My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character

My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character‎ -- also called "Watashi no apaato no kanrinin wa isekai kyara ja nai", or "KanriKyara" {かんりキャラ} for short -- is a shared-world crossover fan work, hosted on Bob Schroeck's "Drunkard's Walk" Forum but deliberately not linked to that story except by the occasional Shout-Out (until Toltiir showed up, at which point My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character became connected to the "Club Pluto" nexus of stories, which (as shown here) is connected to The Dance of Shiva, which is indirectly connected to Drunkard's Walk).

Thanks to a multi-cause multiversal snafu, people from various works of fiction are being deposited into "Refuge", a reality that would otherwise be a universe indistinguishable from Real Life beginning in late-2016. Trustworthy natives (including the self-insert characters of the writing circle who are outnumbered by Original Characters) are originally tasked with making sure these refugees – locally called "displacees" – have a place to live, but will end up taking on additional responsibilities ... especially when some displacees decide they don't like the arrangements in their new universe. Some will jump at the call to defend their new homes. Others will refuse it. Many will not be called at all. And they all have places in this world.

Much like the 1990s' Revenge Wars, the story is an inversion and deconstruction (to a greater or lesser extent) of the Trapped in Another World concept; instead of the original characters and self-insert characters being transported to another world, characters from other worlds are being transported to the original characters and self-insert characters, and real-world economics and law enforcement play at least a small part in the narrative. (However, My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character does not have the built-in animosity that the Revenge Wars characters had for the SIs.)

Writing of stories set in the shared-world began in 2016. For reasons that will not be discussed here, the setting was retconned in 2022-2025. This page primarily applies to the revised edition of the stories.

This page includes tropes and other information about story elements that as yet exist only in the authors' working notes (some of which have been mentioned on the forum, or are available on the work's semi-private wiki). WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware. Anything that hasn't happened yet in any of the published stories is marked as a spoiler, but not everything that is marked as a spoiler are things that haven't happened yet in any of the stories that were published either before or after the retcon.

You can read the published stories here; sort them by thread to put the list into reading order.

In early 2024, the writing team began posting the stories on Archive of Our Own.

Compare Planeocracy.

An incomplete list, subject to change:

This Mega Crossover fanfic specifically does not incorporate elements from the following works:

• Death Note
• Haruhi Suzumiya
• Master PC
• Twilight

Thanks to the presence of Toltiir in the setting, My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character is an unmapped part of the much larger metafictional continuum mapped out in this image (by way of the "Club Pluto" zone, which connects through to the also-unmapped The Bet).

0-E

• 555: The telephone number given for the Dublin residence in the first chapter of Hallowe'en in Another Reality is the Irish equivalent of a "555" number.
• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: The displacee ponies, compared to the equines native to Refuge. After seeing Derpy gesture to her own face at the 2016 Halloween party, Yomi considers Derpy's forelegs to be far more flexible than they have any right to be.
• An Aesop: The Sailor Moon dub's infamous "Sailor Says" segments are mocked by Hotaru in Everyone's a Critic.
• Alien Among Us: The displacees. Even the ones who aren't from space.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Played straight and played with. Hoping to find a displacee in New York City? Sorry, try New Jersey instead... at least until the Muppet Theater shows up or somebody actually sees John Munch or Napoleon Solo. London, England? No, Kent County, UK and Dublin, Ireland. Toronto? Try heading up the road to Ottawa. Detroit? You'll have to cross the river to Windsor. And the largest collection of AI displacees are nowhere near Silicon Valley, having ended up in Boston instead. However, some displacees did appear in Montreal and Los Angeles, including in the latter group one with an interest in cinematography.
• All Chinese People Know Kung Fu: Discussed during the Halloween story when some bullies assume Tomo Takino is Chinese and knows Kung Fu because she was carrying a wooden sword. Tomo only corrects them on the "Chinese" part while taking a kendo stance... which is enough to frighten them off.
• All There in the Manual: The project wiki has hundreds of pages with far more detailed information on everything in the setting than has yet had the chance to appear in published stories, and lays out how everything ties together and where things are going.
• Alternate Realm Boon:
  • Although many displacees already have their own special powers and talents, some of them acquire additional powerups on top of what they could already do. And all displacees also gain the ability to speak the dominant language of the area in which they arrived like a native.
  • Averted in the case of Konata Izumi, who's been expecting to get one just because she's been transferred to a different universe, but appears to be doomed to disappointment.
• Alternate Universe: In Skein of Fools, the unidentified Celestials discuss a collection (or "skein") of universes containing all the possible versions of Suzumiya Haruhi (and what to do with them).
• Apocalypse How: Salem is going for Universal/Physical Annihilation (what used to be called "Class X-4"), if she can't simply depose the gods and run things herself.
• Am I Right?:
  • Tomo punctuates a comment to Depy intended reassure her about her costume with this during the 2016 Halloween party.
  • Onsa uses this phrase to wrap up a tongue-in-cheek claim that ninja put money and their itinerary into Hayakawa's hotel room in the second chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Touring.
• Ascended Fanboy: The apartment managers were recruited through venues where fans of the various works were known or expected to congregate, and were selected in part for their familiarity with the works whose characters they would be playing host to. Played with in the case of the manager of the residence in Nova Scotia, which houses the cast of Ranma ½ -- he's rapidly growing to detest his tenants.
• Aside Glance: Pretty much guaranteed any time Ferris Bueller is part of a story and isn't actually narrating -- for instance, in Everyone's a Critic he winks at the readers when telling Cameron about an Internet theory that claims he is a figment of Cameron's imagination.
• Better Than a Bare Bulb: Played With, Invoked, and Played for Laughs, usually by Rob:

After a beat, he added, "And I just lampshaded that. All The Tropes has ruined my life."

"I'm not sure. But she's the Goddess of the Future, so she had to be have been foreshadowing something," replied Rob as he half-consciously adjusted the lampshade on one of the room's lights.

• Bait and Switch Comment: Accelerator reminds Sailor Jupiter of her sempai. The one who she dumped. Ryouga Hibiki also reminds her of her sempai -- "because he's clueless and walking away from me".
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Kazakiri Hyoga, to begin with. It comes as a surprise to her that other girls have anatomical features that she doesn't. Because of various circumstances, this doesn't last.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty: Committed in-universe by Minako Aino when she misquotes the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "The Bishop" by hailing Bishop (from Mrs. Pollifax) with "Crikey! It's the Bishop!"
• The Big Board: One is jury-rigged during The Big Raid.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Planted on Jaune Arc by Pyrrha Nikos after and because she watched her animated counterpart die at the end of V3 of RWBY.
• Bland-Name Product: Played with in chapter 2 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Touring, when the Okanoue Girls' High School Motorcycle Club drives past a McDonald's and Ritsu exclaims, "What's up with that WcDonald's across the street? The W is upside-down on their sign!"
• Blasé Boast: Played with during The Big Raid, when a troll blindsides Fate Testarossa and she doesn't fall down. Her comment sounds like a Blasé Boast, but it's merely a statement of fact.

"Was that supposed to hurt? My own mother used to hit me harder than that."

• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Ferris Bueller retains his awareness of and ability to talk to the audience, both in various stories and the project wiki.
• British Accents: In addition to those characters from works originating in the UK, Minako "Sailor Venus" Aino, in keeping with her backstory from Sailor V, already speaks English with an Estuary accent.
  • In chapter 1 of Vignettes, Minako and apartment manager Rob have fun playing with the other residents' heads by trading comments in RP and Scouse (Liverpudlian) dialects respectively.
• Butterfly of Doom: A literal one enticed Andy's Right-Hand-Cat Cujo into flipping a lever, activating a mad science invention.
• Calling Me a Logarithm: Played with, in that "troglodyte" was meant as an insult, but not to the person who asked what the word means.
• Cats Are Magic: Cat Síth, Luna, Artemis, Diana, Chiyo-chichi, President Aria, and Maya - from most to least magical. Schrödinger (Misaka 10032's cat), however, is just a cat. And somewhere off the scale on the high end is Toltiir.
• Caught the Heart on His Sleeve: A non-romantic example when ITEM first shows up in Ottawa and Rob volunteers to go meet them.
• A Chat with Satan: Both literally and playing the trope straight, in the epilogue to "Channeling Mana".
• Chick Magnet: Mamoru Chiba, who on his first day in Refuge attracted Ui Hirasawa, Azusa Nakano, Subaru Mikage, and Sora Hasegawa. Ui knew he was already taken (and confessed to being jealous of Sailor Moon); the others had to be told. During later parties, Usagi makes a point of spending all of her time with Mamoru.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Justified in-universe because of a geas placed on Rob Donaldson during Donaldson en Kazakiri:

Belldandy smiled. "Then I will give you the same tasks that Garm did. Rob, you must not sit by when a wrong is to be righted, when an innocent needs help, when injustice is ascending over justice. You must take action - and that action needs to be more than merely 'liking' a post on Facebook."

• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Skuld has a surname and can sing opera, both because of human belief (based on fanon and The Ring Cycle, respectively). She isn't happy about either state of affairs.
• Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Defied. When Ami Mizuno visits the displacees from Mahoromatic and everybody calls her Sailor Mercury despite her never using her codename, she finally realizes that she's a celebrity in the setting.
• Comically Missing the Point: Invoked during Some Uncomfortable Questions:

Bob: "<snrk> What are the odds that somebody is actually running some underwater residence south of Hawaii where Godzilla, Cthulhu, the aliens from Pacific Rim, Reptilicus and the Varga are all hanging out playing pinochle with cards the size of tennis courts? And when they get bored, that's when they show up in Venice?" Brent: "Don't worry guys, I'm a great pinochle player!"

• Composite Character: The version of Rally Vincent present in Refuge combines the appearance of the blonde Rally from Riding Bean with the voice and personality of the brunette Rally from Gunsmith Cats.
• Compulsory School Age: Played Straight and Averted, Depending on the Writer. Rob's stories have his characters place out of high school if they're smart enough; only half of these characters continued to university. On the other hand, Brent's stories have the youngest Undine forced to attend high school despite having been about to graduate in her own universe – at least it's only part-time. The younger girls from K-On! find themselves enrolled at Franklin High School literally within minutes of arriving at Douglass Gardens Apartments (and later, Ascot and Ryunosuke Natsume are enrolled in a nearby elementary school). And a secret no one suspected is revealed when the girls of Kickstand Cottage discover that one of their number is not required to attend the local high school.
• Cool Starship:
  • The IPS Valiant, built for Utena Tenjou by Washuu thanks to an impish request by Anthy.
• Crapsack Only by Comparison: Frenda's opinion of the living arrangements.

Frenda: Are you sure this is the right place? It basically looks like a dump - why would Railgun be living here? Shiage: It's hardly a dump, unless you compare it to either of the Tokiwadai dorms.

• Crossover Cosmology: The setting includes both the Norse Mythology and Ah! My Goddess versions of the Norse cosmology, alongside various spirits from Aztec and Native American Mythology, the three goddesses from Tenchi Muyo!, with guest appearances by gods from Classical Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, and Japanese Mythology. Plus several archangels from the In Nomine version of Christianity as well as someone who might be Christ as seen through the lens of some obscure Japanese folklore.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Rei Ayanami, of all people. It seems getting away from Tokyo-3 has done her personality a world of good.
  • The Misaka Sisters, once they start developing personalities.
• Defictionalization: In-universe: thanks to a playful request by Anthy Himemiya, Washuu eventually builds the IPS Valiant from The Symphony of the Sword for Utena Tenjou.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Once the Academy City main characters watch A Certain Magical Index in Everyone's a Critic:

Ruiko Saten: "I'm never going back to Academy City. Ever." Misaka 10032: "You said that already, Misaka Niiko points out." Ruiko Saten: "It's worth repeating. I'm never going back to Academy City."

• Don't Call Me "Sir"!:
  • "'Mr. Waters' is my father. Call me Harley." This seems to happen every time he's in a story.
  • At the Halloween party, Mihoshi tells Sakaki to call her by her first name instead of "Kuramitsu-san" because "I have a really big family, and it all gets really confusing after a while".
• Doorstopper: Firefox estimates in reader mode that it takes four hours, give or take a half hour, to read the introductory story. Most of the followup stories are much shorter.
• Doppelganger Crossover: Believed to have been averted in-universe:

"Remember that I showed everybody one episode of the anime that was made about you, and everyone complained about the voices being a little bit wrong?" "You said it was because we weren't in this universe, so they had to use voice actors instead."

• Discussed in Moving Days, Part II:

"The voice actresses did do a really good job of sounding like us," Mugi serenely noted. "But we're better at sounding like us than they are," Ritsu added.

• Discussed again in "Like Calls to Like" — the very first thing Chibiusa asks Manami Kasuga is "Why do you sound like Sailor Mars?"
• And then played with when Japanese seiyuu start visiting their characters.
• Further discussed in chapter 2 of Hallowe'en in Another Reality, when Atsuko Natsume admits to her new friends that her voice is sampled from Megumi Hayashibara's:

"Well, that makes sense, given she's your voice actress here," Jun said, nodding. Nao chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Now I'm wondering — do you have the voice you do because she's your seiyuu, or is she your seiyuu because you have similar voices?"

• Either-Or Title:
  • Hallowe'en in Another Reality, or A Mingling of Misplaced Souls
  • Donaldson en Kazakiri, or The Lay of the Heroes of the Blossom
  • In-Universe, one discussion area on the message boards set up for displacees is called "Alternate Histories, or, Why Is Refuge Different From My Home Universe?"
• Elaborate Underground Base: Played with by "Residence 51" in Colorado, which sits atop a half-completed underground base which seems to have been built in the 1980s by the US government or a military contractor, but was abandoned and apparently forgotten before it was finished.
• End of the World Special: Quoting from that trope's page: "Annoyingly enough, this has even carried on into Evangelion fanfics, where Third Impact basically means the writer can do WHATEVER THE FUCKING HELL THEY WANT, no and's, if's, or but's. Oddly, they all make more sense than whatever happened in the original, so maybe it's for the best." Thus, this is played straight in My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character with Shinji unknowingly considering a dozen other works while he remakes reality.
• Epistolary Story: Several stories, including Greetings from Minnesota and the framing structure to So You Just Arrived From a Parallel Universe, are presented in the form of discussion threads posted on a forum for displacees.
• Exact Words: When the undines of Aria ask to be sent to Venice, Sebastian smugly arranges their delivery to Venice, California rather than Venezia, Italy on the grounds that if they had wanted to go to the Italian city, they should have used its proper name. (They did come from Neo-Venezia in their home reality, after all.)
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: "Malleable causality" adjusts people's attitudes (and sometimes memories) toward strange people and things (the displacees) appearing in the setting ... until it's overloaded by too many strange people and things showing up at once.

F-J

• Familiar: Carried over from canon:
  • Sakura has Kero-chan and bishonen Yukito Tsukishiro, and all of her cards as familiars.
  • Fate has Alph/Arf as her familiar.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Invoked In-Universe when Bob casually mentions "The Outers" to Mamoru Chiba, then has to stop and explain the fan usage to him when he expresses confusion.
  • Skuld uses her fanon surname "Ravenhair" in the framing story around "So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe".
  • Nabiki Tendo comes across the term "Nerima Wrecking Crew" in her perusal of Ranma ½ fan works; it so amuses her -- and strikes her as being so entirely on-target -- that she begins using it herself to refer to her housemates.
• Fiction 500: Ciel Phantomhive has enough available cash to purchase, renovate, and furnish over fifty apartment buildings and complexes at the same time, at the beginning of the story.
• First-Name Basis: More because of a change in circumstances than a change in relationships, most of the displacees end up adopting Western interpersonal conventions rather quickly.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: Many displacees are of the "Traveling to another world whose culture is somehow similar to that in a different time period of their own" variety. People from worlds resembling both the past (Jack of Kinrowan, The Wild Wild West TV series, Sakura Taisen, etc.), wildly alternate near-presents (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and mutually-exclusive futures (Firefly, Aria, etc.) have appeared in the present-day setting.
  • Invoked in the in-universe forum thread wrapping the in-universe book So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe, when Artemus Gordon suggests the next edition have a section devoted to advice for the "timelost".
• Flat What: Bob Schroeck says one in Moving Days, Part II (and seen again from a different point of view in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Touring) when he discovers he's the person who's expected to explain what happened to the Okanoue Girls' High School Motorcycle Club.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The celestials and the entirety of Yggdrasil, in Donaldson en Kazakiri: "I expect everything that I sense you doing here is just an analogy that I can grasp." Skuld is happy that they don't need to explain this to their chosen hero.
• Fountain of Youth:
  • Rob Donaldson is rejuvenated to a physical age of 25 just before Academy City shows up.
  • Hayakawa seems to be experiencing a much more subtle youthening -- something he can certainly use, since although he's one serious tough survivor, he is in his 90s, after all.
• Fourth Wall Observer: Ferris Bueller is aware he's in a fanfic and communicates directly with the readers (and sometimes the authors) any time he appears "on screen".
• Fuku Fic: Defied in "Fuku'ing With His Head", where Usagi nearly loses any chance of friendship with Ranma and Akane because (as a prank) she asked Ranma about becoming a Sailor.

"I can help without dressin' like a girl! I am not wearing a seifuku. No. No way. No how. Uh uh."

• Fun Size: During the 2016 Halloween party, one of the managers refers to Derpy as a "fun-sized pegasus" (according to the project wiki, she's only 7 hands/71 cm tall at the shoulder).
• Genius Bonus: The company that delivers a boat to Venice is called "Ekman Transport". It's also the name on the side of the truck that delivers Emily Pollifax and her husband to Douglass Gardens Apartments.
• Genre Savvy: It's hinted in the first chapter of Hallowe'en in Another Reality that Bob, one of the managers, suspects that Ferris Bueller might be in communication with some manner of audience watching things unfold in Refuge. And it's not the first time Bob has wondered if their timeline might not be a work of fiction somewhere out in the multiverse.
• Girlfriend in Canada:
  • Molly Ritter, daughter of the liaison to the Okeechobee, Florida displacees' residence, has a "snowbird" boyfriend who spends half his year in Toronto. Naturally she gets playful "Boyfriend in Canada" ribbing from her friends.
  • In a vignette of questionable canonicity, an unnamed teenage boy claims he has a girlfriend on Canada who says he reminds her of her sempai, "whatever that means".
• Goggles Do Something Unusual / See-Thru Specs: The Ah! My Goddess megami have their canon "debugging" glasses. Thanks to a wish, everybody in residence at Rob's apartment building at the time has a less-powerful version that lets them see through magical disguises – and a few of the characters actually wear them.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Whether it's clearing out a nest of Grimm in Atlanta or reducing an Unseelie stronghold near Ottawa, the more martial residences work together whenever they're asked. One chapter (unreleased as of January 2025 in Real Life) is even titled "And Rohan Will Answer".
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Invoked in the initial story: Brent finds himself interviewed by a pair of six-inch-tall Celestials, Risky and Safety. During the interview he asks Risky, tongue-in-cheek, if they shouldn't be standing on his shoulders. "Not my department, I don't do temptation," Risky basically replies. (This despite having already hopped up on his shoulder and whispered suggestions to him.)
• Greek Chorus: The self-insert characters among the managers sometimes play this role in the stories.
• Guardian Angel: Peorth specifically identifies post-transformation Hyoga as one. In practice, she's more the Zoroastrian sort than the Christian sort.
• Halloween Episode: "Halloween in Another Reality"
  • For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: Costumes are optional for the big Halloween party, and a few people choose to reject the option:
    • Kyouya Takamachi, who is a ninja in his canon story, attends as a ninja. "You don't look like a ninja." "That's the whole point."
    • Luna goes as herself, in her uniform from the Silver Millennium.
    • Ryo-Ohki is still too young mentally to understand the idea of dress-up.
    • Kuroko thinks her Tokiwadai school uniform is good enough to wear to the Halloween party.
    • Apartment manager Bob's aunt and uncle are visiting and didn't have the opportunity to get costumes; his friend Attila doesn't bother (although Attila's wife Helen does).
  • Halloween Cosplay:
    • Railgun attends the Halloween party dressed as Sailor Jupiter. Sailor Jupiter attends dressed as Railgun. (Word of God says this was inspired by this fanart.)
    • After watching a particular Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Uiharu Kazari does an Alternate Character Reading of her own name and goes as Hatsuharu from Kantai Collection, just in case that happens again – which shows she's Wrong Genre Savvy for once. (Word of God says this was also inspired by fan art, specifically this.)
• Happily Married: Bob and Peggy Schroeck, Cassiopée and Grahame Bright, Belldandy and Keiichi Morisato, Harold and Belphebe Shea, Lawrence and Linda Fletcher, Shirou and Momoko Takamachi, Irene and Maya Sellers, Tamora Jean Calhoun and Felix, and after June 2017 in-universe Haruka Tenoh and Michiru Kaioh... who together are less than two per cent of the named characters in the setting. (Akiko and Kyusaku Natsume are unhappily married.)
• Here We Go Again:
  • The final line of Moving Days, Part I, uttered by Bob (as the narrator) when a second batch of displacees arrives in exactly the same manner as the first.
  • And when a new group of motorcyclists pull into Douglass Gardens minutes after the cast of Bakuon!! leaves at the end of Moving Days, Part II, Bob says, "Here we go again. Again."
  • Yomi mutters this at the Halloween party when Tomo walks up to Usagi for the first time.
• Hero of Another Story: Invoked In-Universe in Moving Days, Part I: In response to their obvious dissatisfaction with finding out they are supporting characters for Hokago Tea Time, Bob tells the members of OnnaGumi that in an infinite multiverse there inevitably must be universes where they are the stars of a popular franchise, and the members of Hokago Tea Time are supporting characters for them. It doesn't seem to help.
• Hold My Beer:
  • This alternate name for Tempting Fate is invoked by Tomo in chapter 1 of Vignettes just before she jokingly starts to recite the incantation for the Dragon Slave from Slayers. Yomi stops her before she finishes the second line, and Tomo belatedly realizes it might actually have worked.
  • When Railgun is asked in the next chapter of the same story whether she's heard of gigantic jet lightning, her reply is "Hold my juice and watch this."
  • Two chapters later in that story, the trope's other name "Tempting Fate" gets a mention that's Played for Laughs.
• Hold Up Your Score: Yang does the verbal equivalent to rate Jaune's first kiss with Pyrrha:

"Not bad, loverboy," she said. "I'll give you a 6 out of 10."

• How Do I Shot Web?: After being transformed from a collection of forces to a half-human-half-angel, Hyoga has no idea how to use any of her abilities other than switching forms, flying, and understanding languages; she has to learn how her other abilities work (or not work)... and, for that matter, what her other abilities are.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Rob's Author Insert character is at least One Head Taller than any of the women living in his apartment, with the exception of Mii.
• I Have Boobs - You Must Obey!: Averted when Mii and Rob first fall under Drosselmeyer's influence. She tries to invoke the trope, but he asks her to Please Put Some Clothes On instead.
• I Have Many Names: Skuld is described as having many names by Susanoo in The Eyes in Her Fire.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: A Little Slice of Heaven on the Gulf ends with Kaji and Misato both saying this as a result of Kaji being contacted by HAL 9000.
• If You Know What I Mean: When Jun suggests it's a bad idea to ask Belldandy about a bit of metaphysical trivia:

"Are you going to ask her? Because I'm not," Jun shot back. "If she's around to ask, that means she's destressing and spending quality time with Keiichi-san, if you know what I mean," she added with a smirk.

• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Mimi Hanyu, because of her background as a theatre major before being possessed by Mimete.
• Interquel: Several of the stories are actually collections of scenes and vignettes spanning months or even years, which weave through other events in the setting. One story, Everyone's Still a Critic, is explicitly described as an interquel/sequel to the earlier story Everyone's a Critic.
• Invoked Trope:
  • Rei Ayanami hears about her expies, and decides to dress as Yuki Nagato for the 2016 Halloween party.
  • When Usagi Tsukino learns about Fuku Fics, she decides to prank Ranma Saotome and provide entertainment for a birthday party by pretending to recruit him for the Sailor Senshi.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Invoked in one item of marginalia in the in-universe book So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe: where the book states that "If you meet a self-aware program or android, it's a displacee", Chii from Chobits has indignantly commented "'It'? I self-identify as female."
• It's Quiet... Too Quiet: Lampshaded during the story that brought the undines into the setting.

Aika: It's so quiet. Alice: Maybe too quiet. Like... it's unnaturally still.

K-O

• Kayfabe: For their own amusement, the authors play into the idea that Ferris Bueller can reach across the Fourth Wall... and edit the project wiki.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover:
  • Kindhearted Cat-Lovers: Sakaki and Sebastian have a soft spot for felines.
  • Kindhearted-Cat Lover: Akari exemplifies this trope as well, but takes "lover" in a more romantic sense (just like she does everything else).
• Kissing Under the Influence: Drosselmeyer's influence, shown in at least the Ottawa residence.
• Knighting: Tomo's promotion to the nobility by Minako reminds Saber of a knighting ceremony, with the sword swapped for a transformation pen.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Brent in "A Serotinal Frolic": "If this many people were going to keep showing up, I mused, we'd probably need more than a forum, we'd need a wiki to keep track of them all."
  • Combined with a bit of a Take That: In the In-Universe book So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe, Yomi from Azumanga Daioh writes:

It wouldn't even surprise me if someone was writing about us displacees even now. A whole group of characters from different universes jammed together could be pretty entertaining. If so, the authors are very bad people, because they caused an entire set of universes to collapse together. Seriously, they should be ashamed of themselves.

• In Some Uncomfortable Questions, one of the managers speculates that the entire displacee program might be a fanfic written by the managers' counterparts in another universe.

• Light Bulb Joke: Referenced in "Channeling Mana" at the end of a discussion about politics.
• Like Reality Unless Noted: The reality of late-2016, to be specific.
• Lime: By writer consensus, this is as far as this story will go in deconstructing sexuality. The line has already been reached.
• Literal Genie: Sebastian very knowingly and borderline maliciously plays this role when, in response to the Undines of Aria asking to be sent to Venice, he arranges their transport to Venice, California rather than Venezia, Italy.
• Literal Metaphor: The titular characters of Donaldson en Kazakiri go to the gates of Hel for the benefit of others.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Over 700 with individual character pages on the work's wiki, and more who haven't been given even an outline character page yet. Needless to say, this means that many characters have been Demoted to Extra, including some popular characters such as Belldandy, Ferris Bueller, Ranma Saotome, Shirou Emiya, and Touma Kamijou.
• Log Fic: "Some Uncomfortable Questions".
• Logging Onto the Fourth Wall: Inverted on the project's wiki -- Ferris Bueller has edited several pages and directly addresses the reader in them.
• Look Ma, No Plane: When he needed to take a teleporter and a pilot to an aircraft, Accelerator controlled his own and their speed vectors in order to fly beside the plane close enough for the teleporter to get the pilot aboard.
• Major-General Song: Bob apparently improvised one entirely out of the names of games he and Peggy were providing for the 2016 Halloween party, much to her annoyance. We only get to hear the first line.
• Male Gaze: Jaune Arc is briefly disgusted with himself in Everyone's a Critic when he follows Pyrrha outside after she watches her animated counterpart die, and finds his first thought when he gets there is how nice her butt looks in the jeans she's wearing.
• Marginal Note: So You Just Arrived From a Parallel Universe, an In-Universe book released as part of the project, is liberally sprinkled with marginalia written by everyone from Tomo Takino to Ferris Bueller.
• Marilyn Maneuver: To be expected when somebody dresses as Marilyn Monroe for a Halloween party attended by metahumans.
• Masquerade: Contrary to the expectations of some of the managers, this trope is averted and defied. As Belldandy notes during the lead up to the 2016 Halloween party, it would be impossible to keep the entire refugee program a perfect secret, for multiple reasons -- not the least of which is that not every displacee is part of the residence system, and the Celestials are sure that there are displacees who've completely escaped their notice. The best they can do is keep as low a profile as possible and trust to the displacees' enlightened self-interest. (And it's entirely likely that behind the scenes the forces of Hell are pulling strings and calling in favors from those in power to supplement those tactics.)
• May-December Romance: Rob and his fiancées friends who are girls once the Mind Control is broken (and then they angst about whether they want to go back to being more than friends). Verges on Wife Husbandry in that, during the Mind Control, he insisted on waiting until the youngest turned 18 before doing anything other than a quick hug. Once he's rejuvenated to 25 just before Academy City as a whole shows up, their physical difference in ages is reduced but their psychological differences in outlook remain.
• Medium Awareness: Just as with the film he comes from, Ferris Bueller is aware that he and his friends are in a fanfic, and makes Aside Glances and other acknowledgements of the readers whenever he appears, if he doesn't actually have an opportunity to address them directly.
  • Similarly, Isis retains her awareness of the audience.
• Mega Neko: Cat Síth and Chiyo's father.
• Mood Whiplash: Everyone's a Critic initially seems like a comic piece about displacees watching or reading the works they come from. Then the reactions stop being funny... and then they start alternating...
• Mrs. Robinson: Invoked by Ritsu Tainaka when she jokingly calls college freshman Yui Hirasawa "Mrs. Robinson" for going on a date with the much younger Shinji Ikari.
• Ms. Exposition: Chiyo Mihama knows enough basic science, history, and mathematics to explain the basics of most points. She is a genius, after all. And she is more familiar with the Los Angeles area because, aside from Tina, she was the only one actually planning on living in North America.
• Multicolored Hair: Rhiannon Thornhill, manager of Residence 51 in Colorado, is a natural blonde with blue streaks dyed into her hair.
• Multiverse: Is set in a "Many Worlds" multiverse which is undergoing a massive crisis.
• Mundane Utility: After Rob gains telekinetic control over water, he uses it to clear the snow from his residence's walkway.
• Mundane Wish: When offered a wish by a representative of the Goddess Relief Office, Mihoshi Kiramitsu wishes for someone to help her and displacees like her understand what's going on. This results in Heaven and Hell jointly creating the residence/manager system.
• Mutually Fictional:
  • At least initially, you couldn't find a displacees' residence where nobody had seen the original Sailor Moon anime before being displaced: Saten-san watched it before moving to Academy City, Kaorin is enamored of Sailors Uranus and Neptune, it was Momoko Takamachi's favorite show when she was her daughter Nanoha's age, Misato "really connected with" Sailor Moon before Second Impact, all of the Triomatic recognized Sailor Mercury by name, and the Sailor Moon S anime was in the middle of its first broadcast run in Tokyo when the Magic Knights were sent to Cephiro.
  • In the other direction, at least some of the Sailor Moon cast were familiar with Kimagure Orange Road before being displaced — the very first thing Chibiusa asks Manami Kasuga is "Why do you sound like Sailor Mars?"
• My Name Is Not Durwood:
  • Nabiki Tendo tells Ranma Saotome "Don't call me 'Na-chan'" (an echo of the fanon "Don't call me Nabs") in "Fuku'ing With His Head" and "Everyone's Still a Critic". She gets revenge on Ranma by letting him know about Fuku Fics.
  • Usagi Tsukino eventually gets fed up with having to remind one of the managers, who only knows her from the North American dub of Sailor Moon, that her name is not "Serena".
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: In chapter 2 of Hallowe'en in Another Reality, Ryoko and Ayeka are able to detect Minako expressing an interest in Tenchi from across the full length of the party space with several tents and nearly 200 people in between them. Minako is subsequently able to detect their intent to act on her interest and backpedals immediately.
• Nanomachines: Used in the Phlebotinum Du Jour and Magic From Technology senses of the trope, and usually supplied by Washuu-chan. Nanotech has been used to give multiple characters ridiculously fast medical treatment with a side-order of life extension.
• Never Gets Drunk‎‎: Rob Donaldson and Hyoga Kazakiri, after the events of Donaldson en Kazakiri. If Fafnir's poison breath won't affect them any more, a mickey of liquor certainly won't either.
• Never Heard That One Before:
  • Invoked in Moving Days, Part I, when Bob notes he needs to call "Tetsuoooooo!" at Akira Wasa of K-On!. His wife notes that she's probably heard that "like a million times already".
  • When someone hails him with "Crikey! It's the Bishop!", Bishop from Mrs. Pollifax sighs and mentally notes that there were only so many times he could hear that line.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Described on the work's wiki as "Washuu-chan Breaks the Internet Multiverse", this is what starts off the entire story. As far as Washuu-chan knows, at least — Casey and Andy have evidence that they're the ones who broke the Multiverse, and Shinji Ikari is sure that it's his fault. The War Doctor might beg to differ, and then there's that whole dimensional rift Glory opened up in Sunnydale. Meanwhile, Azusa Nakano fears that her wish that her sempais in Hokago Tea Time wouldn't leave her to go to college set everything off... which is the only theory as of Real Life December 2024 to have been dismissed.
• "No. Just... No" Reaction: Makoto Kino in response to seeing the Toon Makers Sailor Moon in Everyone's a Critic.
• Noodle Incident: In Greetings from Minnesota!, we learn that sometime in December 2016 the displacees from RWBY had a snowball fight, but the only things we know about it (so far) is that Ren got hit in the face by Yang, who also annoyed people by shooting down incoming snowballs with Ember Celica.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The mages, magical girls, aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers who have found themselves in the setting. The overwhelming majority keep their abilities secret, either to blend in more easily or to keep them as hidden advantages (or for both reasons).
• The Not-Secret: Displacees have their own reasons for keeping their identities secret in Refuge (not wanting to be arrested or recruited into a black-op agency, simple inertia of having kept their identities secret at home, not wanting attention, and so on), but with the various works of fiction that exist in Refuge and the wikis that analyse or catalog those works, everybody knows about most of their identities already.
• Numerical Theme Naming: The first four Misaka Sisters seen in the story took personal names based on the final digit of their serial numbers, although one of them was quickly renamed when Mihoshi misheard the name.
• Oh Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us: Many if not most of the displacees end up surprised or worried about the existence of fanfic about them. (A few are from works that are too new to have been released in Refuge.) Some displacees are known to read stories about themselves, including (or especially) Lemons.
  • From Ranma Saotome's point of view, It Gets Worse; he hates the entire idea of Fuku Fics.
  • Other types of fan works aren't immune; for instance, Yui Hirasawa is known to have an entire wall in her bedroom plastered with K-On! fan art.
• Old Shame: In Everyone's a Critic, Satan suggests that the Casey and Andy web comic is this for Andy.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Salem's pronouncements to her flunkies Inner Circle indicate her goals have evolved since her displacement from Remnant -- if she can't depose the Celestials outright, she will do everything in her power to end all existence, everywhere, to spite them. Under normal circumstances this would be a ludicrously impossible goal... but with the multiversal crisis in progress, she just might find a way to accomplish it.
• Omniglot:
  • Hyoga, after her transformation powerup. This is implied to be telepathic, in that she doesn't understand languages that nobody else alive speaks.
  • Also played with for Belldandy, who apparently can speak Alicia Florence's "Ara ara" dialect perfectly.
  • Both Rose Tyler and Derpy, as a benefit of being Companions to their respective Doctors.
• One Steve Limit: Averted repeatedly:

• Only One Name: Averted; several characters who canonically are only known by one name (such as Sakaki and Kaorin from Azumanga Daioh) are given full names in the setting.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-universe: Because of an unexpected interaction between her canonical TARDIS-granted Omniglot ability as a Companion of the Doctor, and the gift of fluency in the local language granted to displacees, Rose Tyler has a tendency to slip back and forth between her native Estuary British accent and a "Southern working class" American accent without noticing.
• Original Character: The apartment managers who are original characters created specifically for the project outnumber the self-insert and Public Domain Character apartment managers.
• Other Me Annoys Me: In Everyone's a Critic, while the Sailor Senshi discuss watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and the North American dub of the original anime. It's also very strongly implied to factor into their reaction to the Toon Makers Sailor Moon video (which gets Ami of all people to swear like a sailor).
• Overly Narrow Superlative: The project's reference wiki describes Entchen as "the greatest anatine ballerina on Earth" (then immediately footnotes that she's probably the only anatine ballerina on Earth).

P-T

• Painting the Medium:
  • Whenever a story has a scene set in an internet chat room or forum, the presentation shifts to look like an IRC or forum thread.
  • An as-yet-unpublished story has a conversation taking place by phone texting; it looks like an Android (or Teams) chat.
• Pals with Jesus: It's common for a residence building to have a tutelary, and in some cases the kami (or demon) visits often enough that they're on a First-Name Basis with the building's residents.
  • The tutelary of Maison d'Orléans, Archangel Michael, shows up there almost daily, and has basically adopted Jehanne Romée as his little sister.
  • The tutelary of Douglass Gardens Apartments, Belldandy, has moved in so that she can live with her husband Keiichi Morisato.
  • The Nereid Psamathe, tutelary of The Beach House, and its manager Nicole Lavelle become BFFs over the summer of 2017; they hang out and go clubbing and to the beach and boardwalk together on a regular basis.
  • Just might be disturbingly literal for the girls of Kickstand Cottage, whose tutelary is a Celestial they'd already met in their home universe who bears a striking resemblance to a clean-shaven Jesus. In an as-yet-unreleased passage, he all but admits to their local liaison that he is Jesus, but at the same time warns that who Jesus is thought to be today and who he actually was might be two very different things. (Which, given that thanks to its use in Bakuon!! the authors are incorporating some obscure Japanese folklore about Christ, is pretty much guaranteed to be the case.)
• Parental Substitute / Sink-or-Swim Fatherhood: In order to keep the Academy City girls from being separated in foster care, and then the same happening to the Sailor Senshi, Rob had to become foster father to them all. He made sure to get their permission first, but he still went from being a bachelor to having ten tween- and teenage daughters in a single week.
  • Happily Adopted: And then after she learns about the dark side of Academy City and decides she's never going back there, Ruiko Saten agrees to be adopted by Rob. As in real life, it will take months in-universe for the process to be completed.
  • In Moving Days, Part III, Bob and Peggy realize they're going to need some kind of paperwork that gives them legal custody of the Magic Knights and Ascot, and turn to HAL 9000 to acquire it.
• Pass the Popcorn:
  • The Sailor Senshi appear to be consuming buckets of it while watching the various adaptations of their story in Everyone's a Critic -- and have enough of it on hand to throw at each other.
  • The managers at Douglass Gardens make popcorn for everyone when the casts of K-On! and Bakuon!! watch each other's anime (and a couple others) in Moving Days, Part II.
• The Password Is Always Swordfish: At least for the first few days, at Aria House:

Brent: The network name is "Pokoteng", and the password is 'swordfish1!', that's digit 1 and exclamation mark at the end. Don't want to make it too easy to guess, after all.

• Patchwork Fic:
  • The K-On! displacees include the manga-only OnnaGumi and the anime-only Ton-chan.
  • During a conversation, the Sailor Moon characters discover that Usagi is from the '90s anime continuity while Naru is from the manga continuity.
  • Invoked in Skein of Fools, when the Celestials discuss the process by which different versions of characters from different continuities might end up in Refuge together, as well as the problems it could cause.
• Perpetual Frowner: Bidzii "Mitchell" Hatathli, manager for "Castle Pueblo" in New Mexico, is described as having a "resting frown face", which combined with his height and linebacker-like build can make him very intimidating or even frightening to those who don't know him.
• Pinky Swear: Tomo offers this to Yomi, but given that they were just talking about yakuza, the implication is Yubitsume.
• Place Worse Than Death: Invoked for humorous effect in the summary for Hallowe'en in Another Reality on Archive of Our Own:

By order of Heaven, all shall make merry upon Hallowe'en. Even if it does mean going to New Jersey.

• Playboy Bunny: Mii Konori's costume for the 2016 Halloween Party.^[2]
• Please Put Some Clothes On: The first day that their emotions are being controlled, Rob has to say this, or the equivalent, more than once to Mii Konori in Reach for the Moon.
• Polyamory: With the (known) gender balance among displacees skewing so much that females noticeably outnumber males, this is a possibility for everyone in the stories. Consider also that characters from Tenchi Muyo! were among the earliest displacees, and there's at least one Reality Warper in the setting who enjoys forcing people into roles in a story. It's known to be more than a possibility in a small minority of the residences. (This plays out as For the Love of Many; as of February 2017 in universe (late-2022 in Real Life), Three-Way Sex has yet to be mentioned as happening anywhere.)
• Pop Cultural Osmosis Failure: In "Dragged along by a strange new force". To be fair, the characters from Fate/stay night had just become displacees the previous day.

"Oh, Saber. Stubborn, stubborn Saber. You need to get to know us better. As Michael Corleone said, keep your friends close but your enemies closer." Saber looked puzzled. "I am not familiar with that philosopher."

• Precision F-Strike: Ami Mizuno's response to watching Toon Makers Sailor Moon: "What the hell was that supposed to be?"
• Prophecies Are Always Right: Belldandy casts the runes near the beginning of Donaldson en Kazakiri. Everything that she reads in the runes appears during the story.
• Public Domain Characters:
  • Archangel Michael: He's the tutelary for the residence in Orléans, France -- in part because Joan of Arc (specifically, the version of her from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) is living there.
  • Joan of Arc: Jeanne Romée from the residence in Orléans, France, who is in fact the version of Joan of Arc from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • When Bob is (deliberately) slow about revealing what Lime Kawasaki looks like under her helmet:

Several seconds went by before an exasperated Peggy demanded, "What. Did. She. Look. Like?"

• During the Halloween party:

Yomi: "They're yakuza, Tomo. Ya-ku-za!"

• Real Place Background: Most of the displacee residences (although not all of them) are or were real buildings, located where the stories say they can be found. Nearby real businesses and attractions which prove plot-relevant also show up in the stories. In addition, at least a couple stories include what are virtually travelogues through real travel routes.
• Real World Episode: This project is what happens when hundreds of works simultaneously get Real World Episodes -- all in the same Real World.
• Recursive Fanfiction:
  • By Halloween 2016, some of the displacees have read enough fanfiction about themselves to start making jokes about specific works and scenes.
  • In Everyone's a Critic, Utena Tenjou reacts to having read the Symphony of the Sword stories from Undocumented Features, and Atsuko Natsume discovers both a goal to aspire to and a problem she never realized upon reading 1990s-vintage fanfiction about herself.
• Refugee From TV Land: See the list under Mega Crossover. Many of the displacees got to watch their own television shows or movies when they arrived, often as evidence that they had changed universes... to the point that, in an as-yet-unpublished story when displacees who don't have fiction about them in the Refuge reality show up, nobody knows how to convince them of what happened.
• Remember the New Guy?: Malleable Causality turns this trope Up to Eleven.
• Retconjuration: Done by accident in Donaldson en Kazakiri, when a mortal and an artificial angel have to put causality back together because everybody more powerful is busy dealing with the damage caused by causality being broken. They almost get it right... but at the end of it, the angel isn't artificial any more, and a few less-important changes also took place.
• Right Behind Me: In chapter 2 of Hallowe'en in Another Reality, Minako is playfully badmouthing Setsuna, whom she assumed was absent, only to realize... "She's right behind me, isn't she?"
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Hyoga Kazakiri in Donaldson en Kazakiri, who remembers what the world used to be like before the Retcon that happens during the story. She discovers this when she realizes that the Author Avatar character doesn't remember.
• Rule of Three: A motif in Donaldson en Kazakiri. Some words are used three times in the same sentence, there were three encounters on the way back to the portal home, and three objections each were raised to the title characters returning to Earth.^[3]
• Rule 34:
  • A comment made by Anthy Himemiya in Everyone's a Critic suggests that at least some of the displacees have been warned about Lemon fan fiction about them.
    • In the final scene of the same story it's obvious that Tomo Takino is reading one about herself and Yomi.
  • In the sequel story Everyone's Still a Critic, Kagami Hiiragi points out some Lemon fanfics to Konata Izumi, wondering who would think she'd do any of the things described in them. Then she admits to being interested in one of the scenes... which Miyuki Takara reads and immediately informs her is anatomically impossible.
  • And there is a discussion forum on the server set up for displacees where they can discuss how to deal with Rule 34 fan works about themselves.
  • Rin Tohsaka's reaction to learning about eroge in Thermal - er, Culture Shock: "If I ever meet anyone who drew any such pictures of me, they will die."
  • Yui Hirasawa's wiki page notes that she has a hidden directory on her computer where she keeps NSFW K-On! fan art.
  • On a meta level, My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character will not be going any farther than Lime stories, by writer consensus.
• Running Gag: Every displacee that's commented on which works of fiction they have at home has seen Wormhole X-Treme! instead of Stargate SG-1.
• Scattered Across Time and Space: Common to larger groups of characters from long-running works. The most obvious example is the characters from A Certain Magical Index, whose arrivals were spread out over a full year and across two continents despite them leaving their own world at the same time.
• Scooby Stack: Nora, Ruby and Ren (and, it is implied, Yang) spy on Jaune and Pyrrha's first kiss this way in the story Everyone's a Critic.
• Secret Path: The tunnel running between the Banzai Institute compound and the Roadhouse in Somerset NJ is the "go somewhere without being noticed" type.
• Self-Insert Fic: With anywhere from two to five self-insert characters active at a given time in Real Life. Subverted in that the self-inserts are supporting characters and/or a Greek Chorus and are rarely central to the action.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Tsukasa Hiiragi gets a Fan Service Pack in her first appearance, Various Ways to Spend Christmas Eve Eve, simply by giving her a less-childish hairdo that doesn't include a hair ribbon and putting her in a dress. When she gets home from the hairstylist, Shirou Emiya can't keep his eyes off of her.
• Shipper on Deck: Tomoyo, approaching The Matchmaker except that she does understand "personal space".
• Show Within a Show/Fictional Document:
  • So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe, an in-universe guidebook for displacees which has been made available in PDF form to readers of the story. It comes complete with comments jotted in the margins by various characters.
  • Hard Press: a Josei manga that doesn't exist in the Refuge timeline (or ours), but was big enough in many other universes (including those of Azumanga Daioh and Comic Party) to get an anime and a live-action movie.
• Side Bet:
  • In chapter 3 of Vignettes, Gryphon and Washuu apparently had a bet about Utena's reaction upon meeting him, judging by the folded bill he slipped the diminutive scientist afterwards.
  • At some point between Like Calls to Like on October 30, 2016 and Hallowe'en in Another Reality on October 31, 2016, a betting pool on Usagi's response to seeing Mamoru for the first time after his displacement was set up between displacees at several different residences; it was resolved in chapter 2 of Hallowe'en in Another Reality. "Okay, who had 'As soon as she saw him' in the pool?"
• Slice of Life: particularly in Brent's stories.
• Snowball Fight:
  • Told, not shown, in Donaldson en Kazakiri after the world has been saved but before the heroes leave Niflheim.
  • Then shown (at least partially) in "Greetings from Minnesota!"
• Sobriquet: Seen in Donaldson en Kazakiri, invoking the kennings of the original Norse sagas.
  • Vindsval, the Norse Anthropomorphic Personification of winter, is called "Winter's Father".
  • Garm keeps his sobriquet "The Best of Hounds" from Grímnismál, and gains "He Who Howls" in Donaldson en Kazakiri.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Invoked for a bunch of folks, including The Misaka Sisters, Frenda Seivelun, Mahoro Ando, Pyrrha Nikos... and Gauron.
• Spell My Name with an "S":
  • Rob is using Hepburn romanization, not Kunrei-shiki; hence, a certain character from A Certain Magical Index is named Kazakiri Hyoga here, not Kazakiri Hyoka. This will become a plot point once Academy City as a whole shows up.
  • Brent has changed two oddly-spelled names back to actual English-language names; thus, "Aika Granzchesta" is called "Aika Grantchester" and "Teletha Testarossa" is known as "Teresa Testarossa" in this setting.
    • Similarly, Bob has changed the oddly-spelled "Sylia Stengovitch" to "Sylia Stankovich".
  • Similarly, "Raimu" from Bakuon!! goes by "Lime" -- then again, this romanization was seen on a leaderboard during a race in the anime.
  • Also, this story uses "Cat Sìth" instead of the plural "Cait Sìth", because there's only one of him.
• Spy From Weights and Measures: A whole group of them, ready to use the name "Crystal Millennium Naval Office of Bells, Charts and Buoys" once the secret is revealed.
• The Starscream: In keeping with her original depiction in Ah! My Goddess, Hagall seems to be playing this role to Hild, albeit very subtly and playing the very long game.
• Stealth Pun:
  • In the story "Bunny Who?", Chibiusa announces she wants to be an action-movie actress... with the stealth pun being that her ID in that story says her name translates as "Bunny Chiba".
  • The bridge crew of Dr. Hooves' STABLE is entirely composed of rabbits.
  • "...we Venetians even take dogecoin" in Matinée Ojou-san.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land:
  • The characters from the Jack of Kinrowan duology have, from their point of view, been sent three decades into the future without warning, with no way to get home. Ottawa seems familiar, but so many details are different.
  • In The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax, Emily Pollifax and her husband Cyrus Reed also find themselves nearly twenty-five years into the future, and as they're driven to the New Brunswick NJ area, she notes how much remains the same... and how much more is subtly (or not so subtly) different.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: While none of the displacees have (as of works released by early 2025) complained about the English voice actors, they have complained about the translations.
  • Washuu from Tenchi Muyo! she enjoyed K.T. Vogt's performance, she disliked the translation. She knows what she said, and that wasn't it.
  • While Usagi Tsukino hates the dub of Sailor Moon, it's because they made "Serena" an idiot, not because of the voice acting.
  • Makoto Kino clearly thinks very little of her counterpart from the North American dub of Sailor Moon. "What kind of name is 'Lita' for an electrokinetic?"
• Subspace Ansible: In the initial story, Ayeka notes in passing that she has failed to raise Jurai, the Galaxy Police or any other interstellar entity on the Masaki home's ansible.
• Sue Donym:
  • Accelerator's ID lists him as "Axel A. Rayder". Even he thinks it's a stupid name.
  • Similarly, Ascot from Magic Knight Rayearth is given the last name "Sumner" for his official paperwork.
• The Talk: Played with in the story Adrift in Time, when Brent reports to the managers' forum that he'd just had to explain their displacement to some of his tenants:

Well, today I had to have The Talk with the girls. You know, the one where I explain where little girls come from. It turns out you all came from a stork carrying an anime DVD and your life is a sitcom called Azumanga Daioh.

• Tarot Troubles: Sakura Kinomoto's cards foretell her difficulties two different destinies: in the Clear Card Arc (canon path) and in My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character (fanfic path).
• That Came Out Wrong: After a young woman had been magically Twinned and the two were playing Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who got to choose where to live first:

"Mimi, stop playing with yourself during lunch." Jayne snickered. Some of the others rolled their eyes. "Okay, that came out wrong."

• Title Drop: Everyone's a Critic provides one for itself, and one for the project as a whole.
• "There and Back" Story: "Donaldson en Kazakiri"
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. One vignette shows the beginning of Sakura Matou's first session with Harold Shea in his role as a psychologist, getting professional treatment for the years that she spent in the Matou family in her character's backstory.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Averted, despite the number of "displacee" anime characters, because the writers and thus the residences are located in Europe and North America. Tokyo is barely an afterthought in this setting to begin with, with only two known displacees (out of over 700) resident there as of Real Life 2025.
• Translation Convention: Played straight, as characters who know Japanese or German may be speaking it to each other, but it's written in English. Also enforced, as most displacees were given knowledge of the local language (usually English, but also including French, Polish and Panamanian-flavored Spanish) on entering the world. Also inverted, as characters subject to the convention in their home canon don't actually know the language, like how all but Akari from Aria don't know Japanese.
• Trapped in Another World: Inverting the trope is the premise of the entire shared world; instead of the self-inserts going to a fictional world, fictional characters come to the shared world. (Hence the implied meaning behind the title: "My apartment manager is not an isekai character, but everybody else in the apartment building is!")
  • Reincarnation Fantasy: Also inverted in the case of displacees who died in their stories but are alive in Refuge. Considering that the cast list includes characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion and at least two of Joss Whedon's works, it's a Necessary Weasel.
• Truck-kun: Played with. During the events of The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax, Emily Pollifax and her husband are transported to a new timeline in a truck. When they inquire about it, the driver says:

"The truck, I have been given to understand, is a newly-traditional means of accomplishing the transition, although for your comfort it was decided that it was better that you were both inside it rather than in the street in front of it, as is the usual arrangement."

U-Z

• Undead Tax Exemption: Averted. Either due to "malleable causality", the explicit efforts of the gods and demons, friendly hacking by HAL 9000, or a combination of the three, displacees generally enter the setting with (or quickly acquire) complete, consistent and fully-backstopped histories (including, yes, tax records where appropriate).
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Thanks to "malleable causality‏‎", nobody who notices that the displacees are displacees seems to care who they are... until the system breaks down when Academy City as a whole and the entire cast of Girls und Panzer show up on the same day and it becomes impossible to hide from even the most clueless native that there are displacees present in the setting.
• Urban Legends: It should be obvious from the title that "I Heard This From a Friend of a Friend" deals with one of these... specifically, the vanishing hitchhiker. There's a twist in that a displacee deliberately invokes the urban legend.
• Void Between the Worlds: Invoked by name in The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax when Sebastian explains to Emily Pollifax and her husband that the truck they are riding in is actually traversing the Void and the view out its windows is a simulation presented for their comfort and sanity. When Cyrus expresses doubt about this, Sebastian invites him to roll down the window he's sitting next to to see the Void in all its unfiltered glory.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: In As the Woods Turn, after a select group watches a particular horror movie:

As the movie's ending credits rolled, Usagi excused herself to make a dash for the washroom. A moment later, some obvious sounds came from where she'd gone.

• Waking Up Elsewhere:
  • In Moving Days, Part I, the cast of K-On! arrive in Refuge by waking up together in what looks like someone's living room. And the story ends with another batch of displacees -- later identified as characters from Magic Knight Rayearth -- who have done the same.
  • Eddie Wilson, Mark Thackeray and Sam Tyler each basically woke up on the side of a street, having no idea where they were or how they got there.
  • In Outriding, Sailors Uranus and Neptune wake up in the same bed, in a hotel room on a different continent than the one they went to sleep on.
  • In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Touring, the cast of Bakuon!! wake up in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Fall River, Massachusetts after going to sleep in a youth hostel in Kyoto.
  • In The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax, Emily Pollifax and her husband Cyrus Reed wake up in the cab of a truck, after going to sleep in their own bed the (apparent) night before.
• Walking the Earth: Ryouga Hibiki mentions this in connection to his canon No Sense of Direction, in Tell me, what do you want?:

"But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm starting to think that being a wandering Ally of Justice just might be what I'm destined to be."

• Well, This Is Not That Trope: The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax starts out with this trope in play:

Mrs. Emily Pollifax normally woke with the sun. It had been her habit for many years while living alone in an apartment in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This habit had continued once she had remarried (to the second great love of her life, one Cyrus Reed, a former judge) and moved with her husband into a spacious farmhouse in Connecticut, not far from New Haven. There were times she was tempted to lay abed, either by its comfort and warmth or by her husband, but most mornings she rose promptly and attended to her yoga and karate before brewing a pot of coffee and considering what to prepare as breakfast for two. This was not one of those mornings.

• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Played for Laughs when Kagura removes the tag from a new mattress.
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?: Becomes a Discussed Trope when the Misaka Sisters ask Sailor Venus about this on Valentine's Day.
• With a Capital T: From Moving Days, Part I:

Over the next couple days we got Busy with a capital "B". (Which rhymes with "D", which stands for "Deadline"...)

• A Wizard Did It: Invoked by name by Ferris Bueller on the project wiki, as the rumored explanation how their residence, which was being radically remodeled when Funtom bought it, was ready to move into only a few days later.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Konata Izumi knows that somebody's who's Trapped in Another World is there for a reason, and is convinced she'll be getting her powers, companions (including a boyfriend), and quest any day now. What she refuses to accept, or even consider, is that she is instead a Refugee From TV Land and the locals are helping her and her friends instead of her helping the locals.
• Wrong Turn At Albuquerque:
  • The arrival of some displacees is essentially this trope in action -- whether for comedy, drama or horror depends on the displacees and the story they came from.
  • Deliberately invoked by the domain name assigned to "Castle Pueblo", located some sixty miles south of Albuquerque ("no-left-turn.displacees.yggdrasil") as well as the pullquote on residence's wiki page.
• You No Take Candle: Shampoo still speaks this way, despite Malleable Causality and the Translation Convention making her as fluent in English as she is in her native dialect of Chinese. Sebastian Michaelis is sure that she does it on purpose to hide her fluency, and gets away with it because people expect her to speak this way.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Alice Carroll to Saber, the morning after the Halloween party.