Command and Conquer Red Alert Series: Difference between revisions

''[[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]] : The Series''

 

 

 

 

 

'''Please note that this page is for tropes that cover multiple games in the Red Alert series. Please add tropes relating to one specific game to that game's page.'''

** In the third game, the Soviet Sputnik and the second function of the Allied Prospector are largely the same. The Empire's base building is completely based on this - each building comes as a "nanocore" vehicle and unpacks at a designated position into a building.

* [[Beard of Evil]]: Kane, Yuri and Cherdenko.

** Stalin in the first game.

** Premier Romanov in the second (or Yuri if you're playing as the Soviets), followed by Yuri to both factions in the expansion.

** Cherdenko and Futuretech in the third game.

* [[Big No]]: Many. As befits the pilot of a [[Humongous Mecha]], Kenji gets one with an ''echo'' in ''Uprising''.

** In the second game, McBurger Kong, a spoof of McDonald's and Burger King.

** The MiG aircraft in the third game is called "Mikevich-Guroyan", instead of the real life "Mikoyan-Gurevich".

{{quote|''"Come on, fight for the winning team!"''.}}

* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: Pretty much all the units, except some aircraft which have to return and reload. [[Lampshaded]] by the Sickle and Rocket Angel:

* [[Bowdlerise]]: The early games were subject to some changes to avoid an M rating in Germany. Most commonly was the tactic of calling all infantry units ''cyborgs'' and changing/removing sounds and effects that would suggest otherwise.

* [[Broad Strokes]]: About the most charitable way to describe the continuity between the games.

* [[Canon Discontinuity]]: The references in ''Red Alert'' that tied it into the Tiberium saga as a prequel are ignored in later ''Red Alert'' titles, even though many of them were [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Crowning Moments of Awesome]]. ''Red Alert 1'''s hardcore fanbase was displeased. [[Word of God]] states that while Red Alert remains a prequel to Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 is the result of more time traveling shenanigans, making Red Alert 2 an ''alternate'' alternate future.

* [[Casting Gag]]: Barry Corbin, who plays General Carville in ''RA2'', is basically reprising his role as General Berringer from ''[[War Games]]''. There's even an explicit [[Shout-Out]] during one of the Ant missions ("I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good!").

** Often in the second game, especially when Yuri's [[Mind Control]] is involved.

** Many times in ''Red Alert 3''. Twice for Soviet, first for Krukov's supposed betrayal, though it was later revealed Cherdenko is the one who framed him, second for Premier Cherdenko's [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|event]]. Surprisingly (at least to the players), the Allies also got one against President Ackerman. The Empire don't get any until the expansion, at least in the Allies campaign and Challenge mode.

* [[Cool Airship]]: Kirovs.

* [[Cool Boat]]: The Allied [[BFG|Cruiser]] deserves special mention. And the boats get progressively more [[Crazy Awesome]] as time goes on. The Helicarrier of Red Alert 1 ''would'' be here, but for some reason it's just set to [[Dummied Out|be available at tech level -1, thus preventing its construction,]] though the player is only [[Game Mod|one variable]] away from being able to use them.

* [[Creator Provincialism]]: Strongly averted in the first game, where nearly all the Allied cast are Europeans--it's not clear whether the USA is even in the war, as opposed to sending volunteers--and the three Allied sub-factions for skirmish missions are Britain, France and Germany. In later games, the Allies are still a broad mix of volunteers from various nations; their units have a wide variety of accents.

** Tanya's absolutely devastating to infantry and can instantly destroy any building she gets close to, but is utterly useless against vehicles. ''Yuri's Revenge'' gave Tanya the ability to blow up vehicles as well, but she still had to get close enough to plant charges, whereas they moved faster and could usually fire while moving.

** Also, several country-unique units in ''Red Alert 2'', such as the Sniper and Tank Destroyer, the latter being most infamous in that it literally ''is only good against tanks''. Even against buildings, which you'd expect them to be competent against (given that all other units effective against tanks usually do well against buildings too), they will only do chicken scratches to.

* [[Easy Level Trick]]: The second Allied level in 2 can be beaten by skipping your base building and using your starting forces to destroy the levels target.

* [[Easy Communication]]: If attacked outside their range of response, some units in the earlier games will just stand there getting shot.

** In ''Red Alert 3'', when you fight {{spoiler|Cherdenko}} in the Soviet campaign, {{spoiler|his}} base has Moais retrofitted with '''man cannons''.

* [[Empathy Doll Shot]]: Right at the start of the original Soviet campaign, as the Soviet air force strafes fleeing villagers. [[Cruelty Is the Only Option|You gave the orders.]]

* [[Expy]]: The original Red Alert was simply a morality-flipped version of GDI and Nod acting as, respectively, the Soviets and Allies with some minor changes to both, though differences quickly arose. By ''The Aftermath'', though, the Allies and Soviets had become much less like their Tiberian counterparts.

* [[Faction Calculus]]: Allies (subversive) versus Soviets (powerhouse) in ''Red Alert''. Except on the sea, where it's inverted.

* [[Frickin' Laser Beams]]:

** The Allied [[Disintegrator Ray|Prism]] and Spectrum laser technology in ''Red Alert 2'' and ''3'' respectively.

* [[Gatling Good]]: The Sentry Gun in ''Red Alert 2'', then Yuri with his own Gatling Turrets and Gatling Tanks.

* [[Heroic Dolphin]]: Used by the Allies in the second and third games.

** The Cuba crisis in Red Alert 2.

** The American sneak attack on Japanese-controlled Pearl Harbor in Red Alert 3.

** A bigger case is the Empire of the Rising Sun in RA 3, who are clearly modeled after [[Imperial Japan|Imperialist Japan]], which in real life was infamous for its war crimes, which include pointless mass murders by the hundreds of thousands, enslavement of tens of thousands of women as sex slaves, and performing medical experiments on prisoners from their colonies that killed thousands of people. Even the whole honor aspect that's presented as a joke in the game was a scary thing in real life; they considered surrender dishonorable and would execute or use enemies who surrendered as slave labor, and fed their civilians propaganda about the Allies that drove them to commit suicide by the tens of thousands when America invaded the Japanese home islands. All of these thing are of course never brought up in the game and the Empire is simply presented as an over-the-top comedic organization, though interestingly it is brought up in an in-progress mod called ''[[Red Alert 3 Paradox]]'' where in the mod's version of RA 3 events, [[Moral Event Horizon|the Empire butchered a major Soviet city]].

* [[Hurricane of Puns]]: In ''RA3 Uprising'', everything the Cryo Legionnaire says are cold-related puns of commonly used terms and [[Bond One-Liner|Bond One Liners]] such as "It's snow time!" and "Let's kick some ice!", this said imitating Schwarzenegger's voice, who acted as Mr. Freeze in the [[Batman and Robin (film)|Worst Batman Movie Of All Time]]. The name of the unit itself is a pun of an Allied unit from ''RA2''.

** The ''RA2'' Desolators spout nuclear and environmental puns, such as "[[The Beatles|Here Comes The Sun!]]" and "It will be a [[wikipedia:Silent Spring|Silent Spring]]." Given the nature of the Desolator and the timeframe of the game, this could even be a [[Historical In-Joke]].

* [[I Love Nuclear Power]]: The Soviets want to marry it. Of particular note are the Desolators. In ''Red Alert 2'', they come with a radiation beam that skeletonizes infantry, and have a secondary ability that can deny a sizeable tract of land to your enemies. In ''Uprising'' they have a [[Dissimile|chemical sprayer]] and an acid shotgun/cannon reducing enemy amour. Heavily so.

** The Soviets in all ''Red Alert'' releases. Also the Japanese in ''Red Alert 3''. All the briefing and communication videos are in English. Some of the units sometimes say things in their native language though.

** Taken to humorous extremes in ''Red Alert 3'' when {{spoiler|Tanya is able to lure the Soviet ships at Cannes into a trap by speaking English with a fake Russian accent.}} Perhaps everyone just speaks English in this timeline...

** In the penultimate original Soviet mission, blindly following your objective (destroy or capture the Allied Chronosphere) would make you fail - you have to destroy all Allied presence in the sector first before doing anything with the Chronosphere.

** In ''Red Alert 3'', at one point you must prevent {{spoiler|President Ackerman}} from reaching a specific objective point without killing him. Once you destroy the objective point (attempting to simply kill him yourself is itself a [[Kaizo Trap]]), he uses his own Chrono technology to warp over to an airstrip in an area you might not have thought to cover and attempt to flee.

* [[Kill It with Fire]]: Flame tanks, flame infantry, firebombing, flame towers. Of course, flame weapons are more devastating to infantry than to armor.

** ''Red Alert 3'' has [[Tim Curry]], Jonathan Pryce, J.K. Simmons, and George Takei. Enough said?

** Stalin in ''Red Alert 1''

** George Takei would like you to know that [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us|all your base are belong to him]].

** {{spoiler|And [[The Cameo]] appearance of [[David Hasselhoff]].}}

* [[Lightning Gun]]: All those Soviet ''Tesla'' weapons.

* [[Military Mashup Machine]]: Pick one from the list, and it's probably here somewhere.

* [[Mission Briefing]]: You get them in front of pretty much every mission in the series. Red Alert 3 is particularly egr...notable, in that it gives you three for every mission: first the live action cutscene, then the world map briefing, and followed finally by a mission map briefing.

* [[Monumental Damage]]: Often, in every game.

** Aside from Kane himself, some of the units bring up this trope, most of them being units that are incredibly apt at wiping out large amounts of particular enemies.

** From RA2 and RA3, many of the Soviet units. The [[Endofthe World As We Know It|Apocalypse]] [[Tank Goodness|Tank]], Desolators, Reapers, Harbingers, Terror Drones...

* [[Non-Entity General]]: [[Lampshaded]] in ''Red Alert 3'', where near the end of the end of the Soviet campaign, a Conscript suggests that due to your success in taking it, {{spoiler|New York City}} will be renamed "Commandersgrad" implying the non-entity-commander is actually ''named'' "Commander".

* [[Our Presidents Are Different]]: President Dugan is a President Personable and President Iron in certain amounts.

* [[Power Glows]]: Starting with ''Red Alert 2'', any unit that makes it to Heroic (max veterancy) status will find their weapon fire glowing red, either in the form of a large red muzzle flash, the projectiles themselves glow, or the explosions they create are bright red. Heroic-level Grizzly, Rhino, and Apocalypse tanks launched two miniature nuclear shells per barrel, and Heroic-level V3 Launchers and Dreadnoughts launched V3 rockets with small nuclear warheads. Kirovs also got tesla bombs, at least doubling the area of effect with a blue electrical glow.

* [[Psychic Powers]]: Yuri is capable of mind control, and the Empire of the Rising Sun's hero unit in ''Red Alert 3'' has powerful telekinetic powers. Yuri pulls a psychic possession ''over a telephone'' at the beginning of ''Red Alert 2'' With the aid of a special building, he can mind control an entire hemisphere!

* [[Red Scare]]: The USSR are the main villains of the series.

* [[Ret-Gone]]: The Chrono Legionnaire from Red Alert 2 had a gun that would ''erase people from the space-time continuum''. Storyline wise, this happened to Hitler and Einstein.

* [[Serious Business]]: What constitutes [[Canon]] is probably the most [[Serious Business]] in any fan community of an RTS game.

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: In one Allied [[RA 1]] mission, you have to carefully, painstakingly guide a single spy through a Soviet base to rescue Tanya. In the ensuing cutscene, the spy heroically bursts into Tanya's cell ''just in time''... and is promptly killed. He does provide Tanya an opening to escape, though.

** The Empire of the Rising Sun is basically a love letter to everything nerds love about Japan.

** The aforementioned school girl (a disturbed psychokinetic [[Person of Mass Destruction]]), as well as the Empire's superweapon (the Psionic Decimator), may well be a specific [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[Akira]]''.

** The Korean Black Eagle aircraft in ''RA2'' is probably named on the real Black Eagle air force aerobatic team of South Korea. Too bad the real Black Eagle planes are painted white, though. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Eagles_aerobatic_team\]

** The series' resident [[Tank Goodness]] incarnate, the Mammoth Tank, is a nod to the Nazi German super-heavy tank [[wikipedia:Panzer VIII Maus|Panzer VIII Maus]], the largest [[WW 2]] tank to reach the prototype stage; it was captured by the Soviets before it ever managed to hit the production lines. How is that relevant? It was going to be named ''Mammut''<ref>[[Captain Obvious|That's German for "mammoth"]].</ref>, at one point. Possibly continuing this, the Mammoth Tank returns in ''Red Alert'' as the Soviets' biggest tank.

** ''Red Alert 2'' had a shout out to the Orca Aircraft in the Tiberium series when Eva comments on the absurdity of the Attack Dolphins.

{{quote|Intelligence informed me that effective countermeasures involves specially-trained dolphins which are now at your disposal. What's next, killer whales?}}

** The first mission in the Soviet Campaign in ''Red Alert 2''? Operation [[Red Dawn]].

* [[Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke]]: you'd expect actual nuclear bombs to do more than wipe out a few buildings.

* [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness]]: The games get progressively sillier, in contrast to the Tiberian series, which does the opposite.

** Just about all of Stalin's cronies in ''Red Alert 1''.

** Yuri in ''Red Alert 2'' and ''Yuri's Revenge''.

** Subverted in ''Red Alert 3'': {{spoiler|Cherdenko tricks the player into thinking Krukov is [[The Starscream]] - then it turns out Cherdenko ''himself'' is [[The Starscream]]. President Akerman also, as it turns out, becomes [[The Starscream]], though [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|only because he thought he was doing the right thing]]. Or because he was an Empire robot. One of the two.}}.

* [[Strange Bedfellows]]: The Allies and the Soviets join forces in Yuri's Revenge to take down Yuri, and again in Red Alert 3 to deal with the Empire.

* [[Steampunk]]: The Soviets in ''Red Alert'', especially ''2'' and ''3''. More specifically, Tesla Punk, since they don't use steam power, though they certainly do use the steampunk style.

** The Desolators of ''Red Alert 2'' and ''3: Uprising'', bonus points since they are uncrushable, in ''Red Alert 2'' they are heavy armoured elite soldiers armed with radioactive cannons which meltdown infantry and light vehicles with ease, their secondary is the ability to contaminate an entire area with nucler radiation powerful enough to keep killing units even after the desolators have moved out, in Uprising they are portrayed as [[Equal Opportunity Evil|terminal ill]] [[Sociopathic Soldier|sadists]] in [[Wetware CPU|life support armored suits]] capable to [[Made of Iron|withstand insane amounts of damage and pain]], they use as weapons sprayers [[Narm/Video Games|which look like gas dispensers]], that release vile jets of chemical waste capable to [[Nightmare Fuel|meltdown any kind of infantry, including the female heroes]], in the most horrific way, their secondary attack launches an corrosive core which slowdown units and make vehicles and structures highly vulnerable to their primary weapons, [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|sounds cool eh?]]

** The expansions to ''Red Alert'' featured Volkov, a 1950s Soviet Cyborg and his dog, Chitzkoi. Volkov had enough firepower and durability to take on a ''battleship'' (this being one of his missions!).

** ''Uprising'' also features the Steel Ronin, who are disgraced Imperial commanders in [[Wetware CPU|life support armored suits]], although these guys are armed with [[Blade on a Stick|energy-bladed naginatas]] that can cleave through tanks and entire ranks of infantry.

** In ''Yuri's Revenge'', Yuri has a secret island, a family castle in Transylvania, and even a moonbase. Premier Cherdenko and President Ackerman have their own in ''Red Alert 3'', [[James Bond|the former inside a volcano]], the latter around Mount Rushmore. The secret Futuretech research facility takes place in a haunted castle lair.

* [[Take Over the World]]: The Soviets want this in all three games, as do the Empire in the third. {{spoiler|Depending on how you interpret what the Vice President says in the Allied ending, maybe the Allies too}}.

* [[Tank Goodness]]: Each side in ''Red Alert'' (''all'' the ones, just about) get a signature killer tank: The Mammoth Tank in RA1 (yes, a simple [[Palette Swap]] of GDI's machine); the more evolved Apocalypse ''and'' the Tesla Tank of the Soviets in RA2, along with the Allies' Prism Tank and Mirage Tank; the Allies' Battle Fortress in Yuri's Revenge; and not only do the Apocalypse tank, Tesla tank and Mirage tank make a return for RA3 but the Allies gain an amphibious ''naval destroyer'' as well as discussed earlier. The Tesla Tank is now a speedboat with spider legs for walking on land. Even discounting the [[Humongous Mecha|King Oni]], the Japanese still have the [[Wave Motion Gun]] tank.

* [[Techno Babble]]: Lots of it. Repeatedly lampshaded, as the scientist characters generally fill in the generals on the technology while the player is being briefed. Since the generals can make neither head nor tail of what they're being told however, they cannot go on to explain to the player. ( [After lots of rambling about physics] "Yes, but what does [The Iron Curtain in Red Alert] actually ''do''" "It makes units invulnerable" "Thank you")

* [[Tele Frag]]: Using the Chronosphere in ''Red Alert'' to teleport infantry will automatically kill them. In ''Red Alert 2'', the Chronosphere could also be used to teleport tanks onto water or ships onto land, thereby destroying them.

** Precisely what happens to the "old" timeline when you change history in ''Red Alert'' is never explained, but no Universe-Ending Paradoxes ever ensue.

** In RA1, Albert Einstein went back in time to eliminate Adolf Hitler, resulting in a time-split and thus stopping WWII in its roots in this RA universe. However Stalin's communist Russia rose to an even higher power without a critical enemy.

*** [[All There in the Manual]] for the first game says it stops time and thus allows units to move to a new location before restarting time, though that doesn't resemble what appears on screen at all. [[Full Motion Videos|FMVs]] shows it as opening a hole vehicles can walk through.

*** Einstein actually says in ''Red Alert 2'' that the Chronosphere is a device for teleporting objects, " . . . Through time, ''und'' through space." It does both at the same time, or none at all. (The exception being the time machine from ''Yuri's Revenge''. Though for all we know you could have just been teleported three inches to the side.)

**** But there is no objective reference point for this. All motion is based on subjective local reference points.

* [[Time Travel]]: The ''Red Alert'' series. By Red Alert 3 we're on an alternate ''alternate'' timeline.

** Chronologically speaking: at some point in an alternate history where [[Albert Einstein]] single-handedly developed a method of time travel technology as well as the standard nuclear weapons, he decided that [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|he's had enough]] of [[Adolf Hitler]]. The technology he develops allows one to go back in time to a given point, but if one touches any living thing from that time, they are erased, and the time traveler returns to the present, sans the now obliqued-from-history individual. Upon returning, Einstein finds that he saved the world from Hitler, sure, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|only to damn it even worse]] to [[Josef Stalin]]. The events of the original Red Alert then ensue, and the paths break (or are simply bad writing) as follows:

*** I. The Allies, especially Germany and Britain, and without direct American military assistance, defeat the Soviet Union. A brave new world then develops throughout the remainder of the 20th century... until the arrival of a strange substance of ''still'' unknown origin.

** At the end of the setup for ''Red Alert'', Kane declares:

{{quote|'''Kane''': [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|He who controls the past, commands the future]]... he who [[Title Drop|commands the future conquers the past]]. }}

** ''Red Alert 2'' had, in the Soviet campaign, the Eiffel Tower used as a giant tesla coil.

** Shortly after, in the Soviet mission in Washington, try get close to the Washington monument. It shoots laser!

* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: Stalin in ''Red Alert'' and his cronies try to pass themselves off as well-intentioned, particularly in his cronies' [[The Starscream|Starscream-esque]] moments (as they did in [[Real Life]]). Likewise to Premier Cherdenko and Emperor Yashiro in ''Red Alert 3'', {{spoiler|while President Akerman explicitly becomes this}}.

* [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]: Yuriko in ''Uprising''. Just play her campaign. {{spoiler|The most [[Tear Jerker|heartwrenching]] part is that she has no idea what to do or where to go after having had her revenge.}}