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''God Emperor of Dune'', the fourth novel in the series, picks up 3500 years later at the end of Leto's reign. Leto, now the last sandworm on Arrakis and [[God-Emperor]] of all humanity, has prevented the collapse of civilization his father foresaw, but only by making himself into a tyrant beyond compare. Much of the novel takes place as a series of conversations between Leto, a clone of Paul's long-dead retainer Duncan Idaho, and Siona Atreides, the distant descendant of his sister Ghanima and a leader of the rebels seeking to overthrow him. Despite his best efforts to convince them that what he has done was necessary for the greater good, they decide the universe is better off without him, and manage to kill him at the novel's end.
The final two novels by Frank Herbert, ''Heretics of Dune'' and ''Chapterhouse Dune'', occur 5000 years after that. After the dark ages brought on by Leto's death, there is no Empire anymore. The sandworms have returned to Arrakis, but after thousands of years of research spice has been synthesized in the laboratory, rendering it a backwater once more. The Bene Gesserit sisters, now the dominant power in the galaxy (and whose leaders are now descendants of Duncan and Siona), find themselves in a struggle for their very existence as the legacy of Leto's tyranny comes back to haunt them in the form of the "Honored Matres" - schismatic Bene Gesserits who fled the galaxy as a result of his persecution, and who in the absence of the spice produced an entirely new culture that relies on sex as a weapon and a tool of brainwashing. The sisters' hopes rest in an attempt to recreate Arrakis on their capital world of Chapterhouse and in a new clone of Duncan Idaho who might be a new Kwizatz Haderach, or something even ''more'' powerful and frightening. Herbert died before completing the final story in the "second trilogy" beginning with ''Heretics''.
In the 2000s, Brian Herbert and [[Kevin J. Anderson]] said they used notes from Herbert found in a safety deposit box to write prequels and two sequels to the Dune series. These books comprise ten novels overall - the "Legends of Dune" trilogy which covers the rise of the Empire and the Spacing Guild some 10,000 years prior to the original novel; the "Prelude To Dune" trilogy which follows the conflict between Leto Atreides and Vladimir Harkonnen in the years prior to Paul's birth; ''Hunters of Dune'' and ''Sandworms of Dune'', two sequels which complete the second trilogy started by the elder Herbert; and ''Paul of Dune'' and ''The Winds of Dune'', a pair of [[Interquel|Interquels]] set between the novels of the original trilogy. Unfortunately, they were not very well received. FHM magazine once speculated that while they may have begun with notes from a deposit box, by the time of the last books they were down to a Post-it Frank left on the fridge saying "NOTE: Write more Dune books". ''[[Penny Arcade]]'''s assessment of these books was rather.... [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15 blunt.]
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*** He rejects her as wife, though, despite her pleading. Instead, Stilgar takes her.
* [[Achey Scars]]: Gurney Halleck sports a long, red scar along his face that chronically delivers residual pain due to abuse suffered from the poisonous plant inkvine during his time as a Harkonnen slave.
* [[Achilles' Heel]]: Leto II, at the end of ''Children of Dune'' [[Biological Mashup|combines his body with a sandworm]] to extend his life by thousands of years and gain immunity to almost every form of physical damage, also inherits the sandworms' [[Kill It with Water|vulnerability to water]]. Of course, this is intentional and part of his plan.
* [[Action Girl]] / [[Action Mom]]:
** Chani.
** Jessica as well in the first book, when she has to be. Her fight with Stilgar is a good example: [[Curb Stomp Battle|short]], to the point, and lets her and Paul introduce themselves to the Fremen properly.
* [[Adipose Rex]]: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is grotesquely obese, but counteracts this by wearing small anti-gravity devices that make him [[Acrofatic|as agile as a healthy young man]].
* [[Aerith and Bob]]: While the first book introduces many distinctly-European names, such as Paul, Jessica, Gurney, and Duncan (even Baron Harkonnen, whose first name is Vladimir), the names get far more exotic as the cast fills out throughout the series. Notable examples include Hasimir Fenring, Hwi Noree, many Fremen, and the Latin-European-Greek full names of the Bene Gesserit.
* [[Aesoptinum]] / [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]] : The Spice. It's one of the few clear-cut allegories in the book - a precious resource absolutely vital to the economy, much like gold in past eras and oil today. To hammer the point home, Herbert even compared the CHOAM company (which oversees the Imperium's commerce, including spice procurement) in one interview to [[Real Life]] international trade organizations, including OPEC. As for the [[Aesop]] : [[Humans Are Bastards|Humans Are Greedy Bastards]] and will often do anything in order to collect as much spice as possible, including armed conflicts, espionage, assasinations, and a great variety of immoral acts, all out of blind wilfulness and greed. Thus, Paul (and later Leto II) act against humanity's immediate desires in order to save it from itself.
* [[A Father to His Men]]: Lampshaded when Duke Leto Atreides risks his life and the priceless Spice to save his men; Liet-Kynes comments that a man such as that would inspire fanatical loyalty. It's implied that this is exactly why the Emperor wants him dead, because he fears Leto will use his popularity to depose him. There are further hints that this may be a mask designed expressly for the purpose, although it's explicitly contradicted by the prequels.
* [[A God Am I]]: When Paul fully awakens his potential as Kwisatz Haderach he becomes a messiah to peoples of thousands of worlds, only to be elevated to the status of god in the millennia following his death. His son, Leto II, grinds into the people of the universe that he is a god more for the sociological outcome rather than personal lust for power. After Paul's death, his status as a god is less widespread compared to his son's.
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** In the prequels, Omnius was actually doing what he was programmed to do (the conquest and enslavement of humanity), he just decided to work for himself, and not his Titan masters.
* [[Alternative Calendar]]: The calender used in the book begins from the establishment of the Spacing Guild's monopoly on space travel, with BG standing for "Before Guild" and AG being "After Guild".
** In addition it's implied that the (3000-year) reign of the Leto II has in effect become a calendar.
* [[Amazon Brigade]]:
** Fish Speakers, Honored Matres, and the Bene Gesserit.
** Alia's female guards are also explicitly referred to as amazons.
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* [[Attack Pattern Alpha]]: Various Houses each have their own, mostly secret languages that are dead to other populations.
* [[Author Catchphrase]]:
** "Ah-h-h-h-h."
** "Plans within plans...wheels within wheels..."
* [[Author Existence Failure]]: Frank Herbert died in 1985, leaving the ''Dune'' series on an apparent massive cliffhanger. His son and Kevin J. Anderson continued the series to mixed critical and reader response.
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But if you desire dames like consuming flames,
Try a Caladanin daughter! }}
* [[Beastly Bloodsports]]: Duke Leto's father was killed in a bullfight. The prequels by Brian Herbert added that the bull that killed him was hopped up on stimulants rather than sedated like it should have been. A tool of assassination. The original didn't attribute any foul play.
* [[Because Destiny Says So]]: How much of ''Dune'' and its sequels are [[The Chosen One]] acting out a ''preordained'' destiny, and how much is actually [[The Messiah]] ''choosing his own'' destiny and then being forced to live it out unto the bitter end? [[Frank Herbert]] would like you to think about it.
* [[Bedouin Rescue Service]]: In ''[[Dune]]'', Jessica and Paul Atreides are rescued by Fremen. They then have to jump through religious hoops and trial by personal combat to prove that they're ''worth'' saving. Of course, they were deliberately seeking out the Fremen, and the Fremen were primed by the religious mythos seeded by the Missionaria Protectiva to look for a Messiah, which Paul and Jessica were trained to exploit. Otherwise they'd have been killed out of hand. Additionally, many Fremen tribes were warned by their leader, Liet, to watch for Jessica and Paul. The novel lays this out clearly through a scene where Liet-Kynes helps them hide from the Harkonnens.
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* [[Body Horror]]: Leto II in demiworm form, Guild Steersmen mutated by spice, the {{spoiler|Axlotl tanks}}.
* [[Brain In a Jar]]: The prequels have brain-jar villains riding around in [[Humongous Mecha|giant war machines]] ([[Rule of Cool|just because they can]]), who cause the [[Robot War|Butlerian Jihad]] through poor programming of their [[AI Is a Crapshoot|computerized inside "man"]] and wind up as minions/slaves themselves. Besides the Titans ([[Humongous Mecha|giant war machines]] ), are the Cogitors, humans who gave up their bodies to spend millennia contemplating the mysteries of the universe. As a group they have declared themselves neutral in the war where humanity is being exterminated like rats.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: A very disturbing example from ''House Harkonnen'' is the prolonged and violent forced prostitution (and eventual [[Kill the Cutie|murder]]) of Gurney Halleck's gentle younger sister Bheth. First she is kidnapped by the Harkonnens for trying to protect her brother. Then they cut out her larynx so she can't do more than scream wordlessly. Next she is subjected to 6 years (starting at age 17) of sadistic rape and torture by a recorded 4620 Harkonnan soldiers. Rabban finally kills her in retribution of Gurney's attempt on his life.
* [[Brother-Sister Incest]]/[[Twincest]]:
** ''Children of Dune'', while treating incest as a theme, does not create such feelings Leto II and his sister Ghanima. Ghanima says "I will not bear your children, brother." to which Leto replies: "I love you, my sister, but that is not the way my thought tends." They do end up marrying each other, but it is nonsexual and actually meant to invoke pharaonic-archetypes of ancient Egypt.
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* [[Butt Monkey]]: Duncan is reincarnated as a ghola. {{spoiler|Again. And again. And again. And again. And killed (rather than dying of old age) only a slightly smaller number of times.}}
* [[By the Eyes of the Blind]], [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]]: Siona and her descendants cannot be detected by prescience.
* [[The Caligula]]: The Harkonnens are pretty much an entire family of Caligulas. Gladiatorial death sports, hunting humans as game, [[Perverse Sexual Lust]], murdering random servants, obscenely expensive luxuries, drug addiction, torture as entertainment--they did it all.
* [[Came Back Strong]]: Paul Atreides almost dies when he drinks the water of life, and when he wakes up he is the Kwisatz Haderach.
** Norma Cenva is tortured by the cymeks until she releases a destructive psychic wave of her latent powers. The wave not only kills her captors but also destroys her body. In that instant, she gets access to Other Memory and rebuilds her body molecule-by-molecule into that of an extremely attractive woman. She also becomes the most powerful sorceress of all.
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* [[Contrived Coincidence]]: Gurney Halleck, the one member of Leto's men who's still alive and on the planet, just so happens to be aboard the smuggling ship that falls for Paul's false spice bed trap.
* [[Cool but Inefficient]]: A lot of the tech, [[Justified Trope|justifying]] the [[Feudal Future]] / [[Punk Punk]] feel of [[The Verse]]. Much of this is deliberate due to prohibitions against thinking machines and the dominance of shields in warfare.
* [[Cool Chair]]: The Emperor's throne is described as "massive chair carved from a single piece of Hagal quartz". In ''Dune Messiah'' this is changed to "Hagar emerald" (probably a typo).
** This may be intentional actually. Green is the color of mourning on Arrakis, and also represents the terraform dream of Liet and the Fremen. So by having a new throne carved of emerald Paul is able to represent his powers of life and death with the symbolic throne.
* [[Crapsack World]]: Dune is a universe of tyrannical regimes, war and constant backstabbing. And even the most moral factions aren't that moral either - see [[Black and Gray Morality]].
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** The shields are also useless in the desert of Arrakis. First of all, it cannot stand up to the desert's powerful storms. Second, the rapid oscillations of the shield drive any sandworm into a murderous frenzy.
** In one of the prequels, it is mentioned that activating a shield while the heighliner is folding space can throw off calculations and result in a [[Blind Jump]]. There are safeguards to abort the jump if a Holtzmann field is active (this includes shields and suspensors).
* [[Deconstructor Fleet]]: For [[The Chosen One]], the [[Messianic Archetype]], and [[The Hero|hero]] tropes in general.
* [[Depraved Homosexual]]: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Though at the time of the main series of books his lust is placed solely on adolescent boys, mention of youthful exploits with women is made. The first is his fifteen year old nephew and the second is his grandson of the same age, though he was unaware of this relation.
* [[Desert Punk]]: A [[Trope Codifier]] here.
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* [[Designer Babies]]: Everyone ''thinks'' this is how the Tleilaxu produce their various genetically modified human products...
* [[Determinator]]: Yueh, after getting dead. The poor fellow doesn't stay upright for ''long'', of course, but long enough to go out with some dignity.
* [[Deus Est Machina]]: The backstory suggests humanity once created machines so advanced that life became incredibly easy and comfortable. It is implied that humans (or at least a large number of [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|fanatics]]) became so abhorred by their perceived over-reliance on intelligent machines (and advanced computer technology in general) that they initiated the Butlerian Jihad, a violent purge of all Artificial Intelligence and advanced computers. When the Jihad ended, it became a crime by religious and secular law to create advanced computers (the chief commandment resulting from this war is that "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind"), with all of their functions in calculation and space travel adopted by specialized humans (who arguably become a human form of this trope). The prequel novels which detail the Butlerian Jihad as a more straightforward [[Robot War]] against oppressive ruler [[A Is]] did, of course, piss off the fans most mightily.
* [[Deus Sex Machina]]: In the final two books, an offshoot of the Bene Gesserit called the Honored Matre arise whom use sex as a form of hypnosis. Numerous galaxy-spanning, [[Xanatos Roulette|wheels within wheels]] plots are derailed when it is discovered that there is a man with the same power. And this man trains other men to use that power. Leading to a feud carried on mostly through ''sexual guerrilla warfare''.
* [[Did You Actually Believe?]]: A heroic example, where Thufir Hawat (the Atreides mentat) betrays the Emperor and Harkonnens by refusing to kill Paul:
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* [[Environmental Symbolism]]: Arrakis, Caladan, and Giedi Prime seem to be designed with this in mind. Caladan is a green, soft world to reflect the humanity of the Atreides family; Giedi Prime is portrayed as a mechanical, desolate place to reflect the inhumanity of the Harkonnens. Dune, of course, is pretty much a planet-sized Holy Land. It is a theme that planet of origin effects the mindset of the groups that live there, or vise versa. Every planet is a reflection of the ruling house (including the Fremen with Dune).
* [[The Epic]]: Exactly.
* [[Precious Puppy]]: Tleilaxu [[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit|chairdogs]]! They bleed and squeak when Honored Matres abuse them.
* [[Evil Chancellor]]: Subverted thoroughly with Dr Wellington Yueh and Thufir Hawat. Dr Yueh looks almost exactly the part of the evil chancellor - tall, blade-thin with a drooping moustache and cold, intellectual manner. He even betrays the Atreides, and the readers find out about it right from the start. He's only doing it because the Harkonnens have probably killed his wife, but he's ''not sure'' - and for the chance to get a bit of revenge. Hawat on the other hand looks like the grandfatherly mentor, but is the Duke's [[The Spymaster|''Master of Assassins'']], and employs methods that horrify Jessica.
* [[Evil Matriarch]]: In the prequels, Duke Leto Atreides' mother, Helena, is generally a thorn in the side of the Atreides household, {{spoiler|and hatches a plot to kill her husband, the Old Duke Paulus. She is eventually exiled to the Sisters in Isolation to spend the rest of her life.}} She is also a Bible-thumper and hates the Ixians supposedly due to their (alleged) violations of the no-AI rule, but mostly because House Vernius (the rulers of Ix) beat her own House Richese in the technological and economic game. Anything bad that happens to the Ixians is God's will in her mind.<br /><br />When Paul shows up on the doorstep of the Sisters retreat, Helena at first wants nothing to do with her grandson, even though he is being hunted by assassins.
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* [[Fantasy Gun Control]]: Firearms exist in large numbers but they have been rendered as secondary weapons due to the prevalence of personal [[Deflector Shields|force shields]]. Force shields can, however, be penetrated by close combat techniques, so those are the dominant means of warfare. Laser weapons are also highly limited since a laser beam hitting a force shield cause both the gun and the shield generator to explode with enormous power. Which means that some uses of shields are only practical because shooting them with lasers is physically equivalent to using nukes.<br /><br />[[Subverted Trope|Subverted]], however, when it turns out that using personal force shields on Arrakis attracts sandworms. One of the common Fremen weapons is the "maula pistol", essentially a spring-loaded slugthrower. And also when Baron Harkonnen uses old-fashioned artillery to trap the retreating Atreides soldiers in caves.
* [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]]: In the main ''Dune'' novels, achieved exclusively via the use of the Holtzman generators, folding space nearly-instantaneously to the destination. However, in order to avoid getting atomized on the way, Spacing Guild Navigators are required to envision the safe passage (since computers aren't allowed). The prequel novels show that a more conventional means of FTL travel was used before the invention of space folding, which took weeks-to-month to get from star to star. It was largely phased out after space folding became common, although it's mentioned in ''Sisterhood of Dune'' that non-critical cargo is still sent by (relatively) slow ships (i.e. using conventional FTL drives) in order to cut costs (this is before they start building the enormous Heighliners). Additionally, when Josef Venport sends warships to secure {{spoiler|a re-discovered Thinking Machines' shipyard}}, his ships first fold space to the target system and then use conventional FTL drives to quickly approach the planet before they're discovered.
* [[Feuding Families]]: Feuding families are so prevalent in the Dune universe that it has evolved into an art form. There's "Kanly", which is an officially sanctioned House-to-House vendetta, and the all-out War of Assassins, which is just what it sounds like. The rules are codified in the Great Convention, which sets out exactly who are the acceptable targets and what weapons or poisons are permitted. Noble families in the Dune universe accept the fact that you can be knifed in the back at any time as just another hazard of the job.
** There are even separate words for poison in food and poison in a drink.
* [[Feudal Future]]: [[The Empire]] is intentionally set up this way. The novels themselves are considered to be the [[Trope Codifier]].
* [[Fictional Document]] : Where... to... begin... Perhaps with the [[Fictionary]].
* [[Fix Fic]]: The end of ''Sandworms.''
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* [[Identical Grandson]]: The Atreides "look", which is so distinctive Miles Teg looks like his ancestor Duke Leto I, ''5,000'' years later.
** Teg was bred by the Bene Gesserit to look like Leto 1 in order to help a certain someone regain their memories. Keep in mind that the BG plan actions far, far, far in advance.
* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]]: Frank Herbert's original ''Dune'' novels all contain the word "Dune", and three out of six follow the formula "X of Dune".
** The three ''Prelude to Dune'' novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson are each named after a noble house in the Dune [[Verse]].
* [[I Have Many Names]]: Paul Atreides is Paul, Muad'Dib, Paul-Muad'Dib, the Mahdi, Usul, the Lisan Al-Gaib, the Kwisatz Haderach, the Emperor, and the Preacher.
* [[I Know You Know I Know]]: Whoooooooooo boy...
* [[Inconsistent Dub]]: In different Italian translations of the ''Dune'' saga, the Golden Path is translated sometimes to "Sentiero Dorato" and sometimes to "Via Aurea".
** The Turkish translations were particularly bad. While the first four books had decent translations, the last two were terrible despite the fact that the entire series was released by the same publisher. To put it in context, the books would sometimes keep certain terms (such as Axlotl Tanks) in their original English forms and sometimes use a translated term for it ''over the course of the same book!''. It was as if the translator was thinking "You know, I think I should have used a different term for Axlotl Tanks. Oh well. That's what I will do without editing the previous bits for cohesion".
* [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet]]: Humanity rules an Empire of a million worlds that stretches across the galaxy. Thing is, not one of those is Earth. According to ''The Machine Crusade'' (written after Frank had died, so possibly not canon), humanity [[Nuke'Em|nuked earth]] [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|in a first strike against the]] [[Robot War|thinking machines]]. In the main series, the majority of humanity has no idea where their race evolved.
* [[Instant Oracle, Just Add Water]]: The Guild Navigators adapted to life in a spice-filled environment which granted them precognition and the ability to navigate at FTL speeds. They spend most of their lives inside of zero gravity tubes filled with spice laden air rather than a tub of water, but same concept.
* [[In the Blood]]: Apparently all Harkonnens are born evil and all Atreides are born good. Then Paul merges the bloodlines...
** Subverted by the possibly non-canonic prequels. Even Feyd-Rautha had potential to be good, had he been allowed to be raised by his parents instead of taken by his older brother to be raised by the Baron. Xavier Harkonnen is a noble warrior and good friend to Vorian Atreides. It was only after the Harkonnen/Atreides schism that the "evil" Harkonnen started being born.
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* [[Loophole Abuse]]: The Great Convention forbids the use of nuclear weaponry by any Great House. ''On People.'' Paul uses them against an inanimate topological feature... [[Magnificent Bastard|to his immediate tactical benefit.]]
* [[Luke, I Am Your Father]]: A twofer, actually. Baron Harkonnen is father to Jessica and grandfather to Paul. This becomes a [[Chekhov's Gun]] in ''Children of Dune'', when his genetic memory-self possesses Alia.
* [[Mad Lib Thriller Title]]: ''Dune...'' or ''...of Dune''
* [[Mad Scientist]]:
** Tleilaxu Master Hidar Fen Ajidica grows more and more insane and power-hungry under the influence of Amal, a spice substitute he has developed with some nasty side effects.
** Doctor Ptolemy is a humble scientist working on cybernetic prosthetic limbs, wishing only to help people. After his lab is destroyed by anti-technology fanatics, who also kill his friend and colleague, not to mention his entire staff, he signs up to work for Venhold, while secretly desiring vengeance upon the Butlerians and Manford Torondo in particular. How does he do it? By {{spoiler|rebuilding the cymek walkers and hatching a plan to use them to crush the fanatics and then re-establish the Time of Titans with himself in charge}}.
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* [[Master Swordsman]]: Duncan Idaho is the archetypal example, identified as such by name, but many of the characters in the first book are skilled with the blade. This is also the [[Planet of Hats|hat]] of House Ginaz, the allies of the Atreides.
* [[Meaningful Name]]: Ghanima, Leto II's twin sister. Her name means "spoils of war," because despite his seeing-the-future-vision, he'd never realized his wife was having twins. "Ghanima" also comes with added connotations of an object that is no longer being used for its real purpose-- or for any meaningful purpose at all, in fact. Paul was in a weird mood when he named her: he'd just been blinded, and she'd just killed his concubine via [[Death by Childbirth]].
** House Atreides is named after [[Classical Mythology|House Atreus]], and are even implied to be the [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|same family]].
** "Patrin" or "pattaran" means a path-marker in Romani. {{spoiler|Patrin showed Teg the way to the Harkonnen no-globe.}}
* [[Medieval Stasis]]: Society is partially stagnant due to the religious proscriptions against thinking machines, robotics, and computers set up after the Butlerian Jihad, which keeps things from advancing too much. Spice does this as well, since its properties allow for expanded lifetimes and space folding, so there was no desire to experiment and find alternatives. Finally, the Bene Gesserit and Guild collaborated to set up a feudalistic government with full knowledge that it would be easier to control.
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* [[Mind Probe]]: Many, many variations, including the Ixian Probe, its successor the T-Probe, and the abilities of Face Dancers to take a memory imprint of their victims even after death. They are so common by the time of ''Heretics of Dune'', in fact, that anyone with secret knowledge takes a special drug named "shere" that is designed to foil mental probes.
** Shere doesn't work with post-God-Emperor Face Dancers: the only way to stop '''them''' memory-printing you is to destroy your own head before you are captured.
* [[Mind Rape]]: In the Bulterian Jihad Trilogy the cymeks take brains from their human bodies (literal mind rape?), stick them in [[Brain In a Jar|jars]] and turn the "thoughtrode" settings to make the minds feel pain. And then they are [[A Fate Worse Than Death|left on a shelf]] in their own little [[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream|silent]] hell ... for centuries.
* [[Mix-and-Match Critters]]: One of the Bene Tleilax' most popular exports are sligs, hybridized pigs and slugs. The combination supposedly makes for tender, succulent meat. Goes well with Caladanian wine.
* [[Mobile Factory]]: Harvester factories move across the desert refining spice from sand.
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* [[Monochromatic Eyes]]/[[Technicolor Eyes]]: A result of high-level Spice addiction, when enough ingestion saturates the blood stream and stains the eyes. Described in the books as "blue-on-blue".
* [[Mundane Utility]]: Horse drawn antigravity wagons for farmers. ''Dune'', for all your anachronistic needs. Justified in that Leto II intentionally suppresses all forms of advanced culture and technology except those he uses himself, as part of his [[Xanatos Gambit]] to force humanity to evolve.
** "Have you not considered how much easier it is to control a walking population?"
* [[My Death Is Just the Beginning]]/[[Heroic Sacrifice]]: Leto II's Golden Path.
* [[My Master, Right or Wrong]]: Count Fenring, except at the very end, when he refuses to kill Paul.
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* [[Never Speak Ill of the Dead]]: When Paul kills Jamis in a duel, the other Fremen refrain from speaking ill of Jamis, even though he had a history of violence and unethical actions (i.e., killing Harah's first husband so that he could marry her). However, Harah's nonchalant reaction to Jamis' death, combined with her sons' delight at having Paul as their new father, suggests that they did not think well of Jamis.
* [[New Powers as the Plot Demands]]: Miles Teg's exposure to a [[Mind Probe|T-Probe]] gives him {{spoiler|[[Super Speed]]}} just in time to save his life, though the T-Probe was meant to ''kill'' him.
* [[Noble Savage]]: The Fremen, backed up by a number of quotes in the [[Encyclopedia Exposita]], are intentionally set up to be perceived this way. Even their essential cruelty is explained as the cold necessity of survival in a harsh environment, combined with a carefully nurtured desire for revenge against their oppressors. This is reinforced by the decline of the Fremen culture in later novels; as they lose touch with the desert and become "civilized", their power and nobility decline.
** Depending on your perspective, the Fremen could be a deconstruction of the Noble Savage trope. Their society is characterized by senseless internal violence, such as duels, inheretance of women by duel victors, and [[Klingon Promotion|succession through killing]]. When Paul assumes the role of Emperor, the Fremen descend on recalcitrant planets, [[Rape, Pillage and Burn|slaughtering and ravaging]] the inhabitants. This from a people who lamented their own unjust oppression for centuries.
* [[No Blood for Phlebotinum]]: The Atreides and Harkonnens end their millennia-long feud over the control of Arrakis, though there were many subtexts.
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** Subverted. The scientist ''had'' plans hidden in his own no-chamber aboard a space station. They are discovered by his fellow scientists who try to recreate the no-field. Unfortunately, the station is raided by the Sardaukar and destroyed with atomics.
*** Despite these setbacks, the technology is re-invented independently, this time with prescience shielding.
* [[No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus]]: An entry in the Dune Encyclopedia claims the Bene Gesserit existed millennia before humanity developed spaceflight, and more-or-less specifically stated that Jesus was nothing more than a premature -- and, therefore, failed -- Kwisatz Haderach.
* [[No Transhumanism Allowed]]: Both subverted and played straight. Deliberate breeding programs are used to create humans with intelligence, reflexes, lifespan, capacity higher consciousness and physical capabilities far beyond those of current-day humans, but a religious taboo is kept in place on genetically engineering anything recognizably inhuman or unable to interbreed back into the larger human population. Thus, the characters and societies remain human while simultaneously having greater advancements over modern man than modern man has over homo erectus. The Tleilaxu, however, have no religious taboo on inhumanity and gleefully make a living selling inhuman humans genetically-engineered for specific purposes.
* [[Not Quite Dead]]: Paul and Jessica. And Leto II. Gholas are a subversion in that the original does explicitly die, but the cloned replacement can be awakened to its [[Genetic Memory]].
{{quote|''Never count a human dead unless you've [[Never Found the Body|seen the body]]. And even then you can make a mistake.''}}
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* [[Once an Episode]]: The Litany Against Fear, which is recited in its entirely at least once in every one of the original books (not all the prequels and sequels, though).
* [[One-Gender Race]]: The Tleilaxu (all male). Exactly how this is achieved is eventually revealed with significant [[Squick]].
* [[One Product Planet]]: Perhaps the [[Trope Codifier]], with the major worlds known for producing a major product. Dune itself is the only source of Spice, Giedi Prime a Factory world, Ix and Richese are Science worlds, Telixau as a Underworld (selling taboo technology), Caladan is a Farm world, Kaitain is the Capital, Salusa Secundus is ostensibly a Penal colony but really a Military world. Tupile is a Service world, providing protection for exiled families.
* [[Only the Knowledgable May Pass]]: Lady Jessica is able to gain acceptance among the Fremen by using phrases planted in their culture by the Missionaria Protectiva (which manipulates religious beliefs to benefit the Bene Gesserit).
* [[Organic Technology]]: Due to the prohibitions against advanced technology, humans were forced to develop their own talents to fill the void. Mentats act as human-computers, the Spacing Guild navigates space through prescience in the place of computers, and the Bene Tleilax {{spoiler|use their females as wombs for their genetic products}}.
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** An introduction to religion is one of the elements in cultivating a mentat, to allow them to understand the logical fallacies and traps involved.
* [[Outlived Its Creator]]: Since Frank Herbert's death, Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J. Anderson have written a number of prequels and sequels.
* [[Painting the Medium]]: Some words like "SPICE" and "VOICE" tend to be printed in capital block letters to give them a sort of mystical echo (see above for DEATH in the Discworld novels). However, there are no capital letters in the Hebrew language, so the Hebrew translation has these words printed in bold and in a larger typeface than the rest of the sentence. This method makes them even more creepy and resonant than the original, if at all possible.
* [[Patchwork Story]]: ''Dune'' itself was originally published as two shorter works in ''Analog'' magazine before being expanded and reworked as a novel.
* [[Penal Colony]]: Salusa Secundus was one of these, as well as a [[Death World]] with the intention of creating [[Super Soldiers]].
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** Alia kills the Baron Harkonnen with a poisoned needle during the confusion.
** Crysknives often have a groove in them where poison can be applied.
** When fighting gladiators, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was allowed to use a short knife with a poisoned blade. During his hundredth bout, he secretly put the poison on his long knife instead, which allowed him to win the match.
* [[Polluted Wasteland]]: The dark world Giedi Prime, the home planet of the Harkonnens, is heavily pollluted from over-industrialization. One of the final two books makes a point that this was so bad, that now, over 8,000 years after the Harkonnens were overthrown, the ground will ''never'' lose its greasy texture.
* [[Praetorian Guard]]: The Imperial Sardaukar. For Paul, the Fedaykin.
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* [[Prescience Is Predictable]]: One of the core themes of the main series. Indeed, this could be the [[Trope Codifier]] for all modern uses.
{{quote|'''Leto II''': "It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will."}}
* [[The Promised Land]]: The Fremen believe they can turn Arrakis into this with some ecological engineering.
* [[Prophecies Are Always Right]]: Justified - prophecy actually controls reality.
* [[Prophecy Twist]]: The Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva intentionally seeds Galactic society with messianic prophecies to provide a ready-made belief structure for their planned Kwisatz Haderach. The twist occurs when the real thing comes along and manipulates the prophecy to make himself Emperor of the known universe. Oops. (Hint: when trying to create a prophet, allow for the fact that the prophet will figure out what you're doing and may try to take it away from you.)
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** And finally Duncan Idaho. {{spoiler|He has clocked up at least 5,000 years through hundreds of ghola-incarnations, although most incarnations only possess the original Duncan's memories, each is blissfully unaware of the many copies that have existed between the original and himself. Then the final Duncan finds a way to awaken the memories of ''all'' the ghola-incarnations to create a chain of memory-lifetimes. And having realised ''that'', he uses it on Miles Teg.}}
** Thanks to the cymeks' life extension treatment, both Vorian Atreides and Gilbertus Albans hardly look a day over 40, even though they're both well over a century old. Vorian, at least, is described to have some grey hair.
* [[Reality Warper]]: Norma Cenva, being not only a Navigator but also a powerful [[Mind Over Matter|Sorceress of Rossak]], learns to fold space with pinpoint accuracy without a Holtzman engine. {{spoiler|She uses her powers to basically become God, and eventually kills Omnius with them.}}
* [[Really Gets Around]]: Arguably subverted by the Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres, whom really do have many sex partners, but only because the Bene Gesserit are engaged in a subtle breeding program and the Honored Matres use their sexuality as a form of conditioning. Both only do it professionally.
** Duncan Idaho more so. See [[The Casanova]] above.
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* [[Red Scare]]: The Harkonnens are apparently of Russian descent. Now remember that the books came out during the [[Cold War]].
* [[Regent for Life]]: Alia in ''Children of Dune'' (she didn't start out that way, but [[It Got Worse|shit happened]]).
* [[Required Secondary Powers]]: ''Heretics of Dune'' sees {{spoiler|Miles Teg}} gain [[Super Speed]], but needs to become a [[Big Eater]] to compensate (Several characters lampshade his Big Eating). He also gets his hands badly bruised and torn from hitting his enemies at such speeds.
* [[Reinforce Field]]: The bones of a sandworm are extremely brittle. However, their crystalline structure can be made as tough as diamond with a weak bioelectric field, such as one produced by a living creature, including the sandworm itself. When a sandworm is killed, its skeletal structure collapses and rapidly erodes. The same is true for crysknives, weapons made out of sandworm's teeth.
* [[Retcon]]: In the first novel, the Reverend Mother power of "other memory" was bestowed by a kind of "download" of all the memories of another Reverend Mother -- only that Reverend Mother's memories, or the memories of previous Reverend Mothers she'd downloaded, were accessible. By the time of ''Children of Dune'', "other memory" was a genetic phenomenon that allowed its possessor access to the memories of anybody in his or her past, male or female.
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{{quote|"You think... you have defeated me? You think I did not know... what I bought... for my Wanna?"}}
** Poor old Wellington kinda gets the short end of the stick in the universe; despite his best-of-intentions betrayal, in subsequent books it is made clear that history remembers him as ''[[Finding Judas|worse than Judas]]'' and for thousands of years his name serves as a byword for unconscionable treachery.
** And then he tries to right his wrongs in the sequels, to disastrous results (he does finally get it right at the end, however, to the point where the reborn Atreides have forgiven him).
* [[Ridiculously Human Robot]]: Erasmus from the Legends of Dune trilogy ([[Fanon Discontinuity|for those that admit he exists]]). He wasn't designed to be intelligent (although does ''look'' at least vaguely like a human - two arms, two legs etc) but ends up being far more so than any other robot, and this feat can't be replicated.
** He's also, somehow, a transexual that crossdresses and is implied to have homosexual encounters.
* [[Rite of Passage]]: The gom jabbar stands out, though is only done on Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach-hopefuls. Better examples exist among the Fremen, such as first hooking a sandworm (at twelve).
* [[Robot War]]: The "Butlerian Jihad," which is referenced in the very first book but wasn't fleshed out in any detail, [[Fanon Discontinuity|certainly not by the prequels]]. Led to a core tenet of civilization: "[[AI Is a Crapshoot|thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind]]"-- by which we mean, No Computers Allowed. Various schools of mental training, such as the Mentats and the Bene Gesserit, were founded to produce humans who can do what Pentiums did (and eventually went far beyond that).
** Of course it's never made clear (in the original series, which predates widespread computer use in [[Real Life]] anyway) how advanced the computer has to be before it's forbidden, nor really what precisely it is that Mentats do most of the time.
* [[Rock Beats Laser]]: This is an example when the trope is totally justified. Because of shields, the Sardaukar use knives and swords. The Fremen use knives because that's what they have. When the Sardaukar come to Arrakis, they have to turn their shields off. So it's not rocks beating lasers, but more along the lines of your lasers have stopped working, and the locals are better at using rocks than you are.
* [[Royal Blood]]
* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: The royalty/nobility in ''Dune'' basically do nothing ''but'' scheme against one another and actually ruling their domains. Court functions and leisure occasions seem to only serve the purpose of furthering their schemes for power.
* [[Sand Is Water]]: The sandworms "swim" through sand by literally eating it and passing it through their system, avoiding most of the implausibilities of it. This generates intense heat that triggers some extremely powerful electromagnetic storms from all the friction.
** Played even straighter with tidal dust basins, basins of dust so deep they have tides, which an unwary traveler can wander into and die.
* [[Sand Worm]]: Possibly the [[Trope Maker]].
* [[Schizo-Tech]]: Many of the apparently anachronistic elements of technology are justified by the book's extremely-detailed backstory.
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* [[Space Is Cold]]: After Josef Venport [[Thrown Out the Airlock|spaces]] {{spoiler|Arjen Gates}}, the latter is told to freeze almost instantly instead of turning into a bloody mess from [[Explosive Decompression]]. Just to hammer the [[Did Not Do the Research]] point home, the authors further state that the corpse is "petrified". Obviously, they don't understand the difference between turning to stone over millennia and simply freezing. Furthermore, the body stays frozen at room temperature when recovered.
* [[Space Jews]] - Literally, as of ''Chapterhouse''. As much as the other major religions have shifted in 20,000 years, there are still people who observe Passover, speak ritual Hebrew, and have a conception of a nation of Israel. They managed to survive by first going into hiding, then pretending to be revivalists.
* [[Space Opera]]: Exactly.
* [[The Spartan Way]]/[[Training From Hell]]: The Emperor's Sardaukar. To a certain extent the Fremen also - their culture is more survivalist than purely martial, but on a man-for-man level it seems to yield a superior result.
* [[Spear Counterpart]]: The all-male Tleilaxu are eventually revealed to be this to the all-female Bene Gesserit (they also call themselves the Bene Tleilax).
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* [[Stalker with a Test Tube]]: This is basically the Modus Operandi of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood - breeding together people with the right genes in order to produce the Kwizatch Haderach... whether that means matchmaking, blackmail, or outright rape is of little concern to them as long as the right children result.
* [[Standard Time Units]]: Years are known as "Standard years", or SY, and are described as being about 20 hours less than the "so-called primitive year".
* [[Standard Sci Fi History]]: The background history of the Imperium tends to follow this trend. The Buterlian Jihad serves the role of World War III by resetting the political and technological situation. The Corrino-led Imperium serves as the First Empire, and the Paul/Leto II regimes as the Second Empire. It's one of the few examples in which the Second Empire follows up the first without an Interregnum. There is an Interregnum (referred to as "The Scattering"), but it occurs only after the collapse of the Second Empire.
* [[Starfish Aliens]]: The sandworms, which are gigantic (as in up-to-half-kilometer-long) wormlike creatures that live in the desert. They also have a larval form, which begin as microbial "sand plankton" that serve as food to the adults, and grow into a small roughly diamond-shaped form called sandtrout AKA "Little Makers". The sandtrout are later revealed to seal away all the water on the planet, which is highly toxic to the adult form, and secrete the precursors to the addictive and [[Psychic Powers]]-granting Spice, which triggers their transformation into the sandworm "Makers".
** They also inhale carbon dioxide and breathe out fresh oxygen, working as a substitute for the nearly non-existant plantlife on Arrakis. This also [[Justified Trope|justifies]] why such a [[Single Biome Planet]] can have a breathable atmosphere. The byproducts of the worms are suspiciously Terran-friendly indeed. Various characters [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade this]] occasionally, even suggesting the idea that sandworms may be in fact [[Lost Technology|Lost]][[Organic Technology]] for terraforming planets ([[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|created]] [[No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup|a long time ago]] by humans, presumably).
* [[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome]]: Chani. Though she dies relatively late in ''Dune Messiah''.
* [[Super Detailed Fight Narration]]
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* [[Totally Radical]]: In the ''Dune'' prequels there are things called 'Cymeks,' apearently trying to combine 'cyborg' and 'mech' with a [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|Xtremely Kool Letter]]. Cybernetic ''and'' mechanical.
* [[To the Pain]]: Feyd-Rautha
* [[To Win Without Fighting]]: In Heretics. In the [[Backstory]], Miles Teg was a famous Bene Gesserit military commander.
{{quote|Teg's reputation was an almost universal thing throughout human society of this age. At the Battle of Markon, it had been enough for the enemy to know that Teg was there opposite them in person. They sued for terms.}}
* [[Tranquillizer Dart]]: This comes up when Leto finds the Shadout Mapes dying on the floor in the palace and {{spoiler|Doctor Yueh}} shoots him with a dart (at the start of the Harkonnens' raid on Arrakis). {{spoiler|Yueh is the family physician, so he knows the duke's body mass, metabolism, and so on.}} Some reference to the drugging of Jessica and Paul is also made; the Baron stands over Jessica as she comes to and tells her, "The drug was timed." This admission tells her the traitor has detailed and intimate knowledge of her vital statistics, and she deduces his identity seconds later.
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{{quote|"CHEOPS: pyramid chess; nine-level chess with the double object of putting your queen at the apex and the opponent's king in check."}}
** Apparently it has evolved into an actual variant of chess that is played by some people.
* [[Viewers Are Geniuses]]: The universe features wheels-within-wheels plots and dense mythology, although the poetic descriptions can make the book enjoyable even to those who fail to understand it.
* [[Villain Ball]] / [[Contractual Genre Blindness]]: Done deliberately by the Tleilaxu. They ''mean'' to leave exploitable loopholes in their schemes; seeing whether or not their victim can spot it is what makes things fun for them.
** It's not that it makes it fun for the Tleilaxu, it's stated that perfection can only come from God, and therefore a person attempting perfection would be blaspheming, so therefore they deliberately include flaws in everything they create, just to make sure.
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* ''[[Dune II]]'' (and ''Dune 2000'')
* ''[[Emperor: Battle for Dune]]''
== Other adaptations provide examples of: ==
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