Phantom of Inferno

Where to begin? Phantom of Inferno is the first release by the visual novel developer Nitroplus. First, to describe Nitroplus: over 80% of their games are dark, scary, and full of murder. Nitroplus can be considered a blender of ideas, but Phantom in fact has a simple story in comparison to their other games.

The story follows the life of a young man who sees something he shouldn't have seen, is captured and Brainwashed by a shadowy organization called Inferno and then is given the choice "join or die". He is trained as an assassin by a soft-spoken girl called Ein. Ein is Inferno's top assassin, code-named "Phantom" and controlled by the sinister Scythe Master, who also brainwashed the man. The man is given the name Zwei and begins his work at Inferno.

The game was first given an adaptation which tried to sum up the game in 3 OVA episodes. In 2009, a new anime entitled "Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~" was produced by Bee Train with Yosuke Kuroda writing and supervising the scripts (including a few from the original scenarist himself Gen Urobuchi) and directed by Koichi Mashimo. The game has since been remade for the Xbox 360 in 2012 featuring the anime design created by Bee Train.

Of interesting note, previews for the original game's second release aired at around the same time as Noir, which led to viewers connecting the two (as they have similar themes).

Tropes used in Phantom of Inferno include:

Accidental Athlete - Drei
Anyone Can Die - Played straight, played with, subverted, averted, inverted, whatever. Drei, Scythe Master, Ein, Zwei, Claudia, Lizzie, a LOT of people. Just take your pick.
Badass Normal - Reiji had implausible fighting capabilities before joining Inferno.
- Later turned into just plain Badass after the first time skip
Bodyguard Crush - Zwei and Cal, Mio and Shiga.
Brainwashed - Scythe does this to Ein to keep her loyal. After Claudia's coup d'etat, the process is ceased and reversed on the agents they still have. Scythe himself later decides that not brainwashing his subordinates may actually make them stronger.
Brainwashed and Crazy
Break the Cutie - Arguably the entire premise of the series. In fact, this is the BigBad Scythe's Job when he's in Stasi, the East German secret police.
Chekhov's Gunman - Back in chapter 2 of the original Visual Novel, there is a small scene where Godoh Daisuke calls and speaks to his niece back in Japan. Considering all of the action that goes on in the chapter, the player will most probably have forgotten about this call by the end of it. Guess who turns out to be a main heroine in chapter 3?
Cool Guns - And how!
Dark Action Girl - Drei.
Downer Ending - (Anime) In literally the last minute of the show, Reiji is shot & killed by a disguised assassin in a passing hay wagon, and Ein commits suicide by consuming a poisonous Oxytropis leaf.
Earn Your Happy Ending - The anime's ending was going this way...but see Downer Ending above! Augh!
Emotionless Girl - Ein.
Expy - Drei looks exactly like Elise from the Triangle Heart 3 ～sweet songs forever～ OVA, and though Elise is much more professional and Drei much more wild, their similarities don't end at using guns, speaking Gratuitous English and wearing purple. Both are introduced after the bulk of the story and are put at odds with the male lead, whom they hate after a traumatic childhood incident involving a bomb planted by the Big Bad, and the female lead, who's just along for the ride.
- Cal has some similarities with Mathilda: a teenaged girl trying to hire an assassin to avenge her murdered sibling, beginning to fall in love with said assassin, and learning the art of killing herself.
Falling Chandelier of Doom - One of the Zahlen Schwestern gets this treatment.
Fan Service - Ein, Claudia, Drei, Mio, and the Zahlen Schwestern.
Fan Disservice Scythe Master licking Ein suggestively in the first couple hours of play.
Gaiden Game Phantom: Integration is Phantom of Inferno with hentai.
- And an extra ending.
Gainax Ending - Reiji is shot dead, Ein lies in the grass smiling. Questions remain, is Ein dead, did Inferno kill Reiji or did Ein? Is Ein dead, did she eat a poison flower? The ending is still hotly debated.
Getting Crap Past the Radar See Fan Disservice for the example. It fits two tropes (Hirameki released the game as 13+).
Genre Shift - Joked around with. The anime's second opening will leave you surprised.
Girls with Guns
The Gunslinger - Ein and Drei.
Hey, It's That Voice! - Anime. If you listen carefully, you'll hear Feldt and Saji from Ein and Zwei. Aya Hisakawa gives her stunning voice to the series as well.
- Game and OVA. Kikuko Inoue voices Claudia. Ai Orikasa of Ryoko fame does Lizzie.
- Sora, is that you?! (in Requiem at least)
Homage - Cal recites lines from films such as Dirty Harry and Taxi Driver as she is learning to fire a gun.
- Possible homages to the Girls With Guns Trilogy also created by the animation studio Bee Train. One example The white dresses worn by the Zahlen Schwestern girls look like the dresses worn by Madlax and Margaret Burton in the series.
  - If anything the Girls With Guns Trilogy had Shout Outs to Phantom since it predated the earliest entry, Noir by about a year. There's more than just the Zahlen Schwestern outfits, for example Ein and the three main characters, Kirika, Margaret and Ellis all have no recollection of their past and Reiji is shown to have almost super-human Assassin instincts like Kirika.
Hot Shonen Mom - Mio's mother
"I Know What We Can Do!" Cut - Scythe's plan in episode 6.
Innocent Fanservice Girl - Ein doesn't care about walking around naked in front of Zwei after having a shower.
Karma Houdini - In the anime Raymond McGuire, leader of Inferno, has Reiji assassinated and Ein commits suicide, and even though he's lost Scythe Master and his assassins, still controls Inferno and most of the US criminal underworld.
Kill'Em All - Of all the named main characters, only Mio and Karma Houdini Raymond McGuire are still standing at the end.
Mad Scientist - Scythe Master.
Mafia Princess - Mio. Even she doesn't know about it.
Mood Whiplash - The first half of Episode 20 in the anime. After such a solemn ending to the last episode, you may question if the anime is playing a joke on you by suddenly switching gears to a high school comedy. However, for the second half of the episode it's just buissness as usual.
- Ein and Zwei suffer from this, though often it is part of their cover. It almost seems as if Ein and Zwei are completely seperate people from Eren and Reiji.
Not Brainwashed - Drei is the result of Scythe's "thought experiment" to see if keeping her memories and playing on her old grudges will keep her as loyal and efficient as removing her memories altogether would.
Not Quite Dead - Over and over and over...
Depraved Bisexual In Phantom: Integration, Drei is one temporarily.
The Ojou - Mio.
Recap Episode - Episode 11. Parts of episode 19 as well, but not as bad as episode 11.
Sexy Backless Outfit - Ein's party costume in episode 6 and the dresses of the Zahlen Schwestern, both in the recent anime and in the visual novel.
Shout-Out - The first episode has a few homages to Scarface including the Giant Globe bearing the words The World is Mine.
Shown Their Work - The original game went into ridiculous levels of detail when it came to the guns. You got lectures.
Sleep Cute - Cal and Reiji in the second anime, oddly replacing a sex scene.
Spell My Name with an "S" - Is it Elen or Eren?
The Syndicate - Inferno.
Vague Age - The only apparent reason to why Drei grew up and Ein/Zwei didn't.
Video Game Remake: Remade for Xbox 360 now features the new character designs created in the anime series ~Requiem for the Phantom~ as well as the voice cast.
White Mask of Doom - Worn by assassins.
Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: When FUNimation picked the series up for simulcast streaming episode 10 was leaked prematurely causing an indefinite postponement of further North American simulcast streams. The simulcast did eventually return.
You Are Number Six - Ein, Zwei, Drei as well as the individual members of the Zahlen Schwestern in the anime.