Escape Pod: Averted. Fusion reactors don’t explode, they fizzle. Antimatter reactors (well, really, the storage cryocels) do explode, but in general, there’s no way you’re going to get away from them fast enough in order to matter. And unless you’re in orbit around a planet or
Animate Inanimate Object: Not to the full extent of this trope, but due to the impact of ubiquitous computing and the generally spime-ish and MEMS-ized nature of Stuff, it’s true enough to make the animists happy.
Location Theme Naming: Sometimes. There’s a class of battleships named after Imperial habitable planets, a class of oilers named after gas giants, a class of cruisers named after Elieran mountains, a class of frigates named after well-known drift-habitats…
Ancient Conspiracy: Averted. Because, well, yes, ancient cabals, except there are thousands, maybe millions of them. And they’re not terribly shadowy, at least not for any value of shadowy that precludes web sites, press releases, and such. And the course of history seems to muddle through just fine doing
Loads and Loads of Races: Played very, very straight. While I have by no means detailed all of them, there are canonically hundreds of different species in the Associated Worlds, each with its own set of races (a few) and clades (if any, many). It’s a life-rich galaxy out
Ancient Astronauts: Almost certainly happened in at least a few times and places, for the same the-Galaxy-is-old-and-relatively-life-rich reasons that are why half the systems in it are practically knee-deep in elder-race trash. Also, technically, connected with the origins of the eldrae and greenlife in general from prehistoric Earth, although given
Lizard Folk/The Reptilians: About the closest you’ll find are either the kaeth (bipedal, vaguely draconic/saurian, and also from such a metal-rich world that their scale-analogs are actual metal) or the mirilasté (legged serpents). Both defy the traditional reptilian-appearing race stereotype by being civilized and urbane, although the
Amazon Brigade: For historical reasons having to do with the local units they used to be, the Empire has several Legions that meet this trope (and, for that matter, its diametric opposites (yes, opposites; not every species has two sexes)), although most legions are mixed. Of course, in-world, no-one finds
Living Starship: The genesplicing esseli and the residents of Kythera – the Empire’s masters of biotech – are the chief users of this sort of technology in the Imperial context, although they’re by no means the only ones in the Associated Worlds to go for this sort of thing. Although,
Flesh Versus Steel: Both have their partisans within the Eldraeverse – many branches of the Silicate Tree are steel fundamentalists, although how much of that is rationalized hatred of their organic creator-enslavers is open to question, and they’re not the only ones. Likewise, there are partisans of the purity of
Living Relic: Quite a few, including some cryonauts and other last-survivor types, but the most common form of these is still-readable archives left behind by dead civilizations. Many of which archives include suspended mind-states – sometimes biological but more often AI – or recipes to create AIs, as part of their contents.
Alternative Calendar: Several. There’s the regular Harmonious Calendar, which is based on Eliera’s – as the homeworld and the throneworld – cycles, but also serves as the de jure calendar for the purposes of the financial year, official record-keeping, and suchlike. In turn, it’s based on weavetime, which is