City of Heroes/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Trivia about City of Heroes includes:

  • Ascendant Ascended Meme:
    • Ascendant, a player character hero from early in the game's history who would stand around roleplaying telephone calls to his agent (among others), became enshrined in NPC dialog; occasionally upon getting near a civilian with a cell phone you can hear them say something along the lines of, "Ascendant? Sorry, you have the wrong number."
    • The "Kill Skuls" badge, which was based off an amalgamation of two separate forum stories about bad Pick Up Group experiences: one who would recruit people only to say "Go. Hunt." over and over again, and one who would recruit people only to say "kill skuls" over and over again.
    • "It's always a Nemesis plot" made its ascent with the introduction of Tips: one Hero/Vigilante tip mission in the 30-40 range reveals the existence of a forum based entirely around making "everything is a Nemesis plot" jokes.
    • The "Strong and Pretty" badge was based off a forum post which sang the praises of a War Mace/Energy Aura Brute. With MS Paint illustrations. The Brute in question was "both strong AND pretty!"
    • An odd case of Meme-turned-extra: During the Closed Beta of City of Villains, A player on the Beta feedback message boards had posted confusion as to why your character didn't jump from gang to gang, using the already established villain gangs set up in City of Heroes. This troper had to point out to them that a lot of groups (Freakshow, Devouring Earth, etc.,) would be impossible to quit, and posted a few comical stories about a made-up incompetent trying to quit each different gang in City of Heroes/Villains with comedic results. More people followed suit, and eventually the "quitter" was given the nickname "Jenkins", and it stuck. (Which is possibly a World of Warcraft reference, or an incredible coincidence.) Jenkins quickly became popular on the Beta boards as a sort of meme, rather than an actual extra. Later, the programmer behind the character Black Scorpion posted that he had just read the thread and found it to be hilarious. The very next update to the Beta had added "Jenkins", an Arachnos incompetent, to the opening tutorial, whom the villain PC has to save him in order to escape from prison.
  • Development Gag: A long history of them.
    • Just one example. A long-standing bug was that, if the game couldn't find the proper model to display for a hostage, it would use the first model on the list—a 5th Column Mek Man. Fast forward several issues to two 5th Column Mooks discussing whether disguising robots in hard light holograms will work. And in an example of Cosmic Irony, said dialogue happened in the issue which broke that bug (now instead of a Mek Man there is another model, a 5th Column leader).
  • Did Not Do the Research: Rhode Island couldn't hold a metropolis, unless the whole state was one city. But honestly, do you really care?
  • Do Not Go Gentle: The player base's response to the NCSoft's shutdown announcement in August 2012. It ranged from protest rallies in-game to letter-writing campaigns to media action to fund-raising drives to finance the purchase of the game from NCSoft. When it became clear that regardless of everything NCSoft intended to bury the game where no one would ever find it again, the response transitioned into a continuous vigil in the Atlas Park zone. Hundreds of players on all the servers set their heroes standing under the statue of Atlas holding torches, forcing the game to spawn a hitherto-unseen number of zone instances to hold them all. The vigils remained in place all the way to the moment the servers were powered down.
    • The very last message transmitted on a chat channel on at least one of the servers was a "looking for team" request.
    • And of course then there was the resurrection of the game in 2019.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: "DOOOOOOOOOOOM!!" is actually a catchphrase used among the community to poke fun at the rioting that ensues whenever a major announcement is made..
    • Sadly, the last time they were right.
  • Fan Nickname: When the Council were first introduced, they were known by many as "Sazis" or "Spazis" (for "Space Nazis"). Seems to have died out, though some still call the masked Galaxy soldiers "luchadores".
    • Rommy and the Fuzzies, for Romulus Augustus and his three Nictus, who look like floating balls of purple-black smoke.
    • Boobcat for the Praetoria revamp of Bobcat's costume.
    • Hami-O's for Hamidon Origin Enhancements.
    • Quite a few signature characters have shortened versions for ease of use: States, Posi, BABs, Manti, GW, Scorp, and DocQ.
    • Flambimbeaux.
    • The new tutorial level for Going Rogue has been referred to as the "Praetorial".
    • The underground city of Orangebagel.
    • Certain terms for players who play "hybrid" characters, like "scranker" for a player who plays a tank but acts like a scrapper, or vice-versa. More here.
  • I Got a Rock: A Shout-Out during the Halloween events is that one of the "treats" you can get is a rock. Description: "You got a rock". Deals minor damage, and is prized by some for Cherry Tapping.
  • Preorder Bonus: City of Villains offered special Arachnos-themed costume pieces to those who preordered the game. Going Rogue offered early access to two of its new power sets.
  • Product Placement: The "Optional In-Game Advertising" for a while advertised Nike and T-Mobile products.
    • Strangely, despite all the kerfuffle about its addition to the game, actual ads not only weren't all that common, but actually seemed to disappear entirely in the last couple years before the shutdown.
  • Real Place Allusion: Averted. Paragon City may be in Rhode Island, but it doesn't correspond to any actual city or town in the state. (In fact, the latitude and longitude canonically given for it place it in the middle of an undeveloped swamp in the real world.)
  • Running Gag: In the mission to rescue Dr. Stephen Fayte (who is, we are told, often mistaken for a famous sorcerer), everyone described him with exactly the same phrase: "a gifted surgeon, and nothing more." Sometimes a half-dozen times in a row:

Attacker 1: We were wrong! He's just a gifted surgeon, and nothing more!
Dr. Stephen Fayte: Truly, I am merely a gifted surgeon, and nothing more.
Attacker 2: You fool! He's merely a gifted surgeon, and nothing more!
Attacker 1: We must attack the hero and completely ignore Dr. Stephen Fayte!
Dr. Stephen Fayte: Ah. Well, I'll just let you handle this.
Attacker 2: Yes, as he is merely a surgeon and nothing more, he is no threat to us.

  • Shout-Out: Hundreds. Just a small sampling...

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit!"

    • Additionally, one of the pieces of salvage you can gather for crafting invention origin enhancements, the Conspiratorial Evidence, reads: "Who knew that the simple aglet's true purpose was so sinister?"
    • And of course, The Inanimate Carbon Rod, another piece of invention salvage. Its description simply reads: "In Rod we trust".
    • The Ouroboros contact who sells inspirations is Mender Roebuck (as in "Sears, Roebuck & Co.")
    • The NPC who built and runs the monkey fight in Pocket D is Joe Young.
    • The descriptive text for the "Fervent" Veteran's badge (42 months) is "Forty-two. Could you be the answer to everything?"
    • One of the possible passwords to give the Latin Student in Steel Canyon to gain access to the Midnighter Club is Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati (alas, the response text doesn't continue the Shout-Out).
    • Dr. Forrester is a contact in Grandville. An NPC in a mission for the "Television" contact is named Dr. Big McLargeHuge.
    • Little Bill didn't deserve to die, not that deserving's got anything to do with it...
    • The mission to rescue Dr. Frank N. Scott, who is being forced to reveal a ritual that might cause a time warp, a ritual which starts with a jump to the left... and then a step to the right.
    • Another mission to recover the Overation Oscillithruster.
    • Let us not forget Dr. Stephen Fayte, who is merely a gifted surgeon, nothing more.
    • Every (non-hazard/trial) zone has a police contact who is a shout out to a TV show, ranging from Fish to Miami Vice to Due South, or to a movie, ranging from Bullitt to Blade Runner to RoboCop.
    • The little snatch of dialog heard from a police drone as you pass them is straight from a Season 1 Justice League cartoon.
    • The "glowie sound" emitted by inanimate mission objectives is from an episode of the 1970s science fiction show Space: 1999.
    • The hastily scrawled note you are required to read as the first mission of the Villain invention tutorial concludes with first a grocery list, and then the line "Jenny (555) 867-5409 Call her!"
    • In one Grandville mission for the villains, you are sent to deal with a Malta cell whose commanders are at odds with each other and are convinced that both are out to get each other. The two in question are Commanders Grimm and Weir.
    • The zone "Monster Island" features an Exploration badge titled "Rikti Monkey Island". To drive the reference home, the description text for the badge begins with "There is a secret to this island of monkeys...". Continuing the theme, a nearby Exploration badge is named "Grim Fandango", the location of and description text for which is heavily bone-themed.
    • Some of the most dangerous, 41-50 enemy groups include: Psychic Aliens with a Collective mental network who use pylons to power their technology, a bunch of creatures mutated by a collectively sentient microscopic organism and a bunch of highly skilled normals including a handful of extremely stealthy assassins.... so, basically: Protoss (Rikti), Zerg (Devouring Earth) and Terrans (Malta/Knives).
    • The choice of a shovel as an alternate form for both War Mace and War Axe may be a shout out to the Shoveler in Mystery Men.
    • One of the options you have to identify yourself to the security computer at the start of the first mission of Twinshot's initial arc is "My name is Inigo Mon--"
    • Doc Delilah, a green-haired academic with super strength, who is clearly a gender-flipped tribute to Marvel's Doc Sampson.
    • ...and literally hundreds more. Just try to list them all!
  • Stock Sound Effects: As of issue 17, a Wilhelm Scream will occasionally be emitted by defeated opponents.
  • Sturgeon's Law: In full effect with the Mission Architect. Even with the search options, it is a huge chore to actually find missions with actual stories instead of being just a farm or meant to be a challenge.
    • And then, predictably, 90% of those are... not very good.
      • When it comes to the Mission Architect, Sturgeon was a wild-eyed optimist.
  • Tuckerization: In addition to shout out locations such as Perez Park and Gaiman Woods, a particular example is the first superhero that players encountered in the old hero tutorial, Coyote.
  • Updated Rerelease: The 2019 return of the game. The version of the server distributed to the Net at large has a new zone that wasn't yet released when the game shut down (Kallisti Wharf), a new archetype (the Sentinel), expanded lists of power sets for various archetypes, new contacts and story arcs, the sixth part of "Who Will Die?", numerous bug fixes, and every possible costume part unlocked for all characters at creation. Players are also granted an unlimited number of toons.
  • Uncanceled: The Cathedral of Pain trial, which up until Issue 18/Going Rogue was hopelessly bugged and unfinished.
    • The game itself, as of April 2019.
  • What Could Have Been: Kallisti Wharf[1]. The Moon Base. The Battalion. The top-end Incarnate powers. "Who Will Die?", Part 6.[2]
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  1. ↑ Now available in the revived game.
  2. ↑ Also available in the revived game.
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