Adventure Is Nigh - TV Tropes

Left to right:Grinderbin, Dabarella, Mortimer, Sigmar.

Adventure is Nigh is an Actual Play Web Video series by the folks formerly of The Escapist, now of Second Wind. Season 1 is subtitled "The Jade Homunculus," season 2 is titled "The Platinum Heart" (nee "In Search of a Platinum Heart"), and season 3 is titled "the Liar, the Witch, and the Wartorn." It also has a spinoff, entitled "Adventure is Nigh: Sidequest", which sometimes interacts with the main storyline.

The web video features the following:

• Yahtzee Croshaw as an elf-dominant Heinz Hybrid (called a "half-elf" entirely to save time) Gentleman Thief (Rogue/Bard) named Mortimer Rafflesworth Everwind-Smythe.
• KC Nwosu as Sigmar Iceblood, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold Aasimar Archer/Artificer who left his betrothed (it was an Arranged Marriage) standing at the altar when he discovered that she was in love with his sister.
• Amy Campbell as Dabarella Yeetster, a hulking-yet-adorable Tabaxi Fighter who aspires to be a chef.
• Jesse Galena as Grinderbin, a Dikarya Artificer who wants to open a discount-magical-items shop.
• Jack Packard as DM and show host.

Animated in a Zero Punctuation-inspired artstyle, the party's adventure begins with tracking down the Jade Homunculus after it was stolen by a flower man with the amusingly inappropriate name of "Davorty Cornhole." Each season follows a different campaign, from stopping a giant worm from tearing up the Earth to negotiating peace talks between warring kingdoms.

The series can be found here.

After the mass resignation of The Escapist's video team on November 6th, 2023 in the wake of editor-in-chief Nick Calandra's firing, the future of the series was briefly in limbo. On December 13th, 2023, Second Wind confirmed that they had successfully acquired the rights to the series from The Escapist. Season 3 was re-uploaded and continued on the Second Wind Youtube channel.

On May 30, 2024, Second Wind announced that Remastered editions of the previous seasons would start premiering weekly, in chronological order (Jade Homunculus, Platinum Heart, Side Quest, Side Quest 2), beginning on June 8, 2024. A fourth season subtitled "The Cat's Paw" began airing on February 15th, 2025, and is airing biweekly (as in every other week, not twice a week).

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Tropes include:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Dabarella has accidentally read a few books on necromancy, having mistaken them for cookbooks while looking for cookie recipes.
• Action Girl: Dabarella is the party's primary front-line fighter, being a war-chef who's both highly-armored and able to dish out a lot of damage with her magical weaponized utensils.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Grinderbin's weapon of choice, the Fowl Language Umbrella, comes from Jesse Galena's "Grinderbin's Mobile Market of Ridiculous Magic Items" — just like Grinderbin themself.
  • Susan Sheerfist's dog resembles Ludo, the dog owned by Susan's player JM8. Graphic depictions reuse a similar graphic from JM8's other Escapist/Second Wind show Design Delve.
• Aerith and Bob: A recurring naming device is this, because it's funny. For example, the pilot episode features two kobolds: the exotically-named Fortude the Poison-Touch, and the mundanely-named Dave Thomas.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: Dwarves never discovered pickling.
• Alternative Calendar: Parodied; the calendar of Angond Ardii has a twelve-month calendar with seven days a week like the real-life gregorian calendar, but they're all given silly names, whether they're ones that sound goofy, pop culture references, or non-indicative monikers. The months are Jan Boo Berry, Feb Boo Berry, Count Chocula, Hoag, Maryfeather, Beatrice, Fergilicious, Sextilius, Vergessen, Drei Monde (pronounced "dredge mon-deh"), Cinendo and Solstice, while the days are Freeday, FirstsDay, TwosDay, Thursday, Forthnite, Fifthday and Sighday.
• An Alien Named "Bob": When asked by Grinderbin if he knew any "dickheads" from his former home in the Ethereal Plane, King Fuzzyhug names the Council of Five as some of them, of which he lists down all their names as follows: Krrrrrggh, Gaaaahk, Vuvuvuvffft, Oernergoergoerg, and Cory (Should be noted that those first four names are just guttural sounds that Jack probably made on the fly).
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Sigmar gets his hand torn off in a Teleporter Accident while trying to tear off a manageable chunk of King Fuzzyhug's massive platinum heart.
  • Sigmar then gets an arcane tattoo from a mysterious tattoo artist named Sebastian Piss. The tattoo could, as Piss explained it, allow Sigmar to summon a bow magically, but what actually happens is that it turns his other arm into a Meat Bow through a really painful transformation sequence. Thankfully, Sigmar can turn the bow back into his arm, although it hurts just as much transforming back.
• And I Must Scream: Albert was turned into a shovel 20 years ago, with his soul remaining conscious inside it. Latavia Ticklepuss inflicted this fate on him to stop him from marrying his daughter Betty, but is thankfully convinced to undo this curse.
• Animate Inanimate Object:
  • Doory, a magical talking door with an elderly face that the party meets in Episode 0, who Grinderbin decides to take with them and now resides at the "Adventure Is Nigh-t Club" as a bouncer of sorts.
  • The party fights a haunted bed, and later, a haunted stove.
  • Inverted with Albert, who was cursed to take the form of a shovel. He was apparently conscious but inanimate during that time.
• Anti-Climax: As the party descends into the Dwarven mines, Jack informs Yahtz and Jesse that their characters see something briefly in the darkness. Tense music starts playing in anticipation of this unknown horror... and then Jack shows a picture of a naked zombie.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The party has more issue dealing with Kalandra Ticklepuss (who is a powerful sorceress) than her father Latavia Ticklepuss (who is a powerful sorcerer and a bloody, goopy, skeleton-y Eldritch Abomination). When Latavia is splattered into paste with a single action from Grinderbin, the party remarks that they were expecting him to put up more of a fight.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • The last guard of the Forest Keep is shotgunned to death by a haunted bed breaking its footboard to shoot splinters through his chest, despite wearing plate armor. Lampshaded by Yahtzee:

  Yahtzee: I note that only one of us was wearing armour, and they immediately died.

  • Averted in the second sidequest - Grinderbin's new suit of armor actually saves their bacon during the battle with the Ghost Knight.
• Artificial Limbs Are Stronger: In Season 3, Sigmar gets an artificial hand crafted by Dwarves, which grants him the power to absorb a spell that's cast on him and copy it.
• Aside Glance: In S2E1, Eggileir gives the party various magic items and explains their use and game mechanics. The players question this, asking if she really does use the word "Hit Points". Jack clarifies that when she says that, she specifically glances towards the camera, straight at the viewer.
  • Mortimer does this in S3E1 when Hugely Flop tries to "deliver" the new cape Mortimer has been wearing the whole time.
  • The entire party does this in S3E2 after their detour to visit Bread results in a massive infodump regarding Queen Beyoncé and her dead husband.
  • Sigmar does this in S3E8 in response to Prince Chisarick Thathird II's obnoxious behavior.
• Assassination Attempt: A subplot in the latter half of Season 3 involves Mortimer planning one against Queen Beyoncé. He ends up killing her son, Prince Chisarick, instead.
• Author Appeal: When asked about their inspirations, Yahtzee and KC cite a couple specific things:
  • Yahtzee likes characters who are Gentleman Thieves, Con Artists, and generally characters who "fly in the face of what you'd expect of traditional heroics". This fits his character Mortimer to a tee: a gentleman con artist and the least moral of the adventuring party.
  • KC says that anime was a major source of inspiration for Sigmar, which reflects in Sigmar's incredibly showy battle techniques (like one moment where he rolls with his blades like a wheel of death, or his bow being able to split into dual daggers). KC specifically cites Bleach's Kanamé Tōsen as his main visual inspiration, which reflects in Sigmar's design (both being white-robed, dark-skinned, braided warriors).
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Inverted, as Mortimer's party outfit is a be-mirrored lounge suit and star-shaped, pink-framed, mirrored shades. This disco style of fashion only really existed when Disco was popular in the late 1970's, yet Mortimer manages to make the flamboyant appearance work in a medieval setting.
• Bag of Holding: Grinderbin has one. According to Jack, the bag operates on "Looney Tunes" physics, allowing Grinderbin to fit an entire bed inside with no issue.
• Bait-and-Switch: Mortimer casts Suggestion on Kalandra. Initially, she complies, about to spill Latavia's weakness... and then Kalandra starts swearing at him again, revealing that she's invulnerable to charm magics.
• The Barnum: Mortimer is a flamboyant and charismatic Con Man who is constantly looking out for new targets. His first instinct when meeting a new face is to either lie to them or to flatter them. The effectiveness of his methods has a tendency to vary wildly.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: One of Mortimer's favorite tactics for trying to evade direct conflict (with varying degrees of success). As an example, Episode 0 had him try to trick two kobolds into handing over their scroll of necromancy by pretending to perform a "dungeon inspection". They almost buy it until Mortimer pushes his luck too far.
• Bearded Baby: In a flashback scene in S3E2, a much younger Bread is portrayed as more or less identical to his adult appearance (complete with bushy mustache), except very short and wearing a Propeller Hat of Whimsy.
• Beary Friendly: Councilman Borbus Sheepsnatcher, an "ursa sapiens" who meets with the party in S2E2 to approve the founding of the Adventure is Nigh-tclub. He prides himself on being approachable in spite of his intimidating size and bestial appearance.
• Benevolent Abomination: King Fuzzyhug is a gigantic worm with a maw full of needle-like teeth, but he feeds on positive vibes and is very amicable when communicating with Grinderbin, speaking in a dopey voice.
• The Big Guy: Dabarella in general, but especially in relation to other Tabaxi. Tabaxi are a Size Category: small creature in Angond Arii, to the point that Dabarella's father, who comes up to her knees, is otherwise the tallest man in town!
• Birds of a Feather: Mortimer and Eggileir are both conniving Manipulative Bastards that aren't afraid of getting their hands dirty. The two have a Friends with Benefits relationship at minimum.
• Birthmark of Destiny: Grinderbin has the Jarmy Family Birthmark, proving their royalty. In art, the birthmark is depicted as a massive crown that takes up most of their torso.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Flowerfolk mating requires a male and female Flowerfolk, and a bee-person of any sex to be present. Kind of like how real flowers reproduce, except flowers are hermaphroditic and use regular bees.
• Black and Nerdy: Sigmar Iceblood is a dark-skinned guy who can cite a number of "nerdy" interests when he was a kid, like having a "shambling mound" phase where he was incredibly obsessed with these creatures and owned toys depicting them, or having trading cards and fanart of Queen Beyoncé.
• Blade Enthusiast: Sigmar REALLY likes throwing knives. The other members of the party and even Jack have noted that it's a little off-putting.

  Sigmar: This may surprise you guys to hear, but... I didn't really have a lot of friends back home.
  Grinderbin: (silently looks down at all of Sigmar's knives, then nods) Uh-huh.

• Bland-Name Product: At the end of S4E2, the party encounters a magical goods store called "Windy's". The mascot and proprietor of the store being a person with red-haired twintails, the founder being a person named Dave Thomas, and their specialty product being sold as squares instead of circles makes it clear this is supposed to be a reference to the real-world fast food chain Wendy's.
• Blatant Lies: Mortimer's bardic instrument is "The Power of Lies." He's able to cast powerful spells by telling absolute whoppers, ex. "I'm 60 feet tall and also the Queen of England!," along with more sublte ones like "I beleive in you!"
• Blinded by the Light: The party argues that the wormshippers, zombies who live their lives entirely underground, would be unused to light and blinded by it. When Grinderbin tries to open and close their Foul Language Umbrella to scare them off, Jack tries to argue that Grinderbin's scare tactics are less visible due to the light... only for Jesse to retort that Grinderbin's positioning in front of the light source means that opening and closing would cause the light to pulse, which would be even more blinding.

  Jack: "You are doing something significantly more terrifying, which is you are creating a strobe light. [...] And so not only is there this, like, ungodly bright light, but it is, like, flashing at their eyes..."

• Body Horror: Poor Sigmar:
  • He gets his right arm messily ripped off in a Teleporter Accident at the end of Season 2.
  • In season 3, he gets a magic tattoo that allows him to summon a longbow made out of the bones and tendons of his forearm. Not only is it excruciating, it makes one guard puke and terrifies another into running away.
• Book Ends: Season 1 starts and ends with an episode involving Dabarella carrying a statue and hurling it.
• Boxed Crook:
  • The party wakes up in the back of a paddy wagon, and is shortly told they have to raid a dungeon as punishment. We're never told what they did, but it's implied (by Mortimer's hangover) that drunken shenanigans were involved.
  • When Kalandra Ticklepuss attacks Castle Sasha, Sigmar proposes granting pardon to any prisoner willing to fight in its defense.
• Break Them by Talking: Mortimer does this to Queen Beyoncé, under the guise of telling her of her son's assassination. By the tone of his voice, it's heavily implied that Mortimer has experienced exactly what the Queen is now feeling.

  Mortimer: This must be a difficult moment for you. I can understand. I lost a family, too. Sort of thing that stays with you, isn't it? Stays with you your whole life. You're haunted the rest of your days wondering if there's anything you could have done to make it happen differently. Don't you...?

• Breaking the Fourth Wall: While the party is trying to find a hidden entrance to a secret location, Sigmar asks an NPC follower to do something to help. Jack Packard (in-character as him) says that he won't do that, because it would be Railroading and the party needs to figure things out by themselves.
• Buried Alive: How Susan kills Mol Cutpurse: she uses magic to create a hole in the ground, then buries him in it. Justified, because her Magic Item, the Spade of the Grave Digger, prevents any corpse it buries from being Raised as an undead, and he's an extremely evil wizard and an Asshole Victim.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Mortimer rolls a lot of critical or near-critical failures during late season 1 and early season 2. This leads to several complications in the group's quests—notably, killing Fudge Ruckersford when they didn't want to—but also makes Mortimer's power struggle with Dabarella over its leadership a lot more embarrassing.

    Jack: You take 8 psychic damage as you attempt to remove this gem. You feel it kind of sap your very will to live. ...The gem did not get removed from the finger.
    Mortimer: Okay, I'm gonna climb down. I've had enough for the day. Dabarella, go get the fuckin' gem.
    Dabarella: Okay!
    Mortimer: Sigmar, give me a Cure Wounds spell. I've had enough. I'm just gonna sit on the floor and sulk.
    Sigmar: I want to see what happens to Dabarella first.

  • Later on, Sigmar gets absolutely beat to shit during the climax of Season 3—first by Kalandra Ticklepuss (in the level-up session, Jack even admits that it made no sense for her to do that and she should have targeted Dabarella first), then by her father Latavia, then by his ex-fiancee Eggileir (who had, ironically, been one of the people who healed him from the earlier damage). Oh, and his non-prosthetic arm has just gotten a Power Tattoo that exacts a horrible price every time it's used.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit":
  • The Catholics have little to do with Christianity, being more of an organized crime gang that coincidentally happens to be dressed in faux-priest garb and worships a Corrupted Character Copy of Jesus.
  • "Basketball" is a Dwarven sport involving a race to weave a basket in the shape of a ball. Somehow, being tall gives an advantage (apparently it has something to do with the correlation between height and finger length).
  • Also Invoked. To hear Grinderbin tell it, "a pickle" has nothing to do with food fermented in brine. It refers exclusively to being at a conundrum or dilemma. Jesse says that he knows about the other kind of pickles, but apparently, Dwarves never invented them, so responding with "a cucumber soaked in vinegar" when the Queen asked "what's a pickle?" wouldn't be helpful.
• Captain Ersatz: Aaron is a transparent pastiche of the titular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Big turtle dude, comes from a city, has a Trademark Favorite Food (lettuce), and is fairly young (more specifically, a millennial, as his player states).
• The Casanova: Captain Domino Fantastic is introduced to the audience while he is in the middle of breaking up with his latest fling. Bread informs the party that he does this a lot.
• Cast from Hit Points: Sigmar's magic bow, Bone-and-Marrows, is summoned and dismissed through a Transformation Sequence that causes him excruciating pain, to the tune of 1d12 damage.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In S3E10, Albert, Betty and Moped arrive at the Castle after the party has already taken care of Kalandra, though fortunately just in time to prepare for the battle with LaTavia.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Played for laughs - late in Season 2 when Yahtzee invokes his real-life singing capabilities to argue that Mortimer should also know how to sing, there's a little animation of Fully Ramblomatic Yahtzee entering the scene and tapping the mic a few times while Mortimer (played by Yahtzee) stares on in confusion.
  • The season 4 prelude, "The Platinum Resolve", has JM8 and Ludo as workers of a mining company. JM8 played Susan Sheerfist in the Side Quests.
• Chef of Iron: Dabarella is a War Chef. Many of her weapons in a battle are also various cooking utensils. She's also capable of making a very good meal, if called to do so.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • After exorcising a bed in Season One, Episode Two, Grinderbin searches it and finds some "human pornography" hidden in the frame. Later in season one, when infiltrating the Black-Eyed Susans' hideout, Grinderbin is able to get the rest of the crew inside by using the human pornography to distract the guard.
  • Before heading into the dwarven city, Dabarella cooks a meal for the party which grants them all a single use of the feather-fall spell. Fast forward a few episodes, with Sigmar nearly falling off a bridge into a bottomless pit. Sigmar plans to have Dabarella use his blink arrows to teleport back up to the bridge, but she fumbles the arrow and Sigmar falls for so long that he reaches terminal velocity. It is only thanks to Amy's last-second epiphany that Sigmar activates feather-fall and avoids taking a fatal amount of fall damage when Dabarella teleports him back up to the bridge.
  • When the party enters Castle Sascha's courtyard, Grinderbin sees a big stone statue depicting the royal family. Jesse pesters Jack with questions about the statue until Jack relents and confirms that yes, the statue is heavy. Come the final encounter of Season 3, the statue is used to crush the Final Boss beneath its weight, complete with a flashback of Jesse asking Jack if the statue is heavy.
• Chest Monster: Encountered in S2 E3, when Mortimer makes Dabarella open a chest that turns out to be a mimic.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: In Season 3, Latavia Ticklepuss, intended as the Final Boss of the campaign suffers a One-Hit Kill from Grinderbin using his fancy new portal-opening shield to drop a heavy statue onto his head. Even if you're an unimaginably powerful Humanoid Abomination with boundless magical knowledge, there's just no getting back up from several tons of solid rock reducing you to paste.
• Cliffhanger: Episodes are usually calculated to end on a cliffhanger.
• Clothing Switch: Mortimer and Grinderbin do this in S3E10 so that Mortimer can convincingly disguise himself as Queen Beyoncé. Afterwards, when the two meet up again with Sigmar and Dabarella, Sigmar misreads the situation, although Mortimer goes along with it for the sake of having an alibi.
• Coitus Interruptus: In S1E8, the party barges in on Davorty Cornhole having sex with Black-Eyed Susan and a giant bee named Professor Plebus Flutter.
• Collector of the Strange: Grinderbin loves collecting random magical junk he finds. In the first few episodes alone, he steals away a talking door and a once-possessed bed; Sigmar remarks that by the end of the adventure he will have the ingredients for an entire magic house in his bag of holding.
• The Comically Serious: Sigmar defaults to being serious and no-nonsense. Even when he's surrounded by things that it's impossible to be serious and no-nonsense about, he might still pull that charade to a hilarious extent.
• Comically Small Bribe: Aaron Mooney is willing to work for three heads of lettuce a day, and rotten lettuce at that.
• Companion Cube: Moped, throughout most of Seasons 2 and 3, is rarely ever seen without his best friend Albert, a shovel. Who, as it turns out, was an Aasimar cursed into becoming a shovel.
• Company Cameo: After KC says that he wants to get the second wind ability for Sigmar in the group's level-up session, Jesse and Jack look right into the camera and emphasize that they're now using "Second Wind".
• Company Cross-References:
  • The remaster of the pilot episode shows a number of statues in the dungeon, which borrow the appearance of Yahtzee's Author Avatar as shown in Fully Ramblomatic. The original version of the episode used the Zero Punctuation version of Yahtzee's avatar.
  • The artwork of the entrance to the Dwarven mines in the remaster of Season 2, as well as the background music playing underneath the scene, are ripped straight from Design Delve.
  • Late in season 2, at two points where there was a mix-up on whether Yahtzee is speaking in or out of character, the real-life Yahtzee is represented with his Fully Ramblomatic avatar.
  • Tartar Sauce, the Tabaxi God whom Dabarella has become patron to, is very similar in appearance to an infamous character design used in Zero Punctuation to represent the "glorious PC gaming master race".◊
  • The surveyors that Mortimer attempts to con in the Platinum Resolve are JM8 and Ludo from Design Delve.
• Compulsive Liar: Mortimer is constantly lying, almost all the time, even when he really doesn't need to. When the party goes to meet the dwarven royalty regarding the earthquakes originating from their territory, Mortimer tries to spin a lie about being a group of earthquake inspectors, when the truth (that they're an adventuring party) is more believable, with Mortimer's lies casting unnecessary suspicion on himself.
• Cool Old Lady: Susan Sheerfist is a retired martial arts master and, dice permitting, can pull off impressive feats in spite of her age.
• Costume Evolution: From Season 1 to Season 2, each of the party members gets an upgrade in their outfit. Dabarella is in armor now, Mortimer gains a cape, Grinderbin replaces their shirt with a scalier one and Sigmar gets too many belts.
• Covers Always Lie: The thumbnail for the Side Quest 2 finale makes the fight look much more even than it actually was - Mol Cutpurse doesn't even get to cast a spell and spends almost the entire fight held up by his neck by Dabarella.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Played for laughs - one of the gangs in Pimpernel is referred to as the Catholics, and the second sidequest delves into their beliefs and aesthetics, revealing that the Angond Ardii version of Catholicism is a severly mangled version of the real-life religion. Their god, "Jeebus Crisp", is the God of Punishment and Status, and was Sophisticated as Hell while incarnated, expressing a special hatred for the Undead.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Moped is a strange individual, to say the least, living alone in a cave, eating wild bird eggs, and talking to a shovel which he insists is actually a human being and his best friend. Turns out he was telling the truth, that shovel is his friend who was transformed; in Season 3, the party manages to undo the transformation.
• Cute, but Cacophonic:
  • Dabarella is a mild example, having a voice that's slightly louder and more childish than normal, but Jack takes full advantage of this trope for a couple of the NPCs.
  • Toasty Cinnamonbuns, the gingerbread familiar, has a voice like an Ed Wynn character.
  • Anus the siren sounds a bit like one of the Pepperpots from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • Both Charon Ferryman^note  and the gang's recurring ally Bread have aggressive Minnesota Nice accents.
• Cute Slime Mook: Oob, a slime monster wrapped around a skeleton and contained in a small wooden bucket. It greets everyone with an excited "Hi!", is dumb as rocks, and addresses its master with an appreciative "Daddy!", generally behaving like a small, stupid child.
• Cutting the Knot: When Grinderbin encounters Bonesy in S3E10, Bonesy has important information to tell them, but — being a skeleton that doesn't have lungs — he cannot succinctly communicate this. Initially Grinderbin plays charades with him to try and guess what Bonesy needs them to know... until Mortimer arrives on the scene, and bypasses the issue by giving Bonesy a pen and paper to write what he means.
• Death of a Child: Prince Chisarick dies after Mortimer, disguised as Queen Beyoncé, tricks him into wearing a poisoned necklace.
• Déjà Vu: The pilot began with the party being forced to venture underground via a massive hole in the ground. The season 3 finale also features the party briefly venturing underground via a massive hole, with Mortimer remarking that the situation reminds him of how they all met.
• Delicious Distraction: The heist plan involves Dabarella making some really good gingerbread cookies. All the guards get distracted from their duties because they're really good cookies, and they manage to sneak Mortimer in by having one of the guards share the trolley of cookies with the guards in the vault.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Early in Season 3, the party tries distracting the Royal Chancellor, Benndory Tickletoes, with food. Chancellor Tickletoes is a rather grouchy Halfling. They attempt to negotiate as his snacks are being prepared, but he bluntly refuses to talk until he's eaten, complaining at length that it's taking forever. You can't offer a hobbit food and expect him to think of anything else until after he's eaten!
  • After convincing Latavia Ticklepuss to turn Albert the shovel back into a person by showing him the future he and Betty would have had together (including grandchildren), Latavia laments that he didn't use his ability to see the future beyond his daughter running away to get married, as he was too afraid of losing more of his family after being banished. If he had, a lot might have been different.
  • Sebastian Piss gives tattoos that allow the summoning of weapons made out of the bearer's flesh, bones, and tendons, but "the price is pain." 1d12 damage per +weapon level to get the tattoo, and again for the Transformation Sequence. The Religion Check Siggy whiffs implies that Piss is some kind of Evil entity; meaning that Sigmar made a Warlock Pact with him. This being a faustian bargain is confirmed in the Season 3 finale.
  • What Sigmar intended as an act of good by breaking off his wedding to Eggileir so she could be with his sister ended up "ruining her life" and she'd been wanting to deck him ever since. 1) He "outed" them to what is likely a highly conservative, religious society, and 2) he abandoned an arranged marriage, which would have rent asunder the alliance their parents intended.
  • Mortimer's plan to attract the attention of Fudge Ruckersford by casually name-dropping the Jade Homunculus within earshot gets him and Sigmar in a lot of trouble, because knowledge of the Jade Homunculus is supposed to be highly classified in the human settlements, leading Fudge to believe that the group are a bunch of enemy spies.
  • Mortimer's plan in the Platinum Resolve to salt a piece of cheap land with platinum falls through when he fails to realize that the professional mining company he's attempting to con will actually send someone to do a proper survey of the land.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: In S2E2, Mortimer attempts to order breakfast for the group at a local inn in Flowery Elizabethan English, leading the orcish bartender to think she's being insulted. Mortimer then attempts to course-correct by ordering in condescendingly plain English, which only serves to make her feel more insulted. Thankfully, Dabarella steps in to apologize and politely order breakfast, saving Mortimer's ass from a prompt whupping.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Grinderbin, while infiltrating the Black-Eyed Susans' hideout, is able to distract one of the flora-folk guards by offering him a magazine containing "human pornography."
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Grinderbin finds out in season 2 that their birth name is Wavelyndan Jarmy. They still insist that everyone just call them Grinderbin.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • When the party first encounters Prince Chisarick Thathird the Second, he makes a number of race-oriented social faux-pas like remarking that seeing the uncommon Flora-folk is "unusual", or wanting to touch Dabarella's hair because hers is different from his, as a cheeky joke about certain uncomfortable real-world behaviors around minorities.
  • To steal a magic amulet, Mortimer is snuck into a royal vault beneath a linen-covered service cart. Jack didn't have the graphics for a service cart at the time the episode was recorded, so Mortimer represents the cart and the cart is drawn over him in post. The amulet is guarded by shirtless, ripped-muscle men in denim shorts known as "Himbos". When all the Himbos get distracted by the Delicious Distraction placed atop the cart, all of them surround Mortimer — at which point the players start remarking that it strongly resembles the classic pornography trope of an oblivious character being flanked from behind by a number of male porn actors.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: At the end of the first Sidequest, Susan Sheerfist is turned into a ghost. When she returns for the second Sidequest, she has a number of limitations attached onto her so she can't just ghostly powers to phase through everything and beeline her objective. Her soul is still connected to her bodily remains, so opponents that cannot interact with ghosts can still damage her remains, which she carries around with her. Her remains are also still physical objects, so she cannot phase through walls. And while she can float in the air, the Catholics have turned all the river water into ghost-repelling holy water, so she's forced to follow around the party and can only cross a bridge when they help her.
• Dreadlock Warrior: Sigmar.
• Durable Deathtrap: The first obstacle the party has to overcome is a hallway full of spinning blade traps, in a dungeon that's indeterminately old.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Queen Beyoncé and Prince Chisarick only become relevant in the third season, but their first mention is in the first, as names rattled off at the bottom of a letter of royal correspondence.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Episode 0, which was initially meant to be more of a proof of concept than an actual pilot, has some minor oddities where compared to later episodes.
  • Notably, many of the named NPCs are depicted with realistically-rendered faces. This was changed for the remaster, which uses the ZP artstyle for those NPCs.
  • The player tokens are represented with photos of their actual players, rather than the player characters.
  • Dabarella is depicted as much more vulgar and aggressive than her later characterization (likely because Amy had yet to nail down her personality). Also, while Mortimer is normally an Anti-Hero, the pilot shows him indulging in For the Evulz, siccing the zombie horde to kill Jeremy GoodSex alongside their captors for no reason other than he's good at nothing besides sex.
• Eat Brain for Memories: Invoked. When Oob steals a memory, that memory is sucked out of the victim's head, eventually killing them when it takes all of them. It's shown gnawing on Sigmar's boots in an effort to get his memories, implying that it actually does at least eat their bodies in the process.
• Emotion Eater: Celestials eat good vibes, to the point that Happiness is used as a Currency Cuisine.
• Exotic Extended Marriage: For dwarves, it is common to be polyamorous and the most prominent example is the royalty of the kingdom, consisting of a queen who is married to three other dwarves.
• Expy: The minigun-wielding centaurs Prentif, Balbi, and DieHeadre are modeled after the protagonists of 90's action films Predator, First Blood, and Die Hard. Prentif has Dutch's crew cut, stubble, and does his memetic "you son of a bitch" handshake during an Imagine Spot; Balbi wears Rambo's iconic headband and messy hair; and DieHeadre has John McClane's white tank top and haircut (in addition to, well, being named "Die Hard" but spelled and pronounced in a funny way).
• The Evil Prince: Prince Chisarick is revealed to be the mastermind behind an insidious plot to seize power from his mother, the Queen, and take over all of Angond Ardii with an army of robots.
• Evil Sounds Deep: While Grinderbin and Dabarella investigate Mull Cutpurse's cabin in "Side Quest" season 2, Jack's exposition is often accompanied by a spooky voice giving directions.

  open the jar

• Failed a Spot Check:
  • While investigating around a dungeon in S1E3, KC rolls low twice in a row. The first time leads to Jack telling him that the hay bed is made of hay. The Nat 1 after has Jack tell him that Davorty is in the basement right that moment and that Sigmar will not stop until he finds Davorty in the basement (he is not in the basement).
  • In the first sidequest, Bucca tries to look for beverage equipment in the abandoned cat cafe. He waltzes past a sophisticated looking espresso machine with what Jack describes as perfect comedic framing. Marty adds on that Buca does find beverage equipment... and promptly homes in on the cat piss dripping from the ceiling.
  • In the same episode, Musk tries to look for something in the cat cafe to give emotional insight onto the previous owners. After rolling a 3, Jack describes the experience as losing awareness of space and time.
• False Reassurance: In the finale of the first Side Quest, after the entire party save for Buca dies in a fiery explosion, two of them irreversibly, Buca says, to the amusement of everyone in the call:

  Buca: Don't worry! I am a level 1 cleric, I can fix this!

• Familiar: As of S3 E1, Dabarella gets Toasty Cinnamon Buns, a living gingerbread man decorated as a wizard, as a familiar. Sigmar is somewhat creeped out by Toasty's excessive cheerfulness, while Mortimer immediately jokes about eating him for lunch before Dabarella points out that Toasty is sentient.
• Family Theme Naming: Sigmar and his sister Rho are both named after letters of the Greek alphabet.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Barnacle Goldenfeel, the last remaining knight of Borthelmoore Keep, is prejudiced against Flower and Faunafolk, as well as Celestials. Basically, anyone non-human.
  • Elderly Dwarves refer to non-dwarves as "Upsiders" and immediately distrust them. Jack illustrates it by invoking the Racist Grandma trope. "There's your racist grandma, your kinda not-racist mom but still kinda-racist, and then you."
  • Mortimer on occasion will say something horribly racist, usually resulting in offense from the people around him, especially Grinderbin.
  • While the Elves have been integrated with the human kingdom for a long time, and the Aasimar are allies, the Flora and Fauna folk are noted to have been enemy countries for a long time. Queen Beyoncé uses this to justify several unspecified atrocities against them.
• Fantastic Slurs: The slur "upsider", used by racist dwarves against non-dwarves. Younger Dwarves just use it out of cultural habit with no real malice behind it.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. Several human guards are seen armed with blunderbusses. They don't seem very effective, since the one time we see one fired, it misses the target.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Jack describes the land of Angond Ardii in the pilot episode as "a place that blurs the line between high fantasy and science fiction just enough to piss off fans of either." While the setting is mostly standard medieval fantasy fare with castles, magic, and knights, some anachronistic elements show up (like robots and miniguns).
• Flipping the Bird:
  • In Season 2 Episode 4, the party is in a cave with a huge statue of a dwarf with a raised middle finger and a plaque with some not-very-nice words on it. Near the end of the episode, the party figures out that the plaque, which ends with "If any of the stinkin' lowlife outsidelings need the help of the dwarves, they can take my last fuck" is a hint that the statue's middle finger is, in fact, meant to be used as a key by inserting it into a large hole nearby, which opens up a hidden door to the next room.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Kalandra, after being defeated and tied up, repeatedly tells the party to go fuck themselves, clarifying that she'd flip them off while saying that if her hands weren't tied behind her back.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The primary antagonist of season two is a huge, wormlike Eldritch Abomination called "King Fuzzyhug."
• Foil: Eggileir and Sigmar are opposites. The Chessmaster versus the Spanner in the Works. Eggileir always thinks ten steps ahead, while Sigmar is impulsive and brash. She's not afraid to manipulate to get her way, while he's always trying to do what's immediately good. Eggileir is always putting up a friendly facade to achieve her goals, while Sigmar is irritable and no-nonsense but amicable deep-down.
• Foot Popping: Mortimer and Dabarella both do this in the group Ass Kicking Pose at the end of the intro.
• Foreshadowing: In late season 1, one of the plans of the party involved Mortimer disguising himself as a florafolk, which he does flawlessly. It was at first chalked up to his skillset as a con artist and a rogue, but come the season 3 finale, and it's revealed to the audience that Mortimer is a changeling.
• Forgot to Feed the Monster: The dungeon in Episode 0 contains the skeleton of a large creature. Doory remarks that the creature was put there to keep out intruders, but is long since dead, presumably due to the neglect of the dungeon's designers.
• Foul Waterfowl: Invoked by Grinderbin's Fowl Language Umbrella. Grinderbin will often flap it open and closed while quacking aggressively to intimidate enemies into running away.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The main party. The chipper and energetic Dabarella is sanguine; the cynical and quick-to-take-lead (by roping the rest of the party into his con) Mortimer is choleric; the edgy and critical Sigmar is melancholic; and the polite, mild-mannered Grinderbin is phlegmatic.
• Friendly Pirate: Captain Domino Fantastic.
• Friendly Skeleton: Bonesy.
• Friendship Moment: There appear to be a couple between Mortimer and the others during Season 3, but one is immediately subverted, and the other is one-sided at best.
  • Before Dabarella attempts an extremely risky Fake Memories gambit on one of the season's main antagonists, Mortimer pulls her aside for a pep talk, where he praises her abilities to the sky—then gives an Aside Glance to the viewer and quips "I can bullshit with the best of them, can't I?"
  • In the finale, after Mortimer is forced to reveal his Changeling abilities to impersonate Queen Beyoncé, he threatens Grinderbin with a horrible fate if the secret ever gets spilled. Grinderbin responds that if they were interested in spilling it, they wouldn't have let Mortimer know that they knew about it.
  • There is a moment in the finale of Season 2 which can be considered more genuine, when he opens up to the other party members by confessing that "Mortimer Rafflesworth Everwind-Smythe" isn't his real name and telling them that they're the closest thing he's had to a family in a long time.
• Frying Pan of Doom: One of Dabarella's pieces of equipment is a big cast iron wok. Naturally, she hits a few people with it.
• Funny Foreigner: Hansel Feuck, a portly, German-accented elf man who hails from the mountains to the east of Angond Ardii.
• Furry Reminder: Dabarella panics slightly when she hears Davorty Cornhole mention his dog in S1E1. She also springs awake in the stereotypical "alarmed cat" pose when the party is attacked by assassins in S3E3.
• Gambit Pileup: Prince Chisarick's plan to use the power of the magic amulet runs directly into the party's plan to steal it and Mortimer's own plan to assassinate the queen with the poison needle in the fake amulet
• Gatling Good: The centaur battalion that attacks the Keep in S1E3 are wielding miniguns.
• The Ghost: Season 3, which was filmed in-person, introduces producer Omar Ahmed to the live-action cast. He has yet to appear on-screen or speak in the series proper, but Jack (and occasionally the players) have acknowledged and called attention to his presence.
• Ghostly Goals: The Ghost Knight fought in Side Quest Season 2 feels he needs to commit at least one heroic deed to be let into Warrior Heaven.
• Giant Enemy Crab: A battle with such a crustacean takes up the entirety of S2E5; "The Battle of Piss-Off Bridge."
• Giant Hands of Doom: The party fights against a giant Stone construct built like one of these in the Murder Dome (albeit missing one of its hands). Yahtzee and KC immediately lampshade that they've faced similar bosses in Wind Waker and Mario Odyssey. Jack admits that the design is inspired by this kind of video game enemy design.
• Girls With Mustaches: While most males dwarves are portrayed with full beards, female dwarves are portrayed with a wider variety of facial hair, including soul patches and five-o-clock shadow. The only female dwarf shown with no visible facial hair thus far is Queen Oh.
• Gladiator Games: In S2E7, The party takes part in a spectacular fight with a giant construct at a dwarven arena called the Murder Dome.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: While it's mitigated by the presence of his daughters, Latavia Ticklepuss didn't handle being banished to Destiny's Keep very well, becoming fixated on happy memories and eventually becoming an infovore, literally eating the happy memories of others.
• Good All Along: King Fuzzyhug is too lazy to do anything evil, being a Sleepyhead who just wants to snooze in his lava cave. He was only causing the earthquakes because he was being disturbed.
• Good-Guy Bar: The protagonists run the "Adventure Is Nigh-tclub", the club-slash-tavern where they kick back and unwind between adventures.
• Good Parents: Dabarella's father is a stay-at-home dad who loves his four kids very much, even leaping to his daughter's (who towers over him) defense when he thinks her friends are ragging on her.
• The Great Offscreen War: Apparently the kingdom is in semi-open war with the Flora- and Fauna-Folk; at least according to Eggeleir. The Season 3 finalé reveals that the Flora- and Fauna-folk are at war, and Dehidré's daughter wants the party to guard the Peace Talks because she fears that he may attack it.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In the second Side Quest, Susan Sheerfist briefly joins Dabarella and Grinderbin after they bump into her and give her a hand, and leaves by the end of that arc.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal:
  • Borbus Sheepsnatcher, a bear-person, is described by Jack as "wearing pants, but doesn't look like he should be or wants to" do so.
  • Drudge the deer-person, in the second "Side Quest" storyline, wears a top but is covered in fur below the waist, and so doesn't bother with pants or a skirt.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Moped Crimbison, an old man with a prosthetic leg which he can detach and use as a boomerang weapon.
  • At the end of Season 2, Sigmar loses a hand while trying to harvest platinum from the corpse of King Fuzzyhug. He's still a badass in the following season, even when he's not using his Dwarven prosthetic hand's ability to absorb and replicate spells cast against him.
• Hate Sink: Prince Chisarick Thathird II, a royal brat who acts inappropriately towards more or less the entire party and underhandedly attempts to seize power from the Queen so he can take over the land.
• The Heart: Unlike the perennial jockeying for the group's Leader vs. Lancer, Dabarella is undisputably their emotional center.
• Heinz Hybrid: Mortimer appears to be "a mixture of multiple genetics" and is referred to as a "half-elf" to save time. He doesn't mind being called a "mutt" to his face either. According to the season 1 recap, Yahtzee figures there have to be people in D&D whose ancestors were multiple parings of several different kinds of Half Human Hybrids. In Season 3, it's revealed that Mortimer is secretly a changeling, and as of yet it is unknown if Mortimer's normal appearance is his true appearance.
• Hidden Elf Village: Ironically, it's the dwarves who hid their capital, not the elves.
• Hollywood Tourette's: After rolling a Nat 1 on stealth to activate his Stone of Truth in S2E2, Mortimer attempts to save face to Hansel by claiming to have Tourette's Syndrome. Jesse, above game, immediately points out to Yahtzee that he won't be able to keep that bit up for long.
• Horrifying the Horror: In the remaster of S2 E12, Dabarella (personality of a kitten) manages to kill three wormshippers and set Celia alight with one blow of a flaming wok, leaving a swathe of mangled and burning corpses. Sigmar (personality of a poorly-socialized blender) can only stare on with Blank White Eyes while Dabarella dispassionately regards the carnage she's responsible for.
• Hub City: VVestage, a central city situated between the four sections of Angond Ardii, where the party sets up their base of operations in Season 2.
• Hufflepuff House: The Faunafolk and Elf factions exist (Dabarella and Mortimer evidence their existence), but have little bearing on the central conflict in the first three seasons. Subverted at the end of the third, which cues the party in to their next adventure for helping the Faunafolk and Elves mend relationships.
• Human Pincushion: Tourniquet Fastlevel is on the receiving end of this after threatening Lady January Farfell in front of a full battalion of her personal guards.
• Humans Are Warriors: The Human Kingdom is noted to have entirely subsumed the elven nation, and driven the dwarves into an isolationist Land of One City. There is also tension between the human, flora-, and fauna- folk nations.
• Human Weapon: Sigmar jokingly calls himself this in S3 E8, and then actually becomes one in S3 E10, when his other arm becomes a Meat Bow thanks to an arcane tattoo given to him by a mysterious man named Sebastian Piss.
• Humiliation Conga: The climax of Sidequest 2 has the party make some amazing rolls, resulting in the Final Boss of the campaign turning into an embarrassing Curb-Stomp Battle. Grinderbin casts Enlarge Person on Dabarella, turning her into a giant cat lady who effortlessly picks up Mol Cutpurse, the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire series, by the nape of the neck as if he was a kitten, and he stays stuck in her grasp for the entire fight, unable to really do anything. Grinderbin then lights the evil wizard's scrolls on fire, leaving him unable to actually cast any spells, stuffs all of his magic items into the Bag of Holding to further deprive him of power, and shoots his flamethrower turret at his ass for good measure. Meanwhile, Susan casts Bane to debuff him, breaks his hand to make sure he's completely helpless, and buries him alive using a magic shovel that prevents bodies from being reanimated, ensuring that he's Killed Off for Real. For extra humiliation, he's naked the entire time, as this happens right after he'd transferred his soul into a new body.
• Hurl It into the Sun: While discussing Queen Beyoncé's very powerful magical amulet, Pikeworth says that he'd want to destroy it, but it would take some effort to do. Amy jokes that they could destroy the thing by throwing it to the moon.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The spelling of the names in the subtitles doesn't necessarily match the spelling given in the art. Sometimes, as in Grinderbin's "real" name given in "The Mother of all Mushrooms", the name on the screen and the name in the subtitles is spelled differently.
• Infodump: The crew gets an extensive one regarding Bonesy's origins courtesy of Bread early on in Season 3.
• Ingesting Knowledge: Latavia Ticklepuss's slime servant Oob eats memories, especially happy memories, which it brings back to "Daddy" Latavia, as a way to deal with the isolation of banishment.
• Inherently Funny Words: The magic word Mortimer uses to activate his Stone of Detect Truth is the goofy sounding "buggernuts". It comes in handy at relatively serious, plot-heavy moments.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Side Quest 2 Episode 3 has a faun who goes bottomless as a matter of course.
• In-Series Nickname: Sigmar has taken to calling Dabarella "Dabs" for short.
• Instant Roast: In episode 3 of the first Side Quest, after the wild magic surge, Aaron's reduced to his shell, inexplicably filled with turtle soup.
• Insult of Endearment: Eggileir almost exclusively calls Mortimer "Thief".
• Interface Spoiler: When combat starts in S1E2, the party learns the names of Davorty Cornhole and Barnacle Goldenfeel from the initiative tracker instead of asking them in-character. They're Hand Waved away; the latter's dogtags are shown flying off his person when he's killed, while the former is explained by Yahtzee suggesting that his name was studded into his leather jacket, and then by Mortimer asking him after combat.

  Davorty: "My name is Davorty Cornhole..."
  Mortimer: "Right. Plot hole filled."

• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Played With and Lampshaded in one sequence: Dabarella casts Augury to predict that the group's plan (distract Latavia Ticklepuss by convincing him to prepare for Albert and Betty's wedding at their shelter, which they actually don't plan on having yet) will be immediately useful, but once Latavia finds out, he will be very, very angry. Dabarella sums it up as "good for now, probs bad for later". Mortimer responds that taking immediately-useful decisions with significant negative long-term consequences is "the story of my life".
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: Inverted. Dwarven miners who have been away from their SO's for too long sometimes take to fashioning erotic sculptures.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  • "My name is Tourniquet Fastlevel, and I say-!" (cue seven arrows to the face and body)
  • Lady January Farfell, distracted by the sudden chaos of an undead horde being summoned directly around her and her guards, is shot in the face by Sigmar.

    January: Ohhh my! Where did all of these zombies- ?! (takes an arrow right between the eyes, points at Sigmar as she collapses and dies) You...!

  • Celia Sporefold is about to launch into a villainous monologue before Mortimer blows her up a second time, this time fatally.
  • Prince Chisarick Thathird II succumbs to poison just after putting on a poisoned replica of his mother's necklace.

    Chisarick: Yes... it's so powerful! I can feel it-! (thud)

• Killing in Self-Defense: The party's defense for their killing of Marquess Fudge Ruckersford and his elven mistress Amily Curtsy.
• King Incognito: Bonesy is the peaceful yet undead remains of the King, who went missing a long time ago.
• The Leader: Mortimer usually fills this role, although a few different characters have designated Dabarella as the leader, to Mortimer's annoyance. (Viewers are starting to joke that his insistence on being the leader actually makes him The Lancer.)
• Left Hanging: At the last episode before The Escapist collapsed, it was revealed that Eggileir pinned the theft of the Jade Homunculus on Mortimer's criminal friend Domino Fantastic. Literally three days later, TE went under. If not for the series later returning with Second Wind, that cliffhanger would have been the end of the series.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: Eggileir falls back on this, when she learns that Latavia Ticklepuss may be headed for the castle the main characters are currently in, at the exact time when (due to Reasons of Plot) the magical barrier that would normally repel him is severely weakened.
• Lie Detector: Mortimer's Magic Item is a Stone of Detect Truth, a rock that turns green when someone tells the truth, and red when someone lies. Like a real "lie detector," it's not 100% accurate.
• Line-of-Sight Name: According to Jack, the name of "Angond Ardii, the Land of Red Grass" was vaguely based on a species of prairie grass^note  that he encountered while landscaping his garden.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Doory, the magical talking door, was inadvertently named by Sigmar this way because their maker didn't give them a name.
• Lovable Sex Maniac:
  • Subverted with Jeremy Goodsex. His unabashedly perverted behavior gets on the party's nerves and at the end of the pilot, after he fails to do anything useful for the team, Mortimer sics an undead horde on him.
  • For a certain definition of lovable. Musk Goodsex, "yes relation", is a rebellious punk rocker with a disdain for authority and bureaucracy, but is otherwise very amiable and certainly lives up to their family name.
• Lunacy: Angond Ardii's three moons are viewed as a primary source of magic.
• Made of Explodium: Susan Sheerfist headbutt-tackles a pile of crates in the first episode of the first Side Quest. Those crates then explode.
• The Mafia: Catholics in Angond Ardii are one half Crystal Dragon Jesus and one half mafiosos. They speak with Italian-American accents and set up illegal tollbooths on bridges.
• The Magocracy: Only the Nobility has any magic in human society, and even then, it comes from some kind of Magical Accessory.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Sigmar's reaction to his arm ripping open and transforming into a longbow made of his own flesh and bones is "Umm... ow?"
• Meaningful Name:
  • Happens by accident with Dwarven mine master Poppers Glowstick after Sigmar casts a spell of him to literally make him glow in the dark.
  • A deliberate case with Celia Sporefold, named after "mycelia", plural form of "mycelium", a root-like underground part of a mushroom. Celia is a Mushroom Woman hiding underground and controlling the wormshippers via a network of roots. Just to make sure the pun gets across, Mol Cutpurse refers to her as "my Celia".
• Missing Steps Plan: Mortimer's initial concept pitch for the Adventure is Nigh-t Club consists of the phrase "Nightclub = Money" scrawled out hastily on a whiteboard. Thankfully, Mortimer is smart enough to seek assistance from Dabarella and Grinderbin so that the actual pitch meeting goes much more smoothly.
• Mistaken for Gay: After Grinderbin takes Mortimer into a room for a talk, Sigmar sees them walking out cheerily acting casual, and leans into Dabarella and whispers "I think they're fucking." Mortimer later uses this as part of his cover story as to why he and Grinderbin swapped outfits as part of one of his schemes, claiming that "This is what happens when you get dressed in the dark."
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Davorty Cornhole has a pet "rosewilder", a dog with a rose-bud for a head. The Black-Eyed Susans also keep a pair of "Flairs" (grizzly bears with flower heads) in their hideout.
• Murder by Mistake: Mortimer acquires a needle laced with Perfect Poison. By hiding it in a forgery of Queen Beyoncé's amulet his intended target is made quite clear. However, the needle instead ends up poisoning Prince Chisarick Thathird, when he attempts to usurp control from Beyoncé using her amulet. Mortimer makes the most out of the situation by guilting his intended victim over the sudden death of his actual victim.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In "Pay Rent or Repent", when Susan casts "Command" (a spell that causes whoever it's cast on to obey a single, one-word order that doesn't involve harming themselves) on the Catholics and orders them to "Repent," they are forced to confront the fact that extortion is a sin, and start praying very, very hard about it.
• My God, You Are Serious!: In S3E5, it takes Betty Ticklepuss a little while to realize that the party is being serious about her lover Albert having been cursed and transformed into a shovel.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: In S2E5, Sigmar body-checks a Giant Enemy Crab off a bridge into a Bottomless Pit, planning on having Dabarella use his Blink arrow to teleport him back to safety afterwards. However, Jack ruled that the way the arrow works would preserve his momentum, which would kill him. Amy then points out that the party had eaten a magical omelette which grants each of them a free use of the Featherfall spell, so the plan can still work. To justify Sigmar suddenly remembering this when there'd be no way for anyone to inform him of this in-character, KC says that as he fell, his whole life flashed before his eyes, including the scene of him eating the omelette.
• Named After Somebody Famous:
  • One of the kobolds from the first episode is named Dave Thomas, after the founder of the American fast-food chain Wendy's. To drive the point home, "Windy's" appears later in the series, ran by the same kobold.
  • The ruler of the humans is Queen Beyoncé Knowles, appropriately located at Castle Sasha, with a nearby disowned keep called Destiny's Keep.
  • The twin Aasimar cities are named Venessula and Hudgnes, for Vanessa Hudgens.
  • The owner of the cat cafe that occupied the land that the Adventure is Nigh-t Club would later be built on is named Reba McEntire.
• The Napoleon: Sigmar is sometimes depicted as being the shortest member of the party, and has the hot-blooded attitude to match.
• Never Mess with Granny:
  • Susan Sheerfist is an old woman, but also an adventurer. Despite her old age, she is capable of doing impressive feats, like deflecting flying planks of wood or flipping in the air.

    Susan: Age took you once, and age will take you again.

  • Kalandra Ticklepuss is an extremely powerful magic user. She manages to hold her own against a platoon of guards, and treats being set on fire like a painful annoyance. She's also quite old, and Jack Packard gives her a very "crotchety old woman"-type voice.
• Never My Fault: Mortimer, on principle, steadfastly refuses to accept blame when the consequences of his actions come back to bite him and the party, even if it was his plans that caused the trouble.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Prince Chisarick Thathird II is a dead ringer for Prince Charles, both of whom are (or were, in Charles' case) prince-heirs poised to become king when their mother dies, but said mother is unusually and exceptionally long-lived.
  • Captain Domino Fantastic has a strong resemblance to Lenny Kravitz, something which all of the players notice and joke about.
• No Dead Body Poops: Mostly played straight, but averted for Fudge Ruckersford, because Jack rolled a natural 1 on the death saving throw.
• Non-Human Non-Binary:
  • Jesse sees his Mushroom Man character Grinderbin as not being male or female, and preferring they/them pronouns. One interaction in particular has Mortimer ask Grinderbin how confidently they could pretend to be a lady — Grinderbin responds by stating "about as confidently that I could present as male". This doesn't always come across since the players (including Jesse) will accidentally refer to Grinderbin with he/him, and in-character Grinderbin doesn't care enough to correct people if they refer to them incorrectly. For the later-introduced flora-people, it's subverted in that they do present as masculine or feminine.
  • Musk Goodsex, a changeling from the first Side Quest, uses they/them pronouns.
• No-Sell: Upon encountering Oob for the first time, Sigmar attempts to stab them. Oob, being made mostly of gel, doesn't suffer any ill effects, and doesn't even seem to notice that they were attacked, to Sigmar's disbelief.

  Oob: What is "pain"?
  Sigmar: Uh... I'm not sure I can explain this to you now...

• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: When Mortimer quips about Eggileir's name in "Keep, Trying", Jack replies, borderline-in-character, that it isn't one of the silly names Jack made up, and that it's actually present in an official player handbook.
• Not the Intended Use: Queen Beyoncé's necklace is actually the power source for the robot army, which itself is only supposed to be bodies for the dead who don't want to move on to reincarnate into. Karen Ferryman is mildly annoyed when she finds out one of her acolytes built the facility with a way to control the robots into it, and she asks that its punch card reader be removed.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Charon^note  Ferryman is voiced and animated in a way that references this trope, but in reality she's quite nice. Ironically, when Chisarick Thathird the Second dies and gets sent to the netherworld, he's the one bothering her with demands to speak to the manager.
• Odd Friendship: Moped, a crazy, senile peasant, and his shovel friend Albert, who is a guy forced into the form of a shovel and is completely inanimate. When Albert is given his original body back, taking the form of a proud Aasimar warrior poised to marry into royalty, he greets Moped with a charismatic, appreciative "My man." and thanks him for keeping him safe and using his shovel body to do various wacky tasks.
• Off the Rails:
  • Early on in Season 3, the party takes a moment to visit general store-owner Bread and talk about the weird skeleton friend he has. They manage to uncover the identity of Bonesy (he's the previous king long thought to have disappeared) when that's not the party's immediate nor long-term goal. Once the group concludes they need more evidence, Jack Packard admits that he wasn't expecting they'd be going this direction during the current campaign.
  • Jack Packard was expecting the party to fight Latavia Ticklepuss, who is an Eldritch Abomination Blob Monster responsible for forcing Albert into the form of a shovel. Instead, the party convinces Latavia to return Albert back to his normal form, a detour Jack admits was unexpected as he describes Latavia opening a puzzle he expected the party would need to do themselves.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • While doing Prentif of Ustaar's The Ahnold-ish thick Austrian accent, Jack accidentally switches to a French accent and quickly lampshades it.
  • Jack ends up forgetting what Poppers Glowstick's voice is — slightly-raspy grizzled mine foreman — and ends up slipping into Hugely Flop's anxious, voice crack-y tone to do his dialogue.
• One-Steve Limit: Thoroughly averted throughout Season 1, where many of the male NPCs share the given name of "Jeremy". An early dialogue in the pilot has one of the players point out that Jeremy GoodSex shares a name with the guards, to which one of the guards snaps back and states that it's a common name.
• Only One Name: Grinderbin, unlike all other Flowerfolk shown so far, has no discernable surname. Even the only other known mushroomfolk, Celia Sporefold, has one.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Dabarella is a soft kind tabaxi that would prefer everyone to be friends. The curse she gets near the end of Season 2 and the events of the second Side Quest push her far enough that by the time she gets her paws on the one that cursed her, she escalates things into a fight without a second thought.
• Our Sirens Are Different: Anus Quiver, a river siren who is portrayed as a super-sexy woman on the top with a mass of wriggling tentacles and a cephalopod beak on the bottom. She also speaks like a Monty Python pepperpot.
• Painting the Medium:
  • In the first Side Quest, Musk fails at investigation so hard that they lose awareness of their surroundings. This is depicted by everything around Musk fading out into a white-and-grey Photoshop default transparent background.
  • Later on, when Susan rolls a Nat 20 on a perception check, it's depicted as her watching the scene she's in get animated by Omar.
• Parasol of Pain: One of Grinderbin's weapons is the Umbrella of Fowl Language, which they use to cast spells.
• Parlor Games: Grinderbin has done this twice.
  • In the pilot, Grinderbin ultimately bypasses Doory by playing 20 Questions (lowered to 5 Questions for the sake of time and challenge).
  • In S3E10, Grinderbin attempts to get information out of Bonesy, who can't speak because he's a skeleton, by playing Charades.
• Parrot Exposition: From S1E3:

  Jack: [in response to KC's Failed a Spot Check] "That's a bunch of hay. You got a bunch of hay there, man."
  Sigmar: "This looks like hay."

• Party of Representatives: Dabarella is a Faunafolk, Grinderbin is a Flowerfolk, Sigmar is an Aasimar and Mortimer is a half-elf, half-everything else.
• Perpetual Frowner: Well, he doesn't usually have a mouth, but the same emotion is communicated: Sigmar's default expression is an unimpressed, annoyed glare.
• Personal Space Invader: Oob's first instinct when meeting new people is to move in closer so he can "taste" them.

  Mortimer: (holding back Oob with a plank of wood) Sorry, do you mind? I have this thing about personal space.
  Oob: (gnawing on the wooden plank) What's personal space?

• Pimped-Out Dress:
  • Dabarella's party outfit is a pink, Disney Princess-esque ballgown.
  • Grinderbin's party outfit can only be described as the men's equivalent of this trope.
• Pointy Ears: Mortimer's family tree is such a mess that it all averages out to a regular guy with pointed ears.
• Politically Correct Villain: Anus Quiver is a man-eating siren that is also considerate enough to ask Dabarella for her pronouns, and even rephrase the question when she doesn't understand it and replies with "cat!".
• Portal Cut: At the end of Season 2, the party find a portal inside the digestive system of Lord Fuzzyhugs. As Fuzzyhugs is dead (at least in the physical plane), the portal is fading away and will imminently close forever. When they carve out a chunk of platinum from his body that's too big to fit into their Bag of Holding, they exploit the portal by pushing part of it through the gate just before it closes, cutting off a precise amount of it that leaves behind exactly enough platinum to completely fill up their bag.
• Power Tattoo: During Season 3, Sigmar gets a tattoo that lets him conjure a bow whenever he wants one.
• Precision F-Strike: Eggileir comes out with one, when Grinderbin questions her scheming ability.

  Eggileir: You saw my plan.
  Grinderbin: That was it? I don't believe that.
  Eggileir: (splutters) Oh, I'm sorry, "that was it?" "That was it?" You mean returning a precious item under the guise of someone else (who I know didn't steal it) so I could make an alliance with the most powerful—wizard—in—this—land?! Oh, "that's it"—fuck you!

• Princess for a Day: Dabarella wears a pink Pimped-Out Dress to the Moonlight Ball.
• Product Displacement: When Grinderbin asks Dabarella for some hot sauce, she gives them what unmistakably looks like a bottle of Tabasco sauce, just without the Tabasco logo on the diamond-shaped label.
• Product Placement:
  • The series is sponsored by dice company Dice Envy starting with the third season. Sometimes they cut to the dice cam — a camera positioned over a box with the Dice Envy logo on it — to show off the result of important rolls.
  • In one bonus video where the players receive miniatures of their characters, Jack mentions that a 3D modeller named Sam Elliott created them. Each time anyone mentions his name from that point onwards, it's announced alongside some very prominent links to Elliott's social media to contact him by.
• Prone to Tears: Dabarella is—by far—the most sensitive of the player characters, and also more likely to display her emotions than some of the others. It's a rare plotline that doesn't end with her in Tears of Joy or Tears of Fear at least once.
• Race Fetish: Prince Chisarick Thathird is absolutely smitten with Dabarella; entirely because she's a Tabaxi.
• Rage Breaking Point: Eggileir has one, albeit into total frustration rather than rage, when Sigmar and Grinderbin tell her that they helped free one of Latavia's daughters, after telling her that Latavia might be coming straight for Castle Sasha
• A Rare Sentence:

• Really Royalty Reveal:
  • Grinderbin turns out to be the recently-sprouted heir of Queen Celia and King Jarmy.
  • Bonesy also gets one in S3E2, when he is revealed to be the ressurected skeletal remains of King Chisarick Thathird I.
• Real-Place Background: Played for Laughs: the entirety of the American state Florida exists in the world of Adventure is Nigh. It's south of Angond Ardii, has some nice Goblin Bingo avenues, and LaTavia enjoyed visiting it.
• Repetitive Name: Played With with Prince Chisarick Thathird II. While his name doesn't strictly repeat, reading his full moniker out loud (pronounced "Prince Chisarick The Third The Second") makes him seem like he has twice as many generational titles as he needs.
• Revenge by Proxy: In Season 3, Mortimer seeks revenge against Queen Beyoncé, highly implied to be for the persecution of his race and death of his family. His assassination plan hits a snag when he and Grinderbin are cornered by Prince Chisarick, but Mortimer manages to trick the Prince into poisoning himself. He then informs the Queen of her son's assassination (leaving out the fact that he was the one responsible for that), and purposefully hammering home how awful the experience is in order to make her suffer as much as possible before leaving to help the rest of the party.
• Rolling Pin of Doom: One of Dabarella's weapons is a giant, wooden, metal-studded rolling pin.
• Royal Brat: Chisarick Thathird the Second (son of Queen Beyoncé), who is slightly racist and constantly demanding attention. More worryingly, he attempts to steal his mother's magical pendant and force her to abdicate, which gets him killed.
• Running Gag:
  • In season 1, every second NPC was named "Jeremy." Even the minor god trapped in the Jade Homunculus.

  Sigmar: Another fucking Jeremy?
  Mortimer: Seems to be a very common name around these parts.

  • A minor subplot of season 2 involves many NPCs designating Dabarella as the leader of the party, much to Mortimer's chagrin. Even Grinderbin and Sigmar get in on it.
  • Dabarella cooking a meal for an NPC the party has befriended. This culminates in her causing the party to have A Moment since King Fuzzyhug is an Emotion Eater who feeds on positive emotions. She has his essence imbued into her wok so he'll be warm (from cooking) and be able to partake in the meal somehow (everyone nearby enjoying themselves).
  • Jack referring to minor, unassuming and/or annoying NPCs as "everyone's favorite character."
• Scatterbrained Senior: Moped Crimbinson, while not outright delusional like many examples of this trope, is a bit stir-crazy from spending decades guarding the entrance to the caves below the Celestial Mountains with only his shovel secretly his cursed best friend to keep him company. His mental faculties seem to steadily improve after spending some time away from his post.
  • LaTavia Ticklepuss, in spite of becoming an eldritch horror, is easily distracted by reminders of happy memories, and is prone to rambling about his family's vacation to Florida.
• Secret-Keeper: Grinderbin knows what Mortimer really is, which they talk about in S3E8, but only refer to via allusion to not give the twist away yet. It comes out in S3E10: Mortimer is a Changeling, and the massive stakes at hand lead him to finally put his shapeshifter powers to use when he's abstained from them for the whole campaign thus far. He also tells Grinderbin that if they ever tell anybody about it, they'll never be safe again.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Mortimer and Eggileir run offscreen and bang at the end of Season 2.
• Shady Real Estate Agent: Hansel Feuck, the elven real estate developer in VVestage who helps the party find and purchase a location for the Adventure Is Nigh-t Club. The main party very clearly distrusts him to do his work for a price they want, he pays his demolition workers in spoiled lettuce, and tries to get out of giving worker's compensation when two of them die on the job.
• Shapeshifter Default Form: Musk's default form is a "crusty punk" clad in black and with a spiky green mohawk.
• Shapeshifting Trickster: Mortimer is revealed to be a changeling during the events of season 3.
• Ship Tease: Mortimer hits on Dabarella during Season 2's victory party. She lets him down gently.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The third episode of the first Side Quest: the party accidentally releases a demon thinking they were helping one of Reba's cats, then Aaron accidentally explodes and takes himself, the demon, and Susan out using wild magic. All of this to try and get Reba's fourth cat out of the basement trap door... and then Reba says that she didn't even have a fourth cat, it was just the demon messing with her head.
• Shout-Out:
  • KC has admitted that Sigmar's original design was based on Kanamé Tosen from Bleach. His redesign in Season 2 also took inspiration from the album cover to Bad by Michael Jackson.
  • Amy's initial concept for Dabarella started as a female version of Meowscles from Fortnite.
  • When Sigmar accidentally suggests to name the magic door from the pilot "Doory", Jesse quips "Doory the Explore-y.".
  • Mortimer's catchphrase for activating his stone of truth is "buggernuts."
  • In the re-upload of Season 2 Episode 1, one of the portraits in Eggileir's house is of Zagreus, Hades, Persephone and Cerberus.
  • In the remaster of "Dear Celia" (S2E10), Mortimer using a MerryBerry has the Minecraft "Eating" sfx.
  • Buca di Beppo, one of the PCs from the first Side Quest, is named after an Italian-American restaurant franchise.
  • When describing Musk's reading of their contract, Jack references the "bearer- seek- seek- lest-" meme from Dark Souls 2, which occurs when the player uses Button Mashing to skip through an NPC's dialogue (and so only hears the first words of each sentence she has to say).
  • S2E12 has Amy reference that one Elmo burning gif when describing how Dabarella sets fire to a bunch of the wormshippers.
  • Susan Sheerfist describes herself as a member of the "Ghoulboosters", and her job is to boost some ghouls. Complete with a knockoff theme of the Ghostbusters playing whenever relevant.
  • When discussing their levelup bonuses in the post-Season 3 "Level Up Special!", Mortimer describes one of Amy's new abilities as a Stand. Complete with the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure "menacing" kanji appearing over Amy's face and a song from the anime playing.
  • Landel Hamfanden's city council campaign poster ("Landel!" written in bold red serif text, with blue sans-serif text beneath it) is deliberately meant to resemble the "Jeb!" Jeb Bush political campaign branding.◊
  • Three of the objects on the desk in front of Windy's magical items are clearly the potions from Pokémon.
• Sidekick Creature Nuisance: Dabarella's familiar, Toasty Cinnamonbuns, has a shrill, grating, Bozo the Clown voice. Mortimer takes one look at the little bugger and immediately proposes eating him, while Sigmar is highly uncomfortable with him getting into his personal space.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Sigmar's party outfit is just the same kind of jacket he always wears, just 1) clean and 2) closed.
• Simpleton Voice: Dabarella is noted to have a low INT score, and Amy gives her a childish voice you'd expect from someone half her age and a quarter her size. (She tends to stammer a bit as she talks, which gives the impression of her brain running to catch up with her mouth.)
  • Jack tends to give a lot of the human guards a deep, dopey, vaguely-Cockney voice.
• Something We Forgot: While investigating Borthelmore Keep during "Keep, Trying", the party gets distracted fighting a possessed stove and forgets all about Davorty Cornhole, allowing the flowerfolk to sneak off, steal the Jade Homunculus and run away before anyone notices he's gone.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Mortimer has shades of this, as do several NPCs, most notably Eggileir Frostbones.

  Eggileir: I do not want to be ambiguous with you, I am rich as fuck.

  • One notable example in S2E4 Involves an inscryption below a massive statue of King Fiddle-Diddle Frick Flipping the Bird: "May the honorable King Tydanlan Jarmy eat a dick. And if any of the stinkin' lowlife outsidelings need the help of the dwarves, they can take my last fuck."

    Yahtzee: Man, you'd have to be REALLY angry to sustain that level of anger throughout the entire construction process.

• Spell Book: Part of Dabarella's backstory is that she read a necromancer's spellbook after mistaking it for a cookbook. She was looking for cookie recipes.
• Sudden Anatomy:
  • The Zero Punctuation-esque artstyle used for the series usually omits limbs except for their extremities. When Sigmar gets a magical arm tattoo, he suddenly has an arm for Sebastian Piss to paint onto.
  • Grinderbin, due to having a mushroom for a head, has no visible facial features, except for a mouth which is never depicted in the actual show because of the ZP-inspired artstyle. According to the official promotional expansion for Red Dragon Inn, Grinderbin does have a face in their mushroom cap's ridges, it's merely not drawn most of the time.
• Suicidal Pacifism: The party is generally against hurting important NPCs whenever possible. They keep Kalandra Ticklepuss alive for way longer than they need to, despite the fact she's made her intent to kill everyone in the room quite clear and refuses to cooperate in any capacity even if it means her certain death. The exception is Mortimer, who very nearly does kill Kalandra, and has previously stated that murdering the entire adventuring party during their sleep to cover his own ass is an actual consideration he once had.
• Summon to Hand: Well, Summon To Leg in this case: Moped's weapon is his enchanted prosthetic leg, which he can throw at someone then recall back to him. This can let him hit a target twice with one attack.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Season 2 ends with the party bringing home a 450-pound chunk of King Fuzzyhug's skeleton, which is made of solid platinum and thus worth a ludicrous amount of money (one pound of platinum is worth 500 gold, so that's 225,000 gold total). In most RPGs, the party would just add +225,000 to their gold counter and call it a day, but the prelude to Season 4 shows that actually spending any of that treasure is not easy: they have to find ways to launder the platinum without crashing the economy or making people ask questions about where it came from.
• Teleporter Accident: Mortimer has the idea to use Sigmar's Blink Arrow to harvest some platinum from King Fuzzyhug's corpse. Sigmar leaves his hand behind.
• That Came Out Wrong: A man named Sebastian Piss gives Sigmar a magical tattoo that allows him to summon weapons. When trying that goes wrong (a bow is created from Sigmar's own flesh and bones, which is extremely painful), a nearby guard vomits at the results. Sigmar is irritated, stating that he needs to see (Sebastian) Piss; the barfing guard gets ticked off, questioning why Sigmar wants to see piss. One of the other guards, upon hearing that, actually decides to run away before the fight even starts.

  Jack: Your arm just ripped itself open and now you're talking about how you wanna see piss... That's gonna lower morale!

• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Human knights and other such low-level guards are typically portrayed by Jack as dim and easily-manipulated, albeit very serious about their duties and even occasionally competent.
• This Is Gonna Suck: In the finale of the first Side Quest, right after Aaron's wild magic roll gets him, Purrvis, Susan and Musk in range of a fireball big enough to kill them all on the spot, but before that gets revealed to the players, Jack is seen saying "Oh... Oh no." and staring at his screen with an uneasy expression. It takes the players a moment to notice.
• This Is My Side: Fortude the Poison-Touch and Dave Thomas, the two kobolds in the dungeon from Episode 0 are bickering over this exact thing when the party enters their workshop.
• Thought They Knew Already: Eggileir gets hit HARD with this trope in S3E9 after Sigmar and Grinderbin reveal what they've learned about Queen Beyoncé. Since Eggileir had been using Moped to spy on the party during Season 2, they assumed she would be doing the same thing again, only for her to reveal that she thought keeping tabs on Moped would be a waste of her time.

  Yahtzee: The ONE time we need her to be a conniving bitch!

• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Downplayed with Sigmar, who is canonically the shortest of the group, although it is brought into focus whenever he's next to Dabarella, and especially Eggileir.
• Toilet Humor: Near the end of "Artificial Monsters and Natural 1s", Sigmar insists that he should search the toilets to find Davorty. When he does so, a certain sound effect of someone violently shitting plays quietly in the background.
• Token Evil Teammate: Of the main adventuring party, there's the naive and eager Dabarella, the polite and affable Grinderbin, the Jerk with a Heart of Gold Sigmar... and Mortimer, who rarely has any Pet the Dog moments without ulterior motive, has zero complications against murder, and flat-out admits at one point that he's considered stabbing everyone else in the back to make his own safe escape.
• Tom Swifty: When discussing the movement of a living tree attacking the group, Jack says that "the tree lumbered".
• Too Many Halves: Yahtzee describes Mortimer at the beginning of "A Man, A Plan and A Flashback" as "half-elf, half-bard, half-rough, half-lawyer apparently".
• Total Party Kill: Nearly occurs in Episode 3 of the first Side Quest. During a wild magic surge, Aaron summons a massive fireball that instantly kills him, Susan, and the demon the party was fighting. Musk also gets caught in the blast but just barely survives thanks to Buca, who was thankfully far enough out of range to avoid taking any damage, and cast cure wounds in order to revive them.
• Translation Convention: The potential roadblock of a language barrier between the party and the dwarven kingdom underneath the mountains is circumvented thanks to the fact that, by sheer unbelievable coincidence, the entire party speaks Dwarven. Jack likens it to having your entire friend group know how to speak Latin.
• Transplant: Jesse's character Grinderbin is transplanted from a separate D&D material Jesse wrote: Grinderbin's Mobile Market of Ridiculous Magical Items, in which Grinderbin peddles strange magic trash.
• Trash the Set: At the start of Season 3, Jack Packard blows up the original Adventure is Nigh viewer interface and replaces it with a smoother and more open new one, which they can use now that the whole group is playing in-person.
• Trauma Conga Line: The finale of Season 3 puts Beyoncé through an extensive one. First, her son is killed by a weapon meant for her, and Mortimer really twists the knife when he gives her the news. Then her father dies, although she wasn't on great terms with what was left of them anyway. Finally, she's forced to kill her half-sister Kalandra, since she's the only one in the room besides Mortimer who realizes that they can't be talked down from trying to kill everyone else.
• Traveling Salesman: Grinderbin is an adventurer who wants to sell the assorted magical garbage they find during their travels.
• The Triple: During the second episode, Mortimer finds correspondence between royals. The first two letters are ridden with Purple Prose; the third simply reads "ok thanks".
• Tuckerization:
  • Aaron Mooney is named after Second Wind Contributor Darren Mooney (formerly of The Escapist). Will lampshades this during the introduction by saying "no relation."
  • One of the members of the Ticklepuss family is Kalandra Ticklepuss, named for Second Wind founder Nick Calandra.
• Unconventional Food Usage: Grinderbin, being trapped at the dinner table for over an hour in S3E9, takes the opportunity to fashion some tools out of drumsticks and kitchen utensils.
• Undeath Always Ends: The Ghost Knight is finally defeated by Dabarella, Grinderbin, and Susan Sheerfist, along with Susan's Spirit Guardians, the ghosts of a hedgehog and a cyclops (who have made their peace with dying, but help Susan because she helped them).
• Unflinching Walk: Poppers Glowstick primes an explosive rock and tosses it over his shoulder. He then doesn't react to the massive explosion that ensues, even when it launches his hat off his head.
• Unfortunate Names: Jack LOVES giving ridiculous names to his NPCs, partially because it means the players will have to repeat the names during dialogue. Some notable examples include...
  • An NPC the party meets when they wake up in the back of a paddy wagon is a goblin named "Jeremy GoodSex." He turns out to be an, er, adult entertainer later, and they guess it to have been his "pornstar name." The Side Quest spinoff reveals that there's an entire commune for clan GoodSex.
  • The primary antagonist of season 1 is a Flowerfolk rogue by the name of "Davorty^* Cornhole."
  • A River Siren who tries to seduce and eat Sigmar and Dabarella is named "Anus Quiver^*," presumably because her mother hated her.
  • At the Flowerfolk hideout is a grunt named "Jeremy Nagginwife."
  • The Elven real estate agent who helps the party set up the nightclub is named "Hansel Feuck^*."
  • The first dwarf that the party meets is a young guard fresh out of training named "Hugely Flop".
  • One of the Dwarf Kings is named "Verri Longdick."
  • Sigmar gets a cursed tattoo in Season 3 courtesy of a man named "Sebastian Piss".
• Unscaled Merfolk: Anus Quiver, the River Siren the party meets in S1E6 is an elven woman with technicolor hair from the waist up and a freshwater octopus below that. It's stated that her horrific main jaws reside at the center of her tentacle cluster.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In S1E4, none of the party seem to acknowledge that the Milkweed Trading post has a reanimated skeleton on staff until Yahtzee wonders if Bonesy was a member of the undead horde they summoned earlier.
• Upper-Class Twit: An Invoked Trope. Part of Mortimer's plan for the Moonlight Ball heist involves acting like a boor, then disappearing with Dabarella ("his chef"), in the hopes that nobody will worry too hard about where he's gone, just so long as he IS gone, and might (hopefully) be gone a long time.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Downplayed: After taking revenge on Queen Beyoncé, via her son at the end of season 3, Mortimer returns in season 4 a little scruffier and less upkept. He got what he wanted, and now he's not as motivated in his daily life.
• Verbal Backspace: At one point Dabarella offers to pick Oob up and hug him. He cheerfully responds "Oob will hug your memories!" and she quickly reconsiders.
• Waxing Lyrical: The party's visit to Anus Quiver in S3E2 results in an extended riff on "Part Of Your World."
  • LaTavia Ticklepuss, a gelatinous red mass containing multiple skulls, inspires multiple jokes in reference to "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child.

  Betty: Listen, about my father... I don't think you're ready for that jelly.

• We Hardly Knew Ye: Out of the six named NPCs in Episode 0, only 1 becomes a recurring character in the series proper. Tourniquet Fastlevel is killed mid-sentence after trying to defy Lady January Farfell's orders, Fortude the Poison-Touch (the alchemist kobold) is killed during combat, Lady January is murdered by Sigmar after the party summons a horde of undead to kill her guards, and the same undead horde also gets sicced on Jeremy Goodsex. Only Doory the Magical Talking Door and Dave Thomas (the artificer kobold) return for the series proper, and even then Dave Thomas is immediately Put on a Bus when the party sends him away at the beginning of Episode 1 only to make a return appearance in Season 4.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Mortimer's first words of the campaign are "Oh, what was I drinking last night?"
• What Could Have Been: In-Universe. The party's plan to get Albert turned back into a man is to show the Evil Sorcerer who turned him into a shovel how happy Albert and the sorcerer's daughter could have been, and creating new memories for the Sorcerer to enjoy with them and their children (the sorcerer dealt with his grief by sending an infovorous monster out to steal happy memories), if only Albert wasn't turned into a shovel. It works.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Jack often gives unique names and personality quirks to even the most low-level NPCs, though largely for the sake of humor moreso than humanization.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Susan is understandably VERY pissed off at Aaron after he kills her and himself with an errant fireball.

  Susan: You're lucky you're dead, or I'd fuckin' kill ya!

• You All Meet in a Cell: The party wakes up in the back of a paddy wagon, being driven to a Dungeon they've been sentenced to loot for one of the local nobles.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Mortimer has a bad habit of invoking this trope from his fellow party members.

  Mortimer: In my experience, the best way to deal with [racism] is to stand around, not being an asshole, and eventually they'll come around.
  Sigmar: I'm curious as to what YOUR experiences with racism would be.

• Zany Scheme: Two particularly notable ones from Season 3:
  • To convince LaTavia Ticklepuss to transform Albert back into an aasimar, the party puts on a minor illusion-aided puppet show for Toasty Cinnamonbuns depicting how Betty and Albert could grow the Ticklepuss family by having a grandchild, then allow Oob to harvest the memory from Toasty, and then send Oob back to LaTavia. It works.

  Betty: Have you ever heard of the dark wizard Rube Goldberg? Because this sounds like some crazy-ass bullshit.
  Mortimer: We are bullshit veterans at this point, lady!

  • To steal the Quantic Reflector necklace from Queen Beyoncé, Mortimer plans to cause a disturbance during dessert and challenge the Castle guard that Dabarella could bake something much more tasty. While Dabarella is baking, Mortimer will hide underneath a cart with an invisibility cloak and replica necklace at the ready. Dabarella will then hide Toasty among her cookies and bring them to the guards, letting them have a taste and convincing them to take the cart into the gem room so the Himbos who are cleaning the gem can have some. Once inside the gem room, Toasty will run around causing a ruckus before swiping the necklace and running under the cart so he can swap the real necklace with Mortimer's fake one, before the guard takes the cart back outside so Mortimer can escape. It works perfectly.

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