Johnny Maxwell Trilogy

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To look at him, you'd think that Johnny Maxwell is just an ordinary twelve-year-old. But weird stuff keeps happening to him. Of course, you could blame these Trying Times -- his parents are in the middle of an acrimonious divorce -- but really, the kinds of things we're talking about aren't part of a normal kid's routine. I mean, what would you do if...

...the aliens in your favorite video game surrendered instead of shooting back? At first, Johnny and his friends think it's part of the programming. But this scenario isn't in the manual. Then Johnny starts having incredibly lifelike dreams -- where he's at the controls of a starfighter, and the alien fleet, hanging in space before him, is waiting for him to lead them safely home. As hard as it was trying to save Mankind from the Galactic Hordes, it's even harder trying to save the Galactic Hordes from Mankind. But hey, it's only a game, isn't it?

...Or if you started seeing the dead -- just as their cemetery was about to be demolished? Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). But Johnny can, and he's got bad news for them: the town council wants to sell the cemetery and put up an office complex. But the dead have learned a thing or two from Johnny, and they're not going to take it lying down, especially since tomorrow is Halloween...

...And what if your local bag lady turned out to be a time traveler? Johnny and his friends discover Mrs. Tachyon semi-conscious in an alley. It seems there's more to Mrs. Tachyon than a squeaky wire cart and a bunch of mysterious black bags. Somehow this wizened little woman holds the key to different times and different eras-including the Blitz of 1941. Suddenly now isn't the safe place Johnny thought it was as he finds himself bound up more and more with then...

The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy is a series of three books comprising Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb, written by Terry Pratchett. It concerns the adventures of Johnny Maxwell and his friends, Wobbler, Bigmac, Yo-less, and Kirsty, as they deal with whatever weird thing the Universe throws at them this week. Only You Can Save Mankind has been adapted for radio, the other two for TV (The Dead for ITV in 1995 and The Bomb for The BBC in 2006). There's also been a stage musical of Only You Can Save Mankind, with accompanying soundtrack CD.

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Johnny Maxwell Trilogy contains examples of the following tropes:

• Action Girl: Kirsty.
• Ace Pilot: Kirsty.
• The Ace: Kirsty (duh.)
• Air Vent Passageway: Johnny and the Captain in Only You Can Save Mankind. Subversion, the Captain complains about it being hard to navigate.
• Almost Famous Name: A running joke in Johnny and the Dead in regard to the local cemetery. For instance, Einstein is buried there -- not Albert Einstein the physicist, but Solomon Einstein the taxidermist.
• Badass Bookworm: Kirsty isn't just brainy -- she also knows karate.
• Bedsheet Ghost: A pink bedsheet. With flowers.

Wobbler: What are you, a gay ghost?

• Berserk Button: Try and call Kirsty "little lady". See what happens.
• Black and Nerdy: Yo-less
• Black Best Friend: Yo-less again.
• Blitz Evacuees: One of them turns out to be Wobbler's grandfather.
• Butterfly of Doom: Both played straight and subverted.
• Canon Welding: The shop from Truckers has been relocated to Blackbury.
• Changed My Jumper: Perhaps it would have been a better idea to keep it on.
• The Chosen One: Johnny. Pretty much by the process of elimination.
• City of Adventure: Blackbury.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Kirsty.
• Conversational Troping: If TV Tropes existed in the Johnnyverse, all five of the main characters would be regulars.
• Copy Protection: Utterly ineffective.
• Crazy Prepared: For a while Johnny kept a bucket of water in his room in case he spontaneously combusted.
• Cultural Rebel: Yo-Less
• Defensive Failure: That's what the Gunnery officer thought would happen.
• The Determinator: Kirsty, because anyone calling her plucky would live to regret it.
• Due to the Dead
• Easy Evangelism: Averted. Here is Johnny trying to teach Kirsty about nonviolent approaches:

Kirsty: Do you know, there was an African tribe once whose nearest word for 'enemy' was 'a friend we haven't met yet'? Johnny: Right. That's how... Kirsty: But they were all killed and eaten in eighteen hundred and two. Except for those who were sold as slaves. The last one died in Mississippi in eighteen sixty-four, and he was very upset.

• Embarrassing First Name: Kirsty doesn't like her name. Or any of the other names she comes up with.
• Expospeak Gag: The Captain's food order, which includes such delights as "pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose". Breakfast cereal.
• Extraverted Nerd: Yo-less.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Hero: Johnny
  • The Lancer: Kirsty
  • The Big Guy: Big Mac
  • The Smart Guy: Yo-less
  • The Chick: Wobbler (because Kirsty point-blank refuses to fill this role).
• Flat Earth Atheist: William Stickers.
• A Friend in Need
• Fruit Cart: Lampshaded.
• Fur and Loathing: Subverted. Kirsty was noted for calling on old ladies for wearing fur, but she puts on a fur coat as a disguise going back in time.
• The Game Come to Life: The plot of Only You Can Save Mankind.
• Genre Savvy: Continual references to movies make it clear the kids have some idea of what to expect.
• Get Back to the Future: Wobbler gets stranded in the forties by a Grandfather Paradox which the rest of the kids then have to repair.
• Ghost Amnesia: The living need to remember. The dead need to forget.
• Homeless Pigeon Person: Mrs. Tachyon and Guilty
• I Have Many Names: Kirsty can't seem to make up her mind on what names she likes.
• I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference: Yo-less' friends explain his presence to the Forties people in Johnny and the Bomb as him being a foreign prince -- "Prince Sega, all the way from Nintendo".
• Implacable Man: the Screewee Empire are genuinely fearful of the protagonist's ability to keep coming back every time they kill him.
• Insufferable Genius: Kirsty.
• Inventor of the Mundane: Wobbler is left in the past, unable to return to his time due to a paradox. While taking The Slow Path, he uses his knowledge of the present to "invent" fast food restaurants.
• It's for a Book: The universal "out" for getting grownups to let you do things: "I'm doing a project on it."
• I Wish It Were Real: Nobody made any wishes, but the aliens still gained some semblance of reality.
• Jive Turkey: Yo-less gets his nickname because he isn't one, and never says "yo".
• Kill Him Already: Johnny and the Gunnery Officer.
• Little Miss Badass: Kirsty.
• Magnetic Medium: Johnny.
• Malaproper: Often comes from Johnny's supporting cast.
• Medium Awareness: big part of Only You Can Save Mankind.
• Meaningful Name: Mrs. Tachyon. Tachyons are theoretical particles that appear to move faster than the speed of light; according to general relativity, they're actually moving slower than light, but backwards in time...
• The Men in Black: Referenced several times.
• Mr. Imagination: Johnny, to the point that his imaginations spills over into the real world.
• Murphy's Bullet: Of all the places to hit...
• Nerd: All four boys aren't even allowed to be nerds because they're not cool enough.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Johnny successfully avoided his past self. Very lucky for him and his lamp.
• The Nicknamer: Johnny is the "official nickname generator".
• Nigh Invulnerability: Johnny and his Thousand Extra Lives.
• The Nineties: The books were written and (Time Travel aside) set at this time.
• Noodle Incident: Johnny found the Loch Ness Monster in his goldfish pond, discovered a lost city behind Tescos and found a cave which may have had a wizard sleeping in it. We don't get told much more.
• No OSHA Compliance: The alien spaceships after Kirsty gets there become quite dirty.
• Not a Game
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: It seems in-between their adventures the heroes are quite bored for most of the time.
• The One Guy: Gunnery Officer.
• Oop North: Blackbury
• Opening Scroll: Parodied, and described as "the bit [the developers of the titular computer game] stole from Star Wars".
• Our Ghosts Are Different: And resent the term.
• Old School Dogfighting: Though the spaceships in Only You Can Save Mankind have a few missiles, most of the work has to be done by guns.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Bigmac, Wobbler, and Yo-less. Though we do eventually find out Wobbler and Bigmac's names.
• Or Was It a Dream?: It seems Johnny's adventures are taking place in between his own imagination and the real world. Although Kirsty and her pickled onion point towards the latter.
  • Word of God sums it up: "Is what happens in the books real? Yes. Does it all happen in Johnny's head? Yes."
• Painting the Fourth Wall: Kirsty can pronounce italics [and brackets].
• Patriotic Fervour: Bigmac in Only You Can Save Mankind, which is set during the First Gulf War. His attempts to inspire it among the other boys, especially Johnny, aren't successful.
• Police Are Useless: not only do they get in the way, but they fail to get in the way very successfully.
• Politically-Correct History: averted in a scene in which a shopkeeper in 1941 uses a racial insult to refer to Yo-less. He is about as impressed as you'd expect.
• Punny Name: William Stickers.
• Reality Warper: Johnny when in a state of extreme stress.
• Resigned to the Call: Johnny. As contrasted with Kirsty, who tends to Jump At The Call.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The plot of Johnny and the Dead comes straight from a contemporary scandal when Westminster Council sold three cemetaries for 5p each.
• Schrodinger's Butterfly: At one point in Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny briefly becomes uncertain whether he's a boy who's having recurring dreams about being a space pilot or a space pilot who's having recurring dreams about being a boy.
• Serious Business: The entire series revolves around Johnny taking a serious look at things other people dismiss as unimportant. Also, Kirsty takes everything seriously.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Captain trying to talk about Earth food. "Pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose" indeed. Breakfast cereal.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few: [1], [2], [3].
  • Sergeant Comely is very well known for having locked himself with his own handcuff and being part of the Blackbury Morris men.
  • Mrs. Tachyon would like you to know MILLENNIUM HAND AND SHRIMP!
• Shrouded in Myth
• Smart Guy: Kirsty. Yo-less sometimes fills in.
• Soapbox Sadie: Kirsty is a ruthlessly efficient version.
• Space Fighter: In Only You Can Save Mankind
• Space Is Noisy: Johnny finds out that space has a background noise, a low frequency hum. But since that part of the book may or may not take place in his dreams, it cannot be taken at face value. Maybe.
  • Wouldn't this be just the background hum of the gaming system instead?
• Stealth Pun: Johnny's sometime nickname, revealed in Only You Can Save Mankind, is "Rubber". For those unfamiliar with British slang, a "rubber johnny" is a condom.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In Johnny and the Dead, both Bigmac and the Dead come up with the idea that the telephone might have been invented by Sir Humphrey Telephone.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In Johnny and the Bomb, Wobbler is unconvinced by Bigmac's claim that he doesn't know a thing, especially not about burgers.
• Talkative Loon: Mrs. Tachyon.
• Talking in Your Dreams
• Tele Frag: It is theorized that occupying the same place as a solid object might be a very bad idea.
• The Tetris Effect: Johnny initially believes his starfighter dreams are merely an example of this.
• There Are No Therapists: Johnny is shocked to find this is the case after a street is bombed; the victims are offered a Spot of Tea and start picking up the rubble almost immediately.
• Time Travel:
  • Both For Want of a Nail and In Spite of a Nail.
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: After giving it some thought, they decide not to kill Hitler after all
  • I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference: Yo-less is Prince Sega all the way from Nintendo.
  • Newspaper Dating
  • Ontological Inertia: Present but not absolute.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: But only for Johnny and Kirsty
  • Rubber Band History: To a degree.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Present.
  • The Slow Path: Wobbler
  • Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: Averted.
  • Time Machine: A shopping trolley of all things.
  • Time Master: Johnny, but only for a little while.
  • Time Police: Referenced but averted.
  • Time Travelers Are Spies: Both Bigmac and Wobbler get mistaken for spies.
  • The Time Traveller's Dilemma: A brief concern soon forgotten.
  • Time Travel Tense Trouble
  • Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Wobbler opens a fast-food restaurant after being trapped in the past. Also whenever someone gives Mrs Tachyon a coin, she goes to whatever date is printed on it to spend it, getting the maximum value for money, e.g. if a 10p given in the '90s is dated 1961, it can be spent as 2 shillings or 24pence in 1961.
  • Unstuck in Time: Mrs. Tachyon's mind.
• Token Girl: Kirsty absolutely refuses to fit this trope, instead referring to the others as "four token boys".
• 2-D Space: Lampshaded when Kirsty doesn't fly like this.
• Urban Fantasy.
• Van in Black: One chases Johnny and Kirsty.
• Walking Techbane: Wobbler, half the time.
• Weirdness Censor: People find it difficult to notice anything amiss, even when it's staring them right in the face. Johnny's complete lack of one is a major factor in the books.
• Weirdness Magnet: Johnny.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Gunnery Captain is initially this, before turning Ax Crazy. Kirsty can sometimes get carried away as well.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Perhaps the entire point of Only You Can Save Mankind
• When All You Have Is a Hammer: An accusation leveled at Kirsty by Johnny.
• Win to Exit: More accurately, "Exit To Win". The 'Border' that the Screewee must cross is revealed to be a giant screen with the words "GAME OVER" on it.
• With Due Respect
• You Go, Girl!: Kirsty.
• You Fail Nuclear Physics Forever: Yo-less and his "fridge molecules". The former trope name is pretty much Kirsty's reaction to this.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: averted.
  • Though hinted at, in the Schrodinger's Butterfly scene.

The TV adaptations additionally contains examples of the following tropes:

• Accidental Kiss: Kirsty gets overexcited and kisses Johnny.
• Weenalized: In the Johnny and the Bomb Kirsty is sweet on Johnny, though the book never explicitly stated such a thing.
• Wet Sari Scene: Happens to Kirsty in Johnny And The Bomb. As if she wasn't upset enough about having to wear a frock.