Left Behind

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
—1st Thessalonians 4:16,17

A series of religious novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins about the Premillennial Dispensationalist version of the Rapture. Despite criticism for hewing closely to a specific sect's interpretation of Revelation (or perhaps because of said hewing), it has gained a strong following among many religious people.

The good guys are a rotating group (due to the inherent high mortality rate associated with living in the End Times and fighting the Prince of Darkness) of 4-5 who call themselves the Tribulation Force. The bad guy is Nicolae Carpathia, The Antichrist, the most evil of all Evil Overlords.

The original Tribulation Force consists of: Rayford Steele, the unofficial leader and a pilot who planned on cheating on his wife (Irene) with a flight attendant (Hattie) because of how his wife's preaching annoyed him; Chloe, Ray's college-age daughter; Cameron "Buck" Williams, an adventurous, street savvy newspaper reporter who eventually marries Chloe; and Bruce, the pastor who brings them all together.

Together, they launch a crusade to convert the world and protect the converts while waiting through seven years of judgments between the Rapture and the Glorious Appearing of Christ at the end of the world.

The series currently consists of sixteen novels; three are prequels dealing with the birth of the Anti-Christ, the various signs leading up to the Rapture, and the Rapture itself.

  • The Rising: Antichrist is Born (2005)
  • The Regime: Evil Advances (2005)
  • The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye (2006)
  • Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (1995)
  • Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind (1996)
  • Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist (1997)
  • Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides (1999)
  • Apollyon: The Destroyer is Unleashed (1999)
  • Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist (1999)
  • The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession (2000)
  • The Mark: The Beast Rules the World (2000)
  • Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne (2001)
  • The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon (2002)
  • Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages (2003)
  • Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (2004)
  • Kingdom Come: The Final Victory (2007)

Has been made into three direct-to-video films, the first of which saw a brief theatrical release the week after the video hit the stores. It's also spun off into graphic novels, a series of young adult novels (with teen protagonists experiencing these events in their own way), and even a PC game, which has a sequel due out soon.

There is a blog which has been doing an in-depth analysis and criticism of the books and authors, practically page-by-page (beginning here).

Tropes used in Left Behind include:

Satan: You dare suggest you have anything to offer me besides your pathetic frame?! You are drunk with a power whose source is far beyond your own! You are merely a vessel, a tool, a jar of clay for my purposes, and yet you parade yourself as if you had a shred of value!

    • Also any scene where the heroes have to talk with Nicolae arguably counts, or at least it is treated with the same degree of dread by the act of conversing with such an prime agent of evil.
  • Adaptation Dye Job: Blond-haired Chloe Steele and Nicolae Carpathia in the books get darker hair in the films.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The young adult series expands on events from the adult series as well as telling some of them from a different perspective. For instance, in the first book, Buck Williams calls Lionel Washington's mother and finds out about her disappearance, while the young adult series shows us the same call fromLionel's perspective.
  • After the End: ...well, after the first end. The second end is still a while away. And not really an ending.
  • A God Am I: Nicolae Carpathia fancies himself this after Satan takes control.
  • Air Force One: Plays a big role in the story, centering around the hiring of Rayford Steele as the primary pilot, and the president giving it to Nicolae Carpathia so he can fly around in it as the leader of the Global Community. Several elements of its purpose and function[1] are handily overlooked for the sake of the story.
  • All Love Is Unrequited Floyd Charles and Hattie Durham. Also David Hassid and Hannah Palemoon.
  • Alphabet News Network: Global News Network in the movies, Global Community Cable News Network in the books.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Guy Blod sounds a tad bit fruity in the Dramatic Audio of The Indwelling.
  • An Asskicking Christmas: Tsion Ben-Judah gets to witness Revelation chapter 12 being played out in full detail in the heavens in The Indwelling.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: At the end of the first novel, Buck confirms to Bruce, Rayford and Chloe that Nicolae Carpathia is in fact the Antichrist foretold.
  • Animal Motifs: On top of the various religious ones mined from The Bible, Carpathia has two planes, the first called the Condor, the later the Phoenix. The first refers to a type of vulture that is usually black in color, emblematic of Nicolae's true goal of feeding off the world's attention,and the second plane is considered a rebirth of the Condor, foreshadowing how Nicolae himself would later come Back from the Dead.
  • And There Was Much Rejoicing: The Dramatic Audio presentation of Glorious Appearing has the sound of a crowd cheering wildly as Michael locks Satan away in the bottomless pit for a thousand years. However, Satan does get out in time for the Final Battle.
    • Prior to that, in the middle of the Tribulation, there were 3 1/2 days of rejoicing when the two witnesses were killed by Nicolae at the start of the Global Gala, which abruptly ended when they were resurrected and taken to heaven in a cloud, according to The Word of God.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: In the prequel novel The Rising, Marilena Carpathia wishes to become a mother. Enter Viviana Ivansova (Viv Ivins), who makes the following proposal to her: join our group and swear loyalty to her lord, and she will have the baby she so desperately desire. Marilena should have read the fine print about what her son will become in the future.
    • Ironically, Carpathia had the fine print spelled out to him by Lucifer when it came time to decide whether to follow Lucifer's lead forever. He still jumped at it and didn't regret it until he lost and was forced to acknowledge Jesus as Lord.
  • Anticlimax: The Other Light battle versus Jesus Christ in Kingdom Come. It took less time in that book to be over than the Battle of Armageddon in Glorious Appearing. Chaim Rosenzweig even Lampshades this fact.
    • In a moment of bleak comedy, it's even noted that anyone who rejects God after 100 years is destined to die during the thousand year reign of Christ, meaning nine generations will have lost by default, but The Other Light thinks they'll still come out on top in the end anyway.
  • Anyone Can Die: Except for one person, Rayford Steele, all of the people we get to know end up dying in various painful and/or messy ways.
    • The protagonists of the young adult series are better off, only one of the original four dies off during the Tribulation.
  • A Plague on Both Your Houses: According to T.M. Delanty, upon finding out that his brother Samuel was killed while escorting Hattie Durham, Bo Hansen got wasted in a bar, pulled out a gun, cursed Nicolae, God and the world, and killed himself.
  • Apocalypse How: a level 1 (global Depopulation Bomb) followed by a level X-4 (the annihilation of the entire physical universe or 'World', as opposed to the 'Kingdom of Heaven').
  • Arab-Israeli Conflict: Ended bloodlessly in the prologue. Israel, thanks to a chemical Super Miracle-Gro has bought the good will of its neighbors to the extent where they apparently have no problem with it absorbing Syria and a large chunk of Iraq.
  • Artistic License Religion: You have to be in a very specific branch of Christianity to agree with the author's interpretation of The Bible.
    • Combined with Artistic License Linguistics, in The Rising, the authors have a curious etymology for Lucifer's name, from Latin lux, or lucis (light) and ferrum (iron) -- in other words, Iron (or Iron-hard) Light. They may have the language and "light" part right, but, in fact, most Christian scholars can tell you that Lucifer actually came from lucem ferre -- Light-Bearer. See here.
  • Archangel Gabriel / Archangel Michael: Be it giving Tsion Ben-Judah a front-row seat of the War In Heaven between Satan and God, or strong-arming the Antichrist and his False Prophet, the two archangels are ready to do their Lord's bidding.
  • Arc Number: Carpathia sure has a thing for 216. Because it's a parody of John 3:16
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • After Chloe is captured by the GC, among the things the GCNN report is that she was expelled from her university for making threats against the faculty, aborted two fetuses (with another daughter dying under unknown circumstances), and naming her son Jesus Savior Williams.
    • Tsion Ben-Judah. Earned the ire of his fellow Israelis by declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, wanted in the murders of his wife and stepchildren, and accused of "fleecing his flock" millions of Nicks.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence Applies to anyone who was raptured or martyred, as you are given a glorified body. Of course, this means that in your glorified state, you cannot fall in love, neither sire or have children. But for those who have been raptured and been with the Lord during the Tribulation, nothing else quite compares to it.
    • By the end of the Millennium, all naturals who are believers are given glorified bodies.
  • Asexuality: The relationship of the "glorifieds" with "naturals" and with each other in Kingdom Come, mostly due to the nature of their new bodies and minds.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The ideas for non-American names leave something to be desired. A Chinese woman named Ming Toy? An Amerindian woman named Hannah Palemoon? (Google "Princess Palemoon" to see the problem...) A Jewish man named Tsion ben-Judah? And of course, "Nicolae Carpathia", which veers into self-parody.
  • As the Good Book Says...: Bible verses aplenty.
  • The Atoner: Anyone who was left behind following the Rapture who became a Christian.
  • Attack! Attack! Retreat! Retreat!: The GC Unity Army is primed and ready to attack both Petra and Jerusalem in Armageddon. Then Jesus arrives. Cue Curb Stomp Battle.
  • Attempted Rape: In Kingdom Come with an unbelieving under-100 "natural" (who was part of The Other Light) and a female "glorified" in the hopes of siring a child that may be able to live past 100 years of age without becoming a believer. God foiled the attempt by having the would-be rapist die in her arms and then incinerated. Given that "glorifieds" are not able to sire or have children, this would have proved to be pointless.
  • Author Avatar: Two of them, one for each author, although it's worth mentioning that it's more severe with Buck, since Buck is Jenkins' avatar, and Jenkins is the one who does the actual writing.
  • Author Filibuster
  • Author's Saving Throw: The young adult series, when read alongside the adult series, fills in a lot of details glossed over in the adult books. The YA series also remedies the Zeerust Canon issues as much as possible and ups the competence of the GC from their seeming nigh idiocy in the adult series, allowing them to be seen as much more competent antagonists. Unfortunately, they had to stick with certain bad writing,such as the physically impossible gunshot Nicolae uses to kill people in the first book because the YA series had to follow canon and couldn't deviate from certain parts of the adult books later on.
  • Author Tract
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: Jesus rewarding the Tribulation Martyrs with a martyrs' crown.
  • Back from the Dead: The resurrection of the dead for the final judgment.
    • Carpathia resurrecting Fortunato, Eli and Moishe being resurrected by God, and Carpathia resurrecting himself (actually being indwelt by Satan).
  • Badass Beard: Take a wild guess.
  • Badass Bookworm: By the end of the series, Abdullah Smith is quite the bookworm indeed. Ken Ritz is also one.
  • Badass Family: The Steeles as the Tribulation goes on, and by extension, Cameron Williams.
  • Badass Grandpa: Rayford gradually grows into this role following Kenny's birth.
  • Badass Israeli: Tsion ben-Judah, David Hassid and Chaim Rosenzweig.
  • Badass Preacher: Tsion Ben-Judah in Armageddon when he decides to help defend Jerusalem and preach to the Jews about Jesus Christ during the Battle of Armageddon
    • Eli and Moishe also qualify.
  • Bad Boss: The climax of the first book centers around Nicolae shooting two of his subordinates for the sole purpose of demonstrating his "power." He then brainwashes everyone in the room into forgetting what they just saw.
    • Fridge Logic: Then why would he do it in the first place?
      • He has a legitimate motive (though it seems secondary at the time) in removing them from the picture, and as it is revealed in the next book, taking over their assets. However, the "power" display itself that he touts so much is still mystifying.
      • It's possible he did it in order to "smoke out" anyone in the room who was immune to his power (i.e., Christians). According to the first book's mythology, anyone converted to Christianity would see "the truth" behind Carpathia's magical mystical hypnotic suggestions, and would probably still be freaking out while the "true Carpathia believers" sat calmly like nothing had happened.
  • Because Destiny Says So: Why did Russia (and Ethiopia) attack Israel? Because it was written that they would. Why would they world agree to suddenly follow one religion after so much bloody strife? It's written that they would. Not even a Hand Wave that The Antichrist is using mind control powers to make it happen. These people do these things solely because it's been foretold.
  • Being Evil Sucks: You're pretty much boned if you take the mark of loyalty and worship the image of the Antichrist. Not to mention that you will be subject to God's retribution in the form of his bowl judgements.
    • And even that's not an immediate concern, the people who took the Mark of the Beast eventually realize they swore loyalty to a despotic lunatic who demands constant worship or death.
  • Big Applesauce: Since the Antichrist's plan so heavily involves the UN, New York is a major setting, which is made all the more jarring given the glaring errors written about it. In the first book, Buck (who is described as being "in great shape"), has to walk a bit through Manhattan. The journey is described like the Bataan Death March, when in reality it's less than two miles.
    • He walks until he's ready to collapse from exhaustion and then he finds an abandoned bike and considers it a sign from God. In less than two miles.
  • Big Bad: Nicolae Carpathia, throughout much of the book series.
  • Big Bulky Bomb: Carpathia tries to use two Big Blue 82s as well as a Lance missile to kill all the believers at Petra in the tenth book, and fails to accomplish squat, as God provides total immunity to any of the fire and explosive damage from either.
  • Big Good: God and Jesus, naturally. Jesus turns up in person at the end of the twelfth book.
  • Big No: In the Dramatic Audio of Glorious Appearing, Leon Fortunato utters this (half-screaming, half-crying, actually) as he is hauled to the pit which will send him and Carpathia to the Lake of Fire.
  • Bilingual Dialogue: While Buck is at the Wailing Wall for the first time with Tsion watching Eli and Moishe preach, Buck and Tsion hear them in their respective languages. Buck later confirms this with Tsion after asking around the crowd. One man says that they are speaking Spanish, while another says they are speaking German, and a third person hears them in Dutch.
    • Played straight with Jesus Himself, as the believers hear him speak to them in their own languages; Rayford, in English, Chaim in Hebrew, Chang Wong in Mandarin Chinese, Abdullah in Arabic with Mac jokingly saying that Jesus "worked a bit of West Texan...the language of Heaven."
  • Black and White Morality: As an example, the character list in the third book lists characters as being either part of the "The Believers", "The Enemies", or "The Undecided". Taking a Third Option in morality is not something that happens here.
  • Black Dude Dies First: In the third Left Behind movie, Bruce Barnes bites the big one. Fitzhugh is the last to go.
    • In the novels, T.M. Delanty is the first black dude to die.
  • Black Market: Inverted with the International Commodity Co-Op, which caters to underground Christians, helping them survive the final years of the Tribulation.
    • Ironically, the completely legal market is such a joke by the final books even they have to engage in this trope since official lines of market goods are so decimated.
  • Bland-Name Product: The movies have Buck Williams working for Global News Network (GNN).
  • Bonding Over Missing Parents: The lead characters of Left Behind: The Kids bond together when their parents were either raptured or killed.
  • Brainwashed: The Antichrist's preferred method of gaining allies and resources.
  • Bottomless Pit: At the end of Glorious Appearing, Satan gets chained up and tossed into one. He will remain there for the duration of the Millennial Kingdom.
  • Briar Patching: Rayford pulls this off with the Potentate at the end of Nicolae. Carpathia knows that Rayford is a believer and wishes to be at the meeting of the 144,000 at Teddy Kolleck Stadium. But Rayford convinces him that showing up would be to his advantage.

Rayford: The enemy has been known to imitate miracles. Imagine the audience in Israel if you were to do something like that. Here are people of faith coming together for inspiration. If you are God, if you could be the Messiah, wouldn't they be thrilled to meet you?
Carpathia: If you are suggesting that it only makes sense that the Global Community Potentate bestow upon those guests a regal welcome second to none, you may have a point...Captain Steele, schedule that flight.

  • Broken Bird: Prior to becoming the head nurse at Brigham Young Hospital, Leah Rose had quite the checkered past. From a broken household to a teenage drug addict who slept around, aborted a pregnancy and nearly killed herself several times before she finally cleaned herself up, got her GED and after getting married, her husband put her through nursing school and the pair adopted two boys. After their children were taken in the Rapture, she and her husband tried to kill themselves. Her husband succeeded. She didn't. In the end, she became a believer.
    • Abdullah Ababaneh (Smith) gets the honorable mention. He starts off as a Muslim, but when his wife Yasmine and their two children, Bahira and Zaki become Christians, they leave him following one argument too many. This drives Abdullah into a state of depression, where he loses himself in booze and women, even though he wants his family back.
  • Broken Pedestal: Nicolae Carpathia increasingly becomes this to those who once believed him to be a noble character, showing more and more what an evil sot he really is. Even Jesus calls him out on it, saying that all his God-given abilities could have been used for good, but he chose to use them all for serving Satan.
  • Brothers Before Lovers: Rayford invokes this against his own daughter, when he sides with her boyfriend Buck in an argument.
  • Bury Your Gays: Within a few pages of (accidentally) outing herself, Verna Zee is squashed by the "Wrath of the Lamb" earthquake.
  • But for Me It Was Tuesday: From Desecration, the exchange with Carpathia and Fortunato.

Fortunato: (re: Hattie's death) Holiness, I called down fire on your enemy just yesterday.
Carpathia: You cooked a harmless woman with a big mouth.

  • But She Can't Be Pregnant!: Buck's reaction upon finding out that Mother Doe is in fact Chloe...and that she is pregnant with their child.
  • But Thou Must!: In Desecration, it's Hattie's confrontation with Carpathia and Fortunato.
  • Butt Monkey: The Antichrist's Dragon has at least one moment per book where he looks like a stupendous idiot.
    • Hattie Durham counts as well.
  • California Doubling: Toronto as New York for the movie, if you look closely, the international flags displayed at the UN are actually those of Canadian provinces.
  • Calling Your Attacks: In Desecration, Carpathia asks Morale Monitor head Loren Hut on how would he deal with dissidents. When Hut responds that he would shoot them in the head or chest, Carpathia insists that he empty his nine-round clip into the offender, starting with both hands, feet, knees, and shoulders. When they finally declare that Carpathia is indeed God, they should be executed with the final bullet to the head, followed by the immediate beheading of the head from the body.
    • Ironic Echo: Carpathia later executes Walter Moon this way when Moon fails to have Tsion Ben-Judah removed from the GC networks.
  • The Cameo: In the end of Kingdom Come, we see The Beast (Nicolae Carpathia) and the False Prophet (Leon Fortunato) in the Lake of Fire screaming "JESUS IS LORD! JESUS IS LORD!"
    • In the films, Christian music artists Bob Carlisle and Rebecca St. James appear as Global News Network studio workers, while the Christian music band Jake appears as United Nations security guards along with Clay Crosse. There's also John and Diana Hagee as well as Jack and Rexella Van Impe who appear as passengers on board Rayford's plane that have vanished, and T.D. Jakes who appears as Vernon Billings.
  • Caught Up in the Rapture: Kicks off the plot.
  • The Cavalry: Or as one character puts it, the "Calvary cavalry", which is Jesus Christ leading His army of saints from heaven in Glorious Appearing. However, Jesus does all the fighting with only the Word Of God as His weapon while the army following Him does all the praising.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy: A pretty effective one in Kingdom Come. Jesus is the proverbial head of state, the Levite priests oversee the rebuilt Temple, and the 11 apostles act as the civil governors with King David as their leader.
  • Character Shilling
  • Chaste Hero: Raymie Steele in Kingdom Come. His being a "glorified" renders him permanently unable to seek any sort of sexual relationship. In fact, any child that was Caught Up in the Rapture will end up coming back as a Chaste Hero.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The Rapture Tape Pastor Billings made three years before the Rapture. It would be instrumental in bringing about Rayford and Chloe's salvation.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Ken Ritz. Most people don't know that he graduated Saluatorian in his high school class, or studied at the London School of Economics, or the ideas he had would eventually become the International Commodity Co-Op, or the fact that he stashed at least 80 percent of his earnings at Palwaukee Airport, thus making him a virtual millionaire. Rayford's reaction to this little revelation is priceless.

Rayford: Did I mention the annual dues for being a member of the Tribulation Force?

    • Tsion Ben-Judah. No one would ever think that the former student of Chaim Rosenzweig would convert, or that his cyber-classes on the Messiah would lead thousands to Christ.
    • Cendrillion Jospin, as it is through her death that the believers discover her connections to The Other Light.
    • Irene Steele is a minor example. She DID warn Rayford about the Rapture.
    • Viv Ivins in the prequel novels. She did convince Marilena to become mother to the Antichrist.
  • Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: As seen in promotional shots for the movie, Gordon Currie seems to be enjoying himself.
  • Continuity Reboot: Cloud Ten Pictures is aiming to reboot the entire film series, starting with the first book.
  • Command Roster:
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Buck Williams' informant Dirk Burton is played as one in both the novels and the movies.
  • Corrupt Church: Arguably Enigma Babylon One World Faith, which consists of the Roman Catholic Church combined with other sects of Christianity that would not hold to fundamentalist doctrine as well as other religions.
    • It gets replaced with something even worse later that doesn't even bother to hide how corrupt it is.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Joshua Todd-Cothran and Jonathan Stonagal...until Nicolae executes the both of them. Prior to becoming the President of Romania, Carpathia himself personified this trope, as anyone who stood in his way were killed or bribed into submission.
  • Cozy Catastrophe: Crashed airlines, mass disappearances, and political upheaval everywhere, but the trash is still getting collected, airline flights are uninterrupted, and it's safe to walk the streets at night.
    • It arguably gets more cozy right on the day of Jesus' second coming, at least for the believers. Conveniently, the world's economic system crashes with the destruction of New Babylon on the same day that Jesus comes. Everyone on Carpathia's side, who isn't in Carpathia's Unity Army and isn't so determined to go forward with destroying the Christians and Jews in Petra and Jerusalem, is in a world-wide panic.
  • Crap Saccharine World: The viewpoint of Christ's Millennial Reign within the Other Light faction, given the 100 years of age limit imposed on unbelieving "naturals".
  • Crapsack World: Descends into this, but later gets turned around.
    • It degenerates back into this during the Millennial Kingdom with the rise of The Other Light.
  • Creator Provincialism: Plenty. If the authors describe anyone who isn't a PMD Christian, expect a Strawman, a Fox News Liberal, this, or a combination thereof.
  • Crisis of Faith: Irene Steele experiences this before switching to New Hope Baptist Church.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: When Jesus comes into the scene and slaughters Global Community troops en masse just by speaking the Word of God, it's a total Game Breaker. He's also unstoppable, as evidenced in the Dramatic Audio presentation of Glorious Appearing where the Antichrist armies launch rockets at Him with no success.
    • The Satan's army vs. God battle in Kingdom Come was over in an instant. All that preparation and the Other Light gets smoked into ashes in seconds!
  • Dan Browned: The authors go to great lengths to assert that these books are accurate predictions of things that will happen once the rapture hits according to a strict interpretation of The Bible. However, the books also demonstrate not just several Critical Research Failures in many areas, but also a lot of implausible reactions on the part of people in the setting that undermines the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. To quote The Slacktivist:

"Here's where a semi-competent hack like Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, would be preferable to wholly incompetent hacks like Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins."

    • It's worth noting the later books of the young adult series attempt to remedy some of the mistakes of the earlier adult books, but they can't fix all of them, as they are integral to the plot.
  • The Danza: Kirk Cameron playing Cameron "Buck" Williams.
  • Dawson Casting: In the first Left Behind film (which came out in 2000), Chelsea Noble was in her mid-thirties, playing 27-year-old Hattie Durham. Janaya Stephens was 27-years-old at the time, playing 20-year-old Chloe Steele. Gordon Currie was also in his mid-thirties at the time, playing 33-year-old Nicolae Carpathia. Played almost straight with Brad Johnson, who was 41-years-old playing 42-year-old Rayford Steele. Dead-on with Kirk Cameron, who was 30 at the time playing Buck Williams, also 30 years of age.
  • The Day of Reckoning: Final day of the Great Tribulation sees the destruction of the Unity Army, the deaths of Baal, Ashtaroth and Cankerworm, Carpathia and Fortunato's Angel-assisted swan dive into the Lake of Fire, and Satan chained up and tossed into the bottomless pit for 1,000 years.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Plenty to go around, especially from the protagonists. Ken Ritz and Mac McCullum top the list. Nicolae Carpathia (post-indwelling) can snark with the best of them.
  • Deal with the Devil: The signing of the treaty that allows the Global Community to have licensed use of Chaim Rosenzweig's synthetic fertilizer formula for seven years in exchange for peace among the nations for Israel in Tribulation Force is seen as the very thing that initiates the seven-year Tribulation period, which according to Eli and Moishe is the final "week" of Daniel's "70 weeks" prophecy.

Eli and Moishe: Thus begins the last terrible week of the Lord!

"Buck...had secretly studied the feasibility of producing an anti-Global Community Web site on the Internet."

  • Despair Event Horizon: From the Rapture to the fall of New Babylon, those who lost the will to live usually end up committing suicide.
  • Deus Ex Machina: Justified Trope -- after all, the whole series is basically about God causing stuff to happen.
  • Devil in Plain Sight: Literally.
  • The Devil Is a Loser: Carpathia pre-indwelling manages to be calm, collected, and careful in his quest to bring the world under Satan's palm. Post-indwelling, with Satan actually present, he rapidly spirals down into maniacal spite and general loopiness.
    • It's revealed in the prequel novels he wasn't really all THAT calm and collected, he just managed to appear that way because Lucifer, of all beings, counseled him to act this way, which just adds extra irony to post-indwelling Carpathia.
  • Did Not Do the Research: When Carpathia takes the title of "His Excellency", he is taken to task for usurping a religious title. Although some clergy, including Catholic bishops, do use this title, it is actually more of a secular title, used commonly by heads of state and government, some state governors, and ambassadors.
    • A minor character in the 1st book is a London police officer called "Captain Howard Sullivan." There is no rank called Captain in the UK police.
    • Honestly, 90% of every book including the Biblical discussions. There's a critical research failure nearly every few pages, from how feminists behave (the writers seem to think their primary objection is to cooking and cleaning the house and portray this as a silly, meaningless objection. Let that sink in awhile) to Buck's trip to his office (which apparently requires a zig-zagging train ride which crosses the Hudson River and takes three hours to pass through Manhattan).
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? - Happens in the sixth book when a believer tells the False Prophet off to his face, and he not long after lampshades this trope. It later turns in a delayed Do Not Taunt Cthulhu when the guy who did it and his wife are killed.
    • Since this means he gets to ride out the rest of the Tribulation in the comfort of heaven before coming back with Jesus anyway, this might qualify as a Thanatos Gambit.
  • Disc One Final Boss, although more of a fake Dragon in Peter Matthews vs. Leon Fortunato.
  • Disney Death: Honestly, who among the heroes will stay dead, given that Jesus will resurrect them? The Other Light can only assume that's what Satan is going to do if they succeed in defeating God and Jesus at the end of the Millennium.
    • Unfortunately averted with some minor nonbeliever characters who help the heroes in this story. They only get resurrected to face the final judgment.
  • Dirty Coward: Despite all of his showboating, Leon Fortunato shows his true colors when Jesus arrives on the scene. He tries to plead his case to Jesus. It does not work.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Russia attacked Israel because it was hogging the new agricultural super growth formula they'd developed, and they try to get it by launching a massive nuclear strike at Israel. Why not just have a spy steal it (which is what most nations do in Real Life when they want to take an innovation another side has developed.
  • Damsel in Distress: With as many times Hattie has been captured by the GC, she could give Princess Peach a run for her money.
  • Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Or rather, Do Not Piss Carpathia Off.
  • Doomed City: So long, New Babylon.
    • Also Doomed Hometown, as members of The Place flee Chicago before it gets nuked.
  • Double Standard: A combination of the author's strong support for 'Traditional gender roles' and Values Dissonance with a lot of people means you can expect quite a bit of this. But there are a few cases that are bad even by those standards. Buck and Bruce have several conversations about Hattie and Steve, both of whom work for the Antichrist. Hattie is declared not worth the risk of trying to save her from the Antichrist, since going was 'her choice' and she's possibly banging him already, the filthy slut! Steve is considered a trusted friend despite that he, unlike Hattie, admitted he knows his boss is involved in the murder of another journalist and went suspiciously silent when Buck mentioned his boss might have something to do with the Biblical end times.
  • The Dragon: Leon Fortunato
  • Driven to Suicide: From the Rapture to the end of the Tribulation...most of them were unbelievers or those who backed the Global Community, particularly more so when they've taken the Mark Of The Beast only to realize it's a point of no return.
    • Following the destruction of New Babylon, those who lost their fortunes commit suicide in droves.
    • Steve Plank's assistant commits suicide when Plank decides to become a martyr.
    • Jim Hickman's likely fate when he accidentally caused his co-worker Ramon Santiago to be killed by Nicolae by spilling the beans about what was overheard from Carpathia's offices.
  • Drunk with Power: Post-indwelling, Carpathia is one step away from being Murdock-level insane...until Lucifer, of all people, call him out on that during the battle of Armageddon.
  • Dying Like Animals: Pretty much everyone on the planet and they're quite a zoo.
    • Those killed in the destruction caused by the initial rapture would qualify as termites, wiped out before they even had a chance to know what was going on.
    • Most of the human race fall into bats, sheep, wasps, or lemmings, unaware of what's going on and either oblivious or brainwashed.
    • The Trib Force themselves would be lambs, depending on God to do the real work since You Can't Fight Fate.
    • And one of the later books involves a group of boars trying to assassinate the Antichrist, but Failure Is the Only Option.
  • Earth Is Young: The movie version of Left Behind uses plain simple Type A. The Bible is literal truth, nothing to argue about. Critical thinking doesn't exist in this setting, and it works both ways. Protagonists who spent their entire lives with a secular world-view doesn't seem to feel any need for any explanation of how young earth creationism can possibly be true. In return, the rapture actually happening doesn't seem to give anyone else the idea that evangelical Christianity might be true after all.
  • Earthquakes Cause Fissures: God and Jesus' natural disaster of choice. If you want to kill a ton of condemned and unbelievers en masse, or cause massive property damage, earthquakes are the way to go.
    • During the battle of Armageddon, one particular earthquake renders the entire Earth flat, while at the same time, causing the city of Jerusalem to rise 300 feet from the ground.
  • Earthshattering Kaboom: What takes place at the end of Kingdom Come when the old earth passes away.
  • Easily Forgiven: In Kingdom Come, Kenny's friends, family, and girlfriend, who know that he plans to secretly infiltrate The Other Light, believe, on specious evidence, including the word of a known traitor and liar, that he had really left the faith. They all turn against him. When the matter is resolved, everything immediately returns to status quo ante, complete with Kenny picking up where he left off with his girlfriend.
  • Easy Evangelism: Played straight with the Tribulation Force, but subverted with just about everyone else. Rayford's decidedly haughty attempt at evangelism to his copilot in book 2 is a prime example of the latter. One third of the population of the Earth disappears, specifically including all children without exception, and the possibility that divine intervention might have been involved is just completely out of the question.
  • Easy Logistics: A literary example. The Antichrist's plan involves forming a One World Government, redistributing governing districts from nation-states to several arbitrary regional divisions, mashing all global religions into One True Faith, turning all public and private media worldwide into a single Propaganda Machine, disarming the nations of the world by retiring ninety percent of their armed forces and the destruction of ninety percent of their equipment, turning the remaining ten percent over to the command of the new Global Community, relocating the United Nations from New York to a newly established and rapidly developed city in the Iraqi desert, and rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. This plan is begun, implemented, and accomplished in only a few years, administrated by only a few people, despite the mind-boggling complexity that such global re-organizing would involve.
    • This is a mistake the prequels and even the first movie tried to fix by implying the ability to pull this off was being prepared in case anyone ever got a chance to get the world to agree to it.
  • Egopolis: United Carpathian States and a minor example, Carpathia Standard Time.
    • Not to say that God and Jesus are not entirely guilty of this trope. Valley of Jehoshaphat, Ozase.
  • Elephant in the Living Room: The presence of God and Jesus Christ in the Millennial Kingdom for the Only Light believers, and pretty much for anyone born and/or raised in the Millennial Kingdom.
  • Elite Mooks: The Morale Monitors for the Global Community, The Only Light for The Other Light.
  • Embarrassing Middle Name: The Antichrist's full name is Nicolae Jetty Carpathia. Jetty. This might explain what drove him to evil. This was discussed in one of the prequels as referring to "jet black".
    • This is also an example of a Meaningful Name, as if you assign each letter a value according to the standard A=1, B=2 scale, they add up to 216, which is 6 cubed (6*6*6).
  • Endless Daytime: In the Millennial Kingdom in the book Kingdom Come, there's still a morning and an evening, but the only difference is that the evening sun is less brighter than the morning sun.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: Which the characters don't want to prevent, but pray will come soon, given the Crapsack World they're currently in.
  • Escort Mission: In Desecration, George Sebastian is assigned to Greece to get Georgiana Stavros and Marcel Papadopoulos out of there. The mission goes FUBAR when Georgiana turns out to be a GC decoy, who kills Marcel, Lukas Miklos, and Kronos, while capturing Sebastian.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: In the Dramatic Audio, we hear Pope Peter the Second get stabbed to death by the 10 subpotentates.
  • Eureka Moment: Played straight with both Rayford Steele and Buck Williams, who recognize the signs which leads to the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake...which leads into an Oh Crap moment.
    • Rayford gets a second one when he notices what he originally thought was a smudge on Mac's forehead is in fact an image of a three-dimensional cross - the Seal of God, which identifies one believer from another, despite the fact that one cannot see it on their own forehead.
    • At the end of Assassins, David Hassid has one when upon watching a surveillance video that Rayford was not the one who murdered Carpathia.
    • After Chloe gets captured in Armageddon, she reminds her father about the trip to Red Rocks in Colorado. Rayford is stumped, but it's Mac who realizes the hidden meaning behind Chloe's words. She is telling them that the San Diego safehouse is compromised and that the believers there should relocate to Petra.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Nicolae turns this trope on its head when he and Viv orchestrate the murder of Nicolae's mother...before he was ten.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Carpathia's relationship with Viv Ivins. She did basically raise him after he orchestrated his mother's death. But Viv did piss Carpathia off by sitting on his throne in Desecration. Fortunately, Carpathia let her slide on that offense.

Fortunato: (after Viv gets splattered by said hailstone) Excellency...I am so sorry.
Carpathia: Yes. Terrible loss.

  • Everything Is Online: The Tribulation Force always has at least one living Smart Guy who can erase any incriminating records, falsify any reports, and hack into anything digital, even security cameras in a condemned building halfway across the world.
  • Evil All Along: In-universe, nobody but those in the Tribulation Force and those who once have been in Nicolae Carpathia's close circle of associates really know just how evil Nicolae really is, and that he is working for his "father" Satan. Of course, after Nicolae is indwelt by Satan, the facade slowly cracks and everyone gets to see the true Nicolae underneath his original public persona.
  • Evil Empire: The Global Community. In the minds of the Other Light in Kingdom Come, Christ's Millennial Reign.
  • Evil Mentor: Of the spiritual variety. Carpathia, Fortunato and Viv Ivins share the same spiritual guide - Satan himself.
  • The Evils of Free Will: The assumption made of God by the Other Light faction in their If It's True manifesto by His not allowing "naturals" to live past 100 years of age as unbelievers.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Even the Global Community is not immune to rebellion among its own ranks, as Enigma Babylon leader Peter Mathews plots against Nicolae Carpathia and the United African States ends up attempting to secede from the one-world government. It all gets straightened out by the battle of Armageddon, and Carpathia's Unity Army still gets seriously owned by Jesus.
  • Exalted Torturer: Arguably God, given that he sets all events in motion, forges all destinies, and that even the things the ostensible villains do are ultimately his responsibility. After all is said and done, he tortures everyone who is not a specific denomination of Christian, regardless of those people's potential virtues, in a lake of fire for eternity. Not that God or Jesus Christ enjoy it, as Jesus sadly watches the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and all those who rejected Him throughout the ages go to their appointed doom.
    • Speaking of those "potential virtues", the Bible does say that there's a way that seems right to a man, but its end thereof is death.
    • To quote Jesus speaking to Asharoth, Baal, and Cankerworm from the Dramatic Audio:

"Like My Father, with whom I am One, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but justice must be served, and death is your sentence."

Buck: Can't uh...the wind...you think...(cue Eureka Moment) Oh, no! (drives off)

  • Faith Heel Turn: The mob of remnants who visited a GC-backed Miracle Worker outside the safety of Petra. Many end up taking the Mark of the Beast in order to save their own lives against an incoming swarm of poisonous vipers, but the false teacher kills them all anyway.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Attempts to assassinate the Antichrist in the book series result in this due to the Word of God stating that only Jesus Christ is able to defeat him.
  • Faking the Dead: In The Mark, Mac McCullum, David Hassid, Hannah Palemoon and Abdullah Smith pull this off by crashing a plane via remote control overloaded with guillotines and biochip injectors in order to avoid taking the mark of loyalty.
    • In The Mark, Hattie comes close to killing herself, but is rescued by Rayford and Albie. She ends up ultimately faking her death to escape the Global Community.
  • Family Business: Rayford's dad wants his son to follow in his footsteps. Rayford, however, has other plans.
  • Famous-Named Foreigner: Jenkins has said in his book, "Writing for the Soul", that one of his tried-and-true ways to create a foreign character's name is to take the given name of some historically important native and append the name of a notable geographical area as a family name. One little problem: Romania doesn't use family names terribly much. Instead, you usually see patronymics. Guess what "Carpathia" isn't?
  • Fantastic Racism: Mostly among the "naturals" against the "glorifieds" in the Millennial Kingdom, particularly among those who belong to the Other Light faction. Not that they can directly act upon those beliefs through violent means due to Unfortunate Implications. However, one of them did foolishly try to rape a female "glorified" and got killed by God in the attempt.
  • Fatal Family Photo: Subverted, as it is not a fatal photo. In Kingdom Come, Rayford requests a picture of the original Tribulation Force at an end-of-the-Millennium party. He is the only member out of the core group who is a natural, while Bruce, Cameron and Chloe are glorifieds. Even Rayford is as shocked as to how old he is.
  • Fidelity Test: Inverted with Rayford, as Irene does not test his faithfulness. He was more than willing to cheat on Hattie while away in London. God, however, decided to wreck those plans.
  • The Film of the Book: A mixed bag. While not exactly great cinema -- its reception was overwhelmingly negative, while the books were successful -- it deals with some of the novel's plot inconsistencies, as well as unrealistic character behavior. It also, out of the sheer fact of being a movie, avoids one of the pitfalls of the series' writing: the stupendous lack of descriptions anywhere.
  • Final Battle: The anti-climactic Satan's Other Light army versus God battle near the end of Kingdom Come. It only takes a few pages as God just smokes Satan's entire army into ashes in seconds. At least during the Battle of Armageddon in Glorious Appearing Jesus allowed His enemies to fire their guns uselessly at Him before He just killed them by speaking the Word of God.
  • Final Confession: After Jesus casts Satan out of Carpathia, the defeated Antichrist acknowledges that Jesus is indeed Lord.

Carpathia: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died for the sins of the world and rose again the third day as the Scriptures predicted...I confess that my life was a waste. Worthless. A mistake. I rebelled against the God of the universe, whom I now know loved me.

    • He still gets tossed into the Lake of Fire.
  • Final Guy: Rayford Steele survives the Tribulation by the skin of his teeth.
  • Final Solution: Nicolae Carpathia's reference to the battle of Armageddon in Armageddon being one for dealing with the Jews in Israel.
    • Arguably, fitting in with what The Bible teaches, this could also apply to God's judgments and the Final Battle.
  • Fire From Above: Aside from earthquakes, Jesus also can use fire to decimate and destroy. It is also how New Babylon met its fate.
  • Five-Bad Band:
    • The Big Bad: Nicolae Carpathia (pre and post-indwelling)
    • The Dragon: Leonardo Fortunato
    • Evil Genius / The Rival Pontifex Maximus Matthews
    • The Brute: Varies, since whoever is in this post ends up pissing Carpathia off ends up dead by his hand. Suhail Akbar is the longest-serving brute under Carpathia's command.
    • The Dark Chick: Viv Ivins
  • Fix Fic: Right Behind has a whole community of them.
  • Flat Earth Atheist: This affects almost everyone on the planet and it isn't at all Played for Laughs. The authors seriously suggest that the majority of the world's population won't really care about all the explicit miracles.
    • It helps to consider that in fundamentalism, the usual conceit is that knowledge that God (a) exists, (b) is all-powerful, and (c) deserves infinite glory and fealty, is hardwired into every human being. Only Nay Theist-level spitefulness can account for such heavy unwillingness to follow him, even after apprisal of the threat of perdition. (Whether dystheism can be animated by anything besides spite doesn't seem to enter the picture.)
    • It's also worth noting that Jesus warned that, "If they would not listen to Moses and the prophets, they would not listen even to a man come back from the dead." Thus, to those in hardened moral rebellion, no sign will convince them, because they don't want to believe.
    • By the time of the Millennial Reign, nobody has any excuse for not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And those that choose not to believe in Him won't live past 100!
  • Four-Man Band: The core group of the Tribulation Force
  • Foregone Conclusion: It can be a bit tough to care particularly about the deaths of the protagonists when it's made explicitly clear from the start that at the end of the tribulation, the Antichrist will lose and they'll all come back to Earth anyway. Also in Kingdom Come, the Other Light attempts to build a resistance force in order to overthrow Christ at the end of the Millennium when Satan is loosed from imprisonment, despite that Scripture says it will end in failure...as it eventually does by the end of the book.
    • And a bit of Fridge Logic occurs when the characters who earnestly believe this, and see the evidence before their eyes, are still so worried about dying. Like Buck, who worries so much that Nicolae might kill him if he speaks against or associates with him, even after his conversion. Given that he also knows that there's seven years of plagues and disasters coming up if he isn't killed, he'd be better off taunting the Anti-Christ.
      • Well, here's a way to look at it: you can survive all the way as a believer through the Tribulation and enter into the Millennium as a "natural" who ages slowly and is still able to have children up until the Millennium ends, where as a believer you will have your glorified body and enter the "new heavens and new earth"...or you can be a martyr and be resurrected in a body that remains in a constant adult state that never ages, with the tradeoff that you'll never be able to fall in love with anyone else, get or stay married, or even have children. It's a tough choice to make, and sometimes God may end up deciding your fate.
  • Foreshadowing: Book two opens by telling us "The odds are, only one of the four members of the Tribulation Force will survive the next seven years." Guess what happens. Go on, guess.
    • One character, Verna Zee, is depicted in her initial appearance (in Book 1) as wearing "sensible shoes", which is UK slang for being a lesbian. She is later described off-hand (in Book 2) as militant. Guess which character comes out as a lesbian in Book 3?
    • Moishe tells Carpathia that "a sword shall pierce your head, and you shall surely die." Guess how the world leader gets whacked?
    • At the end of Kingdom Come, Chaim tells Rayford that when the time comes for the Final Battle to take place between God and The Other Light, that God will not need an army to fight. Take a wild guess as to how Lucifer and The Other Light made out.
  • Forgot I Could Change the Rules: Nicolae Carpathia is an expert in this trope. Case in point; in Descecration after negotiating with Micah (Chaim Rosenzweig) in lifting Bowl Judgement No.1 (the plague of sores on those who took the mark), he sends the GC after the Jewish Remnant.
  • For Your Own Good: Mr. Wong is so determined for Chang to 'make proud,' that he even goes as far as to conspire with Walter Moon to have his son drugged and taken to the mark application site where Chang is given the Mark of the Beast. Fortunately for Chang, he was a believer and still had the Mark of God on his head.
  • Fox News Liberal: We get the occasional sympathetically intended character who aren't WASPs steeped in the PMD culture. But in case of conflict between their own supposed culture and belief systems and the believes of PMD Christians, they always agree with the PMD's. Tsion Ben-Judah, the PMD-Jew, is probably the worst offender.
  • From a Certain Point of View: In Desceration, Nicolae undergoes a polygraph test, with Suhail Akbar overseeing the questioning. When it is obvious that Carpathia had blatantly lied throughout the test, he tells Suhail that "the truth is what I say it is...I am the father of truth."
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Nicolae Jetty Carpathia, natch. He started out as a businessman running his own import-export business. Then he gets into politics, serving in the Lower House of Parliament, and ascends to President of Romania (thanks to Leon Fortunato, who had blackmailed Carpathia's predecessor to step down). After the Rapture, he is tapped to become the Secretary General of the United Nations, which he will change into the Global Community, with himself as the Supreme Potentate and ultimately, The Beast.
    • Leonardo Fortunato also fits this trope. Former businessman/kingmaker to Nicolae Carpathia, later the Supreme Commander of the Global Community. After Carpathia's resurrection, he is made the Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism, ultimately becoming the False Prophet that The Bible has foretold.
  • The Fundamentalist: The protagonists, played totally straight.
  • Genre Savvy: To be fair, there are some nice traces of this occasionally.
  • Give Me a Sign:
    • The Seal of God, which identifies the believers from one another. Once you become a believer, you are pretty much safe for eternity.
    • The Sign of The Son of Man, which is a cross made out of lightning, and has the ability to heal the sick and injured.
  • Global Currency: The Nick is introduced as the standard global currency during the Tribulation until it gets replaced by the cashless "mark of loyalty" system, which is the Mark of the Beast. Nothing is mentioned in Kingdom Come about what the Millennial Reign residents use for currency.
  • God in Human Form: Jesus, only here He returns in his true form. Nicolae Carpathia only claims to be this in the second half of the Tribulation, but is really indwelt by Satan.
  • God Is Evil: Pretty much the view of the Other Light faction in regards to His 100 years of age limit for unbelievers, which is why they're working hard to win converts with each generation of unbelievers that passes away at 100 so they could potentially overthrow Him at the end of the Millennium when Satan is released. Guess how that turned out!
  • Good Guns, Bad Guns: the game Eternal Forces depict the Tribulation Forces being armed with M16/M4s, while the GC peacekeepers are armed with AKs.
  • Gorn: Several deaths have a hefty amount of detail, and this goes into Up to Eleven territory when Jesus shows up and his very words cause entire armies to explode in rivers of gore.
  • Government Conspiracy
  • Gratuitous Hebrew: What everyone is speaking in Kingdom Come.
  • Happily Ever After: How the series ends for the believers. Everyone else goes to Hell.
  • Happily Married: Buck and Chloe Williams may have their disagreements, but they are very happy together.
    • The marriage is now platonic as both Buck and Chloe are glorifieds in Kingdom Come.
      • This goes along with what Jesus said in Scripture that those who are worthy of the resurrection "will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven".
    • For the short time they were married, Rayford and Amanda were very happy.
    • Subverted big time with Sorin and Marilena Carpathia, as their marriage was one of convenience. Marilena wanted kids. Sorin didn't, which made her easy pickings for Viviana Ivansova - the future Viv Ivins.
  • Has Two Daddies / Has Two Mommies: Nicolae Carpathia had two biological fathers who were both gay, and was raised mostly by his mother and Viv Ivins until Nicolae and Viv had the mother disposed of. Later on in his life, Nicolae had his two fathers disposed of as well. And in the Dramatic Audio presentation of Glorious Appearing, Viv Ivins gets killed by a giant hailstone.
  • Deadly Change-of-Heart: Once you've accepted the Mark of the Beast, you're doomed no matter what.
    • Averted in one instance where a believer had the mark forced upon him while he was drugged, but still had the seal of God.
    • Possibly played straight with Nicolae's mother Marilena in The Rising, as she dies of poisoning and asks God to forgive her of what she's done.
  • Heel Face Revolving Door: Chaim Rozensweig is torn between his friendship with Tsion Ben-Judah and his loyalties to Nicolae Carpathia. It is only after assassinating Carpathia and fleeing Israel that Chaim puts his faith in God.
  • Heel Face Turn: Aplenty.
    • But see above.
  • Heel Faith Turn: Leon Fortunato attempts this to Jesus after both he and Carpathia are captured in an act of self-preservation. Unfortunately for the False Prophet, Jesus considers him long since sold out to Satan and Fortunato is "sentenced to eternity in the lake of fire."
  • He Knows Too Much: At the climax of the first book, Nicolae executes his two co-conspirators right in front of a UN meeting, with Buck present. He then brainwashes everyone to imagine that it was a murder-suicide by one of them, and that Buck was never there. This should send up alarms in the heads of normal men, as the last reporter to cross Nicolae only took the ferry halfway to Staten Island. But when Buck is called before Nicolae to explain himself, he acts like a petulant child (and gets away with it).
  • Hell: Where the undecided and the condemned (i.e., those who decided to follow Satan and the Antichrist) end up.
  • Hell Seeker: Hattie Durham is one briefly, after deciding that she does believe in God and the Bible, but doesn't believe she deserves to go to Heaven. She comes around eventually.
  • Heroic BSOD: Tsion Ben-Judah, Chaim Rosenzweig, Buck Williams and Rayford Steele each experience this during the Tribulation. Subverted with Bo Hansen, as his case was lethal.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Aplenty, but it's somewhat negated when the victims know they won't be gone for long. The most admirable characters are those willing to hold out during prolonged suffering.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: In the movies, Dominic O'Malley, his daughter Sophie Lane, Mike Seaver and Kate MacDonald, and Jimmy Trivette / Paul Greebie find themselves left behind. Rick Meyers is the Antichrist seeking to conquer the world and Gunny Sergeant Foley is an unwitting pawn in his scheme. Fritz Brenner designed the Eden Formula and Dr. Gavril proclaimed that Jesus, not Carpathia was the Messiah.
  • Hide Your Children: Every child under 12 or so vanishes in The Rapture. In a better-written book, even if nothing else happened, the trauma from this alone would probably cause the collapse of every government on Earth.
    • This also extends to children in the womb. The description of a mother's stomach suddenly flattening is quite creepy.
  • High Priest: Enigma Babylon Pontifex Maximus Peter the Second was the first. He was then replaced by Leon Fortunato, who became the Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism.
  • Hollywood Atheist
  • Humiliation Conga: Mostly within Glorious Appearing, where Carpathia finds himself unable to prevail against Jesus Christ in the battle of Armageddon, and is only further humiliated when he is forced to kneel before the Lord before he gets sent to the Lake of Fire. Of course, the believers are basically surprised that Jesus is more sad than dancing with unbridled glee at having the Antichrist at His mercy.
  • I Call It Vera: The Saber Handgun Rayford acquires from Albie. Carpathia later uses a Saber to gun down the Two Witnesses.
    • In the Left Behind movie, Chaim Rosenzweig's super fertilizer is known as The Eden project.
  • I Choose to Stay: Ming Toy undergoes a dangerous mission to rescue her and Chang's parents in her native China. She finds her mother, but sadly Mr. Wong died as a martyr. Mrs. Wong decides to remain behind while in China. She does get some reassurance from an angel, saying that her mother will survive the Tribulation.
  • If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: In Apollyon, Bo Hansen and Ernie attempt to steal Ken Ritz's wealth he had stashed at Palwaukee Airport following Ritz's death. Their attempt at robbery was thwarted by the arrival of the horde of demonic locusts. Only Rayford and T.M. Delanty were spared because they were believers.
    • After executing both Todd-Cothran and Stonagal, Nicolae is the sole inheritor of both their estates. When the children of both men dispute the claim, Nicolae simply pays them off under the condition that they do not contest the will.
  • I Have Many Names: Both Jesus and Satan have plenty of those.
  • I'll Take That as a Compliment: The following exchange between Rayford and Ken in the Dramatic Audio of Apollyon after refusing to take Hattie with them:

Ken: Little spitfire hung up on me. Gotta like her spunk, though. She is a gorgeous thing, ain't she?
Rayford: (chuckles) Ritz, you've got to be on the feminists' Top 10 Most Wanted List.
Ken: Really? Hey, save me a copy when that comes out. I want to send that to Mom.

  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Subverted slightly with Chaim Rosenzweig's driver, Jacov. In Apollyon, Jacov is known to fall off the wagon. Chaim even fired him at one point, but rehired him out of pity. He becomes a believer at the meeting at the 144,000 Jews, and is later found inside a bar. Instead of getting drunk, he is instead preaching to the patrons inside when Chaim and Buck find him afterward. After Jacov proved to his boss that he wasn't getting drunk, Chaim's response is very deadpan, but hilarious.

Chaim: Oy. I wish you were drunk.

  • I Warned You: Rayford can't say that Irene didn't warn him about the Rapture. However, after surviving the Tribulation and reuniting with his wife, Rayford tells her (and Raymie in the Dramatic Audio) that she is permitted "one cosmic-I-told-you-so."
  • Immortal Procreation Clause: Goes beyond this with the "glorifieds" in Kingdom Come, since they won't even have the desire for sexual intercourse.
  • Immune to Bullets: Petra and its inhabitants are supernaturally protected from the GC. Rockets and missiles fired by the GC literally go through the believers' choppers and other aircraft to the point that it's routine for the believers.
  • Incessant Music Madness: "Hail Carpathia" becomes musical torture for Chloe Williams when she is held in custody by the Global Community in the book Armageddon. She counters this somewhat by singing "Fail Carpathia".
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Jesus Christ, the angels, those with glorified bodies.
  • Informed Ability: All of Buck's characteristics. He is billed as an amazing reporter but all of the examples of his writing are clumsy analogies. He is (we're told) an investigative reporter, who neither investigates nor reports anything; he's supposed to be worldly wise (before his conversion), but he's a 30-year-old virgin; he's your actual globetrotting journalist, "among the top 3% of air travelers in the world", but washes his underwear in the sink because he doesn't realize hotels provide laundry service; he's a sophisticated world traveler -- who happens to be headquartered in New York, the international-cuisine capital of the planet -- but can't order in a restaurant in Tel Aviv because he cannot begin to imagine what an Israeli restaurant might have available.
    • Now, on the subject of Carpathia, we're told he's a great speaker, but though his speech at the U.N. does get a lot of applause it is clear to the reader that his speech, which consists of reciting a lot of uninteresting trivia about the U.N. and also reciting a list of every member nation, has nothing to gain people's enthusiasm since it doesn't contain any actual opinion that people might agree with, apart from a general "Peace is good, mkay?"
  • Informed Flaw: TV or narrations keep telling us that after all the good Christians have been raptured, crime has risen spectacularly among the remaining godless hordes. Yet we never really see any of that (Rayford and Chloe's house is burgled once, but that's about it), the characters never act like they don't feel safe, and the entirety of humanity is unbelievably enthusiastic and accepting of Nicolae's message of peace, unity and brotherhood.
  • Instant Cultured/Instant Expert: Once the protagonists, and for that matter the horde of unnamed new worshipers at their church, convert they seem to become instantly knowledgeable about the authors' beliefs regarding the Bible and how Christians should act. While this is justified in the case of Rev. Bruce and perhaps Rayford (who both have at least tangental prior exposure to such religious communities,) it's rather odd to see Buck out-debating a bishop using Bible-quotes, not to mention him and Chloe 'dating'. These two people were supposed to be a globe-trotting jetset reporter and a secular Stanford student a week ago, yet they treat handholding as a deeply intimate act that should not be rushed.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Subverted, but only by accident (see Informed Ability).
  • Istanbul (Not Constantinople): In Glorious Appearing, the Valley of Jehoshaphat (also called the Valley Where Jehovah Judges), formerly known as the Mount of Olives.
    • Also in Kingdom Come, the country of Osaze (meaning 'Loved by God') is the new name for Egypt.
      • The reformed world under the Global Comunity (formerly known as the United Nations):
    • United North American States (North and Central America, Greenland and the Carribbean)
    • United South American States (South America)
    • United Great Britan States (Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
    • United Eutopean States: (Most of the countries in Europe, save for Britain)
    • United African States (Africa)
    • United Carpathian States (formerly United Holy Land States, consisting of the Middle East)
    • United Indian States (The Indian Subcontinent, half of Southeast Asia)
    • United Asian States (China, the Koreas, Japan and Mongolia)
    • United Russian States (Russia)
    • United Pacific States (Austrailia, Oceania and Hawaii)
  • Ivy League for Everyone
    • Also Rayford's behavior towards Bo in Assassins. Thankfully T calls him out.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Elena and her GC buddies pull this several times on George Sebastian. But George is ex-military and is capable of taking the pain.
  • Jerkass: Buck Williams and Rayford Steele, again due to Values Dissonance.
    • Rayford is actually supposed to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but his treatment of Hattie Durham is quite jarring. Seriously, he's committing emotional abuse, not to mention ruthless evangelism.
    • Don't forget Buck having sport at the expense of Verna Zee. A mere two weeks after global disaster! And unlike Rayford, he never tries to warn anybody of the Apocalypse.
  • Jerusalem: One of the major locations in the series. It also serves as the world capital in Kingdom Come.
  • Jesus Saves: The rest of the world takes material universe obliterating damage.
  • Karmic Death: Loren Hut, the leader of the Morale Monitors. After failing to kill Chaim Rosenzweig (who was going by the name Micah), simply because Chaim was protected by God, Carpathia guns Hut down, but not before Hut tells Carpathia off.
  • Kill'Em All: The character turnover rate is so high that, by them end, only two of the original characters are still alive. One fun thing to do is comparing the Dramatis Personae in front of each book and seeing how many people died in the past volume.
  • Kill the God: Pretty much the aim and goal of both the battle of Armageddon and the Final Battle with Satan and the Other Light army in the book series. Neither of them turned out as the ones with those goals had hoped.
  • Kill It with Fire: Try to harm the Two Witnesses of the Most High, this is the end result.
    • The Other Light army at the end of the Millennium in Kingdom Come get instantly smoked by God pouring down fire from the heavens.
  • Kneel Before God: Nicolae Carpathia's humiliated bow before Jesus Christ in Glorious Appearing. Of course, Nicolae is left powerless to resist after Lucifer is cast out of him. Lucifer, on the other hand...
  • Kneel Before Satan: In the prequel novels, Satan takes Nicolae to the desert, where he remains for 40 days and 40 nights without food and water. Unlike Jesus, who resisted the temptations (i.e., turning stones into bread, throwing himself from the highest building and bowing down to Lucifer), Carpathia falls to all three temptations.
  • La Résistance: First the Tribulation Force, then the Other Light in the last book. The Other Light rebels against God because they see Him as evil for not letting "naturals" to live past 100 years of age as unbelievers.
  • Large Ham: Everyone has their moments in the Dramatic Audio, but Nicolae Carpathia (post-indwelling) takes the cake when he executes Walter Moon for failing to get Tsion Ben-Judah off the air in Desecration.

Carpathia: (BLAM) Hold out your other hand, Walter. (BLAM) Ah, the foot. (BLAM) The other foot. (BLAM) The knee. (BLAM) Is Ben-Judah still on the screen? Oh, why, yes he is. (BLAM) Still there! (BLAM) Oh look Walter, he's still there! (BLAM) Walter...you have many times stated your devotion to me. I can only assume that the appearance of Ben-Judah on our network must certainly be causing you as much discomfort as it is to me. Therefore, I want to do you a favor. (BLAM)

    • Honorable mention goes to once again, Carpathia (pre-indwelling) as he resurrects Leon Fortunato following the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake in reference to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

Carpathia: Leonardo Fortunato...you have served me well. And you will continue to serve and give testimony to the power of Nicolae Carpathia. Leonardo Fortunato, you have served me well, and you will continue to serve me. Leonardo Fortunato, you will sleep NO LONGER! You will...arise! LEONARDO...LEONARDO, COME FORTH! LEONARDO...COME FORTH! LEONARDO...I COMMAND YOU...COME FORTH!

  • Large Ham Title: His Excellency, Global Community Supreme Potentate Nicolae Carpathia. What a mouthful.
    • Supreme Commander, and later, Most High Reverend of Carpathianism, Leonardo Fortunato
    • Pontifex Maximus Peter Matthews, aka Peter the Second. Counts as a Meaningful Name, as no Catholic Pope has not taken the name Peter, as according to Catholic belief that Peter was the first pope of the church.
    • Both Jesus and Satan have some pretty interesting titles.
      • Jesus: Some of which include Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Root of David, Faithful and True, I AM, Wonderful, Counselor, Bright Morning Star
      • Satan: He has less titles than Jesus. His titles are Lucifer, The Devil, God Of This World/Age, Prince Of The Power Of The Air, The Serpent Of Old, The Dragon.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • An early example occurs in the first book, when Rayford refuses to ride on a bus the airline sent to pick up the pilots from the plane to the terminal, because he couldn't accept such a favor while his passengers have to walk maybe a mile at most. Rayford's co-pilot does accept and very slightly mocks Rayford for refusing. He dies so soon afterwards, Rayford has barely had the time to accept, without question or hesitation, two other privileges the airline gives to pilots: Avoiding the line for the pay-phones, when everyone wants to call their families to see if they didn't vanish, and a helicopter ride home to avoid the total gridlock on the roads that the book describes to such detail.
  • Last Villain Stand: Carpathia, Fortunato, and The Unity Army does this in Jerusalem...until Michael catches up to them. Cue Oh Crap from the two bad guys.
  • Late to the Party: More like Carpathia, Fortunato and Matthews crashing the meeting of the 144,000 Jewish converts at Teddy Kolleck Stadium.
  • Left Hanging: The fates of a dozen or so minor characters from the beginning of the book onward, though considering where those characters were, they could be summarized by the major events that took place. The destruction of New York City, for example, took care of the fates of those who have worked for Global Weekly. The fate of Viv Ivins, a major supporting character in the later books, is not mentioned, though given what happens in Glorious Appearing, she obviously doesn't live to enter into the Millennium.
  • Light Is Not Good: Lucifer, when he takes on his pure form after departing from Nicolae Carpathia. The Other Light faction also see God in the same...uh, light as the Christians see Lucifer, hence the name of their group.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis
  • Living Statue: Carpathia's massive image, which is heated by onionskin paper.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Arguably the second reason, besides the Flat Earth Atheist infestation, why Easy Evangelism is averted. The main protagonists have a detailed step-by-step prophecy of what will happen in the next seven years, but whenever they can be bothered to try to convert someone, they tend to use the same speeches as evangelists do now. They don't say the next 4 things their divine prophecy predicts, and then come back after those things have happened.
    • And then there is Hattie. Buck wanted to impress her, so he offered to introduce her to Nicolae. When she actually seems more impressed by Nicolae, Buck explicitly loses interest in her. After learning Nicolae is the Anti Christ, Buck tries to persuade Hattie not to go on a date with him... by telling her he thinks she's "not that kind of girl". You'd think that telling her Nicolae is the devil (or at least into murder and corruption) might be more persuasive.
  • Loophole Abuse: Taking the Mark of the Beast is supposed to be a free will decision, meaning you take it and knowingly forfeit the right to change your mind later. One believer gets doped up and forced to take it against his will, allowing him to serve as a mole for the good guys later while bearing both the Seal of God and the Beast's Mark, since despite being catatonic, God made it to where his body was still doing things like making the sign of the cross to show he was a believer, which the villains wrote off as delirious hand gestures from a guy strung out on sedatives.
  • Lucifer Is Good: The viewpoint of the Other Light faction in Kingdom Come, claiming in their manifesto that God unfairly treated one of His angels and befouled his name and reputation by casting him out of His presence.
  • Madonna-Whore Complex: The view of females in the series.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Satan
  • Manly Tears: Rayford literally breaks down in tears in front of Jesus as He tells Rayford all about his faults and triumphs.
  • Mark of the Beast: Featuring a variant in which the numbers of each region of the Global Community are based on a mathematical equation involving three sixes.
  • Mass "Oh Crap": During the 'sheep and goats' judgement, the reactions of the unsaved and those who had taken the Mark of the Beast when Jesus condemns them to the Lake of Fire for not caring for "the least of My brethren", referring to Israel. Basically saying that if you're not a friend to Israel and the Jews during the Tribulation, you're going to Hell.

Jesus Christ: Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and you did not take Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit Me. Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. You will go away into everlasting punishment.

  • Meaningful Name: Jenkins has a thing for them. The heroes have super-manly names like Buck Williams and Rayford Steele. How good he is at this lies with the reader...
    • Verna Zee, Buck's theoretically-snippy boss, can be shortened to Ms. Zee -- "Missy".
    • Jonathan Stonagal's name ("Stone-a-gal") is a play on Rockefeller.
    • Carpathia's other Dragon aside from Leon Fortunato, Viv Ivins. Remove the "n-s" and you have Viv Ivi, or VI VI VI, the roman numerals for 666. This one being notable in that VI VI VI isn't the Roman-numeralish for 666, it's the Roman-numeralish for "six six six". The Number of the Beast isn't "six six six", it's (per Revelation 13:18) "six hundred sixty six" -- which in Roman numerals would be DCLXVI. Thus, a more fitting name might be Declan Xavier.
    • More of a Meaningful Number, but Carpathia's obsession with the number 216 comes from 6 x 6 x 6 = 216. Also in a later book, each of the Ten Kingdoms is assigned a number and while the numbering system is never explained, each number can come from some mathematical combination of three sixes.
  • The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Buck and Rayford get into danger, but they don't affect the actual events or main plot much at all, given that they've been prophesied to happen in one specific way.
  • Millennium Bug: Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins expected the Y2K bug to trigger global economic chaos, which the Antichrist would use to rise to power. As the big day approached, they, like other doomsayers, backpedaled. It's a good thing, since they released a spate of books from 2000 till present.
  • Million Mook March: Jesus' army of saints, surprisingly.
  • The Mole: Carpathia had conducted a smear campaign against Amanda White-Steele, showing her that she was in fact on the GC's payroll. Hattie, however, tells Rayford that his late wife was not a mole and that she truly loved him.
  • The Moral Substitute: To other Airport Fantasy books.
  • Motive Rant: Carpathia confesses to Leon and the 10 subpotentates that he is the Antichrist in Armageddon.

Carpathia: Am I Antichrist? Well, if he is Christ, then yes! Yes! I am against the Christ who was falsely crowned by the pretend creator. I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will ascend above the heights of the clouds! I will be like the Most High! (...for I AM THE MOST HIGH!)

  • Murder by Cremation: Suhail Akbar sends the two pilots who bombed Petra (which had failed due to God protecting the city and the people) to be incinerated alive. He does sedate them before barbecuing both men.
    • Subverted by Carpathia's attempt to barbecue the Jewish Remnant in Petra, as they were protected by God.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Tsion Ben-Judah's reaction in Desecration when he realizes he has given away the location of where the Israeli Jews would flee to according to what the book of Revelation says about the matter (the deserted city of Petra), fearing that he has messed up God's plan. He gets some reassurance from one of the Tribulation Force members that God may have intended for Tsion to let slip the location of where the Jews would flee to in order to lure Nicolae Carpathia's forces into a trap God has set up for them, which is all according to the Word of God.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast/Unfortunate Names: Nicolae is the first name of a Romanian dictator, and Dracula being associated with the Carpathian Mountains.
    • Not to mention that "Old Nick" is one of Satan's nicknames.
    • If you're part of the Global Community, Jesus Christ certainly qualifies...although it won't do you any good.
  • Never Got to Say Goodbye: How Rayford feels about Irene after the Rapture.
    • Also counts with Hannah Palemoon and David Hassid.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Every time the heroes' backs are against the wall with no way out, all that needs to happen is for them to pray and God will grant them whatever ability is needed to extract them from their predicament.
    • In the first book, Buck manages to escape Carpathia's hypnosis at the UN by praying to God, who also conveniently rewrites Carpathia's memory to erase any instance of Buck not behaving exactly as intended.
    • In a particularly blatant (albeit funny) example, Rayford is granted temporary immunity from physical harm. While in Carpathia's Elaborate Underground Base. While mocking Carpathia, Leon Fortunato, and a squad of crack Global Community soldiers to their faces. They are forced to more or less go about their business trying to ignore him because not only can he not be harmed, but he can't be touched.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job getting the Greek Co-Op wiped out, George!
  • Nightmare Face: Steve Plank, post-Wrath of the Lamb. Yeesh.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Averted, painfully.
  • No One Could Survive That:
  • Not So Different: Detractors of the series claim that the books' Jesus comes off as the true Antichrist.
    • Hardly surprising, considering the world just switches one God-Emperor for another.
      • Although to God's credit, He does allow the Other Light to have their own religion, despite the fact that it's totally in error and that the 100-year age limit for unbelievers is in place.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Chloe goes over to Buck's apartment and sees his Global Weekly office co-worker Alice outside it talking on the phone to her fiancee while delivering stuff to Buck's apartment. Chloe assumes from that that Buck is Alice's fiancee and was playing her for her affections all along. It takes a private talk between Buck and Chloe to straighten the whole matter out.
    • This also gets carried over into the bouquet of flowers that Chloe assumed Buck had sent her, which she then threw into the trash after witnessing the previously-mentioned assumption. It turns out that the flowers were sent to Chloe by Hattie Durham as a joke.
    • Kenny Bruce Williams goes through this in Kingdom Come when he was secretly infiltrating the Other Light faction to see what they were planning to do, with an Other Light plant working at the Children of the Tribulation daycare center planting false evidence about Kenny to frame him as a traitor.
  • The Nudifier: Hinted at in the first book when people are removed from their clothes during the Rapture.
  • Nuke'Em: So long, London and D.C. Bye-bye, Chicago.
  • Obi-Wan Moment: Any believer who decides to become a martyr. Overlaps with Face Death with Dignity.
  • Oddly Small Organization: The Tribulation Force itself, and also the "Gang of Four" conspiring to set up the One-World Government.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Steele's first landing at O'Hare during the Rapture is built up immensely, but actually occurs between chapters.
  • Off with His Head: Done through guillotines (referred to as "loyalty enforcement facilitators") on the general populace to enforce the law of taking the "mark of loyalty" during the Tribulation.
  • Oh Crap: Plenty from both sides. The Eureka Moment regarding Buck and Rayford in regards to the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake is one major example.
    • Rayford's reaction in which The Rapture hits, and the realization that Irene was right.
    • Leah Rose's reaction in regards to the 200 million demonic horsemen which slays the unbelievers.
    • Buck's reaction when he sees Hattie confront both Carpathia and Fortunato in Desecration.
    • In the Dramatic Audio of Glorious Appearing, the reactions of Fortunato and Carpathia when the Archangel Michael corners them.
    • In the first Left Behind movie, the look on Buck and Chaim's faces when Russia sneak attacks Israel.
    • In the third Left Behind film, the look on Carpathia's face when he sees an incoming missile heading for his tower. Fitzhugh dies, but Carpathia survives.
    • Assassins has Leon Fortunato recognizing that he was set up by Sub-Potentate Rehoboth.
    • The mother of all Oh Craps comes from Lucifer himself in Kingdom Come. After Jesus decimates The Other Light on the final day of the Millennial Kingdom, Lucifer "looked about him and slowly lowered his sword. He appeared to had something to say and even drew breath to say it, but fell silent." Even he knows that he is oh so very screwed.
  • Older Than They Look: Once the Millennium starts in Kingdom Come, all the naturals who enter this time period (either believers or children of believers) experience decreased aging similar to the first several generations of mankind in the book of Genesis, with the children becoming young adults by the time they reach 100. However, naturals who remain unbelievers by the time they reach 100 will instantly die and go to Hell. It's not explained how those who were already adults, including those who were already at advanced age, experience this decreased aging at the same rate as the children who enter the Millennium. By the end of the Millennium, however, the longest-living naturals (who at that point are all believers) end up really showing their age.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig. Specifically in the movie where he helps strategize against the oncoming Russians. He's a botanist for crying out loud!
  • Omniglot: Carpathia.
  • Omniscient Morality License: God, of course.
  • Ominous Hebrew Chanting: The demonic locusts chanting "Abaddon." Very creepy in the Dramatic Audio.
  • One-Hour Work Week: Buck spends zero time actually doing his job.
  • One World Order
  • One-Hit Polykill: Carpathia kills Stonagal and Todd-Cothran with one bullet.
    • This despite the fact that the bullet in question is described several times as a hollow point, which explodes on impact and could not travel through one skull to another, even if it weren't just .38 ammo. .38's aren't that big and do not have that much firing power, a far cry from the hand cannon described in the book. That... and there is literally no way a hollow point bullet could kill two people.
    • Doesn't happen in the movie. Carpathia shoots twice, with the idea being that it was a murder-suicide.
      • Jesus using the Word of God to slay the Global Community army en masse certainly qualifies as this.
  • One True Faith: There's the pantheistic mishmash of all world religions called Enigma Babylon One World Faith as the official one-world religion, but there's also Christianity (as defined by the books' authors and the Tribulation Force characters), Judaism, and Islam (which in the book series ends up being a minority religion), which all become illegal to practice even when Enigma Babylon is replaced by the Luciferian-type state religion of Carpathianism around the midway point of the Tribulation. In the Millennial Kingdom, Christianity becomes the official one-world religion, though dissidents are permitted to practice the beliefs of the Other Light despite the fact that (1) it's totally in error when it comes to believing Satan is going to defeat God and Jesus by the end of the Millennium and (2) those who remain unbelievers in God and Jesus Christ by the time they reach 100 will instantly die and go to Hell.
  • Only a Flesh Wound: Tsion, Buck and Rayford are grievously injured in the Battle of Armageddon. Rayford survives. Tsion and Buck are not as lucky.
  • Only I Can Kill Him: More like Only I Am Can Kill Him, as nobody can defeat Satan and the Antichrist except for Jesus Christ, as The Word of God dictates.
    • Both Rayford and Hattie obsess over killing Carpathia for reasons of their own. Chaim succeeds in doing the deed, but Satan has other plans.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Albie, the black arms dealer who later becomes a believer.
  • The Other Darrin: In the first two movies, Bruce Barnes was played by Clarence Gilyard, Jr., before being replaced by Arnold Pinnock.
    • Due to scheduling conflicts, Gilyard was unable to reprise his role as Bruce in the third movie. That and since Gilyard is a Roman Catholic, his priest was slightly peeved about him taking the role, given the series' stance on premillennial rapturist theology, and was very happy when Gilyard did not reprise the role.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Carpathia's indwelling by Lucifer brought him back as a form of this. In the last book, it's revealed without Lucifer keeping his body alive, it would otherwise be as decrepit as if Nicolae had been dead for as long as Lucifer was making use of it.
  • Overprotective Dad: Subverted. Rayford sides with Buck when his daughter is in tears because it looked like Buck was two-timing. Rayford's silent cheering when Buck raises his voice against Chloe, who's practically in tears, helps you realize there are worse things than a straight Overprotective Dad.
  • Padding: Bear in mind the entire second book can be summed up as "nothing is happening because The Bible says there's a year of nothing happening". The entire second book.
  • Papa Wolf / Mama Bear: Buck and Chloe Williams in regards to Kenny.
  • Praise The Lord And Pass The Popcorn: In the Dramatic Audio presentation of Glorious Appearing, Rayford Steele plus the entire population of believers in Petra, who was now made near-invulnerable by God during the battle of Armageddon, were like this when they were watching the Antichrist's armies getting decimated by Jesus Christ. Rayford even mentions that all he needs now is the popcorn.
    • And due to their beliefs about the Rapture, the series' intended audience believe they'll be sitting back in Heaven and enjoying the show while all this goes down.
      • Biblically speaking, that's what some Old Testament battles Israel had with other nations ended up turning into with God taking over the battles.
  • Persona Non Grata: In the eyes of the Global Community, it's Rayford and Chloe Steele, Buck Williams, Tsion Ben-Judah and Chaim Rosenzweig.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Tribulation Force is supposed to be the Resistance to Carpathia's One World Government. Their track record after seven years is precisely one assasination attempt, not counting Hattie and Chaim.
    • Buck and Rayford each have a cushy job working for the Antichrist. They virtually never try to exploit this fact. Worst Freedom Fighters ever.
      • More like The Pirates That Won't Do Anything Unless The Lord Directs Them To. Not that it has stopped some from trying to do their own thing, like Rayford's assassination attempt.
      • Also justified in the fact that they can't fight fate: what's going to happen in the Tribulation according to The Word Of God is going to happen regardless of what anybody does; all they can pretty much do is help new people become believers and to help existing believers stay alive until Jesus comes or their time comes.
      • Somewhat fixed in the young adult series, where they are certainly more proactive in trying to save believers from the GC and get the undecided to choose Christ, but otherwise they follow the lead of the adult books.
  • Place of Protection: The city of Petra during the latter half of the Tribulation, due to God's protection from Global Community forces.
  • Playing Sick: Chaim Rosenzweig pulls this off beautifully. He fakes having a stroke, and gets around in a wheelchair, all in order to assassinate Nicolae.
  • Point of No Return: Take the mark of loyalty and worship The Beast's image, you find yourself vulnerable to the Bowl/Vial Judgments and ultimately your soul is condemned to Hell. Become a believer in Christ, your place in Heaven is assured. Survive the Tribulation, you can live until the end of the Millenial Kingdom.
  • Plot Relevant Age Leveling: In the third prequel, when the elect are raptured, their glorified bodies are all the same age, 33, no matter where on the -0.75 through +969 spectrum they were in their Earthly lives. This comes from Augustine's claim that one's glorified body will be just like one's 33-year-old body was or would have been, barring anything crippling and/or hideous. It derives from Jesus being 33 when he was crucified.
  • Poke the Poodle: While Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind books does eventually commit evil such as ordering London nuked and demanding the executions of those who refuse to worship him as god, he gets only passing mention to such atrocities and instead focus on his Poke the Poodle moments such as him dating the hero's former love interest and treating her with respect. As Fred Clark on his slacktivist page states:

So far, though, it's hard to take him seriously. He's bumblingly through the first stages of his master plan, getting himself hopelessly bogged down in details that seem less evil than simply arbitrary and weird. For example, Nicolae plans to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. That might be considered evil if he were doing it just to desecrate the Islamic holy site currently sitting there in an effort to start a deadly war, but instead he's carefully negotiated an amicable (if ridiculously implausible) solution to this age-old conflict. [snip] Or consider Nicolae's grand scheme of relocating the United Nations headquarters to an as-yet-unbuilt city in the Iraqi desert. That's capricious and foolish, but not so much evil as just terribly wasteful and inconvenient.

George: "Well, Elena, the good news is...I'm not dead. The bad news is...you are!" (SNAP)

  • Principles Zealot: The protagonists refuse to lie, even to the Anti-Christ. It's a bit undermined by several cases of them telling falsehoods due to bad writing, divine interventions that prevent any negative consequences of not lying, and liberal use of From a Certain Point of View.
  • Propaganda Machine: The Global Community-controlled media and press, leading to the creation of Buck Williams' Voice of the Resistance publication The Truth.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: In the Left Behind universe, "good" is defined as "consistent with God's will" (or, to put the same thing another way, God's will is by definition always good).
    • This blog post gives us an idea of how incidental characters might view the main characters.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: Interesting variant: The authors believe the prophecy used in these books is also completely true in the real world. Which makes the characters' praises of how everything in this story is happening exactly as predicted by the prophecy (which is the exact thing the authors believe in and used for writing the story) all the more smug.
    • Except for when reality intervenes, and the Y 2 K bug doesn't cause the Anti-Christ to show up as they predicted.
  • Pursued Protagonist: The Tribulation Force, both the core group and the later members.
    • Also count for the rest of the believers.
  • Race Lift: Bruce Barnes and Vernon Billings were both Caucasian in the novels while the movies both men were African-American.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Enoch Dumas and his flock of street-wise urban dwellers.
  • Raised by Grandparents: In the prequel novels, Rayford's parents are old enough to be his grandparents, as someone mistakes his parents for being his godparents, so this is a subversion of this trope. Slightly subverted again when Rayford helps raise Kenny during the Tribulation.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jesus to Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet in Glorious Appearing.
    • Jesus does this to Satan yet again in Kingdom Come, right before sending him into the Lake of Fire.
    • In Assassins, Carpathia himself does this to Eli and Moishe before gunning them down during the Global Gala.
  • Real Life Relative: Inverted, as Kirk Cameron (Buck Williams) and Chelsea Noble (Hattie Durham) are married in real life, having met on the set of Growing Pains.
    • Ironically, Kirk Cameron admitted that his wife had pictured a movie adaptation in her mind with the both of them as Buck and Hattie respectively shortly after completing the first book. Several weeks later, Cameron was notified of the movie adaptation and was tapped for the role of Buck Williams. He got the part of Buck, while Chelsea Noble claimed the role of Hattie.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: President Gerald Fitzhugh. He sees that Carpathia is a threat once he loses his power to the American Subpotentate and teams up with his English and Egyptian counterparts to force Carpathia out of office. It does not work, and Fitzhugh winds up getting killed.
  • Recruit Under-100ers With Attitude: The members of The Other Light are all physically teenagers and young adults recruiting others of the same age range.
  • Redemption Equals Death: No pun intended.
  • Reign of Terror: What the world reverts to with the mark of loyalty system.
  • Religion Is Right: Arguably the Aesop of the series. If you do not accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will be left behind to suffer the Tribulation on Earth, followed by an eternity of damnation if you die during the Tribulation without accepting Christ then.
  • Reluctant Ruler: Since Fortunato taught him out to feign humility, Carpathia offers token resistance to the role of Secretary-General of the U.N. Only when he accepts does things go downhill.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Steve Plank, thought to have been killed during the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake, is pretty much alive...yet horribly disfigured, and going by the name Pinkerton Stephens.
    • Buck says this in the Dramatic Audio when people see that he is still alive.
  • Resignations Not Accepted: Carpathia exploits Rayford's relationship with Hattie by attempting to have the both of them killed when he meets up with her once again. However, Buck had taken Rayford's place when it became clear that Rayford wasn't going to arrive in time and rescues Hattie, killing a GC mook in the process and making a fast getaway with Ken behind the wheel.
  • Reverse Mole
  • Rightful King Returns: The whole point of Jesus' second coming in the book series.
  • Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Portrayed very sympathetically as they are apparently the only people in the entire world, aside from the Tribulation Force, to think that One World Government and Religion is a bad thing.
  • Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Most of humanity dies in various disasters, including actual giant rocks falling out of the sky. Many get sent to Hell, y'know.
  • Romance-Inducing Smudge: This happens early in the series, when Chloe is eating a cookie and has a bit of chocolate on her cheek. Buck leans over and wipes it off with his thumb, then eats it on impulse. Since the two have become hilariously repressed fundamentalist Christians, this is treated as a huge sexual milestone in their relationship. (Third base comes with chocolate.) Cookies later become a romantic symbol for them, almost to the point of creepy ridiculousness.
    • Almost?
  • Satan: In this series, the devil is a bad guy. No doubt about that. But God doesn't come off as much better. It's unintentional.
  • The Scapegoat: Thanks to Leon Fortunato, Rayford Steele is pinned for Carpathia's murder, despite evidence from Walter Moon showing that Chaim Rosenzweig was the real assassin.
  • The Scourge of God: Seal Judgements, Trumpet Judgements, Bowl Judgements...take your pick.
    • The Bowl Judgements affect those who took the mark of loyalty and worshipped the Antichrist's image.
    • Most the latter Trumpet Judgments those sealed by God are either partially or completely immune to.
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules: Feebly attempted by Buck when Nicolae offers him a job in his inner circle, based on Buck's out-of-nowhere concern for journalistic ethics. Of course, Buck denies Nicolae in person, having been flown from Chicago to New York first class, driven to the meeting in a limousine, and having had lunch at an exclusive Manhattan yacht club, all on Nicolae's dime. Subverted when after all the posturing he takes the job anyway.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Nicolae Carpathia, full stop.
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them: Again, Nicolae Carpathia, post-indwelling.
    • Josuha Todd-Cothran gives a real sinister example when he is confronted by Alan Tompkins in the first novel. From the Dramatic Audio:

Todd-Cothran: Captain Sullivan, if one of your men was to come to my office and harass me about anything, what should I do?
Sullivan: Mr. Todd-Cothran, sir, you do whatever you need to do.
Todd-Cothran: What if I was to...kill him where he sits?
Sullivan: Sir, I'm sure it would be justifiable homicide.
Todd-Cothran: What if his name happened to be Alan Tompkins?
Sullivan: Uh...I...I'd come over there and dispose of the body myself.

  • Screw The War, We're Praising The Lord!: In the book Glorious Appearing, the people in Petra were like this when the Global Community Unity Army has them completely surrounded and ready to overrun the place. Somewhat justified in that God has made them nigh-invulnerable to enemy fire at that point...and also in that Jesus was going to come and turn the entire Global Community army into bird food!
  • Screw Your Ultimatum: In Armageddon, Carpathia issues the following to the defenders of Jerusalem: by the count of three, if there is silence for fifteen seconds, then that means that the defenders will surrender to the GC. The defenders' response: shooting their guns into the air, Tsion and Buck included.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Satan during the Millennial Reign. Some people who are part of the Other Light subsect The Only Light believe that Satan purposely sealed himself away so that he will be powerful enough to overthrow God (whom the Only Light members believe don't exist despite visible evidence to the contrary) and those that will follow Him. As keeping with what the book of Revelation says, Satan does get released to lead the Other Light army at the end of the Millennium, only for his entire army to be smoked to ashes by God in seconds, and for Satan to be cast into the Lake of Fire.
  • Second Coming: It's all about Jesus' return.
  • Shining City: The New Jerusalem at the end of Kingdom Come.
  • Show, Don't Tell: Just look at this excerpt, for instance. We are told that Nicolae Carpathia "spoke earnestly, with passion, with a frequent smile, and with occasional, appropriate humor", not shown this. We are told that it is a "touching scene", rather than shown why. We are told that Carpathia has a "grasp of history" and "photographic memory of dates and places". We are told that he spoke "with electricity and power". It should be noted that two-thirds of Carpathia's speech is simply reading out the names of every country in the United Nations, before then proceeding to name all the UN agencies and random facts about them. Instead of actually writing a speech that was genuinely captivating and inspiring, the authors simply resorted to Take Our Word for It.
  • Significant Anagram: Chaim Rosenzweig as his alter ego Micah, which really is an anagram of Chaim.
  • Some Call Me... Tim: Buck's real name is Cameron Williams, of which he goes by in Kingdom Come, and Mac McCullum first name is Montgomery. Also, Gustaf Zuckermandel Sr. and Jr. go by Big Zeke and Zeke respectively. Annie Christopher's real name is Angela and Hattie's short for Harriet
  • The Something Force: The Tribulation Force in the main book series, the Millennium Force in Kingdom Come.
  • Stealth Pun: The cellular phone implant during the Millennium in Kingdom Come. It gives new meaning to the term "a ringing in your ears."
  • Straw Feminist: Verna Zee, who is also a lesbian. The authors mean for her to come over as such. But she doesn't really display much feministic behavior, she just doesn't adore Buck like everyone else seems to. Which is a death sentence of course.
    • Also Chloe in the first book, before she changes.

RAYFORD: ...I want to see when Hattie can join us for dinner. That's all right with you, isn't it?"
CHLOE: As long as you don't expect me to cook or something sexist and domestic like that."

  • Strawman Political: Particularly Hollywood Atheist; also abortionists.
  • Super Speed: In Glorious Appearing, the Remnant in Petra make a divine-assisted mad dash from Petra to Jerusalem. Hilarious in the Dramatic Audio as both Rayford and Mac joke about Abdullah being passed by pedestrians on foot.
  • Sweet and Sour Grapes: Two of the main protagonists are offered jobs by the Antichrist, jobs that, were they offered by anyone else would seem like dream jobs. The characters are reluctant to take those jobs, rightly seeing them as tests of temptation before them. After some initial reluctance, they take the jobs anyway, as they feel that taking them was "God's will."
    • In any other story, the following rationalization would be Foreshadowing of some kind of Face Heel Turn, even if we didn't already know that the Big Bad was capable of mind control. In this story, it's considered valid.

His job was ferrying Nicolae Carpathia wherever he wanted to go, and for some reason, Rayford felt compelled to sublimate his wishes, his desires, his will, and his logic. God had laid this in his lap for some reason, and as long as he didn’t have to live a lie, at least for now he would do it.

  • Take Over the World
  • Technology Marches On: You can tell how old the earlier books are by their lack of cell phones and their ilk. In the written-in-2005-and-2006 prequels, though...
  • Teen Genius: Chang Wong, computer nerd recruited by the bad guys (but used as the good guys' mole) before he is even done with high school.
    • Naomi Tiberias, Chang's romantic interest is also a whiz in her own right, as she runs the Petra tech center.
  • Textual Celebrity Resemblance: Carpathia looks like a young Robert Redford.
  • There Are No Global Consequences: God miraculously destroying Russia's military and vacuuming up 20% of the global population has absolutely NO effect on day-to-day life after the first few hours of panic.
    • Interestingly, this is both averted and exaggerated in the same series. The books seem to claim that only a tiny fraction of adults have the necessary beliefs to be raptured, but then exaggerates the consequences as if they represented a huge chunk of society. Entire parking garages full of abandoned cars, planes falling out of the sky (the entire crew was evangelical?), and most amusingly, a completely abandoned row of cabs at O'Hare airport. Of all the stereotypes they hit in this book, the foreign Sikh/Hindu/Muslim cabbie is the one they avoid.
      • The sheer number of plane crashes that blocked runways is especially odd. Rayford's flight to London is diverted to Chicago, despite the fact there are crashed airliners (plural) on that airport's runways. That a large number of flights are still diverted to this airport suggest all other airports are worse. It's as if every PMD-Christian pilot was trying to land his plane at the exact time of the rapture.
      • The pilot of a Concorde, bound for the US from France, reports that his flight "lost nearly fifty" passengers in the Rapture. Concorde carried exactly 100 passengers. As Fred Clark puts it, "La Haye and Jenkins would have us believe that nearly 50 born-again, evangelical Christian millionaires were visiting Paris and were willing and able to spare no expense to return to New York City as fast, and in as much luxury, as humanly possible."
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: A couple of thermobaric missiles and a 'daisy cutter' is indeed overkill, as said payload is dropped onto Petra on Carpathia's orders. Too bad it doesn't work out the way he had hoped.
  • Thousand Year Reign: What Kingdom Come is all about.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: The good guys try to take this very seriously, even when they are forced to kill in self defense, and they certainly agonize over even doing that. In partial fairness, they don't want to fall prey to He Who Fights Monsters, which certainly makes them less bloodthirsty than the enemy, but it sometimes beggars belief how far they will go to avoid killing anyone.
    • It is notably averted a few times, such as when Goerge Sebastian kills one of his captors in Greece in the tenth book, but considering she had already murdered several people he had intended to save prior and killing her was his only means of escape, it would have made no sense to leave her alive, not to mention he saw her as deserving of death for the murders she had committed.
  • Throwing Out the Script: In Apollyon, when Chaim Rosenzweig is asked to appear on TV to give his explanation for the sun giving out only one-third of its sunlight due to one of the Trumpet Judgments taking place (though Chaim isn't convinced that it is the hand of God at work), he is given a script by the Global Community that has him parrot the party line's explanation of some scientific cosmic disturbance that even Rosenzweig as a botanist can see through. He chooses to appear on TV but speaks his own mind instead, almost directing people to Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah's website before being pulled off the air.
  • Time Skip: A few of them right in Kingdom Come. It starts off at the beginning of the Millennium, then jumps to 93 years later where it stays for most of the story, then it jumps right to the end of the Millennium.
    • Several time jumps are evident in the main storyline and prequel novels.
  • Title Drop: Plenty.
  • Took a Level In Dumbass: Both sides, but most notably the villains competence is kept at a far lower level than the protagonists, barring a few exceptions.
    • Somewhat averted in the young adult series, where the villains certainly remain less competent most of the time, but in comparison to the adult series they get far more Near Villain Victory moments.
  • Totally Radical: Some of the lingo used by the characters reveals the eras that the authors grew up in.

"Well, sir, I don’t know what to tell you, but it is a pity you’re not getting the services of the new pilot. I know him and he’s tops."

  • Trilogy Creep: Was originally planned to be one novel, then was changed to a trilogy, and ultimately ended up being thirteen books, not counting prequels or spin-offs.
  • Trash the Set: The Abomination of Desolation (Carpathia defiling the rebuilt Temple with pig's blood and placing his image and throne inside the rebuilt Temple) in Desolation.
    • He then decides to top that by emptying the sanitation system filled with horse dung into the Cradle of Jesus in Glorious Appearing.
    • God Himself destroying the desecrated Temple in Kingdom Come.
  • Try Not to Die: In the Dramatic Audio of Apollyon, after going through the escape plan to get Tsion, Chloe and Buck out of Israel, Rayford asks for some more advice from Mac. Mac's response: "Don't get shot."
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: No specific year is given, emphasizing the "It could happen any minute" message. The first few books are still dated by the lack of cell phones and widespread internet access, though.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: Carpathia seems to be promising this, and this is God's motivation for every last thing he does.
  • Veganopia: In the Millennium Kingdom, everyone is a vegetarian. It was only at the wedding feast at the beginning of the Millennium that the meat restriction was lifted for that event.
  • Villain Ball: Several minor bad guys seem to do their evil business the old-fashioned way, ignoring the opportunities the Rapture presents. Like the burglar who robs Steele's house instead of one of the many abandoned homes where the families where Raptured, and stealing a child's bike (every child on the planet has vanished, remember?). Or the Supreme Council of Vagueness who stages a faked suicide when killing Buck's insider. This is within two days tops since more than a billion people worldwide vanished without a trace, which suggest a much better way to cover up the murder.
  • Villain Override: The Indwelling.
  • Villain Song: Nicolae Carpathia's own self-indulgent national anthem "Hail Carpathia", which gets twisted by Buck Williams into "The Villain Sucks" Song "Fail Carpathia".
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Carpathia has the entire world eating out of his hands from Day One.
  • Voice of the Resistance: Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah himself and Buck Williams' online publication The Truth during the Tribulation; The Other Light's If It's True manifesto during the Millennial Reign.
  • Wag the Director: As mentioned on the trope page, Kirk Cameron did not grow out of this after Growing Pains.
  • Wave Motion Gun: The good guys use a non-lethal Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) that fires microwaves that heat up a target's skin moisture, which is not deadly but considered extremely painful.
  • We All Live in America: When Chang Wong meets an elder, he is reprimanded for wearing a hat in the elder's presence. He apologizes, saying that he is covering up a disgrace (the Mark of the Beast he was forced to take). However, in China, it is disrespectful not to be wearing a hat in the presence of an elder or at a formal occasion.
    • The young adult books try to fix the mistake somewhat by Chang emphasizing he felt showing the forced mark to be a bigger disgrace than removing the hat.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: We're told that Russia emptied their arsenals at Israel. We're told that the attack failed completely. We're not told how things went for Russia afterwards, now that they had shown their willingness to use nuclear force and were unable to retaliate to attacks.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: When it comes to anything Hattie-related, Rayford does some very reckless things. Leah Rose and Albie call him out on that.
  • Where Are They Now: In Kingdom Come, we see the fates of the extended members of the Tribulation Force.
  • Who Writes This Crap?: Chaim's effective reaction to the explanation the GC put out following the fourth Trumpet Judgment, as despite it not being his field, even he realizes it's nonsensical.
  • Wicked Cultured: Attempted (not particularly successfully) with Nicolae Carpathia.
    • After being indwelt, he tosses any further attempts out the window.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Carpathia, hands down.
  • With Us or Against Us: Ultimately, it comes down to two choices - join God or the Global Community.
  • Words Can Break My Bones: Jesus' words when He arrives at the Battle of Armageddon, consisting of proclaiming who He is and reciting Bible verses, slays all his enemies at once.
  • World-Healing Wave: A rather slow one, as God and Jesus spend a few months restoring the earth to its former beauty following the end of the Tribulation to make it new for the Millennial Kingdom.
    • A smaller scale version happen the sign of the cross appears in the skies preceding Jesus' arrival in Glorious Appearing, instantly healing the wounds, no matter the severity, of any believer, and presumably conferring invulnerability to any believer who didn't have it prior.
  • World War III: Plays a major part in the series, as it is part of prophecy. New York, Washington, D.C., London and parts of Egypt are destroyed in the process.
  • Worst News Judgment Ever: Every child on the planet has just disappeared, along with a great many Christians. The planet is plagued by horrific plane crashes and car accidents as a result. The Pope himself is gone, and the Catholic church has fallen into disarray. What stories do Global Weekly consider the most important to cover? A convention of Jews in New York, and a recent recall election in Romania. This stuff wouldn't be front page material on a slow news day.
    • There is apparently a throwaway line that retcons that those events were covered in the previous issue (as if they wouldn't still be news a week later).
    • Apparently, the fact that Air Force One is getting a new pilot is big news.
    • Fridge Brilliance kicks in for at least one of these: one of the candidates in said recall election? Nicolae Carpathia. What is he trying to bring about? A New World Order. Naturally, he would want his name to get out there so everybody knows who he is when he takes over, and he has the supernatural powers to get newspapers to run as frontpage news something that would be normally behind the latest celebrity bestiality scandal. The other events might somewhat be justified similarly, as Carpathia would want to delay or hinder any possible lead that might reveal him.
  • Xanatos Roulette, subverted: God is in control of everything, and the Antichrist thinks he is.
  • You All Meet At The Party: The Global Gala, located in Jerusalem.
  • You All Meet At The Stadium: The meeting of the 144,000 witnesses at Teddy Kollek Stadium, organized by Eli and Moishe.
  • You All Meet At The Temple: The dedication of the rebuilt Temple in Kingdom Come.
  • You All Meet At The Western Wall: Buck and Tsion's meeting with Eli and Moishe. Buck is hearing them speak in English, whereas Tsion is hearing them in Hebrew.

Eli: I am Eli. This is Moishe.
Buck: (to Tsion, whispering) English?
Tsion: (to Buck, whispering) Hebrew.

  • You Can't Fight Fate: Inverted Trope in that the bad guys are prophesied in the Bible to lose, and that every knee must bow before Jesus and every tongue must declare Him as Lord.
    • The Dramatic Audio presentation of Glorious Appearing turns the humiliation of the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and their demonic cohorts into a Kneel Before Zod moment.
    • One of the most jarring, unrealistic aspects of the series is how not one person in the world even tries to fight fate. In fact, just the opposite: the protagonists voluntarily go to work for the Antichrist and help bring about his goals because they believe the Antichrist has to win (in the short term) for their prophesied end to occur.
  • You Are In Charge Now: After Chloe is executed by guillotine, Lionel Whalum takes over running the Co-Op until the Glorious Appearing.
    • At the end of the Millennial Period in Kingdom Come, Jesus returned the Kingdom to His Father and became "subject to Him (God) that subjected all things under His (Jesus) feet."
  • You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good: What Jesus pretty much says to the Antichrist in His "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him before he is sentenced to the Lake of Fire: every blessing God gave him was wasted for serving Satan. This was a point of contention by certain readers since Jesus pretty much berated him from what God destined him to function as.
    • A mistake the prequels tried to fix by showing Carpathia did have a choice to reconsider his way in life, but chose to follow Lucifer anyway.
  • You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: After Satan indwells Carpathia at the end of The Indwelling, he makes the following promise:

Carpathia: There are those among you, however, who have referred overtly to me personally as the Antichrist and this period of history as the Tribulation. You may take the following as my personal pledge...the word tribulation will not begin to describe what is in store for you. If the last three and a half years are your idea of tribulation, wait until you endure the Great Tribulation.

  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the prequel books, Marilena Carpathia, the mother of Nicolae Carpathia, was killed off when Nicolae, still a child, was old enough to be cared for by his mentor Viv Ivins. His two biological fathers, who were living together off payments from the corporation that funded the genetic project that brought forth Nicolae, were later killed off.
    • Also pretty much applies to anyone in Nicolae's circle of advisers in the Global Community.
    • Carpathia tries to pull this on Rayford and Hattie. It does not work.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Plenty in the series.
    • Nicolae threatens to kill Tsion Ben-Judah during the meeting of the 144,000 after his bottle of water turns to blood, but is stopped by the arrival of Eli and Moishe.
    • Carpathia kills the Two Witnesses at the midpoint of the Tribulation, but God revived them and returned them to heaven.
    • Chaim assassinates Carpathia soon thereafter... for all the good it ultimately does.
  • Zip Mode: In Glorious Appearing, Jesus does this on a massive scale to what's left of the human population, transporting them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat for the Sheep and Goats judgment.
  1. ↑ (such as the fact that its pilots will always be Air Force personnel rather than civilian hires, the fact that if a President is not aboard it will never use the callsign "Air Force One", or the President confiding in Buck about how upset he is by ceding it to Carpathia when in fact the President always has at least two identical planes which can serve as Air Force One in case one of them is unavailable)
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.