Battlefield (series)

"Honor. Faith. Land. Oil. Wars are fought for any number of reasons. But on the battlefield, every soldier has to find his own. As things turned out, me and my buddies found a pretty interesting one..."
—-- Preston Marlowe, Battlefield: Bad Company

A series of First Person Shooter games by DICE (Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, based out of Sweden), with help from Electronic Arts and other associated studios. It is DICE's major franchise. Apart from this series, the only other games DICE has released recently are Mirrors Edge, and the multi-player aspect of the recent modern set Medal of Honor reboot.

These games are notable for being among the first to make a large-scale use of mobile vehicles in an FPS game, as well as using large maps. The games are designed to be played in multi-player mode. The earlier games had no 'single-player' campaign, only multi-player missions with bots. For games set in 'reality' these maps and missions recreated important battles in 1942 and Vietnam.Bad Company, however, changed this, coming with not only a cohesive, new storyline, but a group of notable characters that stuck with you the entire game, with their own distinct personalities and voices.

One of the latest games in the franchise is Battlefield 3, released in October 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It expands the multi-player aspect of the game from Battlefield Bad Company 2 by taking it back towards the Battlefield 2 style with large open conquest maps featuring up to 64 players and including jet fighters once again. It also includes a Darker and Edgier single-player campaign storyline, and a co-op mode. It has deep persistence using the Battlelog website and is launched via EA's Origin download and digital distribution manager.


The latest entry in the franchise, Battlefield 1, is slated for release in October 2016. Unlike its predecessors, however, this takes the Battlefield series back in time to World War I while also bringing back large-scale maps.

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Please add any examples for Bad Company 1 & 2, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 1 on their respective pages.

These games provide examples of
  • Abnormal Ammo: Battlefield 2142 has a shotgun that shoots C4!
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Titans in Battlefield 2142. In the hands of a competent team, its ground attack guns could be devastating. However, due to performance issues, most servers would disable Titan movement.
  • Air Vent Passageway: The Titans have two vents on two that allow an alternative entrance inside, however, unless the other team is full of idiots, these vents are usually boobytrapped and/or being camped.
  • After the End: The setting in Battlefield 2142, where the world is devastated by a new ice age.
  • An Infantryman Is You!: The game uses a class-based system, generally basing the classes off effectiveness at certain ranges against infantry as well as vehicles, and other supportive abilities such as repairing, healing allies, laying traps or spotting enemies.
  • Attack Drone: The squad sentry and recon drones in Battlefield 2142, and the EOD Bot and MAV from Battlefield 3.
  • Anti-Poopsocking: Battlefield 2142.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The sniper rifle unlock for 2142, when fired at the body, docked off 90% of a player health who had heavy body armor on (or a one hit kill if they had light armor if shot at the upper torso), opposed to 70% for the default rifles. The rifle could also destroy player-set explosives. However, the rifle only had three shots, took longer to reload than the default rifles, had a red hue on the scope which make it hard to see on weaker computers, and had a loud report. Both the default rifles and the unlock rifle dealt an insta-kill at the head, but the default rifles had two more rounds, and reloaded faster, not to mention 70% damage, even when compared to 90% damage, is still pretty good, especially against enemies in a firefight. If a player was decent enough to score head shots, the extra power wasn't necessary.
    • The hovering attack drone in 2142 was far less effective than its stationary cousin, the sentry gun. Unlike the sentry gun, which would kill anyone that would wander in its kill zone, the attack drone would only nail enemies that were spotted, or had a red indicator diamond on them. While it could be quite effective with a good squad, players in your typical squad in a typical game were just in it for an extra spawn point and a possible field upgrade.
      • Although the clever support user could plop an IDS onto the thing to give the squad the equivalent of a perpetual mobile UAV, turning the equally impractical (to non-campers) infantry sonar into a Game Breaker.
    • Mobile Artillery in 1942 and Vietnam. If one player mounted the artillery piece, another player with the sniper class could use the binoculars to designate a point on the map. This would show the first player exactly where to aim in order to drop a shell right on that spot. But most of the vehicles you'd want to fire at moved too quickly to be hit by artillery, the shells seemed to do minimal damage to structures, and nobody worked as a team in public games anyway.
  • BFG: Many of the vehicle-mounted guns and shoulder-fired rocket launchers certainly count, but the M95 large-caliber sniper rifle deserves special mention. In Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 1&2 it's easily the biggest and loudest firearm in the game and deals extra damage to lightly armored vehicles and helicopters. In Battlefield 2, it was also the only gun capable of shooting through bullet-proof glass, allowing players to shoot a pilot out of the cockpit.
  • Black Screen of Death: In the Battlefield 2 mod "Project Reality," you get a black screen if you are killed or critically wounded. Some varieties of surprise attack will therefore cause true examples of the trope.
  • Blinded by the Light: Flashlights in Battlefield 3 act like open nuclear fusion reactors strapped to the bottom of guns. Waving it around wildly in a room will blind anyone; it's even blinding in the middle of the day.
  • Bloodless Carnage: There is no gore whatsoever, although little sprays of blood do appear with some mods. Battlefield: Vietnam has blood (without modifications).
  • Boom! Headshot!: Played straight. Sniper rifles are a one-hit kill, and other small arms deal more damage when fired at the noggin.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Played straight for mounted weapons as well as vehicle weapons (with the exception of the main gun on tanks & APC's, though the secondary machine guns still exhibit this). They never seem to run low on ammo, just over-heat.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: People who purchased the "Special Forces" addon received two weapon unlocks per rank, instead of one. This was then subverted because players who didn't buy the addon could only use the Spec Ops weapons by prying them from others' cold dead hands. This has resulted in some cases of Teamkilling.
    • There was a trick for players without the game to gain the same ability. They just simply had to log in on a computer with the expansion installed, play a bit, and they would gain the ability to have two unlocks.
    • Bad Company was going to roll out a program where players could purchase new guns with real money. This triggered a large Internet Backlash, so it was scrapped, but the idea returned in the form of an Old Save Bonus in 2.
    • Now played straight with the "shortcut" packs, which gives the purchasers instant access to any weapon for that kit, or even all of them. Needless to say, this is somewhat unbalanced for those who don't spend cash on their games, leading to starting players having the best kits[1].
  • Brits With Battleships: The British Army originally appeared in Battlefield 1942, British SAS appear in the Secret Weapons of WWII expansion pack, the Special Forces expansion pack of Battlefield 2 also features the British SAS and Project Reality includes the British Army as playable factions. Cheers, mate!
    • Furthermore, the EU army added in the Euro Force booster pack uses some British equipment(including the L85A2 rifle and the Challenger 2 tank), while its 22nd century iteration in 2142 features British accents among its troops, although the state of the UK(if it's even still a sovereign country that far in the future) is unknown.
  • Boring Yet Practical:
    • In 2142, while the unlockable assault rifles are quite nice, the default assault rifles for both sides are still perfectly viable weapons, and downright dangerous in the right hands.
    • The AK-47 is Battlefield 2's only weapon that kills armored infantry in four hits without some sort of handicap limiting its effectiveness to a specific niche. It's also the default Chinese assault rifle.
    • Taking down the Titan through the missile silos instead of boarding and destroying it from the inside, while not as exciting, can usually be more effective, as most players would flock to a unshielded Titan, leaving the silos unguarded for capture.
      • Not to mention that the firefights on the Titans usually dissolved into a clusterflop of grenade, APM and rocket spam, which could reduce the battles to stalemates pretty quickly.
    • The support class' mortar in Battlefield 3 can rain accurate death upon the opposing team from thousands of feet away, behind cover. In the hands of a skilled player it can often hold a point completely by itself. But it is a mortar, so the only thing you'll be doing is sitting there listening to the repetitive *THUNK* of it firing and not much else.
    • Used as designed, the MAV basically amounts to getting points for watching your teammates kill enemies. But considering that players can also earn roadkills with the gadget, it occupies both extremes of the scale.
  • Canucks With Chinooks: The Canadian Army appeared on the Battlefield 1942 map Liberation of Caen, and Project Reality has the Canadian Forces as a playable faction.
  • Car Fu: Possible in most of the games, taken Up to Eleven in some games with Tank Fu!
  • Chinese With Chopper Support: Battlefield 2 has the Chinese People's Liberation Army as one of the main playable factions, and the antagonists.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: While it varies from game to game, every faction uses a different color of camouflage on their troops and vehicles for easier identification.
  • Colonel Badass: In the earlier games, one could apply to become the commanding officer of their respective side, which brought all sorts of benefits (such as order artillery strikes in your area or aerial recon). That being said, while the player did not gain points for it like a rank and file soldier, when push came to shove he was no less capable of kicking some serious ass on his own than before he became the ranking officer.
    • In Battlefield 3, various flavors of Colonel are the highest rank one can attain, and basically signify that the player has earned most of the unlockable items.
  • Combat Medic: Everyone in the game with healing abilities can still try to kill you just as hard as you try to kill them, including with their Magical Defibrillator in Battlefield 2 and subsequent games.
    • Battlefield: Bad Company takes this to its logical extreme by giving medics light machine guns as their default armament, and are able to get a tool to call down mortar fire. The sequel just gives them the LMGs on the combat side, with the mortar strikes given to the Recon class.
    • Battlefield 2142 and Battlefield 3 combined the previous Assault and Medic classes into an Assault class armed with the usual assault rifle, and a medical kit consisting of health packs plus a defibrillator. Several DICE employees have even referred to this combination as a Combat Medic in interviews. The main difference here is that the 2142 Assault troopers always have their medkit handy, while BF3 Assault troopers always have their defibrillator (once unlocked).
  • Cool Mask: Several games in the series have these as available clothing customization options for the player-character; ranges from a simple bandanna, to ski masks, even gas masks.
  • Cool Ship: The USS Essex, known affectionately as the "Iron Gator" by her crew, lugs the USMC around in Battlefield 2 and 3. BF 2: Special Forces even featured a level where it was raided by enemy special forces. Presumably, it survived.
    • BF3 added Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in the single-player mission "Going Hunting" as Shark 4-6 and Shark 4-2's mothership.
  • Crapsack World: The first game trailer, promotional, manual, and map descriptions describe that the ice age in 2142 is dwindling resources, thus pushing billions of people to the last remaining fertile land around the equator. One promotional states "Few will live, most will die."
  • Crew of One: Everyone can at least drive or fly any vehicle, though some vehicles require another player to fire their weapons, some vehicles can have more than one gunner, and some vehicles can carry passengers (every game in the series so far).
    • Of course, any player can also man any portion of the vehicle - just hotswap, and you can gun down people pestering your humvee or tank (though you're vulnerable to more rocket fire, due to the vehicle stopping because of a lack of a driver). This also leads to certain gunship pilots swapping seats in midair in order to launch the gunner's TV-guided missiles.
      • Project Reality averts this. The driver no longer mans the main gun on heavy attack vehicles. In order for a vehicle to be fully combat effective, one player must drive while another must gun. Of course, a person could simply just switch positions from driver to gunner, but this would give the enemy a time advantage. All vehicles, except for cars and FAVs, now require a crewman kit (or pilot for air vehicles) to be driven.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: The "anti-tank" class in Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2 suffers from this. The ability to attack vehicles from afar comes at the price of being horrible at fighting off infantry.
    • This is somewhat averted by the vanilla unlock for the AT class in BF 2, the DAO. As a semi-auto shotgun with 12 rounds is it absolutely devastating at close range. Beyond approximately six inches it is pretty useless though. Another example?
    • Also unexpectedly suffered by the Assault class in Battlefield 2, which is meant to be the game's plain combat-oriented rifleman class, only to end up relatively less-played because it's only good at combat. Several other classes can do that while also having additional useful abilities (especially the Medic, which is almost identical minus body armor and plus a longer sprint and the ability to heal/revive), while the Assault's only unique perk is the grenade launcher, which isn't terribly useful especially after it was Nerfed in a patch. Unsurprisingly later games in the series made sure to give the Assault more useful and unique abilities and equipment.
  • Critical Existence Failure: You can be down to one health point, but you'll still be in fighting condition until you fall two feet. Vehicles play this mostly straight, but begin to smoke as they take damage. It causes the screen to grey out and have blood seep in at the edges in Bad Company 2 though, making you nearly blind in snowy maps on low health. Averted in the Project Reality mod, seeing that its aim is realism surprisingly.
    • Crashing into an enemy vehicle headed your way at full speed, for some reason, blows you far and away in Bad Company.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Never mind the hilarious romps of Bad Company. With the sheer amount of freedom the player has in every Battlefield game, something hilarious is bound to happen in at least every match.
    • When you first ram a battleship into an aircraft carrier and it tilts sending the planes on it overboard along with everyone else on the flight deck.
    • Or when you ram a UAV into a helicopter and said chopper disappears. Completely.
    • Any time explosives are used for their high impulse rather than destructive ability.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Battlefield 1943 and Bad Company 2 have almost the exact some control scheme except that the Melee attack and Switch Weapons buttons are reversed. More than one player has accidentally brought a Bazooka to a knife fight as a result.
    • Try going between BF 1942/BF:Vietnam/BF 2, BF 2142, and Bad Company 2, then switching weapons with the number keys. Chances are you'll get a medkit when you wanted a grenade, or a grenade launcher when you wanted the assault rifle, or a defibrillator when you wanted the medkit...hell, 2142 alone is rife with this due to how hand grenades are now an unlock and all the way down on number 7, and the scroll wheel weapon selection reflects this.
    • 1942 and Vietnam use the number row for switching seats in vehicles, with the F-keys used for shouting orders and warning players. BF 2 onward uses the F-keys for switching seats in vehicles, since the number row is used for switching weapons in certain passenger seats and the F-key radio system has been replaced by the Commo Rose.
    • 2142 and later merge the parachute and jump keys. BF 2 and earlier have them separate. Forgetting this fact can be a fatal error.
    • On a similar note, 2142 and earlier have a dedicated keybind to pick up dropped kits/weapons. Bad Company 2 instead merges it with the Use/Enter Vehicle key. BF3 uses the Reload key.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • The storyline for 2142. While 1942 and 2 were just World War II and Modern Combat shooters respectively with little plot (aside from history with regards to 1942.) 2142 tells a tale of an apocalyptic ice age forcing the two major factions into a battle for survival.
  • Death From Above: Artillery and air vehicles. Also, supply- and vehicle drops.
  • Difficult but Awesome: The Baur in 2142 and by lesser extent, the Scar.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Present in all games of the series (except Heroes), but the amount of spread largely depends on the size and weight of the gun. Generally speaking, pistols and SMGs are the least affected, while light machine guns and sniper rifles suffer the most.
  • Drives Like Crazy: Everyone, especially in Battlefield 2, where you can control fighter jets.
    • Taken to its logical extreme with BF 2's scout helicopters. Flying a littlebird sideways full throttle through a maze of trees with barely enough space to fly and being only inches from the ground, while simultaneously taking out a squad of enemy infantry? All the time.
      • That's not that far off from actual military attack chopper tactics. Flying nap-of-the-earth is highly advised.
  • Drop Pod: In 2142, you can use these as spawn points.
  • Ear Worm: All versions of the Battlefield tune, and Bad Company's menu theme, "The Beast".
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: The entire premise of Special Forces expansion pack for BF2 is based on this premise.
  • Excuse Plot: Aside from a brief mention of a war for oil on one map, virtually no explanation is given as to why the war in Battlefield 2 is being fought.
    • This triggered some serious Epileptic Trees on fan forums.
    • Neither the reason why the US is invading Russia in Bad Company.
    • Or why Russia is going apeshit on the entire world in Bad Company 2.
    • It's probably being fought over oil.
    • That being said, the Bad Company games had an actual reasonable singleplayer campaign with an actual plot. The multi-player was more unexplained for the first.
  • Fake Longevity: The requirements for Battlefield 2 ranks were changed when it was pointed out that the #1 player in the world (who was really a team of guys sharing an account), would take over 2 years to even reach the General's ranks, let alone progress through them.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Averted in BF2's Special Forces Expansion Pack, wherein part of the player's standard equipment includes night-vision goggles which can be of great benefit on pitch-dark night time maps.
  • Gatling Good: No Blackhawk helicopter would be complete without those. BF2's Cobra attack helicopter and its Chinese counterpart also sported a gatling-style cannon for the gunner. Also mounted in pairs on EU battlewalkers in 2142.
    • And, of course, the A-10 Warthog with its powerful and deadly GAU-8 Avenger.
  • Gaia's Lament / Gaia's Vengeance: Earth in 2142. The Northern Hemisphere was left uninhabitable because of a new ice age, which was caused by human-caused global warming climate change.
  • Grappling Hook Pistol: More like zipline crossbow, for some classes in BF2: Special Forces. Other classes have a thrown grappling hook used to climb up onto the roof of buildings.
  • Grenade Spam: There's a video for Modern Warfare that decries the use of Grenade Spam in the game, Fight Against Grenade Spam. Yeah, FAGS. Not wanting to be outdone, Battlefield came up with its own video pointing out that this tactic won't work and called it FRAGS: Friends Really Against Grenade Spam.
  • Griefer: Because both killing and reviving were worth a point, farmers would work in pairs, one on each team. They would find a schmuck who was off by himself (usually a sniper) and stab him, revive him, and stab him again. Because the interface would keep resetting, it was nearly impossible for the victim to escape.
    • With all other forms of teamkilling disabled, griefers can still rely on empty moving vehicles.
    • Players across teams can also farm Titan objectives in 2142. Lone players can also force an air transport to glitch through the Titan deck, destroying their own Titan early.
    • In Bad Company 2 some players encourage the use of Tracer Darts on their fellow Recons that tend to camp during objective based game types (usually when the Recon in question is on Attacker). Players on both sides can see the glow of the dart, giving the opposing team an easy kill.
  • Guns Do Not Work That Way: Several accounts, but the most notable are RPG-7s with homing warheads and an MG-3 with an ammo box that blocks the ejection port, and magically ejects brass to the right instead of downward.
  • Historical In-Joke: During the "Battle of Hue" on Battlefield: Vietnam, you can hear the infamous Hanoi Hannah.
    • The designers are also fond of taking sound bytes from military-related videos. "I'll get you ice cream for dinner" was stripped from a helicopter gun camera recording and mixed into the UAV walla in BFBC2.
  • Hit Scan: Averted, from a distance, you have to follow your target.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Battlewalkers in Battlefield 2142
  • Improvised Weapon: Some supposedly benign abilities of commanders in Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142
    • The defibrillators through 2 to Bad Company 2. Its ability is hinted at in the description in 2. One lame thing about in 2142, is that it wouldn't give you the dogtags that a knife kill would.
    • Pre-patches, the 2142 Drop Pods were absolutely lethal "weapons" against some vehicles.
      • Pods can still be used as a hilarious way to finish off damaged vehicles that are running away. If that doesn't quite do it, just drop your best explosive device on it, or put an anti-armor warhead into the roof.
    • Even now, a commander can (if lucky) drop a supply crate on a vehicle, destroying it or heavily damaging it. Focused snipers also prove quite squishy.
    • Another example is the ever popular 'cartillery', which involves supply dropping light jeeps onto unsuspecting campers. Not to useful for attacking vehicles, but still hilarious to watch/perform. This also comes in the form where one of the players involved would stick as much C4 as the Assault member cared to supply, and then detonates AFTER it lands, or midair if you feel like screwing with an unsuspecting helicopter pilot.
    • Also quite common is the tactic of throwing multiple explosives onto the hood of a really fast vehicle (C4 on Jeeps in most games and RDX on FA Vs in 2142) then ramming it into an enemy vehicle at full speed. Usually they bail out. For added bonus, in 2142 you can get an Engineer to throw a vehicle tracking radar device on the car, giving you a guided missile. Freddie Wong and Corridor Digital used this in a TV ad EA asked them to make for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo5-Xp Q 5 Jkk
    • Ramming ships with larger ships generally works well in Battlefield 1942, especially when you ram a submarine with a destroyer, or a destroyer with a carrier or a carrier with a battleship.
    • Up to 2142, parachutes—slightly known for their ability to help players stomp infantry—prove quite implacable to air vehicles or freefallers above you.
  • Insurmountable Waist High Fence: The games goes more for the Invisible Wall as described below, but your character is able to jump over lots of stuff, though there's no 'climb' option.
  • Invaded States of America: The Armored Fury Booster Pack has maps set in the Eastern US and Alaska.
  • Invisible Wall: Battlefield 1942 makes you take damage when leaving the map, while playing a radio message telling you that deserters will be shot. In the later Battlefield titles, leaving the field for too long is an instant suicide.
  • It's Raining Men: That Universal Driver's License comes with a parachute; there are transport aircraft and some spawn points are set in the air (most obviously in the Operation Market Garden level of 1942); 2142 adds landing pods to the mix.
    • It can also be raining FA Vs, Humvees, and Vodniks, if a hacker gets into the server and hacks the vehicle drop feature.
    • 1943 also gives the achievement and an in-game Stamp 'Parachutist' for spending 2 seconds using one. 2142 gives you a HALO award after spending ten seconds in parachute.
    • The first two sets of Rush objectives in BF3's Damavand Peak are at the top of a mountain. The third is at its base. Helicopters (and the occasional Humvee) join the plunge.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield Play4Free have no friendly fire.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: None of the small arms in Battlefield 2142 are Energy Weapons. The developers stated in interviews that guns firing bullets felt more real to them than "pew pew pew you're dead."
  • Lighter and Softer: Battlefield Heroes eschews Battlefield's more realistic gameplay for pure Rule of Fun. Check the Rule of Fun example below for elaboration.)
    • It should be noted that Bad Company is a first person shooter for next generation consoles with a more or less happy ending; something of a rarity these days.
      • Bad Company 2 is same lovable nincompoops from the first game, totally in-character, dropped headfirst into a Darker and Edgier plot, but it's still Lighter and Softer than Modern Warfare 2.
        • It should be noted that Battlefield's developer often cites the rule of fun in their interviews and have done so many times over the last 9 years that "balance and fun come before realism". The Rule of Fun applies to ALL Battlefield games, to varying degrees. Only bandwagon fans think it's anywhere near realistic.
  • Machinima: Stunt videos and some musical ones; many of the in-game videos in 2142 are exemplary for their quality and almost total reliance on the game engine.
  • Magic Tool: Used by the Engineer class to repair tanks, clear mines, etc.
    • In Battlefield 1942, a few turns of the wrench could even rebuild a 200m long bridge if it had been destroyed.
      • Which is nothing really compared to fixing bomb damage on a 250 meter long aircraft carrier...
  • Magical Defibrillator: Used by the Medic class in Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142 and Play4Free. A 50 cal bullet to the brain could be fixed by a jolt of electricity.
  • Master of None: The assault class in BF2. Everything he does, a medic or spec-ops can do just as effectively if not even better.
  • Nerf: At least one character class or vehicle per game tends to be overpowered at release and has to be toned down in subsequent patches.
  • Middle-Eastern Coalition: Battlefield 2 is the Trope Namer for this.
  • Nitro Boost: Battlefield 2's jet fighters have a self-recovering boost meter representing their afterburners, and introduced the Sprint Meter; Battlefield 2142 has boosting cars.
  • Nose Art: The American A-10 Thunderbolts in BF2 sport a warthog face on the nose of the aircraft. The Apaches introduced in the Special Forces pack have a shark mouth on the nose too.
  • No Swastikas: Battlefield 1942; the German flag is the one from the Weimar republic, only with an Iron Cross inside.
  • Obvious Beta: DICE has a notorious reputation for crash bugs and balance issues out of the box. This is counter-balanced by their generally good support for their products post-launch.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: The first patch to Battlefield: Vietnam fixed some serious balance issues; Battlefield 2142 patches are a litany of attempts to fix level geometry to stop people glitching their way inside Titans.
  • Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Just look at the top of the page! The numbers don't indicate a proper order at all, and just try to not mix up Battlefield: Vietnam (standalone game, second in the series) with Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam (Expansion Pack), among other things. And God help you if you mix up Bad Company 2 or Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (PlayStation 2 and Xbox Spin-Off) with the PC Battlefield 2 in front of a very picky Battlefield fan...
  • Oh Crap: BF 2 is simply one moment after another. The roar of incoming jet engines, and the sight of an F-18 emptying its entire bomb payload on top of you; the screech of incoming artillery; the rat tat tat of an Mi-28's main cannon... death is imminent.
    • Also, the horrifying, whizzing sound of a billion incoming artillery shells. You have less than a second before your body flies through the air.
    • The various vehicle alarms and missile warnings; the *s-snikt* of a knife being drawn from behind you; that car racing towards you in plain sight…
  • One Bullet Clips: Averted everywhere except Heroes titles and Play4Free.
  • One-Hit Kill: The laser designator in Battlefield: Bad Company will destroy any vehicle or enemy on a direct hit - though it can only be initiated on an enemy vehicle, you control the missile that comes down yourself, so it can be targeted towards enemy players.
    • If a knife hits you as an infantryman in 2142 or Bad Company 2, you are dead. Certain other games take a few slices to kill, with the exception of BF 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII's throwing knives.
    • Boom! Headshot! by most sniper rifles, unless it's a Barrett, in which case any part of the body works.
    • Don't be in a building if it collapses in Bad Company 2.
    • Getting hit by AT rockets when on foot in 2 and 2142.
    • The APC's mortar in 2142.
    • Under no circumstances should you try to get directly by explosives blowing up as an infantryman if you want to live.
    • Shotguns at close-enough ranges.
    • The battleships' 16" guns.
    • Don't be in a vehicle when it blows up.
    • What we're saying is be very careful in this game.
  • One-Man Army: Averted throughout the series. Pretending to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and trying to win the war by yourself WILL get you killed in very short order, not to mention pissing off your teammates in multi-player mode.
    • Project Reality reinforces this by requiring a minimum two-man team to capture a control point, making it impossible for a Commando wannabe to capture a control point alone.
    • It is possible to work effectively while alone, but the key is not to be in this mindset. Skilled players, especially Recons, can be very effective at harassing enemy spawn points through careful use of hit and run tactics, and can also make themselves useful by spotting enemy vehicles.
  • The Power of Friendship: Do stuff together with your squadmates, makes winning easier and even gives more points in the later games of the series.
  • PVP-Balanced: Battlefield Heroes has been claimed to eschew realism very far for balance - all vehicles are supposed to be fun options and easily countered by all players. Also, the standard grenade launcher for Assault class in Battlefield: Bad Company does very little damage to enemy players and exists for utilizing the game's environment destruction system. (Indeed, it will give you a Cosmetic Award for killing, or rather, finish off, 3 players in one match with it.) That is, blow holes in stuff that are enemy players, or blow up stuff that aren't enemy players.
    • This also results in the A-10 and Su-39 being fairly poor aircraft in Battlefield 2.
    • Throughout the entire series, rocket launchers have always had almost no splash damage. This is to prevent players from pulling a Macross Missile Massacre on infantry, because rocket launchers frequently come with about 5 rockets.
  • Qurac: Many of the locations shown in BF2 and the Bad Company series are set in generic middle-eastern locations, such as the notorious Karkand map from BF2.
    • Karkand is making a return as downloadable content for Battlefield 3.
    • BF3 averts this somewhat: the cities and countries are all named and nonfictional.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: The strongest handgun in Battlefield 2142 is a revolver with 8 shots that can be upgraded to hold 10. It also reloads by removing the entire cylinder. This is really a moot point though, as there are only two handguns in the game, and the EU just has higher power, lower ammo capacity weapons than the PAC in general.
    • Played straight in Bad Company 2 with the MP 412 Rex, which can drop an enemy in just a couple of shots. The flip side is the slow rate of fire and low ammo capacity.
    • BF3 has both the aforementioned MP 412 Rex and the Taurus .44 Magnum.
  • Rare Guns: The Pancor Jackhammer in Battlefield 2, as well as the Breda Modello 30 in 1942. The XM8 and AN-94 in Bad Company 2, as well, but at least the latter has the excuse of being a Special Forces Russian gun.
    • All of the installments set in World War II give Japanese soldiers the Type 5 rifle, a clone of the American M1 Garand. In real life, only about 250 of them were produced, and none of them were actually used in combat.
  • Rare Vehicles: The whole point of the Secret Weapons of WWII expansion.
  • Reliably Unreliable Guns: Most machine guns and vehicle-mounted automatic weapons will overheat and seize up temporarily if fired in prolonged bursts.
  • Reverse Grip: How knives are held in Vietnam, 2142, Play4Free, Battlefield Heroes, and BF3. Dima from BF3's campaign does this with his fancy Spetnaz hatchet.
  • RPG Elements: Present from Battlefield 2 and onward - though generally players could get most of everything and necessities for all classes. Battlefield Heroes, however, takes this even further, having a set number of characters for each account, those characters having a specific class and each of those characters having levels to unlock different character abilities and clothing to wear, in an very MMORPG-style manner.
    • Pretty much ditched for 1943, you get points for kills and such but all they do is increase your rank which has no bonuses other than showing you have a large number of points.
  • Russians With Rusting Rockets: The Special Forces expansion pack of Battlefield 2 includes the Russian Spetsnaz as a playable faction, and Project Reality has the regular Russian Army (Russian Ground Forces if you want to get technical) as well.
  • Rule of Fun: Battlefield Heroes has been said to be built purely on this, making very atypical compared to the rest of the series - characters use third-person to allow you to see your character, have typical FPS unrealistic-durability and no friendly fire, all classes will be self-sufficient, all vehicles are supposed to be easily countered by all players, and you can ride on a plane's wing.
  • Selective Historical Armoury: See the trope page for details.
  • Sprint Meter: Used in 2 and 2142.
  • Shoot the Medic First: The medical abilities of players in the Battlefield series follow the reason why you should invoke this trope to the letter. But watch out while trying to.
    • Averted in 1943, where the health systems was switched to Call of Duty-style Regenerating Health and the Medic class was removed as a result.
    • More often averted in public matches, where eager medics revive teammates only for those players to be immediately re-killed.
  • Shout-Out: You can hear broadcasts from Good Morning Vietnam in certain spawning points of some maps of Battlefield: Vietnam.
    • As noted under Theme Music Power-Up, several of the song choices on Vietnam's soundtrack were inspired by war movies.
    • One of the trailers for Bad Company was a parody of a Gears of War trailer, including the song Sweetwater sings.
  • Shown Their Work: Well, whoever worked on this piece of artwork for Battlefield 3 apparently did, considering what off-duty soldiers found in it.
  • Soft Water: Sort of. While you'll take less damage falling into water, you'll still die (or go into "critically wounded" mode if you hit water at a high enough height). In 2 and 2142, if you hit the water from a high height, you'll go into this state, but you'll never be out right killed like if you hit land.
  • Stop Helping Me!: Battlefield 2's revive ability for the medics. Some players would revive at bad times, such as when a person is trying to respawn with a different class, or at a more important location.
    • Medics often revive in the middle of a firefight, run away and leave you for death. Then they revive you again, ignoring all the enemies around and it goes on and on and on. Especially infuriating if there are snipers around. Particularly maddening when the medic and your killer are working together to pad their stats.
  • Suicide Mission: The whole point of B Company.
    • Also, Operation Aurora
  • Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: In theory, at least. In practice, air vehicles typically lay waste to everything when away from AA guns.
  • Take That: The Ballad of Dedicated Servers asks if the phasing out of dedicated servers (It Makes Sense in Context.) is modern way of making warfare'?
  • Theme Music Power-Up: Battlefield Vietnam included the rather awesome feature that every vehicle was equipped with a radio, allowing you to play soundtrack songs for the other players to hear as you drove around. (Including, obviously, "The Ride of the Valkyries" and "Surfin' Bird") This was then subverted as actually doing so was a great way to get yourself shot.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Killing infantry with an anti-tank weapon will prevent them from being revived by a medic.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: The National Army in Battlefield Heroes is a collection of various Nazi and generally German stereotypes. It even references the trope, by naming one of the weapons "The Wacky Machine Gun"
  • Tie-in Novel: Battlefield 3: The Russian, a continuation of said game's single-player campaign written by military writer/former SAS operator Andy McNab.
  • Title Drop: "I belong to Bad Company. I don't wanna end up in some good company!" Also, the page quote. To be fair, it's kinda hard to go through a military shooter and not legitimately say "battlefield" anyway.
  • Translation Convention: The player has the option to have non-English-speaking armies speak in their native language or have their speech "translated" into perfect English.
    • In Battlefield 2, toggling the switch would simply make every character sound like an American Marine, which was actually a gameplay disadvantage because you couldn't use all the audio cues any more. Bad Company 2 averts this by making the Russians speak accented English.
  • Unbreakable Weapons: All of them, though kits players can drop can be destroyed by explosives or bullets. Lampshaded with its weapon entry on the knife in Bad Company 2, saying it is designed to stay sharp indefinitely and is guaranteed to not rust, bend or break.
  • Universal Driver's License: Every game in the series.
  • Unwinnable: Particularly coordinated teams tend to block off the road leading out of enemy bases with a ring of tanks, engineers, and AA vehicles once they've captured all the spawn points. This makes it pretty much impossible for the opposing team to gain any ground, especially if they're being bombed at the same time. Heroes and Play4free spawn players close to idle points when their team have no ground specifically to prevent this from happening.
  • Urban Warfare: Strike at Karkand is considered to be one of the best urban maps in modern FP Ses.
  • Walk It Off: Averted for most of the series, but present in 1943, Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3. While health regen for 1943 and the single player portion of Bad Company 2 is quick, it's nerfed in Bad Company 2 multi-player and outright removed in hardcore mode as to not render medkits useless.
  • Weaponized Car: Project Reality, the Special Forces expansion pack of Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 3 all include "technicals"; pickup trucks fitted with machine guns or SPG-9 recoilless rifles.
  • We Are Not the Wehrmacht: Project Reality includes the Bundeswehr as of version 0.95.
  • What the Hell, Player?: Friendly fire will be quickly met with unhappy responses.
    • I'M FRIENDLY!
    • FRIENDLY GODDAMNED FIRE
    • CEASE FIRE!! FRIENDLIES!!
    • WAKE THE FUCK UP! BLUE ON BLUE!
    • FRIENDLYGODDAMNEDFIRE!!!!!
    • FRIENDLIES OVER HERE!! C'MON!!
    • OI!! IDIOT!
    • HEY, DUMBSHIT, IT'S ME!!
    • HEY!! I'M WITH YOU!!
  • Whoring: grenade spam and its slightly more annoying cousin, claymore spam.
    • Hand-thrown EMP grenades award points to a player when they successfully "disable" enemy vehicles with them. Included as enemy vehicles are the enemy commander's assets, except hitting them does absolutely nothing useful. You still get points though, and EMP grenades are for the infinite-ammo-baggy support class. Do I really need to elaborate on what happens next?
    • In the single-player mode of i cant see reason for this, the player will occasionally have the AI bots engage in grenade spamming too. Most notably when an opposing tank or APC shows up.
  • World War Two: Obviously the ones with 1942 or 1943 in the title.
  • World War Three: In Battlefield 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, and Battlefield 3. They probably aren't the exact same war, either.
  • Yanks With Tanks: Most of the games feature the United States Armed Forces in some capacity. Project Reality doubles this by having both the US Marine Corps from BF2 and adding in the US Army for good measure.
  • You All Look Familiar: The Battlefield games typically only had 3 different faces for each side.
  1. ↑ Of course, just having the "best" weapons doesn't automatically make you more skilled, just slightly more deadly, so the shortcut packs really only increase your options, not your abilities
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