Command and Conquer Red Alert Series/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster:
    • Unsurprisingly, Stalin and the USSR as a whole in the first game. With maybe one exception, depending on your opinion of Kane.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: From the Red Alert 3 conscript. "Ever since I was little boy I wanted to torpedo dolphin with sub!"
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Is there anyone who, having played the original game, can read the page quote for Red Alert without "Hell March" beginning to play in their heads?
  • Evil Is Sexy: And so is good - in Red Alert 2 both faction's Mission Control chicks are literally played by ex-porn stars.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • Fans still debate on a number of issues, notably which ending of the first Red Alert leads to Tiberian Dawn.
    • According to Westwood, the Allied ending leads to both Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert 2. The Soviet ending appears to lead into a completely different non-canon era.
  • Fetish Retardant: Oh god. Red Alert 3. Cheesecake Overload.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Destroying the World Trade Center Towers in Red Alert 2. Of course that is entirely up to the player to do. However, destroying the Pentagon isn't. And that's the first Soviet mission. To further hammer the point home, Red Alert 2's original box art featured a burning New York City skyline, with the WTC on fire. After 9/11, Electronic Arts recalled all of the unsold units, and for a month, you couldn't even buy the game. What did the new, less offensive box art feature? No NYC, but the American flag in the Soviet commander's monocle was replaced with a mushroom cloud.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Yuri Prime, Apocolypse Tanks (Red Alert 2 only), Kirov Airships, Shogun Battleships, Mirage Tanks, Athena Cannons, Etc.
    • Yuri's faction from Yuri's Revenge.
      • Namely, Flying Discs with lasers and tractor beams, tanks and static defences that can mind control enemy units, and missile submarines.
      • Don't forget that you can shut down an enemy's entire base with just four Flying Discs. Park one over a Power Plant, another over their Refinery, and one near any building that can produce anti-air infantry/vehicles. Not to mention Yuri Prime, who can mind-control buildings (and with the Cloning Vat, you can get two Yuri Primes!)
    • Uprising introduces us to the Harbinger gunship, a nigh on invincible self healing flying fortress. If you can build up a few then they make the attack move option a 'I win' button.
    • Don't forget the Empire's Giga-Fortress. Just one of them can take away a quarter of a Harbinger's health in Sea-Fortress mode. And don't get me started on Sky-Fortress mode!
    • The Sky-Fortress modes is the main use for them. They outrange anti-air units, and do insane damage.
    • The Apocalypse Tank in Uprising gets some major upgrades. Its magnetic harpoon weapon now keeps enemy units from shooting back, so if you micromanage them right you can easily defeat a force tier-3 armor of the same size without taking any damage, and they can used to pull ships on land to instantly destroy them. However, it's not considered a gamebreaker merely because of Harbingers Gunships and Giga Fortresses.
  • Ham and Cheese: Goes a long way towards describing the acting in the series. And man, is it fantastic.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The Soviets. They cross the MEH roughly THREE SECONDS into the first cutscene of the first game. Or more accurately, even BEFORE the game begins which you learn of within the first three seconds of their first cutscene, where Stalin and his subordinates are discussing the effects of Sarin gas upon a few unfortunate civilian "test subjects." Right before ordering you to raze a Polish village to the ground and kill everyone that inhabits it. They get worse as the game goes on.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
  • Villain Decay: The Soviets coming as more and more goofy, and stupid, each game makes them much less threatening.
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