Marathon Trilogy/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Bernhard. Was he simply cruel to Durandal out of a power fantasy, or did he recognize the symptoms of Rampancy and attempt to stave it off as long as possible? Rubicon and Eternal follow each interpretation.
  • And Durandal is subject to this too, mainly in whatever he is an Anti-Hero or an Anti-Villain, or even an outright villain.
• Non Sequitur Scene: Some consider the Pathways into Darkness segment in the beginning of Aleph One version of Marathon to be this. Fortunately for them, there is a plugin that removes that segment. Also, it's been removed in the most recent release.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The Marathon 2 title theme and most of the Marathon 1994 soundtrack. Marathon Eternal uses the good remixes of the latter, and got a cool original title theme.
• Demonic Spiders: The Pfhor troopers; they are the only enemies with near hitscan weapons (their assault rifles) that can do real damage on higher difficulties.
  • In the 3rd-party scenario Rubicon, the enforcers. Dear god, I never knew a health bar could be drained so fast.
  • Compilers can fly, have a homing projectile that can shoot around cover, are quite durable, and can turn invisible.
    • There is a very simple secret to dealing with Compilers though: Punch them. Their recovery time takes longer than the duration between punches. With other enemies while punching you have to strafe to avoid enemy fire, but Compilers do not present this problem. Of course, if there's more than one Compiler at once that could prove more problematic.
• Ear Worm: Swirls, a tranquil track that simply stands out in the soundtrack. Doesn't help that the first time you hear this, the game starts giving lengthy backstory text in the terminals (The History of Mars and the construction of Marathon in Couch Fishing), not to mention that it's the track for Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap which includes Durandal's more famous rants (Escape Will Make Me God) and That One Puzzle.
  • For this troper it's Splash, by far the longest and most repetitive track in the game, which only makes the riff even more infectious.
• Epileptic Trees: Marathon Infinity.
  • Try the entire series. Proof comes from the Marathon Story Page, where they've been doing Wild Mass Guessing since 1995.
    • It's more likely the Kudzu Plot. A ton of subplots were introduced or hinted at and dropped in the first game alone ( JJARRO WERE AT TAU CETI, anyone?), and some plot points seem to contradict each other, and not because of Infinity's Timey-Wimey Ball.
    • In some cases this is somewhat justified, as a lot of the information we have about certain aspects of the plot (most notably the Jjaro and the W'rkncacnter) comes entirely from mythological references by the S'pht. It makes sense that over thousands of years information would become somewhat Shrouded in Myth.
• Fridge Brilliance: Infinity, such as the chapters after the Prologue being: Despair, Rage, and Envy, and the final level being Aye Mak Sicur.
• Fridge Horror: The cyborg tanks in the second and third game are confirmed by Word of God to be created from captured humans. When one thinks about the fact that the Pfhor are slavers and have thousands of years of history, one considers that they have probably done something similar to all of the races they've enslaved. There is also a theory that the "assimilated BoBs" - which look human, run up to you, and explode - might actually be captured humans as well, but the game says they're artificial constructs (however, whether this is actually the case is open to interpretation). Either way they're a pretty strong source of Fridge Horror as well.
• Goddamned Bats or Demonic Spiders (depending on the difficulty level) -- Wasps, Compilers, Lookers, Pfhor Drones, Cyborgs with homing grenades, Ticks.
• Hell Is That Noise: Various. The Jjaro station in Infinity occasionally lets a strained sounds of age and of general lack of maintenance...which sounds more like a barely awake Eldritch Abomination struggling against its prison.
• Magnificent Bastard: Durandal. Also Tycho.
  • Case in point: In the ending screen of Marathon 2 (which takes place many many years after the events of the game), he returns to the Sol system in a Jjaro dreadnought, playing cat-and-mouse with the human defenses near Pluto, and then suddenly warps into low Earth orbit. The reason for all of this? He wanted to say hi, and make sure people still remembered him.
• Memetic Mutation: "Frog blast the vent core!"
• Most Annoying Sound: The BOBs constantly saying "THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!!!!!"
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
  • It's occasionally hard to tell whether the dark rooms, claustrophobic hallways, and stealthy enemies are meant to be scary, but boy howdy, they are.
  • The "dream" levels in Infinity, especially the messages you find in them.
  • The story of Gheritt White. (Third terminal in that level.) It's found at the top of a nigh-inescapable prison cell.
• Older Than They Think: These games helped pioneer the idea of story-driven first-person shooters before Half Life (the game most often credited with this innovation) was even a gleam in anyone's eye. Marathon is also credited with being the first computer-based shooter to use the mouselook control scheme, and was at least one of the first shooters to feature secondary ammo and allied NPCs (the automated defense drones in the first game, then the BOBs in the sequels).
• Paranoia Fuel: The Lookers in Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap. Lookers explode on you, similar to simulacrums, but they are very hard to punch without getting yourself hurt, they can fly, and some are camouflaged (they look like shadows). Still, not too much of a problem, since one bullet kills them. However, on Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap, they are in nearly every dark corner and every other corner in a hallway.
  • It's hard to emphasize how pants-crappingly scary this part of the level was.
  • The camo Compilers in G4 Sunbathing. They wouldn't be very bad if they didn't get together in groups of ten or more on Total Carnage.
• Stupid Neutral: Thoth. He was built to make sure none of the clans ever fully wiped each other out in their frequent wars.
  • When Durandal reveals himself to have faked his death in order to trick Thoth into helping humanity, Thoth then allies himself with the Phfor because now they're the side at a disadvantage. It's too little too late, though.
• That One Level: G4 Sunbathing, Bob-BQ, Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap!, Habe Quiddam, If I Had A Rocket Launcher (M2), Begging For Mercy (M2), Acme Station (Infinity), Hang Brain (Infinity), You Think You're Big Time (Infinity).
  • If I Had a Rocket Launcher? Really? That was the most fun level in the entire series. In how many levels do you get to just whale away at an army of Pfhor troopers with an unlimited supply of shotgun ammo?
    • Who said levels can't be hard AND fun?
  • Sorry Don't Make It So is probably a much better example from M2 than If I Had a Rocket Launcher. However, by far the best example of this trope would have to be "Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap". This level's platform puzzle was so universally loathed by fans (you had to time a series of switch hits exactly right or you wouldn't be able to climb a series of stairs) that when the game was ported over to Aleph One they just left out the timing puzzle entirely and had the platforms automatically extend to the right locations (unfortunately, the original puzzle has since been reinstated in some versions of the game released since, much to various players' chagrin). It's also worth noting that the level's designer, Jason Jones, actually apologised for the level (most likely because of the puzzle) in the credits terminal for Marathon 2.
  • On This Troper's most recent playthrough of M2 (on a higher difficulty setting than usual) the levels that so far have stuck out as being especially difficult (in terms of how much he died) were "Six Thousand Feet Under" and "For Carnage, Apply Within". However, in the former case this may have been due to repeatedly trying a poor strategy and then giving up on it.
• That One Puzzle: The movable platform puzzle on "Colony Ship". Nothing else in the series comes close.

Various mods contain examples of

• Boss in Mook Clothing/Demonic Spiders: Many of the A'Khr (and a few of the Pfhor) in Phoenix have infuriatingly fast firing speeds. These are the main reason the scenario is Nintendo Hard.
• Nightmare Fuel: Marathon RED, from beginning to end. It doesn't help that it's also Nintendo Hard. Intimidating? Maybe just a lee-tle...
  • And many parts of Marathon EVIL too. The Devlins in particular probably gave large numbers of people nightmares.
• Paranoia Fuel: Connected to Nightmare Fuel above; many of the scenarios get this way. The level "Roquefortress" in Phoenix is an excellent example: the level is extremely dark, if you take a wrong step you will die, and enemies come from anywhere and everywhere and it is difficult to keep track of them. It does not help that many of the enemies in this scenario fly and don't make any noise until they fire at you, and can take away a whole bar of health in less than a second. Oh, and the level is set out in a completely non-linear manner so it's impossible to keep track of where the enemies have been released. Have fun! (Despite that, the level, as well as the whole scenario, is awesome, and one of the best examples of Scenery Porn created in the engine to date. The main creator has studied architecture extensively and it shows).
• That One Level: Secret levels tend to be infuriatingly difficult, although there are exceptions (the last secret on Tempus Irae is mostly an excuse for porn).