Battle for Wesnoth/YMMV
- Alternative Character Interpretation: When Asheviere told her son (who was complicit in her grab for power) to go fight Delfador himself, was she hoping he'd win and end the war quickly? Or lose, and get rid of the last barrier to taking absolute power for herself?
- Cliché Storm: Most of the campaigns, being set in a traditional Tolkienesque setting. There are a few exceptions however.
- Demonic Spiders: Many of the Level 3 and above units, but the literal Giant Spider takes the cake, having many hit points, a slowing distance attack and a really powerful bite which inflicts poison to boot. The Giant Spider is so strong, it can kill Delfador within two turns if the player is unlucky. Many Prestige Class enemy units can be this as well.
- Ear Worm: A huge portion of the game's soundtrack. This can be expected with compositions with a highly emphatic rhythm like The Dangerous Symphony, but even things like the calmer portions of The King Is Dead can worm their way into your head and come back at unexpected moments (when you haven't played the game for days).
- Ensemble Darkhorse: The elf lord Kalenz probably qualifies. Initially, he appeared as a supporting (albeit important) character in Heir to the Throne. Later, he became the protagonist of his own campaign, The Legend of Wesmere, which is so far the only mainline campaign to have a multiplayer version. And he also gets a significant role in Delfador's Memoirs. This makes him probably the only character to appear in three (four if you count the multiplayer one individually) mainline campaigns.
- Version 1.9.5 of The Tale Of Two Brothers has him mentioned. The player character becomes his pay-for escort during the epilogue. That makes four if this version of the mainline campaign is committed into the release builds.
- Grogg the troll is a (theoretically) completely optional party member in Under the Burning Suns. Unlike the other optional party member, he is beloved enough by the fanbase that he even got his own spin-off campaign.
- Version 1.9.5 of The Tale Of Two Brothers has him mentioned. The player character becomes his pay-for escort during the epilogue. That makes four if this version of the mainline campaign is committed into the release builds.
- Evil Is Sexy: Asheviere.
- Goddamned Bats: Any highly evasive unit has elements of this, but the actual bats(high movement, high evasion, and draining attacks) fall solidly under this trope as fast, obnoxious, and deceptively hard to kill.
- Saurian skirmishers/ambushers in any appreciable quantity are certainly this. Saurians are highly evasive in difficult terrain like forests and swamps, fast, ignore zones of control, have ranged and melee attacks that do more than tickle, and are cheap enough to recruit mobs of, at least for their faction. Fighting them, especially in some campaign scenarios where the AI can buy leveled versions of them directly, can be compared to juggling fetuses: slippery, unpleasant, and more likely to get blood everywhere than accomplish anything worthwhile.
- Running the Asylum: The game is completely built and developed by people who are essentially volunteering non-paid fans. Fans make the art, the music, the campaigns. Fans write the lore and decide the canon. And, so far, they've been doing a pretty good job.
- That One Level: 'Evacuation' from Eastern Invasion.
- The final scenario of the Dead Waters campaign. Mainly because the three enemy bases never seems to run out of cash while you can barely hire two waves of troops to your aid.
- Crowning Music of Awesome: It's hard to determine whether or not the fact that none of the songs were commisions or even paid for makes it even more awesome.
- Too Dumb to Live: The heroine of the fan-made, downloadable campaign "Love to Death". She even murders some lizardmen in cold blood only because they were worshipping a Death Goddess (but lacked the power of creating undead.)