Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

The third main series installment of the Command and Conquer Tiberian Series, Tiberium Wars is set seventeen years after its predecessor Tiberian Sun in a starkly stratified world. GDI has succeeded in containing Tiberium in areas dubbed Blue Zones, which are bastions of civilization and relative paradises compared to the rest of the planet. Yellow Zones are lawless wastelands where daily life is a struggle and Nod is seen as the last hope of the common man. Red Zones, meanwhile, have been wholly xenoformed by Tiberium and are storm-wracked hells lethal to humans. Kane reemerges once more to launch a surprise attack on a complacent GDI, whose retaliation has an unintended side effect: an alien race called the Scrin suddenly invades, seeking to harvest Earth's Tiberium bounty. The aliens are narrowly driven off, while Kane succeeds in his plan to acquire their technology.

An expansion pack Kane's Wrath introduced sub-factions to the three sides and had a Nod-centric campaign telling the story between Firestorm and Tiberium Wars, and what came after. It also details Kane's reacquisition of the Tacitus artifact from GDI, who had taken possession of it in Tiberian Sun.

Please note that this page is for tropes that feature in this game and its expansion only. Please add tropes relating to other games as well on the main Tiberian series page.

Tropes used in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars include:

• Action Bomb: Fanatics: suicide bombers used by Nod.
• Airstrip One: The world, since it's been divided into "Blue", "Yellow" and "Red" zones.
  • Blue Zones are ones with little to no Tiberium infestation, look fairly normal, and are where humans can live somewhat decent lives.
  • Yellow Zones have a moderate degree of Tiberium. You can live there, but you have to be super careful to avoid the Tiberium lest it mutates or kill you, and the degree these places are livable is dependent on how severe the infestation is.
  • Red Zones are Death Worlds in miniature. Nothing can live in these without hazard suit protection, and even then it's dangerous because Tiberium has utterly subsumed all normal biological life to the point these areas are no longer able to support anything not explicitly adapted to Tiberium or immune to it first.
• Alien Invasion: Invoked by Kane with the Scrin. Except it's not really an invasion, but they try to make it look like one, to divert attention from their mining operations. Kane is very much aware of this but said aliens aren't aware that they have been brought to Earth earlier than they planned.
• Aliens Steal Cable: The Scrin use a satellite news broadcast to learn English; it takes them less than 10 seconds. It comes in mighty handy when they come across a classified transmission by Kane, explaining his scheme.
• Attack Drone/Mecha-Mooks: The Scrin "army" (actually an escort for the mining fleet) seems to be composed of automated troops commanded by Scrin Foremen in spaceborne Motherships. All of their units and even their buildings immediately shutdown and decompose once their Relay Node is destroyed.
• Bread and Circuses: Nod for the people in the Yellow Zones in Tiberium Wars. Overlaps with Villain with Good Publicity.
• Crapsack World: Tiberium's effect on the Earth are so damaging that by 2047, 20% of Earth surface is uninhabitable to humans, and most of it remains dangerous to humans. And this is actually better conditions than the previous game...
• Despair Event Horizon: The Scrin attempt to pull this off in their "invasion" by deliberately attacking cities and monuments. It doesn't work, partially because little things like that have nigh entirely ceased to hold meaning with most people by this point.
• Didn't See That Coming: In Kane's Wrath, Kane's reaction when Alexa says she set up Kilian Qatar is genuine surprise.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: As a result of a continuity error in the Novelization: suddenly, Nod grunts are using laser rifles!
• Game Mod: A number of notable ones have popped up over the years.
  • The Forgotten brings back the tiberium-mutated faction from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, complete with its own fleshed-out campaign and full-motion video cutscenes.
  • Tiberium Essence overhauls the entire game to be much more like an updated Tiberian Sun while keeping the general premise intact, with new abilities and units (including the Mammoth Mk. II).
  • Mideast Crisis 2, a sequel to a Command and Conquer Generals mod involving a near-future conflict in the Middle East.
• Hollywood Science: In the Novelization of Tiberium Wars, radioactive rainwater kills plants and trees within minutes while leaving the rest of the landscape, including the people who live in the area, unaffected. Radiation does not work that way.
• Humans Are Warriors: Why the harvesting operation goes bad for the Scrin in Tiberium Wars. While it's true that the Scrin's "invasion" was actually just a mining operation that harvests Tiberium-infested planets when all the inhabitants are dead, they still view humanity as "warlike to the extreme" and a major threat to the survival of their entire race.
• The Hypnotoad: Scrin Masterminds and their advanced Traveler-59 cousins, the Prodigies.
• Mythology Gag: The GDI campaign has many homages to the Soviet Campaign from Red Alert 2, including a first mission involving the Pentagon and a virtually identical opening to the second mission.
• Never My Fault: A particularly amusing example at the beginning of the Tiberium Wars Nod campaign, where Killian goes on and on about how wonderful the Brotherhood is for spreading Tiberium to those who needed it most... before bitching out GDI for leaving them with all the Tiberium-infected territory. Someone never took lessons on cause and effect, it seems.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Boyle ordering the use of the ion cannon on Temple Prime, which was exactly what Kane was goading into doing.
  • The player character, if he decides to use the liquid tiberium bomb at the end of the game.
  • The Scrin Foreman's rather ill-judged attacks.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Inverted in Kane's Wrath. The bad guys are the only campaign available.
• Novelization: There is one, but it's full of Hollywood Tactics and Did Not Do the Research. Thankfully, there is one Fanfic author trying to fix that.
• Peace Through Superior Firepower: GDI just prior to Tiberium Wars. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of ion cannons orbiting the Earth, ready to blow any baddies off the face of the planet. And that's not counting their nigh-indestructible railgun-armed Mammoth tanks.
• Perspective Flip: The campaigns generally follow the same line of events, albeit told through GDI, Nod, and Scrin's perspectives.
• Starfish Aliens: The Scrin. So alien in fact, that we don't even know how they look like. All we get is the shimmering, cephalopoidal avatar of the Supervisor during his Warp-Link transmissions.
• Suicide Attack: Nod Fanatics are suicide bombers hopped up on Tiberium infusions and religious zeal.
• Title Drop: Kane's Wrath has Kane title dropping two of the missions, "Persuade Him" and "A Grand Gesture".
• Tomato Surprise: The person Kane was talking to in Kane's Wrath is a computer AI.
• Tuckerization: One of the maps, "Black's Big Battle", is likely named for multiplayer designer Greg Black. Ingame art shows a soldier with the nametag "Vessella", a reference to associate producer Jim Vessella.
• Useless Useful Spell: The Nod Avatar's scavenge ability.
• Villainous Breakdown: Kane after Sarajevo: "How could my own brothers believe that what transpired at the Temple Prime did not unfold exactly as I had planned. Of course, I could not have planned for an ambush BY MY OWN FORCES!"
• We Have Reserves: After that, it was clear that the Scrin were fooled by Kain to attack Earth, their leader Overlord wanted more information about him, at the expense of the portals of the Scrin towers for the invading forces. When the Scrin AI pointed this out, The Supervisor, Overlord's representative, tells her that the invading forces were "expendable" and commands Foreman to spend more time on finding researches about Kane and less time on defending the towers.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If you use the liquid Tiberium bomb in the last GDI mission in Tiberium Wars, you end up killing over twenty million people. Granger immediately calls you out on it and accuses you of being a war criminal.