Rise of the Reds

A Game Mod for Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour that picks on the events of the original game and presents its own story on what happened afterward. The GLA came back stronger than ever before, the USA went isolationist for the meantime, China managed a near economic take-over of the world before Russia got its industrial power rolling again and fights the ECA on their ground who themselves rebuild their military might as well.

More information on the mod can be found here and here.

Tropes used in Rise of the Reds include:

European Continental Army

• The Alliance
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Lynx IFV.
• BFG: Manticore and Claymore.
• Cool Plane: The Goshawk.
• Deflector Shields: Possibly.
• First-Name Basis: Inexplicably, the ECA generals Charles, Willem and Wolfgang are refered to by their first names.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: The Jagdmammut.
• Gatling Good: The Goalkeeper.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Getting abandoned by their US allies and ravaged by the GLA had quite an effect on the Europeans. The ECA is a democratic institution but at the same time paranoid, secluded and with slight traces of authoritarianism. The Russian invasion may or may not push them over the edge.
• Gentleman Thief: One of the scrapped concepts for the ECA Hero.
• Improvised Weapon: The European Solaris satellites were not designed to be Kill Sats. During peace time, they were used to project sunlight onto ground-based power plants and automated mega-farms.
• Kill Sat: The Solar Blast weapon.
• La Résistance: In lore.
• Land Mine Goes Click
• Mighty Glacier
• More Dakka: The Goalkeeper.
• Multinational Team
• One Tank Army: Again Manticore, for having build limit of 1 but being near unkillable.
• Pillar of Light: The Solar Blast.
• The Power of the Sun: Solaris sattelites.
• United Europe: Subverted when the Russians ruined it. However, I should be noted that the ECA never conceived itself as a fully unified, centralised super-state but a strong alliance between souvereign nations.

Global Liberation Army

• Action Bomb: Terrorists or Bomb Trucks.
• African Terrorists: The new GLA is mostly based in central Africa.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The GLA can purchase AP Rockets and AP Bullets to increase the effectiveness of... well, rockets and bullets.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Battle Bus.
• Back From the Brink: Again!
• Base on Wheels
• Black Market: Provides the GLA with income, upgrades and higher tier technologies.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Makes heavy use of Cold War era weaponry.
• Cold Sniper: Jarmen Kell.
• Cool Bike
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: It's possible to poison a building to death or turn it into swiss cheese.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Anthrax Shells.
• Hit and Run Tactics: Although all factions can do this to some extent, this is the GLA's specialty.
• Hollywood Acid: Anthrax weapons can, by virtue of Scratch Damage, kill vehicles and buildings.
• Hypocrite: In droves.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Jarmen Kell.
• Incredibly Obvious Bomb: Bomb Trucks when not camouflaged.
• Instant Death Radius: Toxin Trucks.
• Invisibility Cloak
• Improvised Weapon: A whole lot.
• Knight Templar
• Land Mine Goes Click
• Macross Missile Massacre: Most of their artillery centers around this.
• Mad Bomber
• Middle-Eastern Coalition: Loosely.
• Multiple Life Bars: Their buildings, and the Battle Bus.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country!: Their motive.
• Phantom Thief: Hijacker.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
• Stealth Based Game: When you play as them.
• Suicide Attack: Terrorists
• Technicolor Toxin
• Terrorists Without a Cause
• Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty: Plenty of dick moves and sneaky tactics.
• Tube Travel: Their tunnel network system, now much expanded.
• Tunnel King
• Poisoned Weapons
• Universal Poison: Anthrax is inexplicably this.
• Worker Unit: The Worker.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Considering their attitude, the question is: Whose?

People's Republic of China

• Attack! Attack! Attack!
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Chinese APC.
• Bayonet Ya
• BFG: The Overlord Tank and Nuclear Artillery.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Makes heavy use of Cold War era weaponry.
• Chinese With Chopper Support: Especially with the Han Gunship!
• China Takes Over the World: Subverted. They merely annex some of their smaller neighbours, buy large swathes of Africa and strong-arm all of south-east Asia into their hegemony.
• Cool Airship: The Propaganda Airship.
• The Cracker: Chinese Hackers & Black Lotus.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The Depleted Uranium shell upgrade.
• Gatling Good: Gatling tanks, stationary base defenses and as upgrades.
• Impossible Thief: Black Lotus, to a lesser extent the Capture upgrade.
• Kill It with Fire: Flamethrower tanks, infantry, artillery and even helicopters.
• Land Mine Goes Click
• Million Mook March: Favourite pastime of China.
• More Dakka: Gatling weapons can be upgraded to have an even higher rate of fire.
• Nuke'Em: China's MO.
• Patriotic Fervor
• Red China: Subverted.
• Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke: Played with. It's stronger than the normal ZH nuke but still much weaker than a real warhead.
• Tank Goodness: China's other MO.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted oh so hard.
• Zerg Rush: Often used by the Red Army general.

Russian Federation

• Abnormal Ammo: Storm Trooper rifles fire rocket-assisted high explosive bullets.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Russians do this to most of the European air forces on a massive scale in the opening phase of the war.
• Badass Mustache: Russian hero Boris and General Orlov.
• BFG: The Sentinel Tank mounts a 220mm cannon. Taken Up to Eleven with the Tremor, a giant gatling artillery cannon.
• Chain Lightning: Tesla weapons can have this effect.
• Conscription: Obviously.
• Cool Plane: The PAK-FA.
• Cool Tank: A great deal!
• Disintegrator Ray: Tesla weapons.
• Doom Troops: The very purpose of Shock Troopers.
• Field Promotion: Russian Conscripts look forward to these. Most of them don't make it.
• Gas Mask Mooks
• Glorious Mother Russia
• Lightning Can Do Anything
• Lightning Gun: Tesla Weapons.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Russian Buratinos, Frogfoots and Backfires pull these off on a regular basis.
• Magnetic Weapons: Railguns.
• Named After Somebody Famous: President Nikolai Suvorov may or may not be named after legendary Russian general Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov.
• New Meat: Russian Conscripts' only training is a 30 minute instructional video. Soon, they either are promoted or are expected to die in combat.
• Night Vision Goggles: A possible upgrade for Russian infantry.
• Nuke'Em: Again Topol-M.
• One-Hit Polykill: Possible with railgun weaponry.
• Our Premiers Are Different: Russian leader Nikolai Suvorov. The Europeans try to make him out as President Evil / Jerkass while his own people regard him as President Iron / Personable.
• Polluted Wasteland: A large Russian base can give this impression. Their architecture is very austere and industrial and their coal power plants produce insane amounts of thick, black smoke. In gameplay terms, radiation and toxin fields also count.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The Russian in-game music is from the 2003 third person shooter Freedom Fighters.
• Red Scare: Subverted, the Russian Federation is not communist.
• Reds with Rockets / Russians With Rusting Rockets: Sort of.
• Shock and Awe
• Sociopathic Soldier: Aleksander's Shock Troopers are trained to become this. The backstory describes their training methods as literally inhumane and those who survive to graduate end up as living war machines that run solely on fanatical nationalism, social-darwinism and pure hatred.
• Soviet Superscience: General Aleksander lives on this.
• Superpowered Mooks: Subverted. Shock Troopers are feared to be superhuman but they just can push their bodies to the limit.
• Tank Goodness
• Testosterone Poisoning: Boris to some degree,
• Training from Hell: The Shocktroopers go through this, and are trained in Siberia. Spetsnaz as well.

United States of America

• Agony Beam: US Microwave weapons were meant to be this, but it is explained that their operators generally forego the 'non-lethal' setting and just cook the guys who are shooting at them with real weapons.
• Americans Are Cowboys
• America Takes Over the World: Inverted. After their retreat from Europe, the US revert to isolationism which eventually breaks their economy's back, forcing them to form an economic trade bloc with Canada and Mexico. They get better by the time Russia invades Europe though.
• Attack Drone: Plenty of unmanned combat vehicles.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier - Humvee and any of it's super variants the Special Forces General might have.
• Badass Boast: Col. Burton and the Pathfinders are the most obvious examples.
• Beam Spam
• Blinded by the Light: The Ranger's Flashbangs.
• Cold Sniper: The Pathfinder.
• Cool Plane: Sort of their thing.
• Death From Above
• Eagle Land
• Elite Army
• Expy: Col. Burton is one of Rambo.
• Frickin' Laser Beams
• Hellhole Prison: The US Black Sea prison in which GLA Warlord Sulaymaan was held may be this. It was reserved for high-profile inmates and apparently hellish enough for the GLA to execute every non-prisoner they got a hold of when they raided it.
• Hover Tank: The American Crusader II can turn into this for extra speed.
• Instant Death Radius: Microwave Tanks.
• Invisibility Cloak: They have a few stealth units for heavily tactical purposes.
• Kill Sat: Inverted.
• Laser Sight: Used by the Missile Defenders and Avenger to increase accuracy & rate of fire, and by aircraft to increase the accuracy/damage of their weapons.
• Old Soldier: Colonel Burton by now.
• Patriotic Fervor
• Photoprotoneutron Torpedo: The Particle Beam Cannon.
• Pillar of Light: The Particle Beam Cannon.
• Point Defenseless: Subverted.
• Robot Roll Call
• Spy Satellite
• Testosterone Poisoning: Colonel Burton.
• Trick Bomb: The chaff & flare upgrades.
• Wave Motion Gun: The Particle Beam Cannon, again.
• Wild Weasel: The Stealth Fighter.
• Yanks With Tanks

Multiple / Non-faction

• Artifact Title: Unlike the original Revora version, SWR no longer depicts the Russians as neo-communists, making the 'reds' part somewhat obsolete.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The climactic battle of Kurmuk depicted in the main menu. It's China and the US versus Russia, it's epic as all hell and it smoothly repeats forever. The scripting alone took three weeks.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Getting shot by bullets is probably the least nasty cause of death for the average infantryman. Getting dissolved by toxins, burned by napalm or disintegrated via Tesla bolt... not so much.
• Cavalry Refusal: The Europeans did this to the Russian expeditionary forces in Africa, leading to their wholesale slaughter at the hands of the GLA. Russia didn't take kindly to it to say the least.
• Continuity Reboot: SWR's ROTR is very different from the mods original incarnation.
• Cool Versus Awesome
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Plenty, but the epic Russian folk song Polyushka Polye from the main menu stands out in particular.
• Days of Future Past: To a certain degree, with the Chinese and Russians using updated versions of Cold War-era methods.
• Dead Line News: Implied to be the fate of Eric Bryce from ECAN news after the Russians conquer Berlin.
• Danger Deadpan: Most of the various pilots. Understandably, many of them do lose their cool when they get shot down.
• Deconstruction: ROTR started out as a futuristic spin off of the Cold War gone wrong but the story has started to reflect a lot about the world of today and what it could become in a near future.
• Fan Sequel: The mod as a whole is this to Generals, although some consider this to be the one Zero Hour should have been.
• Faction Calculus:
  • Brute Force: Russia
  • Zerg Rush: China
  • Submissive: GLA
  • The Ranger: ECA
  • The Mario: USA
• Fix Fic: In addition to expanding on the backstory of the Generals setting, the mod through its many updates also goes through great lengths to improve and fix the at times thoughtless "canon" plot, especially regarding the GLA "invasion" of Europe in Zero Hour.
• Growing the Beard: The team-change / reboot is generally regarded as this.
• Gunship Rescue: Normal occurrence in a game.
• History Repeats: Africa gets re-colonised by foreign powers, including Europe, the US, Russia and China, sometime in 2020 and all of them are in it mostly for the rare untapped resources. In addition, another full-scale war in Europe erupts in 2045, precisely 100 years after the end of World War II.
• It's Raining Men: The US and Russia can call in paratroopers
• Melee a Trois: Although all factions have at least one common enemy in reality they are all working against each other.
• Mobile Factory: Vehicles are manufactured IN the battlefield.
• Moral Dissonance: Applies pretty much to all factions, though some more than others.
• Nintendo Hard: The Hard AI setting on some maps. The AI in general has been revamped to put up considerably more challenge to the player.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Applies to all factions with exception of China and General Zhukov.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The US and China, though with inverted colors; they are at opposite ends of the spectrum but very much alike.
• Self-Destructive Charge: Applies mostly to the GLA with suicide units and the Scorpion tank managing to get cross several meters when the unit is already dead (possibly managing to bring infantry down with him). Also applies to all infantry in the game since they keep fearlessly advancing even when they are crippled and an inch away from death.
• Space-Filling Empire: The creation of large, supra-national organisations like the corporate NAU, the pro-Russian NSAU, the powerless African Union and the pro-Chinese SSAN appears like this, although they only make an appearance in the backstory. Played somewhat straighter with China and Russia who annexed some of their neighbours.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The timeline starts in 2016 with the ending of the Zero Hour expansion while the actual war between Russia and Europe breaks out in 2032.
• United Nations Is a Super Power: Inverted to hell and back. The UNO has been rendered obsolete by trade blocs and superpowers, lacks any kind of even nominal power and has been reduced to a curiosity in New York.