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== [[Fridge Brilliance]] ==
* Remember [[Comedic Sociopathy|Sean Dempsey]] from the Cataclysm expansion? You first meet him in the Worgen starting zone, lying on the floor being tended to because he just got mauled by werewolves. And then, you meet him as a corpse strewn across 4-5 different crocolisk stomachs in the Forsaken questline. Then you have him resurrected into a Forsaken, just to have your buddies shoot him in the face. The guy can't catch a break. But how did he end up in those crocolisk stomachs? Again during the Worgen starting zone, you're riding a carriage when you see a broken down one in the road. The Prince at that carriage notes the ogres throwing boulders at your carriages, saying "The one behind us got hit harder, and it tumbled off the road into the swamp." When you go over there, what do you see? Survivors fighting off crocolisks. Chances are, Sean Dempsey was on that carriage, and, wounded and defenseless, was eaten by the crocolisks. If you visit Gilneas later, you'll note the crocolisks aren't there. Chances are, they migrated due to the earthquakes to Southern Silverpine, where you start killing them and discover Sean's mostly digested body parts.
* The ''Wrath of the Lich King'' expansion has a surprisingly great deal of [[Moral Dissonance]] in it. In order to complete quest lines (which is where most of the fun and experience points lies) have to [http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/08/torture-in-videogame.html torture prisoners], kill game hunters on a quest for an [[Animal Wrongs Group]] (and in a different area you end up killing animals on a quest for those same game hunters, so whatever the morality of the situation, you are doing ''something'' wrong), kidnap children, beat up adorable baby monkeys, and just generally do things [[Designated Hero|that doesn't make you feel like you're much of a hero]]. And then it dawns on you that the [[Big Bad]] of the expansion is the Lich King, a paladin who set out to fight evil but who in the course of doing so kept finding himself with the decision of either performing some evil deed or giving up his fight against evil. Each time, [[Well
** From the box of the Wrath of the Lich King case: "If you stare long into the abyss... the abyss stares back into you." I didn't think much of it the first time I read it, but while browsing here, I came across [[He Who Fights Monsters]]. Turns out that quote (or a slight variant of that quote) is from Friedrich Nietzche, and it's only half of it. The other half is the heart-chilling, "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster." I'm probably not the first person to notice this, but it still came off as brilliance when I found that out five seconds ago.
** It makes even more sense as you find out about {{spoiler|Yogg Saron, the [[Eldritch Abomination]] whose physical mass is under nearly all of Northrend and whose presence drives people insane.}}
*** It becomes even clearer at the end of the fight against the Lich King, as a scripted event kills every player still alive and he boasts how Icecrown, and indeed every event of the expansion, was really {{spoiler|just a massive plan to corrupt and ultimately attract the greatest heroes of Azeroth to die at his feet and be raised as his new champions. Unfortunately he hadn't counted on his father's soul returning to resurrect the heroes and hold him helpless as they finish him off.}} ~ Drakkenmensch
** With Patch 3.2, a few new instance dungeons were added. One of these had a boss that used to annoy me greatly. While he was originally a human Death Knight, in the instance he returned as an Undead Death Knight, with partially decaying skin and everything. When you killed him, he'd return as a skeleton, claiming the flesh was only holding him back. And even when you killed his skeletal form, he returned AGAIN as a ghost yelling how he didn't even need his bones to kill you. It took me three runs to figure out the significance of his name: [[Monty Python and
*** And that's (so far) the last time you fight him, too. Before that, you uncovered and fought him on horseback, after which he fled, and then uncovered his scheming AGAIN to lead into the Trial of the Champion boss fight. He just won't stay dead. Nothing compared to Anub'arak, though.. Nothing in the Scourge ever stays dead, really.
** The mount the Black Knight rides is a griffin. Much of the forum would like to see it named "The African Swallow". Or European Swallow.
* The Headless Horseman's Mount from the Hallow's End yearly event is an undead horse, which fits with its rider just fine. The part that had bugged me, however, was the fact that it seemed to be fel-corrupted, with the glowing yellow-green legs/bones. Then I got to Northrend and found out exactly who was pulling the Scarlet Crusade's strings...
** [[All There in the Manual|In the World of Warcraft manga]], the Horseman's backstory is revealed. {{spoiler|He used to be a Scarlet Crusader who had a [[Freak
** Also, the Stratholme instance revealed {{spoiler|Balnazzar's involvement in the Scarlet Crusade}} back in vanilla.
* For the longest time, I wondered how trolls could ride raptor mounts. The raptors clearly wear bridles with bits (the part that goes into the animal's mouth and sits on the interdental region, that space between the teeth and the back of the mouth,) but... how the hell do you get a carnivorous dinosaur to hold a metal bit in his mouth? Provided that they even ''have'' an interdental region, what sane person would stick their hands into that mouth? Then I realized: trolls are the only race that raise and train raptors... And also the only race that can regenerate lost digits and limbs. Coincidence, or [[Fridge Brilliance]]?
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*** The poster above me raises a good point but takes it to the wrong conclusion- A blood elf warrior ''would'' presumably be a guy whose much less reliant on arcane magics, but that they appear now isn't because Quel'Thalas is churning out nobler guys- It's because, with the restoration of the Sunwell, Blood Elves can finally let go of their most infamous habit.
** Just my two cents, but I felt that rogues were right inbetween the lines of magical, and normal...they use a fair amount of magic, but don't focus on it. You can just train to turn invisible right in someone's face, or teleport past the shadow. They also have slight control over their bodies, able to force an adrenaline rush, cell regeneration (Recuperate), able to negate all magic in a veil of shadowy energy, as well as many other things I could go on for. While it's true rogues do things without magic that other classes would rely on magic for, such as smoke bomb and blind, they are clearly able to use magic of a shadow nature.
*** Most of the reason for the appearance of "magic" is out of necessity for the mechanic to work in such a game. A traditional class of this sort would use darkness and shadow to hide, jumping out to ambush his foes, before returning to hiding. Unfortunately, not only does WoW not have day/night cycles, but even if it did - a simple change to an opposing player's display settings would defeat the advantage of night as well. Not to mention, of course, that forcing a player to only be able to play during certain time periods, wouldn't go over too well. Second, you're always viewing your character from the third person, in which you can always be looking behind your character. It should go without saying that such a view would make it tough for anybody to sneak up on you. So in return, Blizzard did the only thing they could've done - to make the class able to be played effectively - make stealth turn the character invisible.
** Another perspective - The blood elves have always focused on magic and weaving the arcane into everything they do, and they've earned a reputation of being stuffy and looking down upon other races. Even rogues and hunters, if considered entirely magic-less, put emphasis on skill and finesse rather than brute force. Perhaps the warrior tradition, which uses no magic and is driven largely by brute force, was eliminated in Silvermoon in favor of WC3's Spellbreakers. The fact that the haughty race is adopting a practice that they would have historically dismissed as barbaric and purely the domain of simpletons could be seen as a symbolic indicator that they're starting to understand that they're not superior, that maybe the other races have some good ideas after all, and that they're trying to overcome their race's smugness and adapt to the future Azeroth is headed towards. - [[Tropers/Timber|Timber]]
** However, you have to take into account that all classes in WoW use magic of some sort, warriors as much as rogues. Taunt is a form of perception control, their healing effects clearly have something magical about them, then there's Thunder Clap, Shockwave, Charge/Intercept etc. My opinion is that since becoming trained as a warrior is something with very few shortcuts, And the Belfs are more attuned to be using arcane magic as their main form of combat, so it has taken a while since the end of WC3 (where Blizzard has stated almost all of the Belf warriors to be lost) to train the next corps of warriors.
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** I saw this as a really emotional [[Tear Jerker]] instead: when Garrosh tells you that Hellscream's eyes are upon you, he's referring to his father Grom, the man he admires most and whose actions inform his philosophy and life. That one line pretty much turned Garrosh completely around as a character for me. - [[Plaid Mage]]
* When ''Wrath of the Lich King'' came out, several Warlock demons had their abilties changed. The Felhunter (demonic bloodhound) lost his ability to find stealthed (hidden) enemies. This skill was added to the Voidwalker (big purple "darkness elemental" thingy)'s Consume Shadows skill (the skill is channeled for some seconds, during which the Voidwalker regenerates Health and, as of the Expansion, helps reveal stealthed enemies). At first, I though "well they just added the stealth detection to some random weak spell", but then I realized "Wait, if my Voidwalker consumes shadows, of course you can see people ''trying to hide in the shadows'' better. That makes sense." - [[der Domino]]
** I thought it was a bit random and [[Villain Ball]]-y that, in the ''Last Rites'' questline, {{spoiler|the Cult of the Damned infiltrator opted to brainwash Thassarian's sister, who had basically no strategic significance. The other victim was a ''general'', all Leryssa seemed to do was [[
** This Troper thinks it took him ''far'' too long to realize that Saronite, a metal which is known to drive people to madness, is named after Yogg-Saron. -- [[Sgamer 82]]
*** Rightfully so, too: {{spoiler|it's supposedly his solidified blood.}}
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*** Bronze: Time
*** Black: Earth
*** So just because the colors match up doesn't mean that each color represents the school of magic.
** As for the blue flight, they're explicitly stated to be immune to arcane corruption.
**** This discussion could spiral into a gigantic cauldron of awesome, tbh. Some might not believe that magic itself is innately good or evil. In fact, it's possible that each form of magic has in itself a scale of extremes that, when tipped ever so slightly, begins to totter back and forth increasingly until the user is driven into oblivion. Is it possible that Neltharion's madness set into motion the unraveling of each Aspect in turn? Is this how death occurs for an immortal?
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* The ending to Rheastrasza's quest line in the Badlands totally flipped that on its head, which involved trapping a black dragon and stealing one of her eggs in order to breed a purified black dragon. Through the whole thing, Rhea talked to the player, trying to convince them the [[I Did What I Had to Do|the ends justified the means]], but her voice comes off like she was trying to convince herself that it was the right thing to do. At the end of the story, she is caught by Deathwing who destroys her and the black dragon egg she stole, but it was a ruse. To get the egg out of the Badlands, she needed to convince the black dragons that it was destroyed, by [[Kansas City Shuffle|letting them catch and kill her with a substitute egg]], ''one of her own''. All of her previous fidgeting wasn't guilt over what she did to the black dragons, it was anticipation over her impending [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. - Dino Vercotti
* I never really thought about the significance of the Halls of Reflection dungeon in ''Wrath''; I figured that it was just a cool sounding name and it was just the place where Arthas leaves Frostmourne. It wasn't until I read the [[The Sword That Talks]] Frostmourne entry that something clicked; the entry said that Frostmourne still had the souls of everyone it killed in it, and that the souls can come out and harass Arthas (as we see in the battle with him), so that's probably why he keeps it in the Halls of Reflection. And then it hit me; the ghosts that you fight are the ghosts of every soldier Arthas killed with the sword, and the reason that he has a room for it is because he's filled with remorse. It's the Halls of ''Reflection''. He leaves the sword in the center and reflects on all the deaths and pain he's caused. So Jaina was right; there IS a bit of Arthas left in the Lich King, and he's truly horrified by what he's done. He's still overpowered by the Lich King, but he's still in there. So what used to seem like a fairly random dungeon turned into something really interesting.-Gneissisnice
* I was playing Alliance and doing the exploration achievements. Not having a flying mount at the time, he looked at Mulgore and tried to figure out how to get in. The only path in Pre-Cata was blocked by a massive wooden wall Post-Cata, preventing the only way in by land that he knew of. He asked around to find if there was some way in, but got a negative, causing him to realize the sad truth that [[The Lord of the Rings|One does not simply walk into]] [[Stealth Pun|Mulgore.]]
* Either the guys at Blizzard have been probing the dictionary, or this is a strange coincidence. Following a link from TV Tropes, I found "[
** Umm, Fungalmancer could loosely be translated to "mushroom-caster". And that's all that Glop does in his encounter: throw exploding mushrooms.
*** I meant "fungible" has nothing to do with fungus.
* This one took me a while to discover. I had wondered, since Cataclysm first came out, why the draenei hadn't received a new class while every other race had. I figured, after fighting the Lich King and the Burning Crusade, some of them would have at least become enough [[Combat Pragmatist]] to become rogues. Then it hit me - They had not fought the Lich King to much of an extant. They hadn't done much at ''all'' since the Sunwell, only sending a single corp to Valiance Keep and sending representatives to the Argent Tournament. The reason for not getting a new class wasn't because they couldn't think of another one, it was because the draenei weren't shaken by the Cataclysm like the other, native races of Azeroth. It's kind of sad once you think about it. The draenei are almost universally just and fair, but when it comes to world affairs, they are almost completely aloof and seperated. They never stop fighting battles of the past, never stop claiming "the Legion's end draws near". The only draenei you see at the forefront of the war against Deathwing are the shamans of the Earthen Ring, far more down to earth and proactive than their paladin and priest brothers and sisters.
** In ''Wolfheart'', how little the draenei have really done becomes pretty clear. The other races were invited to Darnassus to cast their vote on if the worgen should be accepted to the Alliance or not. Tyrande didn't ask the draenei to come because ''she thought they had all gone back to Outland after the Sunwell.'' The draenei have done ''so'' little that their own allies didn't even know they were still around!
*** You wouldn't know this by looking at the playerbase, though.
**** Actually Velen's short story has him encouraging the refugees around the Exodar and Draenei to become more active in the world and do stuff. Sadly nothing has actually come of this for the Draenei
** I always thought that they couldn't have rogues for the same reason taurens don't. Draenei and Tauren have hooves, and tauren hooves are ''huge'' (To help support their weight, of course). And since rogues have an ability called kick...can you imagine how much it'd freaking ''hurt'' to be kicked by that? Anyone who's ever been kicked by a horse can probably tell you what kind of damage those things can do. Then again though, the [[Fridge Horror]] comes in when you consider they can become monks....''OW''.
* Sylvanas' recent behavior gained a whole new light in my view after reading the short story ''Edge of Night'' on the community website. It details how Sylvanas came to make her pact with the Val'kyr, and in which she's shown what the fate of her people would be [[For Want of a Nail|for want of a Dark Lady.]] A couple of things are realized because of this story:
** Her animosity towards Garrosh. Granted, just being Garrosh can give the other Horde leaders reason to dislike him, but Sylvanas' vision showed {{spoiler|Garrosh treating her people like [[We Have Reserves|disposable reserves]] and destroying them to the point that they'd throw themselves into bonfires [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|than face the Gilneans]]}}. Any hatred Sylvanas has towards Garrosh is brought about by the fact that she ''knows'' what he would do if she weren't around.
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* I've played a Priest as my main for the past 7 years, and it just hit me recently: the three Priest specs each represent a different part of a person. Shadow is the Mind (just take a look at all the abilities, most of them begin with "Mind"), Holy is the Body (it focuses on healing wounds), and Discipline is the Soul (many of its spells are based around the soul; look at talents like "Strength of Soul", "Soul Warding", and the Weakened Soul debuff associated with PW:S). Priests embody mind, body, and soul. Yes, I feel very dumb for taking 7 years to realize this- Gneissisnice
* The [[Broken Base]] between Alliance and Horde players often complains that the "other side" is getting all the cool toys. For a long time, Horde players complained that the Alliance had most of the territory on Azeroth, and this is later reversed in Cataclysm where the Alliance fan base complains that the Horde is making one-sided gains all throughout the game world. For a long time, I thought it was just a huge case of [[Fan Dumb]]. Then it hit me: Blizzard is ''deliberately'' engendering this embitterment between Alliance and Horde ''players'' because thats what the characters (both player and non-player) feel towards each other. Essentially it's [[Enforced Method Acting]] applied to a role playing game. The fact that I did not realize this before made me feel very stupid.
** I have to wonder if they ''intended'' shamans to be called "OP" or Paladins to be considered "Easymode", then.
* The final battle of the End Time has a mechanic in which you activate an hourglass to, for all intents and purposes, restart the fight. Everything from your position on the battlefield to all of your cooldowns are reset to the state they were in when you first started fighting, with one exception: The boss's health. What makes this [[Fridge Brilliance]] is the reason. The boss brags that the hourglass has no effect on him. That's exactly why it works! The hourglass does not effect the boss, so ''his'' health stays constant while everyone else is reset.
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** In the Borean Tundra, the players are asked by one of the good guy groups (the Kirin Tor, to be precise) to torture a captured agent of the Blue Dragonflight until he cracks. The Kirin Tor wizard who gives the quest hands you a torture device noted in its description to inflict excruciating pain without causing any physical harm, and that it's made in Dalaran, the Kirin Tor home city. The wizard in turn specifically states that Kirin Tor law forbids them from torturing prisoners... so they hire you, the player, to torture the prisoner with a device made by the Kirin Tor while the wizard observes.
*** Worse yet is the fact that that particular quest gives the player ''no'' opportunity to object to the prisoner's treatment. Oh sure, you can abandon the quest and find something else to fill your exp bar, but that wizard is just going to give his quest to some other hero. And to make matters worse the Borean Tundra ''isn't phased,'' so he's just going to keep giving out torture assignments to hero after hero, the captured agent doomed to a life of horrific mental agony...
** Blood death knights. Just spend a little time trying to figure out how their spells actually ''work'' in-game and try not to shudder. Death Strike heals you based on how much damage you've recently suffered. Which means that either the spell is indirectly [[Cast
*** Any Death Knights. The DK starting quest line was enough to convince this troper he just wasn't evil enough to play a DK.
** So according to lore, dragons are the oldest and wisest of all the mortal races and were charged by the Keepers themselves to protect the aspects of Azeroth. They are also the only sentient species in the game which you can skin, use as a mount, keep as pets, and ''slaughter by the thousands for no reason whatsoever.'' (And lest you think all those baby dragon whelplings you killed weren't self-aware yet, a certain [http://www.wowwiki.com/Awbee tiny blue hatchling] would like a word with you.) No wonder Malygos wants to murder us all!
*** And in Cataclysm, the dragons in the 81-85 zones drop meat that can be ''cooked into stat-boosting food''. It's a wonder most of the Aspects are still on the mortals' side.
*** To be fair, most (if not all) of the enemy dragons in ''Cataclysm'' are Blacks and Twilights, which are [[
** Slightly more fridge [[Squick]], but as Alliance when you quest in the Grizzly Hills you accidentally end up eating an important seed out of a bucket. After going through a short chain that involves you using a super-laxative to "retrieve" the seeds you then give them back to the owner. If you stick around a second after handing in the quest, the guy you turned the quest into gives the seeds to his friend to put back, who then responds with "yeah yeah, I know the drill, back in the bucket", now remember the quest text when you first ate the seed, pointing out the "earthy taste"?...
** In the raid dungeon Naxxramas there is ambient noise of all types, but a few in particular stand out; a woman wailing "Pleeease!", "Stop, please stop...", "Help me! Save me!", "Please, nooo!". Then you fight [https://web.archive.org/web/20111209063219/http://www.scrollsoflore.com/gallery/albums/wow_art/thaddius.jpg this guy]. Then the crying/screaming stops. You might be thinking, ''"So what? He just stopped torturing people."'' Except there were no visible people. ''He'' was those people. The fridge horror comes in because typically one doesn't notice the connection at the time. In fact, this troper had to be told one day and then it sunk in. According to an in-game lore character, "'''Thaddius, built from the flesh of women and children, it is said that their souls are fused together - eternally bound within that foul prison of flesh.'''" Yeah. A [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1RkXJC9ZhA video with the sound clips].
* Sargeras starts out as the great Titan warrior that fights against the many races of demons. He defeats the dreadlords (which themselves are capable of manipulating entire nations against each other). And yet something happened that drove Sargeras to undo everything he did, release all the demons he had captured, and create the Burning Legion. What entity could cause such a complete reversal in such a powerful being? Nothing more than the influence of the Old Gods.
* [[Fridge Horror]]: Remember the [http://www.wowwiki.com/Corrupted_Blood Corrupted Blood Incident]? How people would run around infecting others? Yeah. [[Fridge Horror]] because people night actually ''do'' this in real life! Enough people who were HIV positive wantonly infected others that the federal government of the united states considers it murder.
* Sylvanas' short story. She dies and finds herself in a very unpleasant afterlife. But she says when she last died the afterlife was lovely. Assuming her previous experience wasn't a dying dream this brings a few unsettling possibilities. Now discounting the possibility she didn't just end up their for taking a level in jerkass between deaths aside there are 2 possible and unpleasant reasons she wound up there. 1) The undead don't get a pleasant afterlife by default 2) Suicide is an instant ticket to crappy afterlife which if you're undead means you don't have much chance of getting to happy heaven without dying in battle like a viking which sucks for anyone who doesn't enjoy fighting
* Remember the Greymane Wall? Gilneas built the wall long before the infection of Worgen and told both Alliance and Horde that they wanted nothing to do with the war. Rather than quarantine themselves, their paranoia meant that they effectively barricaded themselves ''in'' when the sickness came, keeping all possible aid out. Talk about a security procedure coming back to [[Stealth Pun|bite you in the ass.]]
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