Fable (video game series)



"For every choice, a consequence."

A video game series created by Peter Molyneux. The first game released by Lionhead Studios in 2004. It spent four years in production, and was thought to be Vaporware for a while, before it was released to extremely polarizing reviews. The video game itself is an Action-RPG, with the player's decisions affecting the gameplay. Unfortunately, the differences in gameplay boiled down to people either flocking to you or running in fear depending on whether you were good or evil, and the Karma Meter ended up being purely aesthetic.

The game still received praise for being rather open-ended with both questing and character creation, and is regarded by some as a genuinely good game, just not what it could have been.

Despite the flaws and mixed reception, the game went on to be one of the top selling games on the original Xbox.

A sequel was released in 2008, and was met with surprisingly positive reviews. It improved the Karma Meter, adding Purity and Corruption alongside good and evil, and increased the role the character's actions played in the game's world. While one can still attack a town and kill everyone in it, doing so hurts the town's economy and make the villagers hate you, increasing prices at shops and lessening the quality of the items sold.

Fable III was released in 2010, set 50 years after the events of the last game. It heavily simplifies gameplay elements established in the first and second games, but introduces some new ones, such as weapons that morph in appearance, and to the ability to rule a kingdom half-way through the game.

The three games are mainly set in Albion (not that one), a land based on England during the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution respectively. In the first two games, the player takes on the role of an orphan who grows up to become an archetypal action hero determined to exact vengeance upon those who killed his loved ones when he was a child. The third game has you control a prince or princess, who quests to overthrow his or her brother, the corrupt king of Albion. In each game, depending on your playstyle, The Quest may take the backseat to Wide Open Sandbox gameplay and Irrelevant Side Quests.

Peter Molyneux has stated a desire to continue the series even as far as a Fable 5, but only time will tell.

Fable: The Journey is to be released in 2012, although little is known about it as of yet. A companion Xbox Live Arcade game, Fable Heroes is a Castle Crashers-styled party game that will work in concert with The Journey and will be released in 2012.

Note: If you are putting down tropes that only pertain to a single game, please put them on the game's page.

The Fable series includes:

 * Fable I (2004)
 * Fable: The Lost Chapters, an Updated Rerelease of the original (2005)
 * Fable II (2008)
 * Fable III (2010
 * Fable: The Balverine Order, a novel by Peter David which comes with a bonus item in Fable III (2010)
 * Fable Heroes (2012)

Series-wide tropes include:
" Come back later and I'll have a peasant on the barbie for you!"
 * Hundred-Percent Completion: There's an achievement for this.
 * AFGNCAAP: That it averts this is one of the original's main criticisms. Fable I was supposed to have the option to play as a female character, but the feature was removed before the game was released. Actions the player chooses to make in the game (any of the games) affect the main character's physical appearance, including height, skin color, and body type.
 * A Homeowner Is You: Houses are available for sale, and can generate income when rented out.
 * Almost-Lethal Weapons: Even some of the better weapons deal <100 damage. Without augments and skillranks, killing enemies will take quite awhile. In Fable 2, almost all legendary weapons are Badass. Get a master weapon (doesn't even matter which) with 4 augment slots and put different damaging augments on. You will slay thousands with 1-3 attacks each, MAXIMUM.
 * Altar the Speed: Romancing someone enough to want to marry you takes about 5 minutes of flirting, and presenting a gift or 3.
 * Once you get your appearance and renown up, you can actually get people to fall in love with you by walking past them
 * Truth in Television: Screaming Elvis/Beatles/etc. fans show the same tendencies.
 * Truth in Television: And once they find out you're a regular person, they start getting upset when you neglect them while saving the world.
 * Always Chaotic Evil: Hobbes, children that have had their souls devoured by an evil nymphs--Hobbes can do this to other children, and apparently suggestible males. Also Chesty, makes no real sense and apparently has been killing people for some time and has ultimate control over his insane dimension. "Do you like doggies? I love doggies! Let's play with doggies!"
 * Anachronism Stew: Not so much in the original Fable, but very apparent in Fable 2 and 3.
 * An Interior Designer Is You
 * Anti-Hero: The player character can be anywhere on the scale, and you encounter several of these over the course of the series, such as Garth, who is a type 2, and Reaver, who is a type 5.
 * Arrows on Fire: Played straight.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In all three games, after you commit crimes in a town, a guard will run up to you and charge you with a list of all of them, offering you options of how to respond to the charges (pay a fine, run away, etc). In many cases, you've just finished rampaging through a town destroying everything and every one in your path, and then a guard charges you with 30+ counts of murder and one count of vandalism from that door you kicked down.
 * Badass: Many people throughout Albion's history, but those who bear the blood of the Archons are pretty much born to badassery.
 * Battle Trophy: You get a trophy for each boss you kill. You can hang them on the walls in your house.
 * Betting Minigame: Several in fact.
 * Black and White Morality: One of the game's most distinctive features is its morality system, whereby any issue the player decides the outcome of involves either mawkish virtue or extravagant malevolence with no middle ground. This is especially Egregious around more complicated issues such as ones involving prohibition.
 * Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: "Do you like cheese? Me, I love a bit of cheese. Cheesy, cheesy cheese." "The Badgers are stealing the cheese."
 * Butch Lesbian: One of the many many ways to shape your female character.
 * Camera Screw: The camera tends to whip around to look at whatever the game thinks you should be looking at.
 * Camp Gay: You can make your character this in Fable II and III if you so desire.
 * Camp Straight: Your character can be created to be this.
 * Charged Attack: Ranged attacks in the first game and melee flourishes in the second game can be held indefinitely, allowing the player to theoretically charge for minutes and then release a massively powerful attack. Ranged attacks in the second game, some spells in the first game, and all spells in the second game can be held for a finitely more powerful attack. Also, to a lesser extent, flourishes in the second game. All magic and flourishes with both weapons in the third game.
 * In Fable III, you can kill any creature quickly if you manage a charged melee attack, then quickly finish it by stabbing it (or crushing its head) while knocked to the ground.
 * City Guards: And then some. Arguably one of the most famous examples.
 * Clown Car Grave:
 * Lychfield Cemetery.
 * Don't forget Bowerstone Cemetery.
 * The Tomb of Heroes
 * Shelly Crypt.
 * Basically anywhere that in anyway some people could conceivably have died in, in Fable III.
 * Justified with wisps in the second game. A wisp takes up far less space than an actual Hollow Man.
 * Collection Sidequest: Silver Keys, Hero Dolls...Saving islands from blizzards...Killing 50 odd hobbes...bandit slaughtering in its various forms....
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus Satan: Skorm.
 * Also Avo, who would be God. Subverted in that according to the Oracle, both were made up by a trader who happened to find the locations rich with light and dark Will. However, that doesn't explain the deep voices that echo in the temple...
 * Dating Sim: More present in the second game than the first. In the first all you can do is perform expressions, give gifts, and be generally attractive to make a person fall for you, and once you're married your wife will stay with you unless you go out of your way to abuse her regularly. In the second, one trait an NPC can have is a favorite place, and taking them there will make them more receptive to romance. There's even an achievement for taking someone on the perfect date. Also, in the second game wives have various demands that must be met or else their happiness goes down and you might come home to news that your family's leaving you. As mentioned above under Altar the Speed, in both games if you're very famous and/or very good looking, you can (somewhat realistically) walk through town and find yourself surrounded by women you haven't met begging to marry you.
 * Done much more realistically in III, you actually have to be friends first, and do some nice things, as well as hug them, tickle them, etc.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: In the first game you could carry several resurrection phials, but if you ran out you were sent back to your most recent save. In Fable 2, the developers consciously removed "death" from the game, both because they decided there was no good way to implement it (simply going back to a checkpoint isn't fun, and any significant negative consequences caused testers to turn off their X-boxes before the autosave to avoid them) and because they realized the game was supposed to be the epic tale of a famous hero, and in any other medium you'd never expect him to be killed by some random bandit. So in the second game, when your health drops to zero you simply fall to the ground momentarily, receive a scar, and lose any experience still on the ground. Ditto with 3, but if you're even mildly proficient with any kind of combat ability, you will be fine.
 * Degraded Boss: The Commandant. Inadvertently, as you meet Commandants whilst protecting Garth as he's doing his ritual, and a fair few more show up in Fable III.
 * After Saker is defeated in Fable 3, a few hours later clones of him with enhanced Will Powers start showing up with his mercenary goons, with no explanation whatsoever. This after he personally pledges that they won't meddle in your affairs again, and since you've ruined his base of operations.
 * To be fair to Sakers promise; you can freely enter, hang out, and even make friends with the mercs in his camp if you spare him. The ones outside may be attacking you due to being away from the boss, or even a separate faction of mercenaries that the developers were too lazy or unable to give proper backstory to.
 * Dem Bones: Hollow Men.
 * Depraved Bisexual: Reaver is a straight up (ha) one. The player character can be one too, if they want.
 * Developer's Room: The headstones in the graveyard are mostly developer injokes.
 * Disposable Sex Worker: Hire a prostitute in Fable II and III, have sex with him or her, and then kill them if you wish.
 * Don't Try This At Home: In Real Life unprotected sex is much safer than using a condom your dog dug up in the woods or a back alley.
 * The Dreaded: Any sufficiently famous and evil hero will have this effect on townsfolk, except for those with the "brave" trait in II. Some may even run on sight. Enemies remain unaffected though. Which sucks, you'd think they would have learned.
 * Dronejam: As if the escort missions weren't annoying enough to start with.
 * Escort Mission: The first game has some awful examples. Significantly easier in the sequel, as the escorts are now either affected by Gameplay Ally Immortality or their survival isn't actually required. One quest even gives you the option of looting your escort's Nice Hat off his body and wearing it to trick the quest giver into thinking you're him.
 * It's bad again in the third game. Important NPCs are invincible, but to go on a date with a regular NPC you have to take them somewhere they choose. Date locations can include places on the other side of Albion that you need to go through two caves to reach. And the regular NPCs are not invincible and defensless.
 * Everything's Better with Chickens: There's chickens all over the place in the games. The later games also include a "chicken" action and a chicken costume.
 * Evil Pays Better:
 * Several missions in the first two games have good and evil variants, and generally the evil ones pay more, though sometimes the evil option is just to have an evil option.
 * In the first game, you can only buy property once the owner is dead, meaning you can massacre a town and then get rich buying and renting out the empty houses.
 * The second game subverts this in that while killing someone will drop the price of their property, getting the owner to like you will have the same if not a greater effect. The second and third play it straight, though, with the option to be bad and hike up rent prices or be good and lower them.
 * This essentially becomes the plot of Fable 3 after . You can either screw your allies over and make loads of gold, or give everyone what they want and plunge the kingdom's treasury into negative numbers.
 * Facial Markings: Toned down from the blue veins in the first two Fable games, using magic in Fable III will eventually cause you to get the equivalent of ornate tattoos around your eyes.
 * It's actually just whichever tattoos you're wearing, they begin to glow once you reach a certain level of magic.
 * No it's not. While having a high magic skill will make your existing tattoos glow blue if you're good or red if you're evil, if you look closely you will have very faint light colored markings around your eyes as well.
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Played with, with Samarkand; It's obviously got Asian characteristics, since it is the source of katanas in the game world. However, it's also Garth's homeland - and he's black.
 * Aurora in Fable III is a distinctly Arab city.
 * Albion in the original Fable seems to very typically parallel Great Britain during the High Middle Ages. Five centuries later in Fable 2 and 3, it is heavily based on Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a lot of Steampunk tossed in.
 * Fantasy Gun Control: Averted as guns are one of the new invention that appeared in the time between the first game and second game. Albion has a lot of dedicated alchemists who are always busy making new discoveries. The use of Will seems to have dramatically declined since the first game as guns have made magic much less impressive as a weapon and were crucial in the destruction of the Guild. In Fable 2 few practice magic with the exception of the Hero, a few key NPCs and hobbes (who seem to have their own kind of nature driven magic).
 * Fast Forward Mechanic: Eating the Golden Carrot and the Moonfish will move the game time forward to morning and evening respectively.
 * Fertile Feet
 * Fighter, Mage, Thief: Known in the game as Strength, Will and Skill respectively. Or you can just combine all three into you.
 * Though the Thief also doubles as an Archer in the first game, and Gunner in the second and third.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning: Averted in the first two games, which had Fire and Lightning spells, but no Ice. The third game finally adds an Ice spell.
 * Gay Option: All three games allow the main character to marry people of the same sex, though the first game doesn't provide the same benefits for a gay marriage as it does for a straight one.
 * Also true of the second game. You can't have any children (or, in a lesbian marriage, protected sex) in a gay marriage. Unless you find a certain potion...see below.
 * The simplified communication system in Fable 3 makes this almost mandatory when trying to haggle with a shopkeeper or convincing someone to like you. Friendly gestures? No, you either passionately dance together or you fart on their head.
 * To be fair however, the protection is condoms. Not really that applicable for a lesbian couple.
 * Fable 3 has the ability to adopt a child, so it is possible for gay couples to finally have kids.
 * : The Potion of Highly Surprising Transformation.
 * And in the Video Game/Fable 3 downloadable content, if you are playing as a woman then
 * Gentle Giant: Possibly a Hero from Fable 2 and 3. In 3 you are always larger than 95% of the populace. In fact, people of the same height as the player actually shrink when interacting with them including other heroes (players) visiting your world!
 * Hammerspace: Ranged weapons tend to disappear when sheathed (Fable 1 & pistols in 2). More of a glitch really, in Fable 2 sometimes you can see the pistol strapped to your chest, but VERY rarely.
 * Fable III averts this. You either strap the rifle to your back or put your pistol in a side holster.
 * You can also see your melee weapon being sheathed.
 * Heroic Mime: In the second game the player character has no dialogue but interacts with others using gestures. The first game has a few words, although it more or less follows this trope as well. In the third game, the hero finally speaks, but still lets most of the other characters do all the talking 95% of the time.
 * Heroic Willpower: This is literally the explanation for how Death Is a Slap on The Wrist for you in Fable 2 - after you run out of health, you are knocked out, then you get up again with health replenished and enemies knocked back. Ditto with Fable III, but it probably helps that you're the strongest living conduit for magic remaining in the world.
 * Homage: Possibly...let's see there's an Artifact of Doom, and it can only be destroyed for good by throwing it into a volcano.
 * The Understone district is an underground city sealed off from the surface by a gear-shaped door, ruled over by a man who keeps the citizens in line with warnings about mutants on the surface.
 * I Am a Humanitarian:
 * Hobbes.
 * Hobbes.

"Hatch: That hobbe is dead. He is deceased. He has shuffled off this mortal coil!"
 * If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten: Shows up at least once in each game.
 * Immortality: The descendants of Black and the lineage of the Archons are Type II immortals bolstered by exceptional strength, ability and cunning.  Scythe is a Type IV, implied to have lost his soul and thus is incapable of true death.
 * Infant Immortality: While children can die in terms of the plot, sometimes even on-screen, the player character in both Fable and Fable II can't kill children. This is likely due to it being developed in Great Britain, where it's illegal to sell a game that allows killing children.
 * Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Another of the game's major criticisms. You can, however, hop over them in Fable II and III.
 * Interface Screw: It is possible to get quite inebriated in Fable's pubs, causing temporary visual distortion and sluggish control, vomiting makes it better though.
 * You know you're in serious trouble when this occurs in Fable III.' Even your Sanctuary, (essentially, the pause screen you can walk around inside of) is not immune to the forces of The Corruption! Ewwww....
 * Karma Meter: Fairly bizarrely ranked, too.
 * Fable II also has Purity and Corruption, which represent how well you take care of your body and how people perceive you. These change depending on things such as whether you drink alcohol, give money to the poor or how much you charge people for renting your houses.
 * Katanas Are Just Better: Averted. Katanas are decent weapons, but there are better ones. They are, however, better than their Longsword equivalents. The most powerful legendary melee weapon is a katana. If you want to blaze through combat, katanas can end fight in less than a minute.
 * Kick the Dog: The Hero can do a few of these. But there's also a literal example of this, too. And Reaver does it all the time.
 * This trope was nearly quoted every time the developers discussed the dog in interviews. One of his main purposes is as an easy way to introduce a character - if someone shows up and kicks your dog you know they're a bastard, if they pet your dog you know they're friendly.
 * Lipstick Lesbian: You can create your female character to be like this in Fable II and III.
 * Living Legend: The Hero of each game will become this by the end of his/her story.
 * Match Maker Quest
 * Medieval Stasis: Brutally averted. As time passes (between games, anyway), Albion transforms from Stock European Fantasy to an Industrial nation in the cusp of revolution.
 * The Minion Master: With the Raise Dead spell.
 * More Criminals Than Targets: There seems to be an endless supply of bandits and other troublemakers to deal with.
 * The Musketeer: The second and third games' main characters.
 * My Species Doth Protest Too Much: There's a story that tells of a Hobbe living in a town and becoming the Village Idiot. Once he spoke, everyone knew what he was and killed him. Ouch.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: You, if you choose certain titles.
 * "Crap it's Nobhead! Ahhh!!!"
 * Sybil Malificent?
 * No Name Given: Though Fanon uses the name Sparrow (a childhood name used by Rose and Theresa) for the Fable II protagonist. In Fable III even in subtitles you are simply named by your title, and you only have three: Prince/Princess, Hero and King/Queen. The previous Hero is referred to as the Hero King or Hero Queen or simply a variant of "the last Hero".
 * Non-Lethal KO: The second and third games. You can't die. If you run out of health and don't have any resurrection phials, you get a scar and lose any uncollected experience, or in the case of the third game, you just lose any experience to the next guild seal, be you five or ninety-five percent of the way there.
 * Only Six Faces
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Balverines totally count. They're smack dab in "Call a Rabbit a Smeerp" territory.
 * Our Zombies Are Different: They're called "Hollow Men"; they're corpses that have been possessed by restless, angry spirits called "Wisps" (which basically look like little blue balls of light), and all of the ones we see are just skeletons.
 * Actually, we do see one that really is "zombie like" in Fable 3 - during "The Hollow Legion" quest, we are briefly told that a soldier named Lieutenant Simmons was killed the night before the player arrived. During the battle with the legion of Hollow Men, a rogue wisp flies into Simmons' grave and possesses his partially rotten corpse. Squick.
 * Pet Interface: Your dog in Fable 2 and 3.
 * Playable Epilogue
 * Precursors: The Old Kingdom, which left behind a variety of ruins and Artifacts Of Doom, most notably the Sword of Aeons and the Spire.
 * Queer Romance: An option throughout the series.
 * Religion of Evil: Temple of Skorm in the first game, Temple of Shadows in the second, Dark Sanctum in the third.
 * Rewarding Vandalism: Zigzagged across the series, with barrels in Fable 1 revealing humble loot upon smashing, but their descendants in Fable 2 and 3 exuding no such treasures.
 * Rule of Fun: Despite all of their flaws, the games can be genuinely entertaining.
 * Saintly Church:
 * The Cult of Avo in Fable I.
 * The Temple of Light in Fable II.
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Guards will force you to either pay a fine or do community service as punishment for your crimes. A player who has aquired a significant amount of the businesses in the game will have so much income that these fines become very trivial.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: Also, all three games change the character's appearance in part based on their combat style (using their stats in the first two, and their actions in the third), causing people who are going for a certain look to deliberately not use the character's full power, such as ignoring melee to avoid building muscle.
 * Series Mascot: Chickens.
 * Shop Keeper: They are everywhere in the series, they can even be killed if you wish.
 * Shoplift and Die: In the original Fable, you can get away with various crimes if you're not seen, but if you're caught in the act you'll be attacked by the guards. Once your guile level is high enough, you can attempt to steal items from shops. Getting caught sets the guards on you. This almost counts as a Useless Useful Skill: by the time you're leveled high enough, the stuff you can steal usually isn't worth the effort.
 * Fable 2 revamped the stealing skill: now, anyone can steal from anything at any time. All you have to do is hold A, which causes an "eye" meter to appear. If the eye is closed, no one can see you and you're safe from reprisal. If the eye meter is open, you can stop stealing and no one seems to care that you had your hand in the cash register but didn't take anything. Of course, there's a rare (but significant) bug where, if you steal something when no one can see you, then hang around that area long enough for the house owner or shopkeeper to notice that the item is missing, then everyone knows it was you.
 * Stealing in the original Fable was a great way to make a ton of cash early in the game. Head over to the weapon smiths, get him to follow you, get him drunk, leave him alone, go back and steal all the augments laying around, sell them back to him or to someone else and make tens of thousands of gold for a few minutes of work.
 * Let's not forget that if you got caught stealing(or trespassing, etc.) then when the guards come to attack you, you could simply say "Sorry." if you were generally a nice guy. They simply let you go.
 * Shout-Out:
 * Fable 2 endings are "The Needs of the Many", "The Needs of the Few", and "The Needs of the One".
 * Listen to the children as they play in Fable 2 and if you know your video games you'll be able to pick out shout outs to The Legend of Zelda, Bioshock, The Elder Scrolls and many others. There's even a Planescape: Torment joke in there.
 * Speaking of Bioshock shout-outs, Lucien at one point asks of the player, "Would you kindly step into the circle?" May also be a Lampshade Hanging to the fact that there's no way to continue in the plot without doing this, even when you the player know what's going to happen because of it.
 * Another shout out - an Achievement in Fable II is called The Black Knight, where you kill a hollow man in a specific and brutal way, where you shoot out their weapon, shoot off his head, and then finish him off. Without the right knowledge, this still makes sense since a black knight is usually brutal and not known for chivalry. But others may notice that the achievement description after you get it ends with: "Turns out it wasn't a flesh wound."
 * There's also the guards in the first Fable, who will shout out "Its just a flesh wound!" when they're running low on HP.
 * In Fable 2, a minor NPC who gives several quests is named Giles. He has a son named Rupert. The first quest he gives you has you killing a bandit named Ripper. And his wife was named Jenny.
 * The Tombstones in Bowerstone Cemetery make references to Pirates of the Caribbean.
 * A store in Bloodstone and a house in Old Town both are called the "Dark Mark", a likely reference to the Harry Potter series.
 * Also Max and Sam Spade, who get into a scrape in the cemetery in Fable II. In Fable III you have to get Sam and Max home in time for tea. There's even an Achievement for it.
 * Really? Hal's sword? Hal's rifle? Hal's armor? REALLY?
 * The archaeologist who offers you some quests in Fable 2 is named Belle Rennock; shift some syllables around and this could easily be a reference to Rene Belloq, the evil archaeologist from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
 * "You're too slow!"
 * In Fable III, one of the quests inside a pen-and-paper RPG, you are told to get "Skymetal" to make a +5, er, +3 sword. (It's too early in the session for that high level a sword.)
 * The RPGers are named Ben and Jim.
 * From Reaver's challenge:


 * Fable III: One Achievement is "If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It"
 * And another one- "We need guns, lots of guns"
 * One of the clothing options in Fable III is a rather... "Sharp-looking" green military uniform.
 * Several shout outs to Shaun of the Dead can be found when you meet Major Swift and Ben Finn. One obvious one is that they are defending themselves from waves of undead hollow men when you get there.
 * A tombstone in the Mercenary camp contains the inscription.: Tried to hold his breath for ten minutes.
 * Another tombstone in Mourningwood reads "It's dangerous to go alone, take this." Digging up the grave reveals a toy sword.
 * Tons of Shout Outs to Bullfrog/Lionhead employees on cemetary graves, usually with an Incredibly Lame Pun (Sam Van Tilburgh died of "diary-ea" - he also worked on Black and White.)
 * Speaking of Shout Outs and the Mourningwood Cemetary: "In loving memory of Arnold. He won't be back.
 * In Fable III, there's a man whose life's work is to insult everyone in Albion. It's implied that he does it in alphabetical order too.
 * H.P. Lovecraft: The Normanomicon.
 * And a subtle one: Miska's Tonics.
 * Lute Hero, one of the minigames in 3.
 * In the Brightwall quest where you round up the chickens, after getting the chickens to follow you they cluck the ending credits tune from Robot Chicken.
 * Hobson, a Servile Snarker for a rich guy in Fable III.
 * If you wear the Mercenary Beard in Fable III, Jasper will sometimes remark, "That beard should be a real boon if you're seeking a job in the technology sector."
 * In Fable III, one of the cells in Ferret's Bowerstone Market hideout contains a hobb worshiping a box with a pink heart on each side.
 * There's also a white cake in a table near the cell.
 * Stealth Pun: Hobbes are nasty, brutish, and short.
 * In case you missed it, this is probably a reference to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".
 * In a Genius Bonus vein, about Thomas Hobbes,.
 * Mourningwood.
 * Steampunk: Very prevalent in the second and third games.
 * Straight Gay: Another possible way to play your character.
 * Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom
 * Sword and Gun: Essentially mandatory in the third game, even more-so that it's predecessor.
 * Time Skip: Of 500 years between I and II. III is set only fifty years after II.
 * To a lesser extent, there's one at the beginning of both games, both about 10 years or so, plus a second 10 year skip in Fable II, when you go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth.
 * Training Dummy: The tutorial dummies.
 * Transvestite: Some of the prostitutes in Fable II and III.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Chicken Kickin'!
 * The game makes you care about your family, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a player from starting a vicious cycle of domestic violence.
 * There is even less stopping you from sacrificing your wife in Fable 2. You gain 100 good points and some renown for marrying her, 50 good points for having a child and only 100 evil points for sacrificing her. A net gain of 50 good points and some renown for marrying and killing random women (in fable 1 though it can be a very efficent source of money and renown).
 * Play some mind games with multiple wive/husbands,mostly to be a Jerkass. Just gather them together for some time alone and watch what goes down from. Always a laugh for an evil character.
 * Those are all only scratching the surface of what's possible. You can walk into a town and massacre everyone with your powers, ruin the economy by jacking up everyone's rent, sell people into slavery, curse a young girl to be turned into an old crone...there are some sick possibilities in Fable.
 * Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted. You getting stronger invariably means random Mooks will too, although you still get stronger at a far quicker rate than they do.
 * Volcanic Veins
 * Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Or on your underpants.
 * Writer on Board: Killing your wife gets you 60 evil points. Divorcing her gets you 600.
 * Of course, usually if your wife asks for a divorce, you've been a real physically abusive Jerkass up to that point.
 * Or if you don't regularly visit him/her.
 * The game glitches with this, where you have to visit your spouse every 20 MINUTES or else she divorces you (unless you own the entire town and put the rent down by 25%, making the ENTIRE TOWN absolutely go apeshit over you)
 * And a vegetarian diet lets you max out Purity points...
 * Unless you eat Crunchy Chicks, which are live baby chickens.
 * And delicious.
 * It's also a bit of a Sesame Street food lesson, as healthier food tends to give you positive purity (and in the case of tofu, morality) to reflect your self-discipline. Meat, as in many real philosophies, is considered an indulgence.
 * There's also anthropological evidence that eating meat was a luxury provided by our already increased cognitive function.
 * The loading screens mention that you gain purity from eating vegetables, because unlike meat, no animals were harmed to make your dinner.
 * You Have Researched Breathing: You must find expression manuals in the world if you want to learn to do seemingly basic things like laughing, raising your middle finger, or plenty of other basics.