (generic) textures and the larger, more easily seen from far away landmarks. Other parts, however, can not be legitimely seen from any part of Skyrim, and so would not require height maps.
 * Or, as brought up in the article, it could be placeholders for future DLC (it's not like Bethesda hasn't put in some fairly expansive DLC before...)
 * Word of God confirms that its there for those instances when you can see beyond Skyrim from within the game's proper map. Though it doesn't rule out DLC. There are plenty of places inside Skyrim that do this too. If you no clip through the walls of a city, you'll see a partially detailed map of the city again to provide the detail you'd see from certain vantage points even though the city interior is a different map. Likewise, when you're within a city, the exterior of Tamriel is all detailed this way, again to provide what you'd be able to see from within city walls. There's a mod called "Open Cities" that moves some of those cities into the Tamriel map.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: And the Fandom Rejoiced, as Skyrim got a much larger voice-acting budget. See the UESP and IMDB articles for full listings of voice-actors and their roles.
 * Max von Sydow provides the narration for the trailer and voices the player's mentor figure, Esbern. You Might Also Remember Him As Antonius Block, Father Merrin, Vigo the Carpathian, or Sir Walter Loxley.
 * Arngeir is Christopher Plummer.
 * Claudia Christian is once again second banana in a military hierarchy, but she also goes by the name Helga Sinclair.
 * Delphine is Pamela Landy.
 * Gormlaith Golden-Hilt has had the voice of Nords since Morrowind, but her best claim to fame was when she was Wonder Woman.
 * General Tullius has been Doc Mitchell and Captain Bailey recently, but you probably remember him as Colonel Saul Tigh.
 * Unfortunately for the Imperial Army, Ulfric Stormcloak is The Beast. And this isn't the first time he's played a powerful Norseman.
 * Yancy Westridge is an Orc librarian at the College of Winterhold.
 * And every other male Orsimer you meet.
 * Colonel Campbell takes his turn as the Nord Galmar Stone-Fist in Windhelm's Palace of Kings, and as Felldir the Old.
 * It feels very strange when random Dark Elf NPCs have Joshua Graham's voice, especially as he slips in and out of an accent that is completely unidentifiable.
 * Any time one of his characters gets angry, they immediately start channeling Kamal Re'x.
 * One of the daedric prince quests has you helping a Dark Elf clear out a ruin and remove an artifact that is affecting the sleep patterns of a nearby town. He is constantly referring to you as "my child" and the like (like a priest would). If that doesn't make you think of Graham, I don't know what would.
 * There's one part in the game where Athis says the word "Harbinger."
 * Hello, children! This is Nazir, reporting to you from the Dark Brotherhood's fortified sanctuary in the Skyrim hellhole!
 * Haruko is dishing out jobs in the Thieves' Guild.
 * The leader of the Thieves Guild, Mercer Frey, is voiced by none other than Garrett!
 * Many of the Thieves Guild-related NPCs speak with Stephen Russell's distinctive "Garrett" voice in one huge Actor Allusion. Apparently he also teaches lockpicking, serves as the Winterhold College's resident shifty-goods-dealer and works at a meadery for a boss that he hates. (The picklock teacher wears a hood that covers his right eye, leaving his pale blue left eye to gleam in the dark as a visual reference.) He's also several male townspeople.
 * Several "curmudgeonly" NPCs, including Festus of the Dark Brotherhood and the Court Mage in Windhelm, are Disney's Pete and Tigger, Jim Cummings.
 * Snapper Carr and Duke show up quite a lot, particularly as Sven in Riverwood and Mikael in Whiterun.
 * Fenris has now enlisted in the Imperial army.
 * Alternatively, Balthier gave up on his life as Sky-Pirate and settled into simply kicking ass.
 * Mario himself even shows up as the master of the Greybeards. No, his Thu'um is not "It's-a me!"
 * Alduin used to be a spear-weilding elven hero who tried to stop a plague from invading his homeland.
 * Stay a while and listen, for Ralof of Riverwood is Deckard Cain.
 * And I guess he's now working for Mephisto, who voices Galmar Stone-Fist.
 * Ivy apparently became a Dunmer when she came to Skyrim. At least she still has white hair, sometimes.
 * The male Argonians are voiced by Number 5.
 * It appears Karliah has gone from reffing obstacle courses to becoming an agent of Nocturnal.
 * Knight-Commander Meredith has become a Daedric Lord.
 * Or the local face of the Thalmor
 * It looks like Medic is now a member of the Thieves' Guild and is hawking snake oil in Riften now.
 * You may find Rosh Penin in various places.
 * King Bumi now has hair all over instead of just his armpits. And a tail. And a catface. And he sells fantasy cocaine.
 * Ariane has become the Jarl of Solitude.
 * The Space Core... well actually it really is the Space Core. How the hell was Nolan North not already in this game?
 * The German dub has Dr.Cox as every human male guard.
 * No Export for You: The Collector's Edition was essentially this for Australia, selling out within hours of being put up for pre-order due to the incredibly small number of copies allocated to the country. As something of a compromise, Australia had it's own exclusive Limited Edition, as a free upgrade for EB Games pre-orders.
 * Playing Against Type: Paarthurnax was voiced by Charles Martinet. Yes, THAT Charles Martinet.
 * Talking to Himself: Averted due to a much larger cast of voice-actors, though amusingly in the final Dark Brotherhood mission the player can opt to have  kill off , who are both voiced by.
 * What Could Have Been: If the file names seen in the editor for their equipment is any indication, the Stormcloaks were originally going to be called the Sons of Skyrim, with their officers being called the Sons of Talos.
 * It could be that they did call themselves that originally. The term "Stormcloak" started as an epithet that was adopted by the rebellion. History is full of examples of members of a cause being named after that cause's champion as an epithet only to have it be adopted by the people it was intended to insult.
 * If it's worth anything, Stormcloak NPC's have 'For the Sons of Skyrim!' as a battlecry. Though, that could just be referring to the people of Skyrim in general. Although, they are referred to as the Sons of Skyrim in certain quest log entries.
 * You Sound Familiar: Obviously generic NPCs have this, although they're not keyed to the races as in Oblivion so Talking to Himself is usually avoided. But...
 * Wes Johnson voices both the ghost of Lucien Lachance and Emperor Titus Mede II. This is really the only case where Talking to Himself potentially occurs, since.
 * Lynda Carter voices the Nord hero Gormlaith Golden-Hilt in Sovngarde and the Daedric Prince Azura.
 * Craig Sechler plays the Daedric Princes Hircine and Peryite.