History Fanfic / BeyondTheOuterGateLies

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: This {{Crossover}} and its ContinuationFic explore the implications of the Devils' cultural acceptance of {{harem|Genre}}s a bit more seriously than the [[Literature/HighSchoolDXD original material]], as a result of having a protagonist who ''isn't'' a HormoneAddledTeenager LovableSexManiac HaremSeeker. Namely, it takes Harry a while to figure out why it is so -- according to Azazel in the unpublished fourth chapter, it's a combination of the Devils' AuthorityEqualsAsskicking and TheHedonist mentalities, together with their [[ImmortalProcreationClause centuries-long lifespans and extraordinarily low birth rates]] -- and then some more to accept that Sona and Tsubasa are actually okay with the other pursuing him romantically and not at each other's throats for it, like his common sense tells him they should be.

And ends up in Japan, of all places. [[FountainOfYouth In a teenage body]]. [[NoodleIncident Long story short]], [[Literature/HighSchoolDXD he enrolled in Kuoh Academy]] and HilarityEnsues.

* BoobsOfSteel: Believe it or not, [[spoiler:''Harry Dresden himself''. Courtesy to Azazel's [[GenderBender gender-bending]] [[AppliedPhlebotinum gun]].]]

** In the GenderBender snippet, Xenovia's and Irina's main concern is researching Harry's lifestyle to find out why fem!Harry is so... [[BoobsOfSteel stacked]]. Then Akeno tells them not to bother - [[BaitAndSwitch because it's probably because he's American]].

* HaremSeeker: By proxy. Lash likes to tease him with the idea of Harry having a harem. [[spoiler:She was actually serious about it. The only time he let her talk with Sona, supposedly to give them the chance to have a "woman-to-woman talk" about Lash helping Harry cheat in his tests, [[MagnificentBitch Lash]] told her exactly what Sona and Tsubasa needed to hear to start acting on their feelings for Harry without clueing him in until he asked.]]

* GagBoobs: [[spoiler:Female Harry]] is even better endowed than ''Rias!''

A {{Crossover}} between ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' by Creator/GabrielBlessing, that started out like [[ButForMeItWasTuesday another typical crazy week]] for [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Harry Dresden]].

And ends up in Japan, of all places. [[FountainOfYouth In a teenage body]]. [[NoodleIncident Long story short]], [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD he enrolled in Kuoh Academy]] and HilarityEnsues.

* AngelsDevilsAndSquid: Adds ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''[='=] [[EldritchAbomination Outsiders]] as the Squids to the existing ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' Angel and Devils.

* BizarroUniverse: Harry refers to the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' universe as this, and it fits the profile. In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', devils and angels (both regular and Fallen) are pillars of creation, have nigh-infinite power, can only be created by God, and are almost as hard to kill, [[spoiler:and God is alive]]. Magic functions on willpower and emotion, and causes users to become {{Walking Techbane}}s. And the wizard never gets the girls. In ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'', most devils aren't that much stronger than humans, they can reproduce normally or turn humans into devils, and can be killed almost as easily, [[spoiler:and GodIsDead]]. Magic is performed with complex math, and has no negative effects on technology (what first tips him off to the fact that he's in a new world, is the fact that the hospital machinery he was hooked up too was still functioning, even when his emotions were flaring). He's also getting some female attention...

* {{Crossover}}: ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD''.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: This {{Crossover}} and its ContinuationFic explore the implications of the Devils' cultural acceptance of {{harem|Genre}}s a bit more seriously than the [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD original material]], as a result of having a protagonist who ''isn't'' a HormoneAddledTeenager LovableSexManiac HaremSeeker. Namely, it takes Harry a while to figure out why it is so -- according to Azazel in the unpublished fourth chapter, it's a combination of the Devils' AuthorityEqualsAsskicking and TheHedonist mentalities, together with their [[ImmortalProcreationClause centuries-long lifespans and extraordinarily low birth rates]] -- and then some more to accept that Sona and Tsubasa are actually okay with the other pursuing him romantically and not at each other's throats for it, like his common sense tells him they should be.

* FountainOfYouth: Harry is aged down to his teens again when he enters the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' world.

* OurDemonsAreDifferent: There are massive differences between demons from Dresden verse and [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD D×D]] verse. For one, Dresden's demons only care about mortal business generally because of hunger or need of terrifying them. The [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD D×D]] demons (or rather, devils) though act like your normal, everyday people [[spoiler:(Most of them anyway)]]. This is why [[ShellShockedVeteran Harry]] acts with such hostility to the Student Council when he firsts learns what they are.

* WeakButSkilled: Harry is ''far'' from a powerhouse by ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'''s standards, yet remains a dangerous opponent to have because he's used to hit above his weight class. His varied skill set, his unique-to-Bizarro-World magic style, his CombatPragmatist and MugglesDoItBetter tendencies, his acquired caution to always look at the big picture and outplay his enemies, his ProperlyParanoid mentality that makes him to always look for ways the FinaglesLaw could screw him over yet again, his BS-ing skills and a long etcetera make Harry a much more effective combatant than he has any right to be, {{Power Level|s}}-wise.

A {{Crossover}} between ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'' by [[Fanfic/TheHillOfSwords Gabriel]] [[Fanfic/InFlight Blessing]], that started out like [[ButForMeItWasTuesday another typical crazy week]] for [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Harry Dresden]].

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: A comedic version. When Harry meets Sirzechs, he calls upon his rusty manners, but can't help tossing in a [[Music/TheRollingStones "Sympathy For the Devil"]] reference. A moment later, Sirzechs gets the joke and continues it, causing Harry to briefly concede defeat.

'''Harry:''' [[Music/TheRollingStones Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name]].\\

A {{Crossover}} between ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' by [[Fanfic/TheHillOfSwords Gabriel]] [[Fanfic/InFlight Blessing]], that started out like [[ButForMeItWasTuesday another typical crazy week]] for [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Harry Dresden]].

And ends up in Japan, of all places. [[FountainOfYouth In a teenage body]]. [[NoodleIncident Long story short]], [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD he enrolled in Kuoh Academy]] and HilarityEnsues.

* AngelsDevilsAndSquid: Adds ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''[='=] [[EldritchAbomination Outsiders]] as the Squids to the existing ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' Angel and Devils.

* BizarroUniverse: Harry refers to the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' universe as this, and it fits the profile. In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', devils and angels (both regular and Fallen) are pillars of creation, have nigh-infinite power, can only be created by God, and are almost as hard to kill, [[spoiler:and God is alive]]. Magic functions on willpower and emotion, and causes users to become {{Walking Techbane}}s. And the wizard never gets the girls. In ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'', most devils aren't that much stronger than humans, they can reproduce normally or turn humans into devils, and can be killed almost as easily, [[spoiler:and GodIsDead]]. Magic is performed with complex math, and has no negative effects on technology (what first tips him off to the fact that he's in a new world, is the fact that the hospital machinery he was hooked up too was still functioning, even when his emotions were flaring). He's also getting some female attention...

* {{Crossover}}: ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD''.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: This {{Crossover}} and its ContinuationFic explore the implications of the Devils' cultural acceptance of [[HaremGenre harems]] a bit more seriously than the [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD original material]], as a result of having a protagonist who ''isn't'' a HormoneAddledTeenager LovableSexManiac HaremSeeker. Namely, it takes Harry a while to figure out why it is so -- according to Azazel in the unpublished fourth chapter, it's a combination of the Devils' AuthorityEqualsAsskicking and TheHedonist mentalities, together with their [[ImmortalProcreationClause centuries-long lifespans and extraordinarily low birth rates]] -- and then some more to accept that Sona and Tsubasa are actually okay with the other pursuing him romantically and not at each other's throats for it, like his common sense tells him they should be.

* FountainOfYouth: Harry is aged down to his teens again when he enters the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' world.

** Lash's masterful trolling of Harry deserves a mention, especially considering that she only can speak directly to him and yet she still manages to push him into embarrassing situations. A good example of this is when he tricked Harry into saying something aloud that made Tsubaki think the two of them were engaging in "[[{{Meido}} Maid]] {{Naked Apron}} [[CasualKink play]]" (Tsubaki's words). The HowMuchDidYouHear moment and having another two {{fetish}}es attached to his name were bad enough on their own, but Lash's real objective was a doozy of a BatmanGambit that ended up with half of the girls on the Student Council (plus Akeno) wearing maid uniforms the next time he opened their office's door. Even Harry was impressed.

** AttractiveBentGender: Pretty much everyone. Special mention to [[spoiler:Harry, who remarked how "uncomfortably good looking" his tall and shapely female form was, his numerous scars giving "her" an appealing dangerous sort of air rather than detracting from her beauty at all.]]
** GagBoobs: [[spoiler:Female Harry]] is even better endowed than ''Rias!''
** ManIFeelLikeAWoman: [[spoiler:Lash outright suggests Harry, in a [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Spock]] cosplay no less, to "boldly go where no man has gone before" by "absconding to her quarters to masturbate".]]

* OurDemonsAreDifferent: There are massive differences between demons from Dresden verse and [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD D×D]] verse. For one, Dresden's demons only care about mortal business generally because of hunger or need of terrifying them. The [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD D×D]] demons (or rather, devils) though act like your normal, everyday people [[spoiler:(Most of them anyway)]]. This is why [[ShellShockedVeteran Harry]] acts with such hostility to the Student Council when he firsts learns what they are.

* RecursiveFanfiction: [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10752206/1/Beyond-the-Outer-Gates-Lies-A-high-school-library Beyond the Outer Gates Lies... A High School Library?]], a spin-off that started when a reader suggested Kusaka Reya join Harry's list of admirers, and Gabriel Blessing challenged him to write it. The ContinuationFic has three times the word count of the original one as of chapter 77.

* WeakButSkilled: Harry is ''far'' from a powerhouse by ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'''s standards, yet remains a dangerous opponent to have because he's used to hit above his weight class. His varied skill set, his unique-to-Bizarro-World magic style, his CombatPragmatist and MugglesDoItBetter tendencies, his acquired caution to always look at the big picture and outplay his enemies, his ProperlyParanoid mentality that makes him to always look for ways the FinaglesLaw could screw him over yet again, his BS-ing skills and a long etcetera make Harry a much more effective combatant than he has any right to be, {{Power Level|s}}-wise.

The ongoing [[RecursiveFanfiction recursive]] [[ContinuationFic continuation]] by [[FanFic/AGrowingAffection Xavon Wrentaile]] titled ''Beyond the Outer Gates Lies... A high school library?'' -- originally intended as a WhatIf scenario about [[CuteBookworm Reya]] becoming Harry's third {{Love Interest|s}} after bonding over their love of fantasy novels (hence the title) but long, long since overtaking the original fic in length and scope -- can be found [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10752206/1/Beyond-the-Outer-Gates-Lies-A-high-school-library here]].

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[[folder:Tropes Present in ''Beyond the Outer Gate Lies...'']]

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[[folder:Tropes Present in ''Beyond the Outer Gate Lies... a High School Library?'']]
!!''Beyond the Outer Gate Lies... a High School Library?'' provides examples of:
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cover_636.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[ChristmasEpisode Merry Christmas, Harry Dresden!]]]]
* AccentRelapse:
** [[spoiler:Oakley [[InvokedTrope brute-forced her southern drawl back into her speech patterns]] despite Language letting her talk in a perfectly unaccented English. She's a Texan girl and proud of it, after all.]]
** One of the maids at the Sitri Manor apparently did the same thing, adding a Japanese accent to her English speech.
* AcCENTUponTheWrongSylLABle: How Beholders "talk." Harry asks Lash to filter their sounds so he (and the audience) can hear them as normal speech. {{Subverted|Trope}} with certain types of Beholders who have better pronunciation thanks to their greater intelligence and/or having actual lungs and voice boxes.
* AccidentalEngagement: [[AmbiguousSituation Maybe]]. It's left ambiguous whether Harry technically beating Sona in chess (she let him win to prove a point to her father) and fulfilling the letter of her EngagementChallenge means they're now betrothed or not.
* AccidentalTruth: The ''LightNovel/{{Campione}}'' light novel series exists as a ShowWithinAShow and, in an InUniverse case of AccidentallyCorrectWriting, Rossweisse was more than a tad uncomfortable that their author got [[spoiler:goddess Athena]]'s super-secret backstory better than most actual mythologists.
* AcquiredPoisonImmunity: Harry comes up with the crazy idea of teaching Rias and Sona's Peerages to offset their crippling weakness to Light-based attacks like this. While effective to let them learn how to use their Devil Power to expel Light poisoning, it's only thanks to Asia's [[HealingHands Twilight Healing]] and having an emergency reserve of Phoenix Tears at hand that this kind of training can even be considered relatively safe(-ish).
* ActuallyPrettyFunny:
** Most of the core members of the Hero Faction actually liked being portrayed as ThePsychoRangers in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''. It helped a lot that Cao Cao, Siegfried and Heracles were ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' fans and the former two's fictional counterparts were respectively played by their favorite Power Rangers actors. The three even got into a debate about whether Creator/JasonDavidFrank should have played the character based on Siegfried instead because "Blue is the only main color he hasn't been before" and that felt like a missed chance.
** Jeanne is a {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion to the above. Hard to blame her after she had to spend half an hour on the phone trying to convince her little sister that she's neither gay nor hitting on Alice's own girl-crush Tsubasa. For another {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, while not happy about getting portrayed as [[GenderBlenderName "Georgia"]], Georg decided "not to give in to the Leviathan's taunts" and was at least glad that the Devils didn't GenderFlip any of the other, more muscle-bound guys.
* ACupAngst:
** Mild example with Sona, she's a bit self-conscious about the fact that she's the least endowed of Harry's love interests, and worries that Harry might not find her as appealing as the others. Harry of course couldn't care less about cup-sizes, nor is Sona as flat as she seems to think.
** Alice White briefly considered joining Sona's Peerage after she got a MarshmallowHell hug from Serafall and mistakenly thought the FanservicePack was a side-benefit of turning into a Devil.
** Also Oakley when she meets Behemoth. She said she wasn't sure whether she's more turned on or just plain jealous.
* AdaptationalHeroism: InUniverse. Atalanta turned out to be a more heroic figure of myth in Bizarro World than in the more prevalents variations of her legend.
-->'''Lash:''' In our world, there was an uncommon, and frankly untrue, variation on the Atalanta legend. In that version, she did not outright kill every man who lost in the race to claim her hand. Instead of death, the losing suitors had to agree to a punishment of Atalanta's choosing. Most were killed, but others were enslaved and treated harshly. And still others were enslaved, but were treated kindly. At first everyone just thought it was her whim, but then Athena, or possibly Aphrodite or Persephone, noticed the pattern.\\
The men Atalanta had executed were villains, they either wanted to marry the princess to take control of her kingdom, or they wanted to marry the great huntress so they could boast of breaking her. The suitors who were spared but forced to work hard, either wanted to marry her so they could live lazily as a prince consort, or they were enamored with her beauty but did not care for her as a person. And the ones who were treated well, they were either forced to challenge her by their original superiors, or genuinely loved her.
* AdaptationalSexuality: An InUniverse example. Jeanne of the Hero Faction got fictionalized as lesbian for the ShowWithinAShow ''Miracle Levi-tan''. The Devils went a step further with Georg, who got fictionalized as a straight [[GenderFlip woman]] because his CampStraight {{Fanboy}}ism of Harry was [[PragmaticAdaptation easier to write that way]].
* AdaptiveAbility: Harry suggests experimenting with getting Sacred Gears to absorb other magical items and effects, like Issei's been doing with the Boosted Gear, to increase their powers.
* AerithAndBob: An unusually literal example; One of the bodyguards of the Senju clan is actually named Bob. And she's a woman (well, female Tengu). She explains it's because her parents are big fans of Music/BobDylan.
* AffectionateParody: InUniverse. ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' is a straightforward MagicalGirlWarrior show, but its American audience consistently think of it as this trope. Serafall can't really understand why that's the case, but the fact is a live-action MagicalGirl show intended for (Devil) kids with a very curvaceous protagonist might be enough of an explanation in itself.
* AgeGapRomance: One of the reasons it takes a long while for Harry to start dating after arriving to Bizarro World. Lash counters that he didn't have such reservations before, particularly his relationship with Anastasia Luccio who was old enough to be his ''grandmother'' (in wizard years, no less) and was similarly and permanently stuck in a much younger body against her will. [[spoiler:This gets Harry to admit that his real problem is that he's [[DarkSecret hiding too many things]] from his LoveInterests and that he's afraid that the truth of his real age and specially his origin will end his friendship to people he's come to care about. In other words, he considers himself entitled to his secrets ''as their ally'', but a ''boyfriend'' or more is an entirely different story.]]
* AIIsACrapshoot:
** {{Discussed}}. Gasper asked the Beelzebub about the possibility of a Devil having a "digital {{familiar}}." When Harry heard about it, he immediately wondered if the little {{Hikikomori}} had just inspired Ajuka to create [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} Skynet]].
** Downplayed. [[spoiler:Fate ends up getting herself in a bit of trouble, and makes Nanoha panic, when she borrows Raising Heart to get the card patched for Brave Duel's UpdatedRerelease as a surprise -- only for Raising Heart to rebel and refuse to take the patch unless she gets a Belkan Cartridge upgrade as part of the deal. This causes a thirty-minute process to take over a day.]]
* AllForNothing:
** All of BB's efforts at getting Harry and Gasper's eyes only got him and his subordinates killed, revealed abilities that the Beholders were trying to kep hidden, and allowed Harry to develop spells that could penetrate their defenses.
** An off-screen example. [[spoiler:Serafall was practicing how to craft disposable yet functional magical guns out of her Devil power so she could let Harry borrow them whenever they work together. That is, until a certain Sacred Gear researcher accidentally provided Harry with a MorphWeapon that can transform into any production firearm he could want, plus functionally unlimited ammo, suddenly making Serafall's secret efforts irrelevant. In a partial {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, her self-training did come in handy to gear up Oakley in a hurry during the Kyoto arc.]]
** [[spoiler:Jeanne points out that the Hero Faction's efforts in Kyoto were a total waste of time, effort, and resources, and suggests that they go after Trihexa instead of Great Red, since one of their "allies" is unsealing it anyway.]]
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: While calling Harry a "bad boy" might stretch it, both Tsubasa and Serafall confesses that his dark and tougher aspects is part of what they find attractive in him.
* AlliterativeTitle: The ShowWithinAShow character based on Harry that appears in both ''Oppai Dragon'' and ''Miracle Level-tan'' is often called "Wandering Wizard" or "Mercenary Magician".
* AlmostKiss: Harry and Serafall almost have their FirstKiss during the first sleepover/guard duty shift at his place during the Beholder StoryArc. They were interrupted by Sona's voice from the other side of the door.
* AlternateSelf:
** [[spoiler:Azazel's lab assistant is the D×D version of Lasciel, who looks just like Lash's projection, though their only real shared trait so far is being attracted to Azazel.]]
** [[spoiler:Harry found a couple others, but he never contacted them. There's also Yoshimo Shiro, as mentioned below.]]
* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents:
** {{Invoked|Trope}}. Sona's mother does her very best to embarrass her in front of her boyfriend during their New Year's Eve dinner.
--->'''Sona:''' Mother, I know what you are doing. Please stop.
** Goddess Athena looked thoroughly embarrassed when in the same room with Zeus and Poseidon, her boisterous father and uncle, respectively. She even was (suspiciously) kind enough to signal Harry to take his leave before they could notice him.
* AmplifierArtifact: One of the Hero Faction {{Mook}}s Harry faces is a StalkerWithACrush to Georg that Harry calls "Goth Hermione" with a Sacred Gear that makes regular spells much more powerful than they should. Her Balance Breaker allows her to fire five of the same attack spells at once, each with a different elemental attribute.
* AngstComa: Unusually {{Justified|Trope}}. It's well-known that the prognosis of the Devil-only sickness known as Purgatory Malaise is heavily dependant on the patient's mental condition, to the point that counseling is a fundamental part of the treatment. This is why patients that get to the stage where they fall into a coma rarely, if ever, wake up and recover. [[spoiler:Harry discovered a strong resemblance between the sickness and [[TheCorruption Nemesis]], meaning that its psychological component is far from a random trait.]]
* AntiMagic:
** [[spoiler:The Beholders can use this under certain circumstances.]]
** Leonardo's Anti-Monsters in the Kyoto arc, particularly Fire and Ice magic to counter Harry's specialties. [[spoiler:They weren't as effective as the Hero Faction expected, though. Rossweisse threw a wrench in it by hitting them near simultaneously with every {{Elemental|Powers}} attack magic she could think of until finding something they weren't resistant to, prompting every allied magic user to change their spells to match. Harry took an even more pragmatic approach and simply gunned several Anti-Monsters down with a submachine gun.]]
* ApocalypseHow: The War of Forgotten was a Type 2. 90% of humanity was killed and the survivors descended into Stone Age barbarism just trying to survive. The gods could not help, because they were too busy recovering from preventing it from becoming a Type X.
* AppropriatedAppelation: After hearing of Harry's "Boss Beholder" nickname (shortened to BB), Argus makes it official, much to the newly dubbed BB's displeasure. When he hears about the "Rini" name for the female pink Beholder, he demands an explanation in the hopes that it'll be worse than his nickname.
* ArchEnemy: {{Discussed|Trope}}. The little nine-tailed {{Kitsune}} Kunou [[FromTheMouthsOfBabes innocently asked]] if the Hero Faction were the 'Wandering Wizard's arch-enemies" from the way he talked about them. Harry was about to deny it when he realized that the shoe kinda fit them, given how often they cross paths and butt heads. A nearby Azazel considered it a good plotline for Harry's ShowWithinAShow counterpart and [[BrickJoke implement it many chapters later]].
* ArtifactTitle: The "High School Library" in question has not shown up on screen in since the single digit chapters.
* ArtificialStupidity: According to Harry, out of all the mandalas that go into making a {{Golem}}, the one that control its actions are by far the most complex and the hardest to work with. That's why stories are full of {{Golem}}s that accidentally turn on their masters or cause tons of unnecessary damage.
* {{Asexuality}}:
** While she later admits she was exaggerating, Serafall calls Azazel this, pointing out that he's currently more focused on Sacred Gears research than any real relationships.
** [[spoiler:There's some InUniverse speculation that Tomoe could be this to some degree. Harry's info is only third-hand, but he hears that when the female Council members where talking about boys, she acted like she never even thought about it, and takes a good deal of prompting to get an answer out.]]
* AsHimself / ForHalloweenIAmGoingAsMyself:
** Harry is dismayed to find out that [[Creator/ChrisHemsworth Chris]] [[Film/{{Thor}} Hemsworth]] is the stage name of the real Norse God Thor.
** Harry takes it better later when he learns that [[Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys Kevin Sorbo]] is the real Heracles. He even taunts the Hero Faction's Heracles with that fact.
* AskAStupidQuestion: Harry groaned to himself when he felt he was duty-bound to ask Issei "what's so special about Rias's breasts?" Harry interrupted him before he could break into "another worshipful lecture on the perfection of Buchou's Bosoms" and clarified that he meant that question as a magic specialist acting as a combat coach to Rias' Peerage. As in, why does something like that help him when it's TimeToUnlockMoreTruePotential, and whether he ever tried it with another of his girlfriends for comparison purposes.
* TheAssimilator: [[spoiler:He Who Walks Below managed to assimilate the magic users he drew into his seal with him, integrating with reality and becoming stronger, eventually becoming Trihexa.]]
* {{Atlantis}}: The ''continent'' of Atlantis existed in prehistoric times in Bizarro World. [[spoiler:It was destroyed in its entirety -- as in the ''whole landmass'', enough to actually affect the planet's gravity -- during the War of Forgotten.]]
* AttackItsWeakPoint: Oakley's Balance Breaker, in addition to allowing her to see through shapeshifting, lets her see weak spots, like an ankle injured from a bad step on Mulan during her battle.
* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Remus's Sacred Gear, Colossus of Rhodes, takes him from 6 feet tall up to 60 feet tall.
* BadassBoast: Harry gives one to Argus that is [[ContinuityNod more than a little similar to the one he gave Marva]]:
-->'''Harry:''' However you normally do it, you are going to tell every one of your Beholders to get the Hell out of Japan. Because if I ever see any of them again; if I ever even think that they are coming after me, or one of my friends, I will hunt them down, and then come after you.\\
'''Argus:''' While I cannot stop you from finishing poor BB. I highly doubt you can make good on that little threat.\\
'''Harry:''' You might not have heard what I told BB. But your Beholders are already done. I have the spells to track them, to block them, and to kill them. I am going to make those spells available to every magician, Devil, Fallen, Angel, Valkyrie, and any other supernatural being that wants them. Their days of being near mythical phantoms, untraceable and untouchable, are over. With any luck, in a year you won't dare send a Beholder anywhere that there might be any kind of magic user. And as for you, ''maybe'' I can't kill you on my own. But I'm on good terms with the leaders of the three factions. Most of them owe me some favors, and I'm friends with the two you seem to fear the most. And I know five Longinus users. Two of them would help me if I asked and the other three I might not be all buddy-buddy with, but I can easily push their buttons to get them to do what I want. And that's just the simple connections. Give me a reason, Argus, and I will gather up every god, demi-god, and god-killer I can, and I will sic them on you. We will find whatever hole you are hiding in. And then you won't have to worry about Hera's curse anymore. Comprende?
* BadBoss: {{Defied}}. Sona was ready to dress down her Peerage for acting on their own during the Kyoto StoryArc, but Harry stepped in and defused her main point of contention by basically throwing Azazel under the bus and telling her that the Fallen was in charge of contacting her in the Underworld. Once in private, Harry told Sona that what he actually did was keeping her from taking her AngerBornOfWorry out on her Peerage, which isn't just a bad call as a leader in general but also unfairly detracts from their accomplishments during the emergency.
* BaitAndSwitch: ''the Soul of a Mahou Shoujo?'' begins with unnamed but recognizable Harry and Sona in a WallPinOfLove as he leans in to kiss her. Then the ''real'' Harry appears and blasts the Stray Devil away from his would-be victim.
-->'''Harry:''' ''[narrating]'' [[LampshadeHanging What, were you expecting someone else?]]
* BandageMummy: [[spoiler:Duncan Sitri after his wife and daughters beat him up for trying to bribe Harry to disappear from their lives.]]
* BatmanGambit: Harry asked Tsubasa to help him move to his new place in front of the rest of the Student Council, citing her augmented physical strength as a Rook to make things a lot easier. He knew she would immediately agree, if only because she surely would want to see both his old apartment and new house. Just like he knew Sona and Reya would volunteer to help too for the same reason, plus their understandable reluctance to leave ''[[TheTease Tsubasa]]'' alone with Harry for a whole day.
-->'''Harry:''' ''[narrating]'' I really did feel bad about manipulating my three romantic pursuers like that. But as they say, "all's fair in love and moving."
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: The Bizarro World version of Creator/HarryHoudini had actual magical powers. He was known as the last confirmed "wizard" -- as in, a human who could cast magic without magic circles or a Sacred Gear -- before his death 20-30 years ago. This is very relevant to the plot because it's thanks to his precedent that his wisecracking namesake's powers are considered highly unusual rather than impossible, and why people are curious of Harry instead of labelling him as a dangerous eldritch threat like other entities from beyond the Dimensional Void.
* BerserkButton:
** Besides hurting innocents and people he cares about, don't fuck with people's minds around Harry. Cao Cao is very high in his shit-list precisely for that reason.
** [[spoiler:Beholders]] for Tsubasa. Big time.
** Hurting Harry is this to all of his LoveInterests, as the bad guys learned the hard way in ''Eyes on the Prize?''. With Tsubasa taking the "berserk" part ''quite'' literally.
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: [[spoiler:BB used the last of his strength to request Argus to use [[PowersViaPossession Divine Sublimation]] on him, basically [[DeathOfPersonality destroying his own mind]] and condemning whatever it was left to PossessionBurnout, so his creator could use his body as an avatar with greater powers and proficiency than himself to kill his would-be slayers.]]
* BewareTheNiceOnes:
** Reya is by far the nicest and least confrontational of Harry's LoveInterests, which makes her brief shift to a vicious ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend in the Beholder StoryArc all the more scary.
** On a more humorous note, while the Sitri sisters merely latched to Harry's arms and Tsubasa jumped to his back under the effects of an accidental aphrodisiac in the HalloweenEpisode, Reya went straight to his bedroom and waited for him in his bed. Thankfully for his LetsWaitAWhile policy, the booze put her to sleep before he could get there.
** For the hat trick. When Tomoe dared to take the only free seat next to Harry at lunch while Reya, Tsubasa and Sona were still deciding which one of them should get it, the Bishop "hissed demonically" (Harry's words) at her very best friend. A heartbeat later, Tomoe was sitting next to Serafall's Knight on the other side of the table. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Reya got the seat.
** When Xenovia is hurt defending Gasper in the Rating Game against Sairog's Peerage, he gets ''pissed'' and quickly finishes his foe off
* BigCreepyCrawlies: One of the creatures Leonardo makes are 'flies the size of small dogs'. Not huge, but still big for a flying insect. Also, the hybrid griffins he makes may count; they are based on normal griffons in size and basic shape, but have dragonfly wings and scorpion tails.
* BigDamnHeroes: In the eponymous chapter, Harry fired up his coat's beacon spell while he fought off a Beholder that attacked Mihae. ''Eleven'' Devils answered his call, [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere forcing it to flee]].
* TheBigDamnKiss: Harry has kissed all four of his girls, but his kisses with Serafall and Sona fall best into this trope. Serafall's kiss left Winter Harry weak in the knee, and assisted her LogicBomb to save him. And Sona's kiss came last, and was the most romantic/heartfelt. And led to more; very nearly much more.
* BigFancyHouse: The Sitri Manor in the Underworld is ''enormous''. It looks like a large mansion from the gates, but it takes a 20-minute ride in a golf car to get from there to the actual door. Harry jokes that one end of the building may not even be in the same ''time zone'' than the opposite one.
* TheBigGuy: Tsubasa, as per norm for Rooks, when she's not being TheTease. [[spoiler:As their relationship evolves, she starts to show a [[HiddenDepths much more vulnerable side]] to Harry.]]
* BigNo: Sona and Rias did this in perfect unison when Harry ever-so-innocently proposed to have a sparring match with Kendra after the Kings vetoed the latter two's prank war.
* BitingTheHandHumor: Harry is shown not to be overly fond of fanfic websites.
* BlindIdiotTranslation: As amazing as the Devils' power of [[TranslatorMicrobes Lang]][[{{Omniglot}} uage]] is, Harry observes that it has its limitations. For example, when Harry asked Sona if there's a "RPG club" in Kuoh Academy, Language [[FunWithAcronyms mistranslated the English acronym]] as "[[MoreDakka Rocket Propelled Grenade]]." She was about to [[RubberFace pinch his cheeks]] for supposedly trying to get his hands on heavy ordinance before he clarified that he meant "role-playing game."
** It ''also'' cannot translate conlangs like Elvish or Klingon.
* BodyDouble: [[spoiler:D×D!Mab]] tries to dupe Harry like this, but it falls short because he knew their AlternateSelf from his original universe.
* BodyHorror:
** The severity of Harry's scars are emphasized a lot more in this fic, and even commented on by Sona when she sees Harry without a shirt for the first time. However, their size is slowly decreasing thanks to long-term healing by Asia, which is reducing them to tolerable levels. especially his mutilated left hand (he can't get rid of them entirely without raising questions from the non-magic students).
** Harry is badly injured in the fight against the Beholders, and it almost costs him his leg, which is described in almost sickening detail. Thankfully, they have Asia on hand to heal him.
* {{Bookworm}}: Harry and Reya bond because they are bookworms. Harry notes that books in Bizarro World (or just in Japanese) are subtly different, making rereading them more interesting.
* BoomerangBigot: Mulan purportedly hates Japan for their actions against China in WWII, but is apparently an [[{{Otaku}} anime fan]], to the point that she's completely fluent in the language. [[spoiler:It is implied by Oakley that Mulan's prejudice is likely due to Cao Cao's brainwashing.]]
* BottomlessMagazines: More like ''Unlimited'' Magazines if you want to get technical about it, but Second Amendment comes fully loaded whenever the artificial Sacred Gear transforms into a firearm. This means that it's actually faster to just drop it and re-summon it than reloading normally. The ammo seems to be perfectly non-magical and stays if fired or manually removed from the weapon, making a good source of ammunition in a country with strict anti-gun laws like Japan or for raw materials like depleted uranium rounds. Even Azazel isn't sure where the ammo comes from, but he and Harry suspect it's summoning it from ammo depots around the world.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:Christine Lee/Mulan was brainwashed even more heavily than Oakley or Yasaka to get her eager to participate in the attack on Kyoto.]]
* BreakTheHaughty: A {{Downplayed|Trope}}, well-meaning example. Harry noticed that Akeno was getting bored with the training regime that he and Rossweisse came up for "the magic types" in Rias and Sona's Peerages because it was simply too easy for her. Seeing the potential complacency/frustration/hubris problem there, Harry performed an incredibly more complex variation of the exercise as a way to tell Akeno and everybody present that, a) nope, she's got a ''long'' way to go as a magic user, and b) if she had a problem with the training, she should've just told them about it because he certainly can provided her with a challenge proportional to her current skill.
* BrickJoke:
** Whenever Harry gears up for battle, he takes a baseball with him. Not an enchanted one, just a normal baseball. If he gets called on it, he insists that it might come in handy. [[spoiler:It shows up again in ''A Storm Gathering?'' and is used to incapacitate [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Goth Hermione]], a Hero Faction mage.]]
** Speaking of Goth Hermione, the Hero got angry when Harry called her that. It seemed at the time she was upset of he would compare her to the fictional character, but a later chapter reveals that her hair ''is'' dyed. She is trying not to look like Hermione, and was annoyed that the guy she hates on principle would noticed the similarity.
** One going back to the original story; during the gender-bender incident, Harry sarcastically tells Lash he will be sure to have a larger t-shirt on hand for the next time Azazel turns him into a girl. In ''A Terrible Thing to Waste?'' he has a t-shirt handy for Oakley (who had been stripped by Ise's Dress Break), and when he gives it to Tsubasa to put on the unconscious girl, the Rook notes that the t-shirt is much larger than what he normally wears.
** For another, Harry jokily complained that he never gets what he calls "the good kind of stalker" -- namely a "[[AllGuysWantCheerleaders hot, overeager, sexually aggressive cheerleader]]" -- in the original fic. In the chapter 42 of the {{Continuation}}, [[spoiler:Jeanne from the Hero Faction]] offered to pay for Harry's OccultDetective fees by renting and cosplaying as a cheerleader for him, which [[ClingyJealousGirl didn't]] [[KillingIntent fly]] [[BattleAura well]] with [[SuperStrength Tsubasa]] and [[PersonOfMassDestruction Serafall]].
** For a third one, Lash suggested devising a spell to tug a girl's hair from a distance while teasing Harry about his alleged {{fetish}} for it. It's revealed in chapter 75 that he knows the fae spell [[PunnyName Tug-straction]] that does exactly that. No [[PowerPerversionPotential perverted usage]] of the spell (so far), though.
** Harry learns from Azazel that there's a spell that copy memories of the caster into a DVD and that ''[[LovableSexManiac Akeno]]'' of all people knows it. That's why Harry was ''very'' nervous when Issei brought an unmarked DVD that he wanted to watch with Harry at his place several chapters later. [[spoiler:No, it's not a HomePornMovie, but rather the debut episode of the Wandering Wizard in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]''.]]
** One time Harry mentioned that he wanted to buy some jewelry as bases for new talismans, only for Serafall to unsubtly {{Hint Drop|ping}} that "a simple bronze or copper ring or bracelet is a good gift to give a girl early in a new relationship" and then mentions that she and Sona coincidentally both wear a size 7 ring on their right ring finger. Harry pretends to not hear the last part. Skip 33 chapters into the future [[spoiler:to Christmas where it's revealed that she gave him the idea of crafting upgraded Force Rings for all four of his LoveInterests.]]
** A meta example. Chapter 20's Author's Notes mention that [[spoiler:the name "Sophia" will be used a temporary name for Harry and Lash's daughter until the time Creator/JimButcher will provide a CanonName for the newborn Spirit of Intellect]]. Jump to chapter 74 where [[spoiler:her CanonName -- Bonea -- is mentioned in a mostly unrelated context and Harry's only remark about it is [[TakeThat "poor]] [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude kid"]].]]
** There is one with more than ''500,000 words'' in the making, between the set-up in the first chapter of the original fic and the punchline in the chapter 76 of the {{Continuation}}. Namely, when Harry finally [[spoiler:finds out why the ''Literature/ArsGoetia'' says that "the Sitri was a demon which approached and could cause love between men and women, but could also cause people to become naked before them" and why Sona was truly ''mortified'' when he mentioned it. It turns out that her family has a hereditary power that allows them to produce the so-called "Sitri Oil" through their Water magic. The magical substance dissolves anything dead or inorganic without harming living beings while also acting as a powerful {{Aphrodisiac}} by contact, making it the [[HistoricalInJoke in-universe origin]] of the "clothing dissolver" variation of TheNudifier trope and few [[PowerPerversionPotential kinkier]] more. No wonder Sona asked her sister to not tell Harry about it.]]
* BunnyEarsLawyer: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Harry noticed that one of the Knights of the Peerage Sona's would face first in the rescheduled Young Devils Rating Game tournament was completely ignoring the press conference and instead focused her attention on her handheld game console without her King calling her out on it. This makes him label her as highly dangerous because only people that gets results tend to get away with that kind of open dismissal of protocol. [[spoiler:She later is revealed to have a Sacred Gear that allows her create ImprovisedGolems and control them more easily than normal with the console.]]
* BusmansHoliday: Harry and his girlfriends had to solve with some supernatural problems during their Christmas Eve date. Fortunately, it wasn't too much of a hassle to deal with and things went pretty much as planned for once.
* ButForMeItWasTuesday: [[spoiler:The Beholder that stole Tsubasa's eyes and left her to bleed out [[SubvertedTrope actually remember her]], even years after the fact. It quickly becomes a DoubleSubversion once the creature makes clear the incident didn't mean a thing it at all other than it was rather looking forward to take "those lovely blues" for its master for a second time.]]
* TheCaligula: Argus. He sends out Beholders to make a treaty with Human kings. When some of the kings refuse, and others try to negotiate, he has a fit of rage and forces the Beholders to kill them. Even the kings who readily agreed to his terms. Then he forced the Beholders to fight each other as punishment and for his amusement.
* TheCameo:
** Harry and Reya's first date is to [[Manga/TheDisappearanceOfNagatoYukiChan a familiar book swap meet where a familiar tiny, lavender haired girl and taller brown haired boy act as their primary competition]].
** [[Manga/ShinozakisanKiWoOtaShikaNi Shinozaki Akina]] appears as a possessed thief Harry helps the Tokyo PD track down.
** One of the books Azazel sees and names in the ancient library is the [[LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero Founder's Prayer Book]].
** Two VideoGame/PuzzleAndDragons monsters Lumiel and Rozuel, show up as Angels.
** There's an InUniverse example when Harry gets roped into making a brief appearance as his Stetson-wearing fictional counterpart in an ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'' live skit.
* CampStraight: Despite his {{Fanboy}}ism of Harry, Georg says he's straight when asked. He details that girls like Mulan, and to a lesser extent Jeanne, are his type.
* CanonWelding:
** [[spoiler:Sona's Knight, Meguri Tomoe is the granddaughter and student of the Bizzaro World version of [[Characters/TheDresdenFilesTheChurch Yoshimo Shiro]] (on her mother's side).]]
** [[spoiler:''The War of Forgotten?'' bolts the two canons together and welds up the seams. The reason Ophis originally left the Dimensional Void? She was either infected by [[TheCorruption Nemesis]], or influenced by a carrier. The ancient gods started to create the Magogs to stop the Outsider invasion that follows. And Trihexa used to be known as He Who Walks Below.]]
** It's implied that the illness that put Sairaorg's mother in a coma is an SyntheticPlague developed 9,000 years ago -- and thus predating the Great War between the Three Faction by several thousands -- [[spoiler:in an attempt to replicate [[TheCorruption Nemesis]].]]
* CantCatchUp: Harry actively {{Defie|d}}s this trope for himself by always researching and developing new spells and magical tools -- [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein "stop learning, start dying"]], as he puts it -- and for others by suggesting new uses or improvements to their skillsets.
* CantHaveSexEver: An unfortunate reality for the Angels, who are unable to have sex without succumbing to Lust and becoming Fallen. The higher-ups are trying to figure out a way around this, as Angels are just as interested in sex as everyone else. Harry suggests that the issue might just be [[spoiler:that the Angels having sex aren't ''married'' when they're doing it.]]
* CartwrightCurse:
** Much of Harry's reluctance to romance comes from acknowledging this trope. Hard to blame him when most women who have ever loved him in the [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles source material]] ''have'' objectively come out worse for it.
** Also a DiscussedTrope when a jealous Saji ranted at Harry for the likely possibility of him hurting Sona deeply someday, something that Harry admits won't ever be out of the question.
* CatGirl: The Sitri maid who picks up Harry at the train station is a humanoid with cat ears.
* CatsAreMagic: Harry's cat Mister somehow finds his way to Bizarro World, much to Harry and Lash's shock. They have no idea if it's the original Mister who has somehow crossed universes, the local counterpart of the original Mister [[spoiler:like Santa Claus and Uriel]] or something else entirely, but he acts just like the original Mister, looks exactly the same under the Sight, and apparently sees Harry as his owner (as much as a cat normally does anyway). He also [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane might or might not]] be able to NoSell Gasper's [[TimeStandsStill Forbidden Balor View]].
* CatsAreSnarkers: Mister manages to do this without speaking. His dialogue is limited entirely to meowing (written as "Nya").
* TheCavalry: Frequently {{Invoked}}. Harry crafted an enchantment onto his coat that, once activated, lets anyone who knows the other half of the spell use it as a teleportation beacon to his current location. He combines it with preset text messages to quickly call for help in emergencies. [[spoiler:Beholders quickly wise up and start jamming magical and mundane communications to prevent this from happening.]]
* CelebCrush: According to Behemoth, Serafall once had a crush on Creator/JohnnyDepp.
* CelebrityParadox: Harry has now read and is a big fan of the ''Literature/CodexAlera'' books. He tells Sona that if he ever needs someone to write his biography, he will ask Creator/JimButcher. Harry even [[GameMaster runs a Codex Alera game]] for Sona's Peerage using the [[TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles official, licensed RPG based on the FATE system]].
* CelibateHero:
** A very rare ''self-imposed'' example. Harry's girls are perfectly willing to consummate their relationship already, but Harry himself, no matter how much he WANTS to, doesn't feel comfortable doing so emotionally, mostly related to his true age and origins. Not that they haven't had a few close calls in moments of passion.
** Another self-imposed example in Issei and his harem. Irina can't have sex or she will Fall. Koneko can't have sex or she will suffer DeathByChildbirth. So all the members of Issei's Harem agree that none of them will have sex until all of them can. Both problems are being worked on, but it is not clear exactly how long either fix will take.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Jeanne was a lot more [[TheDitz ditzy]] and [[ValleyGirl fun-]] and [[BloodKnight battle-loving]] in the original fic than in the {{Continuation|Fic}}. FridgeBrilliance kicks in when you realize the sobering of her personality matches her growing disillusionment with the Hero Faction given their SlowlySlippingIntoEvil, with them [[spoiler:targeting her little sister for recruitment]] as the turning point.
* CharacterOverlap: The "Wandering Wizard", a PopCulturedBadass ShowWithinAShow character based on Harry, is an InUniverse example. He appears in both ''Oppai Dragon'' and ''Miracle Levi-tan'' series as the first step of a bigger crossover piece still in development.
* ChekhovsGun:
** Harry received a single vial of Phoenix Tears from Ravel as a housewarming gift and a reward from her family for saving Mihae, one of Riser's Bishops, at the start of the Beholder StoryArc. Thirty-four chapters later, he used them [[spoiler:to save Issei's life when Cao Cao scored a hit and almost managed to exploit the [[HolyBurnsEvil Devil's inherent weakness to Light to wipe him out of existence]].]]
** When Harry and Sona finally try to have a Soulgaze, they discover that her magically protective glasses can keep it from activating. [[spoiler:Later on during their Christmas Eve date, she gets non-prescription equivalents for Tsubasa and Reya so they and Harry can look at each other in the eye without triggering a Soulgaze.]]
* ChekhovsSkill:
** Serafall's Soulgaze with Harry allowed her to promptly figure out when Harry was getting overwhelmed by the Winter Mantle, and what to do to snap him out of it.
** Harry is an expert at handling (and manipulating) ditzy and overenthusiastic little fairies from his experiences with Toot-Toot and the Za-Lord's Guard. In the original fic, he considered using said skills to recruit like-minded Tomoe should the need for mischief arise, but he does nothing of the sort it until [[spoiler:he manages to talk D×D!Mab into allying the Unseelie Court to the Kuou Alliance by promising her a big role AsHerself in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''.]]
** The language-changing spell from ''An Expected Result?'' returns in ''A Rearguard Action?'', allowing Texan girl Oakley to read the sign on the side of a Japanese building and know that it is a school.
** The same spell later returns ''again'' when [[spoiler:Sona uses it in a Ratings Game to keep members of the opposing team from being able to understand each other by making it so that each one only understands a ''different'' language, while using a modified version to allow her Peerage to temporarily be able to speak and understand both English and Klingon, since Language doesn't work on ''artificial'' languages.]]
** Harry's question to Issei about why he can get power from touching Rias' breasts and not from the other girls in the harem [[spoiler:comes back when, during Issei's fight with Sairaorg, he summons the power he gets from the girls to make more powerful versions of his Rook (Koneko and Rossweisse), Bishop (Asia) and Queen (Rias + Akeno + Irina) armors, with a naked image of the girls forming around him as he summons the energy.]]
* ChivalrousPervert: While it obviously applies to Issei, the trope itself is played with by the story itself. Since the setting is that of a light novel/Ecchi anime, it keeps setting up situations where this would normally come into play, but since Harry ISN'T a character from that type of media, his reactions are different. While certainly chivalrous almost to a fault, Harry didn't originally have any sort of interest in a harem, and is utterly dumbfounded by the way fate (and [[ShipperOnDeck Lash]]) seems to draw him towards one.
* ChosenConceptionPartner: Coira Sitri née Allocer is looking one for herself, despite being completely uninterested in a potential male partner, due to political pressure to keep the Pillar family from dying out as such and hopefully pass down her RecessiveSuperGenes to her children. It helps a lot to the situation that she actually wants to be a mother after helping out to raise Serafall and Sona. [[spoiler:Coira is considering Harry of all people for the role because he's likely to pass his magical aptitude to his kids, and a human sperm donor should improve the chances of her RecessiveSuperGenes to manifest (as well as giving a metaphorical middle finger to the elitists and racists in Devil society). Less clinically, Coira likes the idea that Sona, Serafall, and her own future children would be half-siblings to each other, which gives him an even bigger pause during the conversation due to Coira's implicit assumption that he's going to marry both Sitri sisters someday.]]
* ChristmasEpisode: Done originally as an {{Omake}} at Christmas, then rewritten later in a longer and slightly altered form when the story actually reached Christmas. Harry takes his four girlfriends out on a romantic date as is typical for Christmas Eve in Japan, and they end up stopping a hedge magician from ruining it for all the happy couples. Then he has them stay overnight for an American-style Christmas morning. [[spoiler:There is even a visit from Santa.]]
* {{Chuunibyou}}: Harry met a girl like that in his first high school:
-->'''Harry:''' Then I was targeted by that chuuni girl…\\
'''Sona:''' Targeted?\\
'''Reya:''' Chuuni? Are you sure she wasn't…\\
'''Harry:''' No, she had less magical energy than Aika or the duo, and no real supernatural skills or knowledge. She just dyed her hair green, and kept it in a ponytail with six different ties. She said if even one was removed her hair would go wild and destroy the school. And when I say targeted, she kept saying that I was her disciple. Really, she was just trying to get me to teach her. But like I said, she didn't have any talent or power.
* ClarkKenting: [[spoiler:Referenced and hoped for by Harry, who thinks people might not recognize Lash as a copy of D×D's Lasciel, since Lash is wearing a revealing toga (vs. Lasciel's layer of concealing clothing), has her hair expertly done (as opposed to pinned in a haphazard bun with whatever she has on hand), and yes, does not wear glasses. If the similarities are noticed despite these precautions, he plans to just say that Lash based her appearance off of Lasciel, which is technically true.]]
* ClingyJealousGirl:
** Issei's harem like in canon. Harry also observes their less obvious displays such as Rias and Asia keeping a watchful eye on Issei's hands when he used the Boosted version of Pai-lingual on Misla's breasts.
** {{Subverted|Trope}} with Harry's, whose personalities makes them less likely to fall into this.
** Also actively {{Defied|Trope}} by the wizard himself. Once he finally decided to give their blossoming multi-partner relationship a fair chance, Harry made sure of giving each of his girlfriends equal attention, not playing favorites, not showing interest when other women (mostly Jeanne) try to seduce him, and generally just not being stupid enough to give his girls a reason to be jealous in the first place.
* ClingyMacGuffin: [[MorphWeapon Second Amendment]], one of the artificial Sacred Gears Azazel has created. When he asked Harry to help him test it, it refused to detach from Harry when they were done. Both Harry and Az suspect the other might have planned it.
* ClosetGeek: Saji became a big fan of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'', and wasn't too happy when Harry learned about it the time they roomed together during the school trip. Thankfully for him, Harry isn't one to give someone grief about their fandoms despite being TheGadfly most of the time.
* ColorFailure: [[spoiler:During their conversation on the Outside, Rossweisse makes an expression that has Harry lampshade that she'd be doing this in an anime.]]
* ComicallyMissingThePoint:
** At the convention, a fan takes a Polaroid of Serafall and reluctantly includes Harry. Then he drops the instant photo and runs away. Serafall picks it up, and she and Lash both complain that he cut Harry's head off. Completely ignoring that he also managed [[SpookyPhotographs to capture the dark and malevolent shadow that is Lash]]. When Harry protests, Lash admits it doesn't look much like her, either.
** When Serafall proposed to have Harry cosplay as [[Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire Prince Xizor]] and Tsubasa, Reya and herself shapeshift into Twi'lek in skimpy dancing outfits for the premier of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', the librarian girl's only complaint was that it wasn't canon-compliant with ''Franchise/StarWars'' anymore, rather than remarking on how little she would be wearing.
** When Harry finally dares to mention the [[EldritchAbomination Outsiders]] to his girlfriends, Reya thinks at first he's talking about [[Comicbook/BatmanAndTheOutsiders American comic books]]. Harry finds the MoodWhiplash so abrupt and funny that he [[ActuallyPrettyFunny breaks into a laugh]].
* CommonalityConnection:
** The original premise of the ContinuationFic is that Harry/Reya becomes a thing because they're huge {{Bookworm}}s with a taste for fantasy fiction and how it compares to their actual supernatural lives.
** Harry and Mihae -- one of Riser's Bishops -- have a moment of CommonalityConnection from the opposite sides of a Rating Game because they both call a plant monster a [[ContinuityNod "chlorofiend"]].
** Serafall and Arashimaru, a [[{{Muggles}} normal guy]] she and Harry met at the [=GamesBlast=] convention in Nagasaki, hit off pretty well because of their love for the MagicalGirl genre [[spoiler:and their taste in men.]]
** PlayedForDrama for a bit later on when a rather distraught Tsubasa observed that she has less in common with Harry than any of his other LoveInterests. Harry counters that it's not about ''having'' things in common from the get-go, but instead giving themselves the chance to ''find'' commonalities. For example, Harry didn't think he would enjoy action videogames until Tsubasa introduced him to them, and now it's one ''their'' favorite pastimes.
* CompositeCharacter: InUniverse. The character "Georgia/Wands Green" from ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' is a mix of Georg and Goth Hermione.
* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Harry is well aware of this Hollywood fallacy, and as a ProperlyParanoid precaution, he paid extra for furniture made of more sturdy materials that could be used as cover in a pinch.
* ContinuityNod:
** The opening line of ''Equity?'' is "[[Literature/BloodRites The building was on fire,]] [[DestructiveSaviour and for the second time I could recall, it wasn't my fault]]."
** Mihae from Riser's Peerage uses the word "chlorofiend." It surprised Harry because he thought he was the only one who called plant monsters that.
** Serafall reveals to Harry that she takes pole-dancing lessons, but is not as good as Rias or Akeno. This is a reference to the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' anime's infamous first ending sequence.
** Harry's threat to use every weapon he can get to end Argus, if he ever sees a Beholder in Japan (see BadassBoast above) is very much like the threat he made to Marva at the end of ''Dead Beat''.
** Harry turned [[MorphWeapon Second Amendment]] into a [[CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns FN P90]] and a [[HandCannon Desert Eagle]] during the Kyoto arc. These were Murphy and Thomas' [[WeaponOfChoice firearms of choice]] in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', respectively.
** Harry introduces Rias and Sona's Peerages to his weighted clothing regimen from the sneak peak prologue of ''Peace Talks''.
* ContrivedCoincidence: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Harry found a house for sale just beside the Hyoudou residence cheaper than its market price ''because'' it was next to the Hyoudou residence. Rias turning the place into a BigFancyHouse (literally) overnight and the constant shenanigans Ise and his harem get up to ended up tiring out one of his neighbours who turned out to be mildly immune to the [[WeirdnessCensor notice-me-not spells]] on the place.
* ConvenientComa: PlayedWith. While certainly not ''easy'' as it took the combined efforts of Asia, Issei, Rias, Harry, and Lash to pull off, they did manage to wake Misla Bael up from her coma on their first try.
* ConversationalTroping: Often between Harry and Lash, sometimes even referring tropes by name. Also relatively common between Harry, Serafall, and Azazel.
* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: Harry's planned death curse for BB? To blind the Beholder. Fortunately, he gets saved before he has to go through with it.
* CooldownHug: Harry to Tsubasa to keep her from going off half-cocked after [[spoiler:a Beholder]] in her blind rage [[spoiler:to avenge her own death.]]
* CoolMask: Oakley's Balance Breaker takes the form of a mask.
* CoolOldGuy: Arashimaru, the older gentleman Harry and Serafall meet at the convention. He is the second person to ask to join their pickup board game, against Japanese custom (the first barely counts since she worked for the game company). He tells Serafall about the book sale that Harry takes Reya to. He is also there selling some of his deceased husband's books, and points out a magician selling actual spellbooks to Harry. And finally he is fully aware Harry is dating both Serafall and Reya, and he just tells Harry to be good to them.
* CoordinatedClothes:
** Downplayed. While each of Harry's girlfriends dressed up in their own particular styles for their Christmas Eve's dinner date, Tsubasa and Reya joined Sona in wearing glasses and they all wore a necklace with a "hexagonal aquamarine on a silver chain" to unify their outfits (a matching tie in Tsubasa's case) as seen in the fanart above. The latter may have been a bad call on their part, one that unwittingly contributed to all the intense if silent scorn Harry got from other people that night, if they were mistaken for [[UsefulNotes/{{BDSM}} day]] [[BondageIsBad collars]].
** Sona's Peerage wears new, matching uniforms for her match with Seekvaira; form fitting long-sleeved navy blue shirts, black canvas cargo pants, and heavy work boots. Sona, Reya, and Tsubasa also sport new jackets; black leather dusters like Harry and Tsubaki.
* TheCorruption: [[spoiler:Leaks in Trihexa's first seal, from when he was the Walker He Who Walks Below, caused his corruptive influence to leak out due to his nature changing from assimilating the few magic users helping seal him that he had dragged in with him. It especially affected the Devils due to the fact that he grabbed more of them, leading to the start of the DealWithTheDevil stuff, but it also helped lead to the first Angels that started Falling, and thus what would become the war between the factions.]]
* CosmicPlaything: Harry notes that despite the fact that GodIsDead is in effect, he still feels that there's some higher power that likes messing with him. Sona, knowing how much of a WeirdnessMagnet he is, can't really argue.
* CovertPervert:
** Harry is fairly sure that a certain crossdressing vampire is straight because of some ''interesting '' websites he showed Issei.
--->'''Harry:''' I swear, it's always the quiet ones.
** Reya and Sona, unlike [[ChivalrousPervert Tsubasa and especially Serafall]] who are a lot more honest about wanting to take their relationship with Harry to the next level. To wit, Reya seems to have frequent {{Erotic Dream}}s about Harry given how easily she fell into one when Riser's Queen cast a [[ForcedSleep sleep-inducing spell]] on her, and Sona pointedly ''didn't'' refute the idea of [[spoiler:bringing "[[TheNudifier Sitri]] [[LovePotion Oil]]" to the bedroom]] despite how much she hates even talking about [[spoiler:her family's hereditary power.]]
* CrazyJealousGuy:
** {{Invoked}}. Harry figures it pays to play the part when you're dating several beautiful girls.
--->I partially shielded my dates from the polite observers and well-wishers. Most just wanted to offer congratulations or thanks. But I stood beside them, and glowered down at the handful of men, teen, tween, and adult, who seemed to be less interested in Tsubasa and Serafall's gaming skills, and more interested in how they filled out their somewhat revealing workout outfits. They seemed to get the idea. [[DeathGlare I have a pretty good glower]].
** During the school trip to Kyoto, the Perverted Duo made the mistake of telling Harry about their plans to peep on the girls of the student council and the female teachers in the onsen. Harry pretends to be interested in joining in to get them to spill more details, and then uses that intel to trap {{The Peeping Tom}}s in their room with magic for the night and then he lowers the room's temperature for good measure. In their defense, the Duo didn't think their own rumors about Harry dating three of the girls in the council were real.
* CripplingOverspecialization: The Anti-Monsters Leonardo sets upon the group in the Kyoto Arc are these. They're effective against Devils, and resistant to normal magic -- particularly [[PlayingWithFire Fire]] and [[KillItWithIce Ice]] to account for Dresden -- but they're not very effective on Issei due to his Dragon traits, vulnerable to lightning and water spells from a certain Valkyrie, and weak against normal bullets, rendering them less effective against the mixed group than they would be against a Devil-only party. When Leonardo makes adjustments for these weaknesses, he ends up giving them new ones, implying that he can only give them so many powers and resistances at once.
* CrisisMakesPerfect: Oakley is finally able to achieve her Balance Breaker when she was losing to Mulan, and decided not to give up.
* CurbStompBattle: Nike was trying to get Remus to reveal the location of Leonardo. Once she realizes he doesn't know, she takes him out in two hits. He was 60 feet tall at the time.
* CutawayGag: Harry saves himself and Sona's Peerage from getting yelled at, by putting out that it was Azazel's job to contact her. Cut Azazel is under a bus, looking for his keys.
* CutLexLuthorACheck: Harry has a much easier time making money from his abilities in this setting, and makes a tidy profit from selling magically-enchanted clothes and jewelry to the supernatural factions, on top of his detective work.
* DamagerHealerTank: Harry [[DiscussedTrope explains this]] to Asia, when she wants to be more than a Healer. He also includes a fourth classification, Controller (or just "Troll" as he puts it).
* DarkMagicalGirl: InUniverse. Georg(ia)/Wands Green in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'', down to being the magic specialist of "[[ThePsychoRangers Divine Inheritor Hero Rangers]]" and wanting to take the MagicalGirl protagonist's {{Love Interest|s}} for herself.
* DeaderThanDead: [[spoiler:When Argus remotely hijacks his henchman BB, he states that doing so has effectively erased BB's personality for good, and even if the body survives the battle, the mind will be gone.]]
* DeathbringerTheAdorable: [[TheDitz Tomoe]] named her {{Familiar}}, a palm-size hummingbird with partially metallic feathers, "Massacre".
* DeathGlare:
** Harry tends to get annoyed looks from envious male passersby whenever he's in public and in the company of one of his LoveInterests in a damn-that-plain-looking-foreign-delinquent-got-the-hot-girl-oh-why-not-me kinda way. [[spoiler:The one time he and all four of his girlfriends had an actual date in the ChristmasEpisode, he got so many envious/disproving stares from men and women alike that Reya had trouble believing he could endure them nonchalantly. It's quite sad that said fortitude and tolerance come from decades enduring [[HeroWithBadPublicity mocking and disdain from people who don't know better]].]]
** Harry's got a "pretty good glower" to keep guys from hitting on his LoveInterests.
* DePower:
** Harry proposed a method to remove the "Hero" aspect of a person's soul before it takes root. [[spoiler:It fails.]]
** [[spoiler:It does, however, inspire a potential way to remove things like Evil Pieces, Brave Saints cards, and Sacred Gears without harming the host, which could do much for keeping the Zeroes contained.]]
* DepthDeception: When Harry arrived to the Sitri Manor in the Underworld, he saw a large mansion from the gate. As he ''slowly'' make it to the door, he realized it was a ''huge'' BigFancyHouse where "you could slice up the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower Sears Tower]] and fit it inside Sona's parent's home. With room to spare. For [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field Wrigley Field.]]"
* DidntThinkThisThrough:
** Takako Senju should've thought twice before carelessly quoting ''Franchise/StarWars'' at Harry.
--->'''Harry:''' No, just… You mentioned training and other styles. So I was wondering if you know any common or non-secret types of unarmed combat.\\
'''Takako:''' I am fluent in over six million forms of melee combat.\\
'''Harry:''' Great… Ta-three-K-O.\\
'''Takako:''' ''[pales]'' I apologize for attempting to quote that movie in front of you, Harry. Please don't call me that or say it in front of anyone else.
** Harry pranked Kendra for trying to get him in trouble with his girlfriends by dyeing her hair and skin bright pink. He wasn't overly concerned about the consequences because his "Brillo-us" spell was perfect to get her back to normal if waiting for the dye to wear off wasn't an option. What he didn't take into consideration -- that is, until Rias ''gleefully'' pointed it out -- is that the spell needs Harry to "vigorously scrub the area to be cleaned with [his] hand." Given that ''all'' of Kendra's body was affected, you may see why this was poor planning from his part. Akeno quips that perhaps that was ''exactly'' he was aiming for.
* DishingOutDirt: One of Seekvaira Agares's Rooks has a Sacred Gear that summons rocks to his hands. Azazel comments that's kinda lackluster as far as Sacred Gears go, but it becomes a reliable tool when combined with a Rook's SuperStrength and some creativity. For example, by using them as projectiles, or summoning rocks with the right shapes and composition to be wielded as improvised weapons.
* DismantledMacGuffin: {{Invoked}}. The Senju Clan has a "dimensional break jutsu" that spatially divides an object into several pieces without destroying it by keeping it connected through portals. They use it to store dangerous items that can't be destroyed, for communication, or [[MundaneUtility pranking smartass wizards]].
* DistractedByTheSexy:
** {{Invoked|Trope}}. Tsubasa is not above exploiting Harry's hormones to beat him in videogames. As he puts it, "it was no coincidence she wriggled her butt [while sitting on his lap] when [his] combo counter got too far above hers."
** InUniverse example in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'': When the Wandering Wizard had a GlamourFailure after losing his NiceHat and returning to his real appearance in his late teens, the protagonist Levi-tan was so distracted by it during her fight with Spear Red that she almost loses an ear.
--->'''Levi-tan:''' Do you mind? I'm having a BishieSparkle moment here!
* DoesNotLikeMen: {{Discussed|Trope}}. When Coira Sitri comments that she's "not particularly interested in the traditional method of becoming pregnant", Kendra asks whether that's because she doesn't like men. Coira then makes the distinction that she likes men just fine, she just lacks "any romantic or sexual interest in them."
* DoIReallySoundLikeThat: Harry's reaction at seeing his wisecracking ShowWithinAShow counterpart the "Wandering Wizard" for the first time. Lash's reaction was naturally to [[RhetoricalQuestionBlunder answer "yes" to his question]] and [[LaughThemselvesSick laugh herself sick]].
* DontExplainTheJoke: A DoubleSubversion. Harry once talked about donkeys and making assumptions, but Asia didn't understand why he was doing it. Momo had to explain to her that he was referring to the {{pun}}ny joke "to assume makes an ass out you and me", but she didn't actually say it.
* DoomMagnet: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Azazel rather rightfully calls Issei and Harry "the two biggest trouble magnets [he's] seen in a thousand years" and starts to make plans for ''when'' -- as opposed to "if" -- major problems will hit their school trip to Kyoto just because the two of them are in attendance. The Fallen Angel is, of course, proven right.
* DoppelgangerAttack: Reya's Artificial Sacred Gear is a mix of this and AstralProjection. "Colors of the Storm" allows her to create a clone of herself out of her winds that "borrows all of her pigmentation", making her real body almost invisible in the process. The clone isn't particularly strong or solid, but it makes for a great distraction and an ideal scout that can move more swiftly than her own body, plus being able to slip into otherwise inaccessible places because it's basically an Wind Elemental with her shape as its ShapeshifterDefaultForm. The AstralProjection aspect is {{Downplayed}} in that Reya can act on her own while [[{{Synchronization}} seeing and hearing what her clone does]] rather than "be" in the elemental construct, [[spoiler:but it can be considered "her" to a sufficient extent that the Rating Game system recognizes the clone's location for the purposes of Promotion requirement.]]
* DoubleDate: An accidental example when Harry and Reya went to get lunch at the same place Issei and Asia were already having theirs. Harry and Reya wanted to LeaveTheTwoLovebirdsAlone (and avoid a [[ThirdWheel third and fourth wheel]] for themselves), but Asia caught sight of them waved them over before they could take a table at the other side of the room.
* DoubleKnockout: Tsubasa and Seekvaira's Queen during the Rating Game between both Peerages in the [[TournamentArc Young Devils Tournament]]. Being a "capture the flag" kind of match, they both can return to the field after a timeout period.
* DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: {{Defied|Trope}}. After meeting her parents, Harry realized that Sona likely unconsciously picked up her bad habit of [[LittleGirlsKickShins kicking his shin]] and [[AgonyOfTheFeet stomping his foot]] from her parent's SlapSlapKiss relationship, which is somewhat justified in their case because her father has an amazing HealingFactor and he can be too much of a {{Jerkass}} at times. Sona admitted that Harry had a point and promised to not do it again, but he commented that he still expects her to [[RubberFace pinch his cheeks]] on occasion... as she should expect him to mess up her hair in retaliation.
* DoWrongRight:
** Harry seems ready to scold Sona for using her water dragon to intimidate Riser (after Ise gave him a severe case of dracophobia). Instead, he tells her she could make the dragon much more scary, and proceeds to demonstrate.
** Azazel in the Kyoto School Trip arc:
--->'''Azazel:''' ''[to the boys]'' I expect you all to be on your best behavior, No sneaking into the girls' rooms, even if you are invited. Follow the set bath times. No peeping.\\
'''Azazel:''' ''[in a lower voice]'' And whatever you do, don't do something stupid to get caught. Like climbing the fences. Instead, build a periscope or use a selfie-stick. And if you take any pictures, make sure you save them to the cloud and delete them off your phones.
* DramaticIrony: When asked about it, Harry says that he's not sure if he's ready to be a father. Lash {{Lampshade|Hanging}}s the irony in his head.
* TheDreaded:
** [[spoiler:The Outsiders, especially the Walkers, to those who know of them.]]
** For a less serious example, ''everybody'' in Kuoh Academy are scared of having math with Takamachi-sensei. Her finals and make-up classes the previous year are so infamously hard that the now third-year students have given her the epithet [[MythologyGag "White Devil"]] despite being an otherwise very amiable teacher. [[spoiler:It's bad enough that Sona agreed to reschedule supernatural business with Harry so he could help Nanoha with a missing property case. They knew that a sad and frustrated teacher is a surefire recipe for even harder quizzes and assignments.]]
** [[EverybodyHatesHades Hades]]. People can feel "energy, light, and hope" sapping away in his proximity and Azazel outright places him in the top ten, if not the top five, of the heaviest hitters around.
* DressesTheSame: {{Defied|Trope}}. Harry's girlfriends apparently passed notes to avoid this trope or outdress each other. They did agree on wearing glasses (Soulgaze-blocking variants for Reya and Tsubasa) and a distinctive aquamarine necklaces to [[CoordinatedClothes unify their outfits]].
* DrivenToSuicide:
** The Beholder 2-Delta in Shizukesa's backstory. She couldn't handle the guilt for killing numbers 6 and 4 (4 by choice). [[ICannotSelfTerminate Beholders are hard-wired to be unable to kill themselves]], [[SuicideByCop so she challenged something she knew she couldn't beat and got herself killed]].
** [[spoiler:One of the corrupt rangers at the Familiar reserve kills himself, apparently fearing retribution from the Brigade.]]
* DroppingTheBombshell: Coira Sitri casually asks [[spoiler:Harry to be her ChosenConceptionPartner]] in front of her half-brother Duncan and niece Serafall. Cue the guys' simultaneous SpitTake and Serafall's DeathGlare.
* DualAgeModes:
** Serafall has a "beer-buying" appearance she shifts into when she needs to be treated like an adult in the human world. [[spoiler:She also has a yet-unseen "adult mode" that it's actually her real form. She keeps it hidden with {{Glamour}} because it's SoBeautifulItsACurse.]]
** There's an InUniverse example in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' with the Wandering Wizard, whose NiceHat is a magical item that makes him look older than he really is.
* DumbMuscle: Hercules/Herakles of the Hero Brigade is muscle and little else. This works against him when Tsubasa blasts him with a "Fuego". The blast is weak, but since Herc doesn't pay attention in school, and thinks explosives and flames mixing makes explosions all the time.
* EarlyBirdCameo:
** Oakley shows up briefly in the Alice White arc, before becoming more important in the adaptation of Volume 9 (the Kyoto School Trip).
** Hades appear on TheStinger of the Beholders' StoryArc, whole 47 chapters before his first official appearance in the Young Devils Tournament as in canon.
** Bennia appears briefly as part of Hades' entourage of Grim Reapers for the above event.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: Very narrowly avoided in Bizarro World's prehistory [[spoiler:during the War of Forgotten]], limited to "merely" the destruction of the {{Atlant|is}}ean ''continent'' instead. Going by the resulting reduction of Earth's gravity by a half a percent, that means around 3.001 × 10 ^ 22 kg of planetary mass just ''gone''. Just to give you an idea of the sheer scale of the damage, that's the ''[[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure 40.84% of mass of the Moon]]''.
* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler:Trixeha turns out to have once been the strongest of the Walkers of the Outside, He Who Walks Below, before it assimilated the unlucky magic users it managed to drag in when it was sealed the first time.]]
* EmbarrassingRingtone: Harry uses Rick James' "Super Freak" as his ringtone for, you guessed it, [[LovableSexManiac Akeno]]'s number. It went off during a tense standoff with [[spoiler:Cao Cao at the end of the Alice White arc.]]
* TheEmpath: Alice, as one of the powers she gets as the reincarnation of Atalanta, has an empathic sense that lets her sense what a person is like. Harry notes that the legend that power came from, where Atalanta punished her failed suitors proportionately to their true nature, was false in his own world, but is apparently true in Bizarro World.
* EndangeringNewsBroadcast:
** A sports broadcast variant. Harry is greatly annoyed that Azazel went into details of the Artificial Sacred Gears that he developed for Reya in his role as CombatCommentator. Sure, the rulebook forbids the opponent they're currently facing from hearing him, but Sona's future opponents would be plain stupid if they don't take notice and plan ahead how to counter it.
** Azazel learns his lesson and prevents another commentator from giving away [[spoiler:Gaspar's auditory illusion to make Sairaorg believe the Bishop was teleported away from the battleground]] in Chapter 84.
* EngagementChallenge:
** Sona has hers from canon about [[BestHerToBedHer only marrying a man who can beat her in chess]] that she used to get out of an unwanted ArrangedMarriage in the past. This conspicuously was not once mentioned around Harry until a reporter asked about it during the Sitri/Agares pre-Rating Game press conference in ''A Star's Life''. The implication is that she wanted to quietly dismiss the requirement when Harry entered the picture, and that her friends caught on that and kept it to themselves.
** Sona's father isn't overly fond of Harry, so he tried to use the above agreement with Sona to try to break them up by setting them up for an unexpected chess match. Not only Duncan's ploy was ''painfully'' obvious -- so much that his wife apologized in his place and reassured them that he's not actually bad at playing others when his daughters' love lives aren't involved -- but also Harry and Sona trivially turned it on its head by LoopholeAbuse. After all, no part of her agreement with her parents said a thing about her ''having to'' play to win, so when the EngagementChallenge came about, she simply set her pieces to be taken by Harry's until her king was captured in a trivial checkmate.
* EngineeredPublicConfession: When Kendra pranked Harry by stealing his staff and divided it into six pieces with a secret technique designed to create DismantledMacGuffin so he couldn't just scry for it, he very angrily confronted her about it because the process supposedly ruined the unique enchantments he had carved into it. As she starts to apologize, he begins to grin like a loon.
-->'''Harry:''' And that, boys and girls is how you get a confession from a guilty conscious.
* EntendreFailure: Reya tends to miss turns of phrase that would have Tsubasa or Serafall cracking a lewd joke, or Sona looking disapprovingly at the speaker. It seems it's just her lack of practice looking for off-color subtext given the hints that Reya doesn't ''quite'' qualify as the TokenWholesome of Harry's LoveInterests.
* {{Ephebophile}}: Herc of the Hero Faction is apparently this. Him expressing an "interest" in Jeanne's sister Alice and his tendency to be a bit forceful about it (namely being a bit overly rough in training sessions, not watching their back in battle and going after anyone he thinks has an interest in her) is one of the reasons Jeanne asks Harry to help keep Alice out of the Hero Faction.
* EroticDream:
** Harry has several the night after his first date with Sona. One is on screen, and two others are referenced when he tries to shift the blame to Lash.
** Reya starts [[TalkingInYourSleep sleep-talking]] her part in one about Harry when Yubelluna successfully casts a [[ForcedSleep sleep-inducing spell]] on her during a Rating Game.
* EscalatingWar: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Rias and Sona put a hard stop to Harry and Kendra's prank war when it threatened to get out of hand. However, just like kids getting caught by their parents, the Kings were only successful at making subsequent pranks a lot subtler.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** Sona and Serafall's father goes from introducing himself to Harry straight to imperiously asking him what it's going to cost him to have Harry leave his daughters' lives forever. Ineffectually so, due but not limited to the fact he wasn't careful enough to [[FailedASpotCheck look over his shoulder before making the attempt]]…
** Moments later, there's Anna Sitri's. She joins her daughters in leaving their father a BandageMummy for making such an offer, while somehow looking classy about it. She warmly welcomes Harry to their house, but then a ''very'' nervous Sona and Serafall cut the moment short and, as politely as possible, drag Harry away from their mother as if afraid of letting them interact more than necessary.
* EvenTheGuysWantHim:
** An older guy from the game convention in Nagasaki was interested in Harry, but he noticed right away that he wasn't into guys and likely in a relationship with Serafall.
** Georg from the Hero Faction, whom Harry unaffectionately refers to as his stalker/fanboy, is a maybe. His IgnoredEnamoredUnderling "[[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Goth Hermione]]" certainly thinks so, from the way Georg frequently praises Harry's magical achievements. That's the reason why she goes the extra mile to try to MurderTheHypotenuse when she and Harry met in Kyoto.
* EverybodyHatesHades: Played straight in ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' unlike ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. Harry and Lash complain as one that they vastly prefer their home world's version.
* EverybodyHatesMathematics: Hard not to when Takamachi-sensei gives math homework to do to students on a school trip. Harry isn't a fan himself, but given how heavily dependant on [[GeometricMagic geometry]] and [[FormulaicMagic calculations]] magic in Bizarro World is, he decided to pay attention in class and do his homework without Lash's help.
* EveryoneCanSeeIt: [[spoiler:D×D!Lasciel's feelings for Azazel are obvious to Harry. He even compares her to Asia and her feelings towards Issei.]]
* EvilIsPetty: While an antagonist, it's a little tricky to tell where Jeanne actually falls on the moral spectrum. Nevertheless she's definitely not above badmouthing Harry's girlfriends behind their backs:
-->'''Alice White:''' [Jeanne] said his name was Harry Dresden, and he was like a giant stick figure, wearing Wrestling/TheUndertaker's coat. She told me he was handsome, in a scary way. And he was supposed to be with a smaller girl… She said if that girl was flat as a board, her name was Sona Sitri, and if the girl had huge, fake looking… [[LastSecondWordSwap um breasts]]… that her name was Serafall.\\
'''Sona:''' ''[frowns]''
* EvilMatriarch: The downfall of the House of Allocer, one of 72 Pillars, can be traced down to the plotting of Duke Allocer's first wife during the war, who also doubled as a WickedStepmother to the only two survivors in the family, half-siblings Duncan and Coira.
* EvilOverlordList: Referenced by Harry when Saji and Vritra break Rule 34. He helpfully points out that no, it's not ''[[RuleThirtyFour that]]'' RuleThirtyFour.
* ExactWords:
** Harry basically always talks in these. {{Discussed|Trope}} in the "Fan Site {{Omake}}" where Kunou argued that he and Serafall weren't a couple because he told her they weren't "lovers". Other users caught the misdirection and explained to her that "in many languages and cultures, [[TheirFirstTime being a 'lover' is a step beyond simply dating]]," meaning that Harry hadn't actually denied their relationship, he merely said he and Serafall weren't yet at that stage at the time.
** Another lampshaded example occurs earlier on where, after getting 2nd Amendment stuck to him, he says something to Azazel that the Fallen thinks means that he'll keep mum about it to Sona... when really he went straight to her and explained the whole mess to avoid a misunderstanding.
** When Duncan tries to use Sona's old statement about not marrying a suitor who can't beat her at chess against her and Harry, it fails because Sona can just let Harry win, not to mention the fact that Harry has Lash to help him.
* ExecutiveMeddling: InUniverse. It seems that the FoeYay between Harry and Jeanne was written out of their fictional counterparts in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' because Serafall doesn't like it for obvious reasons. Instead, Jeanne/Girl Pink was made to hit on Rampa-tan (Tsubasa's counterpart) and the Wandering Wizard got a StalkerWithACrush in the form of "[[GenderBlenderName Georgia]]", a {{Gender Flip}}ped fictionalization of Georg with characterization cues from Goth Hermione.
* ExoticExtendedMarriage: Relatively common among High-Class Devils. For example, [[spoiler:Anna Sitri married half-siblings Duncan and Coira Allocer, while the latter also serves as a Queen in her Peerage.]]
* {{Expy}}. InUniverse. The Wandering Wizard is basically [[Franchise/SailorMoon Tuxedo Mask to the Miracle Mysticas's Sailor Guardians]] in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''. Namely a MysteriousProtector[=/=]AloofAlly to the MagicalGirl team who often gets to say IWasJustPassingThrough, serves as the protagonist's main {{Love Interest|s}} and a [[SavvyGuyEnergeticGirl Savvy Guy to her Energetic Girl]], and doubles as the StraightMan to anyone else should the need arise. Levi-tan even calls out "Wandering Wizard-sama" when he arrives, which not coincidentally has the same intonation and number of syllables as Sailor Moon's impassioned cries of "Tuxedo Kamen-sama".
* ExtraEyes: Beholders, naturally. [[spoiler:However, even in her Human form, Shizukesa has an additional eye in the palm of each hand. They are completely hidden when closed, and are an additional source for her TK powers.]]
* EyeBeams: The Beholders' primary means of attack is to focus the TK from their eyes into a concussive beam. Some of the stronger ones can also cause three of these beams to twist around each other into a drill.
* EyelidPullTaunt: How the dignified leader of the Senju Ninja Clan responds to Harry's sass.
* EyesAlwaysAverted: Like in canon, Harry always avoids looking people in the eye out of fear of triggering a Soulgaze. Among other problems, this makes people who meets him for the first time think he is untrustworthy, which is an especially bad thing when [[MeetTheInLaws meeting Tsubasa's father, and later on, Serafall and Sona's]].
* EyeScream:
** [[spoiler:The Beholders (yes, the TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons ones) murder humans and devils and tear out their eyes to present to their master, Argus, God of Eyes. Mihae loses one of hers to a Beholder but is saved by Harry before being killed or completely blinded]]
** [[spoiler:Issei manages to destroy Cao Cao's right eye while Georg is transporting the Hero Faction members away thanks to a boost from Sun Wukong.]]
* FaceDoodling: Elaine used to do this to Harry as teens when sufficiently pissed off. That's why Harry came up with "Brilloius", a spell specifically designed to wash off permanent marker from his skin.
* FailedASpotCheck: Sona and Serafall's father makes Harry an offer so he'll stop seeing his daughters... not noticing that his daughters and wife are within earshot. He tries to pass it off as a SecretTestOfCharacter, but they don't buy it for a second.
* {{Fainting}}:
** [[PerpetualPoverty Rossweisse]]'s reaction after earning more than 20 million yen (around USD 200,000) for basically keeping an eye on Gasper for an afternoon ([[EyeOfNewt Beholder remains as magical ingredients]] are just ''that'' pricey). Harry observed that even passed out, Rossweisse still had the check in a death grip.
** [[spoiler:Reya when Winter Harry [[ForcefulKiss forcefully kissed]] her.]]
* FakingTheDead: In this universe, Harry Houdini made enemies out of some Magicians who were doing the spiritualist equivalent of MagiciansAreWizards trope and faked his death to escape them.
* FamedInStory:
** Harry is starting to become this among the supernatural factions.
** [[spoiler:Yoshimo Shiro's Bizarro World version, aka Tomoe's grandfather, is famed even in the supernatural world.]]
* {{Familiar}}: Several members of Sona, Rias and Serafall's Peerages get theirs in the eponymous StoryArc.
* {{Fanboy}}:
** It's mostly second-hand accounts, but it seems Georg became one to Harry after his first run-in with the Hero Faction. Thankfully not a case of StalkerWithACrush… we think. Harry seriously hopes that Georg's IgnoredEnamoredUnderling had it wrong on seeing him as [[MurderTheHypotenuse the hypotenuse she should murder]].
** When asked about it, Georg complained that Herc's fanboyism over NFL quarterback [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Brees Drew Brees]] is way worse than his over Dresden.
* FemaleGaze: Played with when Oakley meets Behemoth. Oakley gives Behemoth a thorough up and down, before settling on her breasts. Oakley isn't sure if she is more turned on or [[ACupAngst plain jealous]].
* FirstNameBasis: {{Invoked|Trope}} and PlayedWith. Sona enforces ''shortest'' name basis (and no honorifics in Japanese) among her Peerage during Rating Games, to save potentially critical time. As such Sona, Reya, Momo, Tomoe, and Harry are all called by their given name, while Tsubaki (Shinra), Tsubasa (Yura), and Genshirou (Saji) are called by their family names. Ruruko Nimura is a wash, but she is called by her first name, partly because Tomoe calls her "Ruru" anyway.
* {{Flashback}}: Used fairly frequently, but specifically:
** Any of the InMediasRes examples below.
** ''An Eye Tyrant?'' has a flashback to how Tsubasa joined Sona's peerage.
** Similarly, ''A Moment's Inattention?'' has a flashback to how Reya joined Sona's peerage. Plus a separate one showing Sona talking Harry into acting as a mercenary in one of her Ratings Games.
** ''A Tenuous Divinity?'' has a flashback to not long before chapter 1 of the original fanfic (a.k.a. how exactly Harry ended up Outside).
* FoeYay:
** Jeanne from the Hero Faction flirts with Harry, who's way too used to TheVamp trope to fall for it. PlayedWith in the sense that it's possible that she's genuinely interested in him, but {{Bad Bad Act|ing}}s her attraction so Harry and her own allies will think she doesn't really mean it.
** While not an ''enemy'' per se, Mihae of Riser's peerage flirts with Harry after the Ratings Game, much to the dismay of both her own teammates and Harry's admirers.
* {{Foil}}:
** Harry to the Hero Faction as a whole, embodying everything they're ''supposed'' stand for as humanity's champions [[{{Hypocrite}} but they don't]].
** Raynare and [[spoiler:D×D!Lasciel]] to each other. The two of them are former Angels who Fell for Azazel, both with a capital "F" and otherwise, but they went about it in completely opposite ways. The former managed to seduce him once, but she was too much of a BrainlessBeauty to keep him interested further than that and her increasingly desperate attempts to regain his attention had her hunting down Sacred Gear holders for his research (which incidentally kickstarted the ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD''[='s=] main storyline). The latter is Azazel's intellectual peer and has maintained a long and stable professional relationship with him, but he never thought of her as any other than his research partner and she remains an IgnoredEnamoredUnderling because she's just [[CanNotSpitItOut too shy and insecure to make the first move]].
* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Serafall and Sona, respectively. Occasionally inverted when the former acts her rank or the latter lets her CovertPervert[=/=]NotSoAboveItAll colors shine through.
* ForceAndFinesse: Agares Bishops are a SiblingTeam example. One of the twin sisters specialises in low precision, large scale offensive spellcasting, while the other is the opposite. Their usual tactic when afar from each other is to swap positions via teleportation depending on whose specialty works best in a given battle situation, but the TeleportInterdiction in place for the "Four Tower Capture the Flag" Rating Game against Sona's Peerage left the first sister stuck trying to hit Tsubaki and Saji without hurting her own teammates.
* ForcedSleep: Riser's Queen used a powerful sleep-inducing spell on Sona's Peerage in their exhibition Rating Game, [[spoiler:only for Sona and Harry to make themselves temporarily immune to it thanks to his Extract of Sleep potion]]. This takes a rather heartwarming subtext when Harry deduced that Yubelluna most likely got proficient with the spell in an effort to help her King to get some rest despite his frequent nightmares about dragons.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** The scars Harry Sees in Reya in ''Devilish Research (part 2)?'' foreshadow how she originally died; they are injuries she got in the car crash, erased by Sona when Reya became her Bishop.
** When Harry Soulgazes Sona, he sees an oneiric representation of her long-term plans for their {{Polyamory}}, including their hypothetical BigFancyHouse with enough bedrooms for ''six'' permanent adult residents. This hints that his begrudgingly-called harem is still missing one more person.
** Sona seemed a lot more concerned that Harry would reject her sister without giving her a fair chance than the fact Serafall was trying to get together with her own {{Love Interest|s}}. It's later revealed that this has less to do with High-Class Devils' cultural acceptance of [[{{Polyamory}} multi-partner relationships]] and more with [[spoiler:Serafall finally taking a risk after giving up on romance pretty much [[TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask since the moment she took the title of the Leviathan centuries ago]], which very likely outweighed any other concern Sona had on the matter]]. Furthermore, Sona had strong reasons to think the SiblingTriangle could work out fine as part of a {{Polyamory}} because [[spoiler:that how it was for their parents' relationship, where half-siblings Duncan and Coira Allocer both married Anna Sitri.]]
** When discussing about "secrets and forbidden techniques", Harry told Sona that he's willing to bet she's got a few. She answered the implied question with a "maybe", but when Harry teased that perhaps he should do some research about it, she very pointedly changed the subject. [[spoiler:It's quite possible that she was thinking of the hereditary power of the Sitri family -- the so-called "[[TheNudifier Sitri]] [[LovePotion Oil]]."]]
** One of Seekvaira Agares' Knights was chewing gum and playing a console game without a care in the world during an important press conference for the [[TournamentArc Young Devils' Tournament]]. Other than [[EstablishingCharacterMoment giving hints of her personality]], both are major hints of her unusual fighting style.
* FreudianSlip:
** Harry has plenty of practice minding his trains of thought -- a necessity because of the Winter Mantle and Lash -- but sometimes his mouth is just a bit faster. For example, when he declined Reya's request to let her tag along in his first OccultDetective job for the police, he argued that it wouldn't look too professional of him to "bring a girlfriend to a crime scene" and he wanted to make a good first impression. It's only when he noticed Reya's JawDrop that he realized he just talked about her as his girlfriend, albeit indirectly.
** [[ShipperOnDeck Serafall and Sona's mother and aunt]] tend to talk about Harry marrying their girls in terms of "when", not "if". This doesn't go unnoticed neither by their father nor Harry himself.
* FridgeLogic: Gets brought up a few times InUniverse, usually by Harry when he's questioning some aspect of magic or the like in his new world..
* FriendlessBackground: Shizukesa. Argus wasn't the type to let his "children" make friends. Her siblings died a long time ago. Her cousins are all soulless killing machines. As a result she spent the last few hundred years basically alone.
* FriendlyRivalry: Rias and Sona, as in canon. Enough so that Harry was able to talk them into having both of their Peerages train together for the [[TournamentArc Young Devils' Tournament]], instead of arguing over who gets to hire him as a coach, by simply pointing out that their Peerages won't fight each other until the finals.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Besides Cao Cao and Georg, no one in the Hero Faction is really friendly with Herc. A few of the girls like his antics and appearance, but that's it. Even the original Hercules doesn't like him, and makes him stay away from his family.
* FullNameUltimatum: Harry to Kendra when he pretended to be furious at her for apparently chopping his staff to pieces. Made more notable because he usually refers to her by her nickname.
* FunetikAksent: Oakley's Texas accent. It disappears when she is under the translation spell and thus speaking Japanese and [[spoiler:after she becomes Serafall's Pawn and starts using Language. And then brute forced back into her speech pattern thanks to a combination Texan pride and stubbornness.]]
* FunTShirt: Jeanne's fictional counterpart in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' has a white t-shirt that says "SlapSlapKiss" in pink letters.
* TheGadfly: After the battle in Kyoto, Sun Wukong deliberately returns the gang to the real world... with a bunch of tourists surrounding their reentry point, leaving them to figure out how to explain that one away.
* GameBreaker: InUniverse. Harry and the Sitri family sans Serafall {{discuss|edTrope}} how TabletopGame/{{Chess}} is actually a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game solved game]] just like TabletopGame/TicTacToe, but that no optimal strategy for it is likely to be found due to its complexity. Unless you happen to be a literally God-damned Pillar of Creation with more computation capability than a supercomputer, a panache for [[TheChessmaster the other kind of Chessmastery]], and spare time measured in thousands of years.
* GameMaster: Harry acts as one for Sona's Peerage (and really anyone he can convince), with Lash's somewhat unwilling help. Reya also tries her hand at it, albeit with a much smaller group at the beginning.
* GenderEqualEnsemble: InUniverse. Georg got a GenderFlip in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' because their fictionalization of the Hero Faction as a ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' {{Expy}} needed a balanced male-to-female ratio as per conventions of the genre. It also let them take advantage of the StalkingIsFunnyIfItIsFemaleAfterMale trope for Georg's not(?)-crush on Harry.
* GenderFlip: InUniverse. ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' had Georg adapted as a DarkMagicalGirl because the StalkingIsFunnyIfItIsFemaleAfterMale and GenderEqualEnsemble tropes.
* GenreSavvy: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Harry suggests that if they were in a detective novel, the most likely explanation for Misla Bael's medical condition would be a failed murder attempt by poisoning. One orchestrated by Sairaorg's little half-brother in a plot to get rid of him and his mother for the inheritance, all while making it look like Lord Bael is the one responsible so Sairaorg would come after their father after Misla's death. Then Harry dismisses his own guesswork by pointing out that real life is rarely that straightforward.
* GirlOnGirlIsHot: Duncan Sitri and Zeoticus Gremory preemptively agreed that their respective wives Anna and Venelana sleeping together wouldn't be considered cheating if the latter ever changes her mind about it. As long as the husbands will be allowed to (remotely) watch, of course.
* {{Glamour}}: Serafall's "default" appearance isn't the real one. In a bit of an {{Inversion}} of usual motivations for this trope, she uses her VoluntaryShapeshifting powers to greatly downplay her true form's beauty [[SoBeautifulItsACurse due to all the problems it would cause]]. There's a reason why out of all the D×D cast, {{Archangel|Gabriel}} [[WorldsMostBeautifulWoman Gabriel]] is her only proclaimed rival.
* TheGlomp: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Serafall tried to greet Sona and Harry with a tackling hug after [[spoiler:their final battle against BB]], but Tsubasa quickly stepped in and ended up taking Harry's place in the Maou's arms because she knew that he injured his back. Harry's {{hormone|AddledTeenager}}s couldn't help but notice that the action placed Serafall's head in MarshmallowHell range.
* GlorifiedSpermDonor: {{Discussed|Trope}}. In a conversation about artificial insemination, Harry stated that [[DefiedTrope he'd still want to be part of his kids' lives]] in that scenario. This earned him some approval from Coira Sitri, who's uninterested in men that way and is considering AI for herself to keep the Allocer bloodline from dying out.
* GoingCommando: In ''Plans and Perils (Part 1)?'' Harry notes that Irina's yukata is thin enough that he can tell she is not wearing anything underneath (or as he puts it "in the traditional manner").
* GoldDigger: Serafall has bad history with men who pursued her because they considered her one big political prize. And those were the few that dared to make the attempt -- the rest were too scared of her power and whims to even try.
* GoodCopBadCop:
** Harry and Serafall use this twice when investigating the counterfeit Pokemon cards, once against a random tournament contestant, and once against the real perp. Harry explicitly let Serafall play bad cop, because she normally does not get to do so.
** During the Familiar Hunting arc, Harry realized he got cast as the Good Cop to an "overabundance of ready and willing Bad Cops."
* AGoodNameForARockBand: Harry reflects that "Dragon Made of Swords" would be an awesome band name if it wasn't for one trying to kill two of his friends in Kyoto.
* GotMeDoingIt: Harry starts calling the tengu bodyguard Kendra, and even gets Azazel doing it.
* GovernmentConspiracy: [[spoiler:There's a benevolent one going around for millennia, trying to keep info on the Outsiders and the War of Forgotten, well, forgotten.]]
* GrandRomanticGesture: Though Harry would deny it, his girlfriends seem to think his final Christmas gift is this. Specifically, he has them stay over so he can attune his wards to them and let them teleport in or out at will. The custom magic jewelry didn't hurt their feelings, either.
* GratuitousForeignLanguage: The spell Snoepglas -- a very weak magic shield but cast-able at a distance and spammable as heck -- seems to be named after "snoep glas" meaning "candy glass" in Dutch.
* GratuitousJapanese:
** Done in universe; Serafall deliberately uses Japanese honorifics regardless of which language she is speaking, including at least English and German. And while her TV show is said to be filmed in English, the opening theme is half English and half Japanese.
** Averted in ''An Expected Result?''; Harry's speech is suddenly in Japanese instead of English (though he narrates what he is saying), but this is a PaintingTheMedium shorthand to indicate that the other characters he is speaking to have lost their ability to understand Japanese.
* GreatOffscreenWar: In addition to the war between the Three Factions, [[spoiler:there is the War of Forgotten, where the Outsiders invaded the D×D reality after Ophis left the Dimensional Void. It caused the deaths of 90% of humanity at the time (the rest being knocked back to the Stone Age), the destruction of the entire {{Atlant|is}}ean ''continent'' and pantheon (with an EarthShatteringKaboom only narrowly being avoided, and Earth's gravity being permanently reduced by .5%), and the sealed Walker He Who Walks Below morphing into Trihexa after assimilating the few magic users not lucky enough to be simply killed in its last strike before being sealed by the HeroicSacrifice of Ur-Athena. It's called that both for the knowledge lost and because it was largely covered up (including the exact time things started) to prevent anyone from using the knowledge of it to cause trouble.]]
* HalloweenEpisode: The Halloween party at Harry's place in "...An All Hallow's Eve Omake?" -- although the author later brought it into canon -- involving costumes, [[SlippingAMickey spiked punch]], InVinoVeritas confessions, and very nearly [[APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy an orgy]]. Needless to say, {{Hilarity Ensue|s}}d.
* {{Hammerspace}}:
** Harry made bronze bookmark for Reya with a magic circle that makes the book disappear or reappear when she charges the spell. It even keeps the page when the book comes back, as "it wouldn't be much of a bookmark otherwise."
** Harry later applies the same technique to his coat's inner pockets in order to carry more tools on his person.
** Takako Senju -- better known as Kendra -- has one [[VictoriasSecretCompartment in her bra]] as par of her {{Ninja}} techniques.
* HandsOnApproach: Sona and Harry manage to do this without any physical instruction involved. None of them was particularly knowledgable about D×D crafting methods for Imbued Items, so they needed to read their only copy of the subject's primer first. Problem was that the Student Council office comes with big fancy chairs with armrests that made reading from it at the same time by sitting side by side too uncomfortable until Harry flippantly suggested Sona to sit on his lap -- which she unexpectedly did, but not without locking the door first.
-->'''Harry:''' ''[whispers in her ear]'' We are still going to study, right?\\
'''Sona:''' ''[unconvincingly]'' Of course. Anything else would be inappropriate.
* HappyEndingMassage: It turns out that Harry is really, ''really'' good at giving massages, as [[spoiler:Reya, Sona and ''[[TheImmodestOrgasm especially]]'' Tsubasa]] found out in chapter 75. [[FridgeBrilliance This makes sense]] considering all the physiotherapy he went through in ''Literature/ColdDays'' [[spoiler:while recovering of being all but dead for months after the events of ''Literature/{{Changes}}''.]]
* HaremSeeker: One of Lash's pastimes is flexing her manipulative muscles by getting Harry a harem. She even gets competitive about it whenever a new girl gets a RelationshipUpgrade with Issei.
* HeadDesk:
** Harry does this on the Brave Duel terminal when Alicia says he looks like the Wandering Wizard.
** Sona does this with her parents' dinner table (or at least one of them), when her mother implies she is accepting Harry's offer to go into business selling magical marital aids (ItMakesSenseInContext).
* HeartTrauma: Mentioned as being easier to heal from for many supernatural creatures than brain damage. [[spoiler:Hence why the spears of light from the Longinus tend to be found in the latter location more.]]
* HeroesWantRedheads: [[spoiler:Oakley. Since Rias is already taken, she sets her sights on Tomoe.]]
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Oakley takes a lethal hit for Shizukesa, because Shizukesa was in the middle of defending a school. She gets better, thanks to Serafall's Evil Pieces.]]
* HeyThatsMyLine: Pretty much the entire Student Council to Tsubasa when she asked to join in on Harry and Reya's first TabletopRPG session.
-->'''Tsubasa:''' Could I join your game? I…\\
'''Tomoe, Tsubaki, Saji:''' ''[plus Ruruko and Sona mouthing the words]'' …would like to know more about your interests.
* HiddenBuxom: Jeanne, according to Harry after Issei used [[TheNudifier Dress Break]] on several girls of the Hero Faction in Kyoto.
* HiddenDepths: After getting sufficiently close, Harry discovered that Tsubasa is a lot more emotionally vulnerable and insecure than her confident ActionGirl[=/=]TheTease persona lets on.
* HidingBehindTheLanguageBarrier: After wrapping up the angelic counterfeit ''TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}}'' cards case ([[ARareSentence really]]), Harry and Serafall have a conversation in English to give themselves some privacy while the Japanese food cart vendor has their ramen orders ready. It works, but Harry forgot to consider that bedroom eyes are pretty much universal language.
-->'''Vendor:''' Young man, before your girlfriend drags you off for something thoroughly enjoyable that cannot be discussed in public; that will 2,300 yen.
* HistoricalInJoke:
** It turns out that [[spoiler:the Sitri Family]] is personally responsible for a few kinky tropes very common in {{Hentai}}. [[spoiler:[[BrickJoke Damn those demonic strippers]].]]
** Real world Creator/HarryHoudini was interested in the supernatural, but was disgusted of finding only frauds and dedicated himself to systematically debunk them. Bizarro World's version was [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy the real deal]] and made a habit of exposing magicians using their powers to deceive people out of their money -- for example, by pretending to be mediums given how profitable the SpookySeance business was in the early twentieth century. This earned him plenty enemies who eventually put a price on his head and he decided to [[FakingTheDead fake his own death in 1926]] to avoid the hassle and went on to live until 1987.
* HomingProjectile: Remus axe, Colossus of Rhodes has this as its Balance Break. When he throws it, it will continue to home in on the target until it scores a kill. [[spoiler:Though that kill does not have to be on the person targeted.]]
* HonorBeforeReason: Harry is well-known for this. Sona often has to preventively talk him out from provoking a diplomatic incident.
* HormoneAddledTeenager: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Lash once tried to get Harry to act on his attraction to [[spoiler:Takako Senju/Kendra]]. Harry retorted that's irrelevant because his 17-year-old body basically makes him feel physically attracted to most pretty girls and his circle of friends is choke-full of gorgeous young women as per ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD''[='s=] standards.
* HotLibrarian: Azazel's research partner dresses like one from 80s -- 1880s, that is -- under her LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine but remains attractive as it's the norm for female {{Fallen Angel}}s. [[spoiler:As expected of Lasciel's D×D AlternateSelf.]]
* HotScientist: [[spoiler:The D×D version of Lasciel, as Harry lampshades, dresses like a librarian from the 1880s, but is still noticeably attractive even so under her heavy clothes, not that Azazel notices.]]
* HumanityEnsues:
** The Delta Beholder nicknamed Rini gets a Human form when she becomes Serafall's Knight. Unlike usual for this trope Rini/Shizukesa is happier as a humanoid, in part because of the fact that her senses as a Beholder, save eyesight (and a little bit hearing), were abysmal, as well as not having a body that matched her gender identity (the possibility of having kids of her own someday also fits into this).
** Behemoth, Serafall's Queen, is a truer example. Originally she looked more like the Franchise/FinalFantasy monster of the same name, and she tolerates the Human form because even in the Underworld, most things are not built to her scale. And even in Human form, she is taller than Harry (at least for now).
* HumiliationConga: It's hard not to feel a little bad for [[spoiler:Saji when he's called in by Sona and told that a) she knows about his feelings for her and doesn't feel the same for him, seeing him just as a valuable ally and more of a younger sibling, b) thinks his desires towards her are rather creepy (he's explicitly stated that he wants to get her pregnant), and c) spanks him as punishment for letting his resentment towards Harry affect their last mission.]]
* HyperCompetentSidekick: [[spoiler:Maleficent]] to her ditzy boss [[spoiler:Queen Mab.]]
* {{Hypocrite}}: Harry briefly muses on the Chaos Brigade's hypocrisy (namely that the various faction hate or look down on other species/mythologies, yet they have all banded together).
* HypocriticalHeartwarming: Yubelluna went to wish for victory for Sona's Peerage prior to latter's Rating Game against Seekvaira Agares, but only because Riser lost against Sona before and his Queen didn't want her losing against anyone else because that would make Riser look bad. Tsubasa sarcastically remarked that Boom Queen just gave them something to look forward if they don't manage to win.
* HypocriticalHumor:
** ''[[LethalChef So]][[OneNoteCook na]]'' of all people once criticized Harry's perfunctory bachelor-level cooking.
** Harry once described Issei as [[TheDulcineaEffect "the type to jump in when any girl is in trouble"]]. Lash naturally couldn't let that one go.
--->'''Lash:''' Pot, kettle, black.
* IAlwaysWantedToSayThat: Serafall says this after telling her new Pawn "you can consider this enemy territory." for the first time.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Beholders' built-in subservience to their creator prevents the Delta from committing suicide. It doesn't prevent [[SuicideByCop Suicide By Dragon]], though.
* ICantDance: Issei is a threat to life and limb on the dance floor. He does well enough with slow songs thanks to Rias' insistence he should to know how for formal events and the like.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Most of the chapters are named ''Beyond the Outer Gate Lies...X?'', with X being something Harry encounters or does in the chapter. One pair of chapters plays on this, ''A First Date?'' and ''A First Date!'' implying a question and a firm answer.
* IfOnlyYouKnew: In ''A Star's Life?'', [[TheDitz Tomoe]] accuses Harry of keeping secrets. He's taken aback by this for a second until he realizes she's talking about the Wandering Wizard, his fictional counterpart InUniverse.
* IGaveMyWord: Harry avoids making promises because he firmly believes in this trope, making it a very big deal whenever he does promise something.
* IgnoredEnamoredUnderling:
** [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Goth Hermione]] to Georg in the Hero Faction. She has got a big chip on her shoulder against Harry because of Georg's professional(?) admiration of him.
--->'''Harry:''' ''[incredulous]'' Free "Master Georg" from my clutches?\\
'''Goth Hermione:''' Yes. Ever since he met you, you are all he talks about. "Dresden's spells are so fast", "Dresden can vary the effect to an unprecedented degree". "Dresden, Dresden, Dresden!". But once I defeat you, Master Georg will finally acknowledge me.\\
'''Harry:''' Stars and stones. My stalker has his own stalker?\\
'''Goth Hermione:''' ''[glares at him with LuminescentBlush on her face]''\\
'''Harry:''' Do I need to get you a "Notice Me Senpai" t-shirt, Hermy? Size extra small, maybe customized with an airbrushed wand?\\
'''Goth Hermione:''' Shut up! Jerk!
** [[spoiler:D×D!Lasciel]] to Azazel.
* IKnowYouKnowIKnow: Both Sona Sitri and Seekvaira Agares are TheChessmaster kind of King that make most of their fighting within their own heads. When facing against each other in a Rating Game, the latter couldn't help but keep looking for ploys within ploys in everything the other did and said. Seekvaira even had to be told by one of her Knights to stop overthinking lest she falls into ParalysisByAnalysis or ends up losing for being TooCleverByHalf.
* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: While not technically combat, this is how the combined efforts of Rias, Asia, Issei, Harry and Lash to cure Sairaorg's mother played out, especially the former who was in charge of talking to her comatose aunt.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: Done in all but name to Sairaorg and his mother by Lord Bael, who effectively banish them by [[ReassignedToAntarctica sending them to "administer" an area of the Bael territory in the Underworld that was little more than a wasteland]]. It's believed that the difficult life in there, especially for someone that lived her whole life as a Noble, made her ill or at the very least made it difficult for Misla to realize she contracted Purgatory Malaise until too late for the onset treatment to be effective.
* ImprobablyFemaleCast: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d. Issei and Gasper occasionally play videogames in Harry's place next door from their own, as the wizard puts it, "to escape the pool of estrogen that was the Hyoudou house."
* ImprovisedGolems: [[spoiler:A Knight Sona's team faces in the tournament]] has a Sacred Gear that allows her to create and control {{Golem}}s relatively easily.
* IncompatibleOrientation:
** [[spoiler:Oakley]]/Tomoe is a maybe. The former is interested but the latter's personality makes it really hard to tell whether she likes girls that way or not.
** [[spoiler:Anna Sitri]] was interested in a serious relationship with [[spoiler:Rias' mother]], but she was straight and turned her down. [[BetterAsFriends They did remain best friends, though]].
* IndirectKiss: Harry and Sona during their first date. Via french fries, unusually enough.
* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Harry when he observed that Misla Valupa's appearance was "downright average" compared to every other Devil woman he knew, meaning that "she could have easily made a living as a model on Earth."
* InMediasRes:
** ''A Movie Marathon?'' starts with Harry arriving at Tsubasa's apartment for said movie marathon, and then flashes back to how she talked him into it.
** ''Equity?'' starts with Harry and the Occult Research Club exploring an ancient ruin, and then flashes back to Azazel explaining the expedition and convincing Harry to go.
* InsistentTerminology: When Azazel refers to [[spoiler:D×D!Lasciel]] as his "research partner", she interrupts to say that she is his [[SubordinateExcuse "assistant"]].
* TheInternetIsForPorn: Gasper is the more internet-savvy member of the Occult Research Club. Naturally, he's the one who knows best where to find the most "interesting" websites.
* InVinoVeritas: A drunk Sona admitted to her ACupAngst in the HalloweenEpisode. An equally drunk Harry reassured her that size doesn't matter to him because [[ChivalrousPervert "it's all about the shape and feel"]] in his opinion. That's when he realized that something was wrong given that there wasn't supposed to be any booze in the party.
* {{Irony}}:
** Azazel ''loves'' to play ShipperOnDeck to others yet completely fails to notice that [[spoiler:his lab assistant Lasciel -- yep, Lash's Bizarro World counterpart --]] has been in love with him for possibly centuries.
** After months trying to get his hands on firearms -- a tall order in a country with anti-gun laws as strict as Japan, on top of Sona forbidding her Peerage from bargaining any with him -- in chapter 35 Harry gets Azazel's prototype Artificial Sacred Gear that can [[MorphWeapon turn from a metal bracelet into any production firearm that the user can accurately picture in their mind]]. What makes this an irony is that [[MeaningfulName 2nd Amendment]] is a super-ClingyMacGuffin that Harry can't get rid of, not even by cutting off his arm and asking Asia to reattach it.
* ItsAWonderfulPlot: [[TearJerker Painfully]] {{Subverted|Trope}}. [[spoiler:Harry stopped tracking down the Bizarro World counterparts of his friends when he found out that Murphy was a lot more successful, and by any discernible account, so much ''happier'' without Harry Dresden in her life.]]
* JackassGenie: Harry, coming down from a Winter high, considers acting like this to the Perverted Duo's requests. Like giving them invisibility but rendering them blind because he's bending light around them, or giving them XRayVision that works like actual X-Rays...
* JerkassHasAPoint: Saji's dislike of his romantic rival has led him to do more than a few jealousy-fueled stupidities, but he isn't exactly wrong when he said there's very good chance that Harry will hurt Sona deeply someday -- especially once you consider his ChronicHeroSyndrome, his deep-rooted hang-ups and his tendency to [[DoomMagnet find himself at the center of a major supernatural clusterfrak in a semi-regular basis]]. Harry acknowledges this and promises to never ''intentionally'' hurt any of his LoveInterests, which sadly enough is the best he can aspire to accomplish.
* KissingUnderTheInfluence:
** Harry's first kisses with Reya and Tsubasa come while he's deep under the influence of the predatory nature of the Winter Mantle. He kissed Serafall too, technically, except she is the one initiating as part of a plan to snap him out of it. See LogicBomb below.
** PlayedForDrama for a bit with Sona, who was the only one of Harry's LoveInterests he ''didn't'' kiss during the above incident despite being present at the time. Following the logic that the Winter Mantle ramps up Harry's libido and possessiveness while shutting down his inhibitions and consideration for the long-term consequences, Sona arrived to the EntertaininglyWrong conclusion that deep down he simply isn't physically attracted to her. When they talked it out, Harry confessed that the only reasons he didn't assault her like he did to the others was because she was just a few steps too far for him to walk to her on a broken leg, and that Serafall managed to LogicBomb him out of the Mantle's influence before he could try to regardless.
** Happens to several of Harry's guests to his Halloween party because of the accidentally aphrodisiacal punch. {{Subverted}} with Akeno who didn't drink any but still took advantage of the mood to make out with Issei.
* KnifeNut: [[spoiler:Oakley]]'s late father, a retired US Marine, taught her how to wield a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka-Bar Ka-Bar]] in combat.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Pretty much ''every'' weapon user in the story has shown some degree of admiration and awe for [[spoiler:Shiro Yoshimo, Tomoe's grandfather from her mother's side]], who's FamedInStory as the greatest swordmaster alive, and likely one of the best to ever live.
* LackOfEmpathy: [[spoiler:As Harry points out, Argus has been stealing eyes and killing people for centuries with his Beholders despite it being obvious that the eyes keep wearing out. He even says that if Argus had told his Beholders to only take one eye and leave the victims alive, he might have tried to help the god to weaken or even undo the curse.]]
* LamePunReaction: Harry once commented that "for a centuries old, Devil demigoddess, [Serafall] had one hell of a pout." Lash fired off a RimShot inside his head in response. Same thing when he tells a bad "eye of the Beholder" joke.
* LampshadeHanging: Azazel complains about the loitering students to explain why he doesn't just use magic to retrieve the keys he dropped under the bus.
* LaserBlade: Harry has his own built from the core of an fallen exorcist's Sword of Light installed in a custom order [[Franchise/StarWars Lightsaber]]'s hilt (because how could [[NerdActionHero he]] not?). It doesn't get much use because Harry doesn't have the swordsmanship skills to wield it effectively, and he's a much better spellslinger already.
* LastSecondWordSwap:
** Harry offers [[IgnoredEnamoredUnderling Goth Hermione]] to help her to win her crush over if that "will get Georg off [his]… back." Saying "ass" instead would have [[ContinuityNod come out a little more homoerotic than he intended]].
** Harry tries to avoid using the word "love" when talking about his girlfriends, even in narration.
* LaughThemselvesSick: Lash from time to time. Being an non-corporeal entity, she can laugh in Harry's head for half a hour straight without any need to catch her breath. The best example of this is when she realizes [[spoiler:Bizarro World Mab, far from the MagnificentBitch she was in Dresden's universe, is as dumb as a pile of bricks in comparison.]]
* LegacyCharacter: Herc turns out to be using the name of the original Hercules, his ancestor who was raised to full godhood. Original Hercules notably is not happy about this, and makes Herc stay away from his current family.
* LeonineContract: Oakley and Serafall. Played with however, because Serafall desperately wants to save Oakley, who is not so keen on becoming a Devil. Oakley actually negotiates to get her own pair of [[MorphWeapon 2nd Amendment]] thrown into the deal.
* LesserOfTwoEvils: PlayedForLaughs. This is how Sona was strong-armed by Harry and the others to join them at the premier midnight showing of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', cosplay and all. They left her with three less-than-appealing options: 1) Forbid Tsubasa and Reya from attending by Commanding them as their King, which would be morally wrong and leaves Serafall alone with Harry. 2) Don't join them, in which case Harry would let ''Serafall'' pick up the costumes with everything that implies. Or 3) Sona joins them, getting a say on the outfits and the chance to monitor everyone's behavior, which implies donning her own costume and going to bed late despite having school next day.
* LetsYouAndHimFight: Argus forces the Delta Beholders to fight and kill each other for arguing with him.
* LevelGrinding: Rossweisse maintains spells at the point where the mandala glows, but without enough mana to fully activate, for hours. This gives a steady, constant, aerobic style pull on her magic power, and burns the spell into her memory. Harry adapts this, shifting the circles in place to give it better mana control and mental flexibility aspects. Then they make all the magic-user types practice it to build up to the tournament.
* LiteralistSnarking: When Harry silently asked someone to pinch him when the chance to do magic research with the guy who invented the Evil Pieces presented itself. Lash, annoyed at Harry for the incident that brought that about, painfully obliged.
* LittleSisterInstinct: Sona is just as protective of her big sister as Serafall is of her, it just doesn't come up as often because she's, well, the ''[[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking Levi]][[PersonOfMassDestruction athan]]''. Sona was particularly concerned when her sister started to hit on someone with as much emotional baggage as Harry, exhorting him to take Serafall's interest in him seriously because underneath the lighthearted flirting and off-color humor, Serafall was anything but casual about her romantic pursuit of him.
* LivingLieDetector:
** [[spoiler:Alice White, as Atalanta's reincarnation, has a [[GutFeeling sixth sense of sorts]] to reliable tell how trustworthy a person is. It's the main reason why she gets behind Harry's CrazyEnoughToWork plan to get the Hero Faction to leave her alone.]]
** Oakley, the reincarnation of Annie Oakley, has a Sacred Gear that allows her to sense lies and see through illusions. [[BlessedWithSuck It caused her no end of grief]] as a result of her learning about the supernatural as a child without anyone around to explain things to her. Although it also makes her MookFaceTurn easier once they explain how many people could be hurt by the Hero Faction's actions and how not all supernatural beings are evil.
** Oakley's case serves as a {{Deconstruction}} in two different ways:
*** Her ability to detect lies doesn't necessarily prevents her from getting deceived. Thanks to Harry's extensive experience dealing with ExactWords from the Fae, he was able to show her how she can be told strategically chosen pieces of literal truth to guide her to draw the wrong conclusion from them.
*** Oakley has deeply rooted trust issues because she was able to always tell when people lied to her since she was very little, showing her the ugly side of people before she was old enough to understand it.
* LogicBomb: Serafall throws one at Harry to break him free from the Winter Mantle. It goes more or less like this:
-->'''Winter Harry:''' I want to have sex.\\
'''Winter Harry:''' Serafall agreed to have sex with me if I go back to "normal."\\
'''Winter Harry:''' But if I go back to "normal", I'll just turn her down.\\
'''Winter Harry:''' Then I won't get to have sex.\\
'''Winter Harry:''' But I want to have sex…
* LoopholeAbuse:
** An Angel was able to create and sell counterfeit Franchise/{{Pokemon}} cards without Falling because while she was breaking the law, her intentions to earn money to save a church and preserve the good work it does for its community, help players who cannot get rare cards (she's a fan of card game anime in much the way Serafall is of magical girl anime), and undercut unscrupulous secondary sellers were good.
** Sona's EngagementChallenge states that only someone who has [[BestHerToBedHer bested her at chess may marry her]]. Of course, it doesn't preclude her from losing on purpose.
** [[spoiler:Reya's Artificial Sacred Gear [[DoppelgangerAttack creates a clone of herself]] that the Rating Game system incidentally recognizes as her due to its AstralProjection properties. This quirk allows her to Self-Promote anywhere on the field as long as her-clone-as-her should be able to based on its position and other conditions.]]
* LoveObstructingParents: Duncan Sitri does ''not'' approve Harry as a significant other for neither Serafall nor Sona, much less the two of them at the same time. His EstablishingCharacterMoment involves offering him ''huge'' amounts of power -- let it be magical, political, or enough cold hard cash to last him three ''generations'' -- just to make him break up with his daughters and disappear from their lives forever.
* LowerDeckEpisode:
** ''A Walk on the Wild Side?'' is about what happened to the younger Devils left behind in Kuoh, while the main characters are in Kyoto and the older Devils are in the Underworld. Ruruko, Gasper, Koneko, and Ravel get led around town by Mister, [[InMysteriousWays coincidentally(?)]] performing some minor heroics in the process.
** ''A Rearguard Action?'' focuses on the defense of real Kyoto from Annihilation Maker, something the D×D canon glosses over. Though what happens is different than what little we do know of canon; though Azazel and Serafall still spearhead the efforts, the Sitri Peers attacked the Heroes with the Gremory crew, so Az and Levi-tan are instead assisted by some of the youkai, Serafall's Peerage, Nike, and Oakley.
* MagicalGirl: {{Discussed|Trope}} to the point of {{Deconstruction}} when Harry half-jokingly tells Serafall that he's a "conscientious objector" of the genre.
-->'''Harry:''' I believe that the conscription of untrained, under-aged practitioners, by dubious, "cute", supernatural animals or fairies, to fight insane warlocks and world destroying monsters, while wearing miniskirts and frou-frou outfits, is at best borderline amoral and illegal under child labor and endangerment laws.\\
And that is assuming the mascot character is on the up and up, But most of the time it comes out later that "[[Franchise/SailorMoon this has been getting you killed every five hundred years for the last twenty thousand]], [[Manga/KannazukiNoMiko but maybe this time it will work]]", or "[[Manga/{{Pretear}} sorry to tell you but the evil queen is actually your beloved older sister and you still have to kill her]]", or even "[[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica the monsters are former magical girls who lost control of their powers, but maybe it won't happen to you]]"…\\
'''Serafall:''' You seem [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial awfully familiar]] with magical girl series, for someone so morally opposed to them.
* MagicMirror: The mystical dangers of mirrors from Dresden's world don't apply in Bizarro world. Harry's surprised that he's gotten used to it so quickly.
* MagicMissileStorm: Goth Hermione's Balance Break splits a spell in five, letting her turn a five shot Force Bolt into a twenty five bolt barrage.
* {{Magitek}}:
** Harry drew three magic circles on a wireless [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 PS4]] controller as a present. One acted in lieu of the battery so it could be charged up with magic, another enhanced the signal, and the last one granted it extra toughness so [[spoiler:Tsubasa]] could {{Button Mash|ing}} without worrying about breaking it.
** He's working on a series of magic circles to assist, and eventually replace, a house's AC system. Becoming a modern home owner taught Harry how darn expensive AC is.
** There's a spell that copies some of the caster's memories to a DVD. Akeno used it once to record her account of the final battle against the Beholders. Harry suspects [[LovableSexManiac she]] learned it for [[HomePornMovie other reasons]] and resolved himself to never borrow a DVD from either her or Issei.
* TheMaidenNameDebate: Duncan and Coira Allocer -- the last two survivors of one of the 72 Pillars -- took the Sitri name after marriage. [[spoiler:Both to Sona and Serafall's mother, Anna Sitri.]]
* MandatoryMotherhood: Devils nobility takes after human medieval one in this sense where continuing one's bloodline is paramount. This is a source of conflict in several ways, such as Rias' ArrangedMarriage to Riser in order to produce a pure blooded descendant. More specifically to this trope, Coira Sitri is under political pressure to have children despite being both lesbian and married to Anna, in order to pass down her birth family's name and highly regarded RecessiveSuperGenes. [[spoiler:She is, however, planning on having a human as her ChosenConceptionPartner as a way to "really stick it to those old bigots" and their FantasticRacism.]]
* MarshmallowHell: Mild example, after helping Harry move to his new house, Rias insists that Issei "needs to study" and can't stay any later, which she demonstrates by shoving his head between her breasts. Issei, for obvious reasons, doesn't resist in the slightest (though Asia and Koneko are less happy about the attention their crush is getting).
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane:
** Mister, full stop. He just appears one day. From everything Harry and Lash can tell, he is a normal, non-magical cat, but is also completely identical to the Mister from Harry's universe, even though the Sight. Is he the original Mister, which should be impossible, especially since he shows no signs of such a transit? Or Mister's Bizzaro World doppelganger who somehow found his way to Harry or was directed to him? Or something powerful and subtle enough to imitate Mister and fool both Harry and Lash?
** And then there is ''A Walk on the Wild Side''. Was Mister just leading his new "servant" to his favorite places and the heroics were an accident? Or was it all according to plan? He also seems to manage to avoid getting hit with Forbidden Balor View's TimeStandsStill power, but it's unclear whether or not it's because he's equal or greater than Gasper's power, allowing him to NoSell it, or if it just missed him.
** Azazel himself isn't sure where the ammo for 2nd Amendment comes from; does it create it from magic or transport it from somewhere else? Either way, the ammo is completely normal and the spent casings remain after being fired.
* MeanCharacterNiceActor: Kiba in his role as "Darkness Knight Fang" in the live event of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]''. He rather dislikes his likeness being portrayed as the BigBad of the show.
* MeaningfulName:
** Shizukesa names her bugbear familiar (who has a body dominated by a giant eye) "William", after Creator/WilliamShakespeare, who either invented or popularized the word "eyeball".
** Levi-tan's companions in the Miracle Mysticas in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' are based on Tsubasa, Reya and Sona and their names allude to each of them in some way. Tsubasa's fictional counterpart is "Rampa-tan", as in ramparts a.k.a. castle/rook walls. Reya's is Libra-tan, as in library. And Marine-tan's name comes from Sona's MakingASplash ElementalPowers.
* MilhollandRelationshipMoment: [[spoiler:Serafall sort of [[YouDidntAsk neglected]] to mention to Harry that her normal appearance is just a {{Glamour}} that greatly downplays her real beauty because she was afraid he could fall in lust with her like many others before him. Right after her LoveConfession, Harry revealed that he both knew about it and actually agreed with her decision, going as far as to make her promise to not show her "adult mode" to him until he's ready to say "those three little words" back to her.]]
* MisplacedRetribution:
** {{Invoked|Trope}} with [[spoiler:Mulan from the Hero Faction, whom Cao Cao outright {{Brainwashe|d}}s to turn her into CannonFodder in the Kyoto arc by making her obsessed with getting revenge on Japan for their actions against China in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII -- something Oakley observed Mulan didn't care about just a week ago.]]
** In the ChristmasEpisode, [[spoiler:Harry runs into a former classmate from his pre-Kuoh Academy time, who learned all the wrong lessons from Harry's {{Bully Hunt|er}}ing and dabbling into the supernatural. He tried to cast a town-spanning curse on "all those couples flaunting their happiness" before Harry made him see reason.]]
* MistakenForGay: The rest of the Heroes assume Georg is gay, due to his reaction to Harry (or more specifically Harry's unique magic) and the fact that he ignores Circe's aggressive crush on him (he thinks she is too young and not his type in general). He corrects them once he finds out.
* ModestyTowel:
** Serafall wears one of these when the girls are staying at Harry's house during the "Beholder" storyline, and she uses the shower in Harry's room with the excuse that she prefers the western style bath he has in there, though it's clear to Harry, her ''and'' the reader that she's really just doing it for flirtation.
** Averted with Sona when Harry accidentally walks in on her in the shower at Tsubasa's apartment (she put a silence charm up while bathing and didn't hear him knock). She's wearing a towel, but is using it to dry herself off, meaning that Harry gets a partial view of her.
* MoneyDearBoy: An InUniverse example. Besides his slim chances of winning a lawsuit to make them stop, Harry allows the use of his likeness in the ShowWithinAShow ''Oppai Dragon'' and ''Miracle Levi-tan'' because he gets paid a tidy sum in royalties per appearance.
* MoneySpider: The [[spoiler:literal Phantom Thief]] from chapter 40 left behind a bunch of 10,000 yen notes upon termination (or rather, [[spoiler:exorcism]]). Harry joked that he must have ended up in ''Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld''.
* MonsterProgenitor: [[spoiler:Argus created the Beholders after being blinded, using them to gather eyes to replace his own. Certain high-level Beholders can also use stolen eyes to replenish their own, using the cast off eyes to create weaker ones.]]
* MoodWhiplash:
** There's a sudden moment of levity when Harry, Asia, and Issei were about to try to help Sairaorg's mother with her illness and a "small troop of heavy hitters" consisting in the scientifically/medically-minded Ajuka, Athena, Asclepius, Azazel, Raphael, Sekhmet, and Thoth opened the door hoping to witness the procedure firsthand. The room got so crowded that the doctor had to ask them to move to the observation room next door.
** During the procedure, Issei broke into a heartwarming speech about how Rias was the right person to try to converse with her comatose aunt and encourage her to fight her disease from the inside. Then he just ''had'' to talk about breasts. Harry barely resisted the urge to groan.
* MookFaceTurn: Oakley is referred to as one of the Hero Faction's Mooks. After Harry removes her brainwashing, and they explain to her just how many people the "Heroes" are going to kill, she switches sides.
* MoreThanMindControl: What the Hero Faction did to Oakley (and possibly others); they rescued her from a bad foster home, taught her about her Sacred Gear, and told her she was going to learn to fight monsters, which she'd been seeing for years due her Gear, and giving her an incomplete and biased account of said supernatural beings as to not trip her LivingLieDetector powers. Then they also used a normal MindControl power so she would not notice when they didn't quite fulfill their promises, and as a safeguard against her being captured or making a HeelFaceTurn.
* MorphWeapon: 2nd Amendment, an artificial Sacred Gear that can transform into any gun and ammunition type the wearer can accurately picture, but it's limited to non-magical weaponry. [[spoiler:The first prototype became a ClingyMacGuffin to Harry.]]
* MrFanservice: Harry is surprised at finding himself this in-universe. While ''most'' of his human classmates are still wary of the tall, imposing foreign student, many of the supernatural women he's run into have expressed an interest in him, much to his dismay as he has enough trouble balancing the girls he's actually interested in.
* MugglesDoItBetter:
** One of Harry's tenets, despite being a Wizard/Magician. Besides firearms, he's all too willing to resort to technology to solve magical problems now that he's not a WalkingTechbane, like letting computer-controlled milling machines do the etching of magical symbols for him, and Lash is learning SQL in hopes of developing a magic database (not to be confused with a MagicalDatabase) where magic circles and its components can be found by a criteria. The same applies as a detective by using internet as another investigative tools.
** Agares Knight Reiko uses a handheld game console to control her {{Golem}}s. Despite her being Sona's opponent at the time, Harry praises her approach as a "brilliant" solution to the ever-present problem of improving the magical constructs poor decision-making skills by using modern ArtificialIntelligence like the one already found in RealTimeStrategy or {{Fighting Game}}s characters for the job. This not only allows her to program the {{Golem}}s to perform ''much'' more complex tasks than what's possible with FormulaicMagic or even the use of spirits or elementals, but also allows the caster to micromanage their actions as they were {{Player Character}}s in a game if necessary.
* MundaneUtility:
** Harry has a habit of repurposing calculated combat spells to mundane uses, like turning a fire shield spell into a personal air conditioning one, and creating a spell to laminate paper.
** He also uses 2nd Amendment's ability to create any kind of real-life gun he can accurately picture, ammo included, to get depleted uranium to use in his experiments.
** He used real magic in his cameo appearance in a ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'' live-action skit for kids because there wasn't enough time for the special effects team to come up with good ways to fake his signature spells with theatre props and tricks.
** Kendra used a "dimensional break jutsu", normally used to store dangerous items that cannot be destroyed, to hide Harry's staff from him.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Goth Hermione]], Georg's IgnoredEnamoredUnderling, goes the extra mile to try to kill Harry because of the way he monopolizes her crush's attention -- or at the very least defeat him so Georg will stop thinking he and his magical abilities are such a big deal.
* MyFriendsAndZoidberg:
** In ''Devilish Research (part 3)'', Harry describes himself as being in a room with three of the smartest people in the world (using "people" a bit loosely)... and Azazel. He later repeats the line, telling Rias that he ran his idea by "three of the smartest people in the universe, and Azazel".
** When training the magic users in Rias and Sona's Peerages, Harry addresses them as "{{Ladies and|Germs}} [[DudeLooksLikeALady Gasper]]."
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Oakley has one of these moments. [[spoiler:She was fine during the battle, while helping Harry fix Mulan, and during the debriefing. But once she his a moment to decompress, she starts thinking about how she killed Remus. Shizukesa expressing relief at being able to cut loose without hurting anyone sends Oakley over the edge.]]
* MyHairCameOutGreen: Harry pranked Kendra by dyeing her hair pink. And all of her skin too for that matter. It doubles as a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome once you consider he somehow pulled the upscale, magical version of a fraternity prank on a ''literal ninja'' without getting caught and while giving himself enough PlausibleDeniability to ''[[RefugeInAudacity discuss the details of his]] PlausibleDeniability [[RefugeInAudacity with her]]''.
* MySisterIsOffLimits: Jeanne doesn't want her little sister Alice to join the Hero Faction despite her being the reincarnation of the Greek heroine Atalante, both because she doesn't want to turn her sister into a soldier but also because Hercules has "expressed an interest" in her (even more creepy than usual as Alice is barely into puberty at this point).
* MythologyGag:
** A character based on Harry appears in the "Oppai Dragon" ShowWithinAShow wearing a hat. Harry never wears one and complains about the inaccuracy, but is told it won't be changed. This is a reference to how the cover art of the ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' novels have Harry wearing a fedora [[CoversAlwaysLie despite never doing so in the story proper]].
** The "Wandering Wizard" is played by Creator/JamesMarsters, the narrator of ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''[='=] audio books.
** Harry said that Nanoha's avatar from her old [[Manga/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaINNOCENT Brave Duel]] matches "looked like Sailor Moon and a Gundam had a baby", which is exactly what the creators of ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'' were going for.
* NamedByTheAdaptation: Not a character per se, but the sickness that put Sairaorg's mother in a coma is called "Purgatory Malaise" here.
* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: InUniverse. The "[[ThePsychoRangers Divine Inheritor Hero Rangers]]" in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' didn't get the chance to bring in their [[HumongousMecha Zords]] to the fight because the summoning system doesn't work yet in the Underworld.
* NerdsAreSexy: Played with, Reya is originally drawn to Harry because he shares her love of books.
* NeverHeardThatOneBefore: When Harry found out that one of Kunou's bodyguards was a female {{tengu}} named Takako, he wondered if the WingedHumanoid's parents purposely named her after [[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Hawkgirl]] -- [[DontExplainTheJoke which Takako roughly translates to]] and it also happens to be the real name of [[Creator/ReiIgarashi Hawkgirl's voice actress]] in the Japanese dub of ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague''. He tested the waters by asking her whether he could call her "Shayera". Takako instantly caught the reference and told him that she didn't particularly care if he called her "Kendra," which he keeps on doing for the rest of the story.
* NewYearHasCome: Chapter 76 is all about this, but without the Japanese traditions because the whole cast was in the Underworld at the time. Harry [[MeetTheInLaws had dinner with the Sitris]], then attended the party with Rias and Sona's Peerages, followed the countdown/Auld Lang Syne/midnight kiss traditions, and all ended up with both Peerages being too tired to do well at their first training session of 2015.
* NiceHat: Harry remarked on Thoth's nice bowler hat when he first met him. For some reason the Egyptian god of medicine even had a light British accent to match.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Rossweisse reveals that Harry's suggestion that Jeanne getting the Hero Brigade to try and pick a fight with Trihexa is a thousand times worse than their original plan of fighting Great Red, because not only is Trihexa such a massive threat that his original defeat during the War Of Forgotten eons ago was made at the cost of the near-destruction of the world, the death of 90% of humanity, hundreds of thousands of devils and other immortals, and dozens of ''gods!'' It also led to the death of a weakened Jehovah in the subsequent war with Lucifer. On top of that, the seals keeping him locked up are ''already damaged'', and only number at about 6, and not thousands like Harry believed. To be fair, others on the Chaos Brigade were already plotting to release Trihexa before he suggested this, so the Hero Faction probably isn't going to do anything there, and at least there'll be strong warriors there when the seal is broken.]]
* NoBiologicalSex: The Beholders, though Shizukesa and the other Deltas always had gender identities.
* NoBodyLeftBehind: A Beholder's body doesn't quite puff out of existence when they die, but it does disintegrate completely in a matter of hours unless properly preserved. Given their low numbers to begin with, the extraordinary rarity of [[EyeOfNewt their remains as magical ingredients]] netted Harry a big fat check for their sale in chapter 26, even after splitting the cash equally over around 18 people.
* NoiselessWalker: When Michael was hiring Harry to find the Angel making counterfeit TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} cards in Serafall's office, she suddenly appeared right behind him and accepted the case in his stead without him hearing her approach.
* NoJustNoReaction: When Boosted up to the limit, Issei's power to talk to breasts seemed to have some affect on ''Harry's nipples''. Very understandably, Harry decided to believe it was only his imagination, and then threw away the memory where he wouldn't find it.
* NominalImportance:
** None of the Hero mooks in ''A Violent Introduction?'' are given names. However one of them was given a name in the previous arc. Guess which one gets captured and interrogated by Harry and company?
** The Beholders don't have names, they have designations consisting of a Greek letter and a number. Harry nicknames one (BB, short for "Boss Beholder") who is FinalBoss for the Beholder Arc. Serafall nicknames another one (Rini), who is the only Beholder sent to Japan to survive. [[spoiler:Rini also gets recruited by Serafall to be her Knight.]]
* NoodleIncident:
** {{Invoked|Trope}}. Harry ''strongly'' encourages everybody to refer to the events of the omake with Azazel's [[GenderBender gender-bending]] [[AppliedPhlebotinum gun]] as "The Incident", and to not give any further details about it.
** For a {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, Harry tell his dates in the ChristmasEpisode how ended up in Kuoh Academy in the first place.
** Apparently, the first time Tsubasa and Reya went on an exorcism with Tsubaki, Tsubasa ended up covered in mint ice cream. The full story had Serafall and Harry laughing uproariously, but that much is basically all the readers get.
* NormalFishInATinyPond:
** Harry in his own world, despite his accomplishments and stuff like the Winter Mantle, is still nowhere near his prime as a wizard yet. In "Bizarro World", however, his style of magic is apparently entirely unique, as is his use of Winter, Hellfire, and Soulfire. In addition to coming up with a way to protect Devils against Light, simply by doing what he usually does to his protection spells when he finds some new force trying to kill him, and his breakthroughs with calculated spells, he's managed to gain the personal attention of the leaders of the Three Factions, and even their respect, and survive fights with things outside his weight class.
** Rossweisse even says that he might be the strongest human that doesn't have a (natural) Sacred Gear in the ''The War of Forgotten?''.
* NoSocialSkills: Shizukesa has had plenty of opportunity to observe human interactions, but very little chance to use them. Since it goes back centuries, she can be a little of. In addition, she has almost no knowledge of pop culture. Finally, she is naturally shy and doesn't expect people to like her [[spoiler:given her past as a Beholder]]. As a result she is more than a little hesitant around other people. Though she is getting better.
* NotADate:
** Issei keeps insisting that the various outings Rias takes him on aren't dates, still too hurt from his experience with Raynare to think that anyone is romantically interested in him. Harry finally tells Rias that her subtle game isn't working, and that she needs to simply sit Issei down and confess her feelings directly to him. She does offscreen, alongside Akeno, Koneko and Asia, leading to Issei officially dating his harem.
** Harry briefly tries to justify his day out with Tsubasa as just him keeping an eye on her, but quickly caves in and admits to himself that yes, it ''is'' an official date.
* NotBrainwashed: PlayedForLaughs. When the punch in Harry's housewarming/Halloween party got accidentally turned into an aphrodisiac, all of Issei's LoveInterests under its effects jumped him at the same time. Plus [[LovableSexManiac Akeno]], who certainly didn't mind participating in the incipient orgy despite remaining completely sober. Thankfully (or not for her), Harry found the way to snap them out of it before anything R-18 could happen.
* NotHyperbole: The "Phantom Thief" robbery case in Akiba involved an actual ghost.
* NotSoStoic: Cao Cao gasps and gets briefly unnerved for the first time when Harry demonstrates 2nd Amendment on the anti-monsters, likely remembering how Harry had pulled it on him.
* NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat: Jeanne tacks in this verbatim when complaining that her little sister thought she was gay after seeing how she was portrayed in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''.
* TheNudifier:
** {{Subverted|Trope}}. Harry subs for Momo in the Ratings Game against Riser and his peerage, and when cornered, pretends that he knows how to perform Issei's iconic Dress Break. He doesn't, but his array of useless but flashy mandalas distract his female opponents long enough for Tsubasa to take most of them down.
** Also {{Defied|Trope}}. Harry refuses to research Dress Break because he finds the technique extremely skeevy. He muses that it wouldn't be so bad as a disarming spell, but the fact that Dress Break only works on female opponents and only as TheNudifier rather than just getting rid of their outer armor are deal breakers for him.
** The real thing makes it's debut in ''A Violent Introduction?'' during the fight against the Hero Faction in Kyoto. Issei uses it on a group of female fighters, which makes most of them run away. Unlike canon Jeanne also gets hit, as does [[OriginalCharacter Oakley]]. Both of them try to keep fighting, but ultimately cannot -- Oakley because one of her fleeing comrades accidentally knock her out with her own rifle, and Jeanne because she got embarrassed when she saw that [[FoeYay Harry]] was watching her fight in the nude.
** [[spoiler:The "Sitri Oil" can dissolve clothes without harming people while also acting as an instant {{Aphrodisiac}} by contact. Hilariously enough, it's the HistoricalInJoke origin of several {{Hentai}} tropes.]]
* ObliviousToLove:
** [[spoiler:Azazel is completely unaware of D×D!Lasciel's attraction to him.]]
** Earlier, Harry lampshades Saji being this to the two Peerage-Mates of his that are pursuing him, even after the Halloween Party incident mentioned below, even dropping the trope name. Saji claims that he doesn't remember the incident, but Harry thinks he might be lying because he still holds a torch for Sona.
** While Issei became aware of Rias, Asia, Akeno, and Koneko's feelings after Harry told Rias to stop with the NotADate stuff and just confess directly, he was still initially unaware that Xenovia and Irina were interested in anything more than having a Heavenly Dragon's baby, despite his own feelings for at least the latter. Harry notes that this makes sense, as he's still not fully over Raynare's betrayal, even if he is healing.
** [[spoiler:Harry warns Oakley that her crush Tomoe might well be this.]]
* ObviousRulePatch: {{Invoked|Trope}} during the pre-Rating Game press conference between Sona and Seekvaira Agares' Peerages. Harry pretended to be a reporter ([[ShoutOut specifically]] "[[Franchise/{{Superman}} Clark Kent]]" from the "[[Franchise/SpiderMan Daily Bugle]]" to several of the actual reporters' chagrin or amusement) and pointed out how the modification of the rules to supposedly allow Sona, Tsubasa and Reya to use Side-Promotion to compensate for their numerical disadvantage actually gives their opponent an even bigger advantage. The moderator had to step in to explain in detail how that wasn't the case, but Harry was left with the impression he was just back-pedalling after getting caught.
* OhCrap: A multi-stage example happens in ''A Star's Life''. First Tsubaki when she realizes that Momo was going to complain that the rest of Sona's Peerage don't have fictional counterparts in neither ShowWithinAShow, quickly making some distance in order to not get lumped together with them. Saji [[NotHyperbole literally jumps out of the way]] when Momo makes the question for the same reason, and then Ruruko and Momo herself when the latter figured out [[SayingTooMuch how badly she messed up]] [[GotVolunteered by making that question]].
* OhCrapThereAreFanficsOfUs: Thanks to [[spoiler:D×D!Mab]] [[IKnewIt bragging online about being right about]] [[{{Shipping}} Wandering Wizard/Miracle Levi-tan]], there were around a dozen of {{Lemon}}s featuring the pairing by the next morning.
* OhMyGods: Tsubasa sometimes swears by "the Maou/Lucifer".
* {{Omake}}: There have been five Omake chapters so far; the April Fools' chapter (which was removed due to negative fan backlash), the Halloween Party (which is now canon), Harry's Christmas with the girls, a tribute to Creator/CarrieFisher, and a thread from the ''Miracle Levi-tan'' forum arguing over whether the Wandering Wizard and Levi-tan are dating.
* OneSteveLimit:
** Played with, with Tsubasa and Tsubaki. Serafall decides she can't use 'Tsuba' as Tsubasa's nickname, because that could refer to either of them.
** Also played with Bob the Skull from Dresden Files; who is not an active character (being trapped in another universe) but is still occasionally mentioned, and Bob the tengu kunoichi, who is a secondary character and does not have a major impact on the story.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: {{Subverted|Trope}} with [[OriginalCharacter Goth Hermione]] from the Hero Faction, who goes by [[Literature/TheOdyssey Circe]] as revealed 28 chapters after her first appearance.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** Reya became certain that there was something in Harry's mind when he, as [[GameMaster DM]] for the Student Council's TabletopRPG night, didn't make fun of Saji despite the latter setting himself up for a perfect [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_and_the_Dread_Gazebo "Gazebo"]] follow-up.
** Harry knew he was onto something when he told Tsubasa that he wanted to take her and Serafall on a date at the same time and she ''didn't'' go for the obvious flirtatious retort.
* OpenMindedParent: It's been observed that Issei's parents are surprisingly accepting of their son's harem. Harry thinks they're actually in denial and "mostly just hoping that at least one of the girls won't come to her senses and dump him when the others do." Also, it helps that [[IWantGrandkids Issei's mom really wants grandchildren]].
* OutOfTheClosetIntoTheFire: ZigZagged. Devils as a culture couldn't care less that Coira Allocer is lesbian in itself, but remaining childless as she is now and allowing the Pillar family and her RecessiveSuperGenes to die out, especially by risking an unwanted Extra Family to take the Allocer's place in the nobility, are big enough political issues [[MandatoryMotherhood to pressure her to consider artificial insemination as a solution]]. [[spoiler:The situation CrossesTheLineTwice when Coira [[DroppingTheBombshell nonchalantly gives Harry an open invitation]] to be her ChosenConceptionPartner.]]
* OverprotectiveDad: HaremGenre means Harry has to deal with more than one.
** Mr. Yura isn't crazy about his daughter going on a date with a self-proclaimed wizard because [[LockedOutOfTheLoop he isn't aware of the supernatural]]. Tsubasa mentions he put her in an all-girls school for this exact reason and wasn't happy at all when Kuoh Academy suddenly became co-ed.
** Sona and Serafall's father tries to make a deal with Harry to stop seeing his daughters as soon as they first meet -- unfortunately for him, [[FailedASpotCheck his daughters and wife were within earshot]]. He also visible bristles when Harry half-hugged Sona while sitting at the table during the New Year's Eve dinner in their place.
* PaintingTheMedium: The Beholders' disturbing and inhuman voices are initially written with every vowel as a capital letter, and consonants as lower case. This stops after Harry asks Lash to filter their speech.
* APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy: The party in the Halloween Omake almost becomes one of these due to two different guests spiking the punch, not knowing about the other. The resulting mix ends up accidentally becoming an aphrodisiac and nearly leads to the various love interests consummating their relationships in Harry's living room (Akeno didn't have any, but that didn't stop her). Only Harry just barely managing to cast a sobering-up spell (while very close to being drawn into an orgy with his sort-of girlfriends) stops it. Sirzechs and Grayfia had already adjourned to his guest bedroom though...
* ThePeepingTom: {{Defied}}. When the Pervert Duo told Harry about their plans to peep on the Student Council during the school trip, the Wizard made sure they couldn't even leave their rooms.
* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: [[spoiler:The general consensus is that the Allocer family basically sold the illegitimate son of the last Duke Allocer to the much more powerful Sitri family as a trophy husband for their leader in order to secure an alliance. Despite the less than ideal circumstances, the marriage of Sona and Serafall's parents turned to be a happy one.]]
* PerpetualPoverty: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Unlike in his original world, Harry has a ''much'' easier time making ends meet because magic is a lot less inherently dangerous in Bizarro World -- to the point there's an active open market for enchanted artifacts and other magical items that Harry can now produce for a tidy profit.
* PlayingWithFire: Tsubasa manages to use something similar to Fuego when fighting Herc. Harry didn't missed it and later called the attempt "an embarrassment to [him] as the spell's creator, and to Sona as [her] King" right before promising to teach her the right way to do it.
* PointOfNoReturn:
** A non-videogame example. [[spoiler:Lash warns Harry that letting Tsubasa deliver the killing blow to BB is one in their relationship, observing that there's little to no chance the Rook will ''ever'' get over him if he fulfills his promise to her.]]
** ''The Inevitability of Death?'' provides a medical one. If a Devil afflicted with Purgatory Malaise get to the stage where they fall into a coma, it's all but certain that they won't ever wake up. That's why Sairaorg's mother was considered pretty much a lost cause.
* PokemonSpeak: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Harry tried to use the [[TranslatorMicrobes Lingua Prima spell]] to get Kendra stuck speaking in [[Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy Groot]]'s [[IntelligibleUnintelligible "language"]] as part of his escalating prank war with her, but Sona and Rias put a stop to the whole thing.
* PoorCommunicationKills: A {{Downplayed|Trope}} yet recurrent problem for Harry. His experiences in his original world taught him to keep his cards to close to his chest and only reveal dangerous information in a need-to-know basis. However, having to keep this ProperlyParanoid approach for so long makes him apply it to areas of his life that don't require it. For example, Harry didn't tell Reya right away that Jeanne crashed on their date without her noticing and even [[SexForServices offered to settle her debt to him with sex]]. The unnecessary secrecy made Reya briefly worried that her boyfriend could have accepted the offer despite knowing him better than that.
* PostKissCatatonia: Harry's ForcefulKiss causes Reya to pass out and collapse. Then he kisses Tsubasa, and she does the frozen-in-place version of this trope. Which was good for Harry, since one of his legs was disabled and he was barely standing, so he used her SuperStrength for support.
* PostModernMagik: One of the fic's tenets as in the source material.
** In the "Phantom Thief" case, Harry gives the police detective in charge a detailed explanation of how four different types of supernatural {{Invisibility}} interact with modern cameras.
** Harry requested a Q&A meeting with Raphael, Azazel, Ajuka and Athena where they discussed the metaphysical differences between Angels, Fallen and Devils and how it relates to genetic theory. They also talked about how the Angels tried to resort to artificial insemination to bypass the problem of Falling to the [[SevenDeadlySins Deadly Sin of Lust]] during sex to no avail.
** The anti-poisoning spell "Chemi Cleanse" was developed in Berkeley in TheSixties by magicians who "wanted a fast and easy way to pass a blood test." The spell specifically ignores toxins on the target's skin because said magicians didn't want to lose their tattoos whenever they cast it on themselves.
* PowerLimiter: {{Subverted}}. Harry and Sona discover by accident that her glasses can stop a Soulgaze from activating thanks to their protective enchantments. Harry tries them on, hoping that they will do the same when he wears them and finally be able to look people in the eye, but the attempt is a failure.
* PowerPerversionPotential:
** Harry suspects Akeno learned a spell that copies some of the caster's memories into a DVD to make her own {{Home Porn Movie}}s.
** There's really no way to miss how [[spoiler:the "Sitri Oil", a [[TheNudifier clothing dissolver that doesn't harm people]] and a powerful {{Aphrodisiac}} by contact all in one substance,]] can be used for perverted purposes. Harry even suggested to sell it [[spoiler:bundled with bedsheets immune to its effects]] as "marital aid."
* PowersViaPossession: The Akiba thief uses a ghostly possession to perpetrate her crimes; specifically invisibility to avoid detection, and intangibility to gain entry.
* PragmaticVillainy: While calling it "villainy" is a stretch at this point, Lash learned to be more upfront about her [[HaremSeeker pro-harem plans]] because Harry is in fact weaker to sincere emotion-based arguments than to clever subterfuge.
* PrecociousCrush: How Georg sees 13-year-old Circe/Goth Hermione's obvious crush on him.
* ProperlyParanoid: Harry's paranoia and faith in the FinaglesLaw usually pay off.
* ThePsychoRangers: InUniverse. The "Divine Inheritor Hero Rangers" from ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' are a ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' {{Expy}} based on the Hero Faction that play as BloodKnight[=/=]KnightTemplar antagonists to the MagicalGirl Devils protagonists who are also trying to get the Wandering Wizard to (re)join them.
* PunchedAcrossTheRoom: How Tsubasa [[DynamicEntry greeted]] [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname "Scorpion girl"]], a Stray Devil ganging on Harry with another two. She {{Megaton Punch}}ed her hard enough to break her leg from the landing alone.
-->'''[[ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend Tsubasa]]:''' Get away from him, [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch bitch!]]
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: Done by Serafall when playing bad cop in ''A Working Date?''
-->'''Serafall:''' Give. Us. The. Website!
* PunnyName: Azazel names an artificial Sacred Gear that can turn into any non-magical gun the user can accurately picture [[UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics "2nd Amendment"]].
* QuestionableConsent: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Harry didn't mince words and referred to the {{Forceful Kiss}}es he gave to Reya and Tsubasa under the influence of the [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Winter Mantle]] as assault. Lash pointed out that neither girl sees it like that, which he argued only makes it worse.
* RaceLift: InUniverse with the Hero Faction's fictional counterparts (other than Jeanne's) in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''. Siegfried is played by a [[Creator/JohnnyYongBosch Korean-American actor]], Herc by a Samoan-New Zealand actor, Cao Cao by an [[Creator/JasonDavidFrank American]], and Georg by an Afro-American ''[[GenderFlip actress]]''.
* RagingStiffie: Harry is, after all, a teenager boy now.
-->'''Harry:''' Damn hormones, and praise loose-fitting male gym uniforms.
* RealDreamsAreWeirder:
** Harry has one representing his romantic situation styled after a "rose ceremony" from ''Series/TheBachelor'' but with comedian Chris Hardwick in a tuxedo t-shirt as the host. Then Issei takes over and explains the audience about the new "Harem Rush" rules involving Harry "taking [his LoveInterests] two at a time on group dates to determine [their] compatibility as threesomes." When Harry wakes up, he decides to talk to Lash about her TV privileges.
** After meeting [[spoiler:D×D!Mab]], Harry dreamed of himself as Film/AustinPowers, Mab as Doctor Evil, [[spoiler:Bizarro Mab as Mini Me]], and his "Bond Girl" kept switching between Serafall, Sona, Reya, Tsubasa, Susan, Takako and Jeanne without his dream self noticing.
* RealityEnsues: [[Manga/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaINNOCENT Brave Duel]] TradingCardGame faded out of popularity because it was a little too ahead of its time, technologically speaking, which translated to [[CrackIsCheaper the hefty price tags on decks and boosters]]. Playing the game with full specs required "Stadium" arcade machines that most game centers only rented due to the cost, and once sales started to drop, it created a snowball effect where arcades canceled their rentals, making it harder for players to find places where to play, which made the game less attractive to both old and new players, and sales dropped even more. However, TechnologyMarchesOn and Brave Duel is expected to have an UpdatedRerelease thanks to the current dirt-cheap price of RFID chips for the cards, more commonplace readers, and home consoles with high enough specs to run the required software.
* RecessiveSuperGenes: Neither Serafall nor Sona inherited the Allocer power from their father, their SuperpowerfulGenetics favoring instead their mother's supernatural traits. Duncan and Anna are planning on having another child just in case of ThirdTimesTheCharm, while his lesbian sister Coira is considering artificial insemination. [[spoiler:by ''Harry'' of all people.]]
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Oakley]] dies in a HeroicSacrifice after her MookFaceTurn. [[spoiler:She gets better thanks to Serafall's Evil Pieces.]]
* RefugeInAudacity:
** In ''a Working Date?'', Harry and Serafall demand to check a tournament player's Pokemon deck (while in LightNovel/SwordArtOnline cosplay) by claiming to work for Nintendo, and masking the spell that makes magical counterfeits glow orange with a flashlight with a bit of colored cellophane over it.
** How Harry gets rid of Cao Cao at the end of the Alice White arc. [[spoiler:He basically says, "I just split this girl's soul into Normal and Hero halves and destroyed the Hero part. Now get out of here before I make you kill me so Serafall and Azazel have an opening and a reason to kill you". Cao Cao complies. Moreover, the first part is a total bluff: Un-Hero-ing Alice was Harry' plan but the procedure failed, so they fell back to plan B consisting in making the Hero Faction believe it was a success.]]
** Harry has the cheek to prank Kendra by dyeing her pink and then ''discuss the details'' of PlausibleDeniability with her. It works despite Kendra and everybody around knowing he just has to be the culprit because he made sure of leaving no hard evidence behind.
** It takes some serious lady BrassBalls and chutzpah to [[spoiler:ask Harry to [[ChosenConceptionPartner father your children]] -- notice the plural -- right in front of his girlfriend the ''[[PersonOfMassDestruction Leviathan]] herself'', but that's how Coira Sitri rolls. She even manages to get them to file the whole idea as a maybe rather than refuse it outright.]]
* RelationshipUpgrade: Issei and his girlfriends have theirs well ahead from canon thanks to Harry clueing in Rias on what a number Raynare actually did on his psyche.
* TheResenter: Saji to Harry for getting together with his crush. Sona gave him the chance to come to terms on his own, but once his hostility to Harry started to interfere with combat, she stepped in to make him stop and unambiguously told him that she wasn't interested in him that way, and wouldn't be even if things with Harry somehow don't work out. Since then Harry remains Saji's least favorite person but he did knock it off, becoming instead sullen or irascible around him in a AgeAppropriateAngst kinda way.
* RetailTherapy: Akeno goes in an off-screen shopping spree in the Underworld on Rias' orders, ostensibly to purchase everything their martial arts instructor will need for their training. Harry notices that she comes back from it with "almost a post-coital glow about her, happy, refreshed, and extremely satisfied" and carrying enough shopping bags to fill a well-sized bedroom with them. Takako Senju, the instructor in question who got stuck with Akeno during said shopping spree, blames Harry for letting her go through such an exhausting and at times embarrassing experience that apparently included some stores of the adult kind. This sparked the prank war going on between them during their stay in the Underworld.
* RetiredMonster: For all her dislike for her progenitor, and her current TheMatchmaker[=/=]CosplayOtakuGirl antics, there's a reason why Harry still considers Lash a lot more dangerous than even the Winter Mantle. A good example of this is the time she suggested a [[MoreThanMindControl rather disturbing]] SexFaceTurn scenario on [[spoiler:Jeanne]] by basically turning her into a {{Functional|Addict}} {{Sex Addict|ion}} with a SingleTargetSexuality on him.
* {{Revenge}}:
** Jeanne joined the Hero Faction because a high Class Devil entered a bar owned by a Fallen, and the place caught fire as a result, her father dying when he went in to save others. She's already killed the Devil, and Harry gives her the info to track down the Fallen.
** Remus has a grudge against Nike, deliberately passing on a chance to attack their draconic target and joining in the attack on Kyoto in the hopes of fighting her, blaming her for not favoring his original incarnation, despite Nike having had no part in that incident.
* RevengeBeforeReason: Mulan of the Hero Faction wants revenge on Japan for the actions taken against China during WWII. As Oakley points out, besides the obvious problem that nearly everyone in Japan (and Kyoto, which she is helping attack) who was involved is dead, and that her ''parents'' weren't even alive then, let alone ''her'', Mulan is Chinese-Canadian, and asks why she's speaking the language if she hates Japan so much, and points out that for someone who hates Japan, she sure watches a lot of anime... [[spoiler:This is later confirmed to be Longinus brainwashing, and she accepts protective custody after the battle is over.]]
* RevengeByProxy: Despite being certain that it was Harry who pranked her, Kendra knew she couldn't prove it. Unfortunately for Tsubasa, the tengu ninja was in charge of her combat training that day... [[spoiler:Or not so unfortunately. See HappyEndingMassage above.]]
* ReverseMole: InUniverse. Harry suggested making Kiba's fictional counterpart in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'' into this because he doesn't like to be portrayed as the villain. Azazel considered it a good plot twist and InUniverse explanation for the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil by making it so "Darkness Knight Fang" was purposely throwing increasingly stronger henchmen at Oppai Dragon as a way to train him.
* RhetoricalQuestionBlunder: Harry muses that he might have given the people present at the training camp reasons to be annoyed with him. Lash immediately asks him whether he wants her to enumerate their grievances against him in alphabetical or chronological order.
* RiddleForTheAges: What other people see when Harry Soulgazes them, whose reactions are all over the place. They go from Raynare becoming completely ''terrified'' of him, passing by Azazel becoming a firm if annoying friend to Harry, to Serafall and Sona trying to jump his bones then and there.
* RomanticWingman: Harry to Issei is something of an unintended case, as it's never Harry's primary objective to help Issei to get girls, but much of his advice tend to have a romantic side benefit anyhow. It gets to the point it would be strange if someday Issei ''doesn't'' name some of kids after him.
** Most notably, Harry was the first to understand what a number Raynare really did on Issei's head, and his advice to Rias telling her what she and the other girls were doing wrong in their romantic purse of him allowed them to have their RelationshipUpgrade several volumes-worth of events earlier than canon.
** When Issei, Saji and Azazel went to complain to Harry how his GrandRomanticGesture for Christmas Eve made them look bad by comparison, Harry called them out on their BS, but not without end up reminding Issei that [[ValentinesDayEpisodes Valentine's Day]] was drawing near and that most of his girlfriends aren't Japanese, meaning they're likely to be expecting him to come up with date plans for the day rather than following the Japanese custom of giving him chocolate.
** While acting as a sort of coach to Rias' Peerage, Harry felt he was obligated to ask Issei just why her breasts give him power upgrades and whether it's just hers what trigger them. This turned out to be a very sore point for his other girlfriends because Issei never thought of trying it with them, but their ire gave way to anticipation when Harry advised to, er, ''experiment'' on the subject during training rather than taking an unnecessary risk during battle.
* RuleOfSeven: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Kendra separated Harry's staff into six parts as part of a prank. He complained that it should've been seven pieces and that she had "no respect for gaming history."
* RunningGag:
** Harry cursing his teenage hormones whenever they make him feel excited.
** Often when discussing about magic with Sona and Rias, Harry will point out something neither King thought about before -- sometimes it's something nobody in Bizarro World ''ever'' thought about before -- and the girls will look at each other and have a SilentConversation about the implications.
** Whenever someone compares Harry to the [[ShowWithinAShow "Wandering Wizard"]], they point out [[MythologyGag he's missing the hat]].
** Tsubasa can't ever go out with Harry on a date without something ActionGenre-y happening. Like an enemy attack, Jeanne showing up to talk to Harry, or an amateur magician trying to literally curse all happy couples on Christmas Eve. Serafall half-jokingly guessed that the universe must know of Tsubasa's love for action movies.
** Harry's narration in the ChristmasEpisode tackles in an enthusiastic "(yay!)" whenever [[spoiler:he looks Reya or Tsubasa in the eye without triggering a Soulgaze thanks to the special glasses they wore for their date.]]
** Harry ''never'' admits aloud that he turned Kendra's hair pink. Whenever the subject comes up, he talks about it in hypothetical terms or as if someone else did it despite fooling absolutely no one.
* SavageWolves: Some show up right after Harry chases off the wyvern. [[spoiler:They're the children of Fenrir and Hela.]]
* SayingTooMuch:
** Momo when angrily asking why she, Ruruko, and Tomoe don't have fictional counterparts just like Sona, Reya, Tsubasa, and most of Rias' Peerage. It's only after she saw the twinkle in Azazel's eyes that [[OhCrap she realized just how badly she screwed herself and Ruruko over]] -- [[TheDitz Tomoe]] was at least able to happily roll with it when he cast the three girls as "the Hellines" to Koneko's "Hellcat-chan" character.
** Earlier, when Georg is berating Harry for using bullets against the Anti-Monsters in Kyoto when he's the wizard who developed the Anti-Beholder techniques, he gives Harry the idea to try using the Anti-Beholder spells on Dimension Lost, since it generates extra-dimensional mist. It works.
* ScaledUp: Both Saji and Alivian during the Rating Game between Sona Sitri and Seekvaira Agares.
* TheScapegoat: After Harry pulls a prank on Kendra by messing with the showers to dye her pink, forgetting that he'd need to vigorously scrub her with his hand for his undoing spell to work, he blames Lash for it, since she's in a situation where she can't defend herself.
* ScarsAreForever: {{Defied}}. Lash noticed that Asia's Twilight Healing can in fact heal Harry's numerous scars, but the effect is too limited to be visible at naked eye if Ise doesn't Boost her first. From then and on, they have scheduled healing sessions where Asia slowly erases Harry's scars and she gets to practice with Boosted healing without having to wait for one of their friends to get injured first. They could go faster, but Harry remarked that his scars disappearing too fast would only draw unwanted attention from people not in-the-known.
* SecondLove: Harry to Reya, who originally was interested in Kiba until spending time with the former made her realize she had actually very little in common with the swordsman.
* SecretIdentityApathy: InUniverse. In ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'', when the Wandering Wizard complains that both the [[MagicalGirl Miracle Mysticas]] and the [[ThePsychoRangers Divine Inheritor Hero Rangers]] gave away their SecretIdentities to the enemy doing their TransformationSequence in front of them, a scandalized fictionalization of Jeanne tells him that no HenshinHero would ever reveal another's SecretIdentity. It seems to be some sort of professional courtesy that the GoodIsNotNice PragmaticHero just could wrap his head around.
* SecretTestOfCharacter: [[spoiler:The Sitri family wanted to see whether Harry would keep his protective coat on his person for dinner with them or allow it to be taken from him as manners demand. For a moment they considered the test inconclusive because he was still wearing his rings and other combat tools until Serafall pointed out that he was in fact carrying a lot less weaponry than the usual (four rings instead of the full set of ten, for example) and didn't even bring his staff.]]
* SemiDivine: Jeanne reveals that the Hero Faction's Heracles is the fifth generation descendent[[note]]technically Jeanne is not sure if Herc is four or five generations removed from the original, but WordOfGod confirms it is five.[[/note]] of the real Heracles, after Zeus raised him to full godhood. That explains why he is stronger and tougher than a Human has any right to be, since his Sacred Gear just makes explosions.
* SenseFreak: Shizukesa is so happy to have a humanoid body in part because, besides eyesight (obviously) and a little bit hearing, her senses were not that good as a Beholder. Her sense of touch was almost non-existent, being just pressure, temperature was either too hot, acceptable, or too cold, and she had no sense of smell at all. She's particularly fond of taste, apparently tasting chocolate for the first time made her finally understand why ''Literature/HarryPotter'' said that it's a cure for nearly getting your soul sucked out.
* SeriousBusiness:
** Dominance games between felines for Koneko and Mister. Losing a StaringContest against Harry's cat meant that the Rook had to follow his lead for the rest of the day in ''A Walk on the Wild Side?''
** {{Shipping}} in the ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]'' fandom. It took the InUniverse fans maybe hours to produce dozens of {{lemon}}s featuring the eponymous heroine and the Wandering Wizard, and an equal number of {{Death Fic}}s by the anti-shippers, after the news of Harry and Serafall being together got to the forums.
** Coriana tries a strategy in her match against Issei that involves doing a striptease, leaving her foe dumbfounded. But when she tries to remove her panties ''before'' her bra, Issei hits her with a quadruple Boosted Dragon Shot.
* SexFaceTurn: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Lash considered that Harry should have held [[spoiler:Jeanne/Eve White]] to her half-serious SexForServices offer to pay him back for saving [[spoiler:her little sister from the Hero Faction]], which Lash saw as the perfect chance to {{Invoke|dTrope}} this trope on her. Harry remained sceptical until Lash hit him with a rather disturbing {{Deconstruction}} of the trope: Instead of trying to ''[[LoveRedeems redeem]]'' the girl in question, Lash wanted Harry to ''[[MoreThanMindControl corrupt]]'' her to his side by basically turning her into a {{Functional|Addict}} {{Sex Addict|ion}} with a SingleTargetSexuality on him badly enough that she will betray her current allies and fight for the good guys if just to get him to give her her next "fix."
-->'''Harry:''' …Okay, in the unlikely event I could do what you are suggesting, you don't see anything ironic, or, oh, I don't know… ''wrong''… with lying to her and basically addicting her to something to make her be a good guy?\\
'''[[RetiredMonster Lash]]:''' [[RhetoricalQuestionBlunder Not particularly]].
* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: ''Leviathan'', even by the standards of Devils, is completely shameless and combines this trope with her obsession with MagicalGirl fiction and her CosplayOtakuGirl hobbies. One notable incident is when she magically transforms out of her uniform... except ''her'' TransformationSequence does not have any censorship sparkles, giving Harry and every member of Sona and Rias peerages a FullFrontalAssault. Ironically, despite her unrestrained nature, she's never actually been involved with anyone before Harry, her political role having made that impossible.
* ShapingYourAttacks: Done by Harry to show off what being a Wizard (versus a D×D Magician) is to Goth Hermione. He fires three Pyro Fuegos at her in a row. The first is a two-toned beam of fire. The second is a giant dragon's claw of flames. And the third is a descending cloud of fire.
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend:
** Harry wants to invoke this trope in ''A Working Date?'', but does not because he know it will just get him in trouble. To the readers, it's pretty clear that at this point it's just a matter of semantics.
** Harry also [[VerbalBackspace backpedals]] whenever his narration refers to one of his LoveInterests with a possessive determiner. It takes him until the denouement of the Kyoto StoryArc to tell himself that he needs to own to the fact that he ''is'' dating them. From then and on the character tags "my Bishop", "my Rook", "my King", and "my Maou" become a lot more common.
* ShesGotLegs: While Sona isn't as voluptuous as her peerage, her physical appeal lies more in this trope, something Harry even remarks upon on their date, pointing out that Sona clearly picked an outfit that shows off her legs.
* ShipperOnDeck:
** Like in the original series, we have Lash, but she has been joined by Azazel who is aware of Harry's feelings due to their Soulgaze, and enthusiastically both encourages Harry to pursue the girls, and prods him for info about his romantic life. Much to Harry's chagrin, since he doesn't consider his relationships to be anyone else's business.
** [[spoiler:He and Lash, upon realizing that the D×D version of Lasciel, Azazel's assistant, has a crush on him, start plotting on how to get them together.]]
* ShuttingUpNow: When Issei notes that Ddraig isn't going to be happy that they're collecting dragon body parts, Harry notes that the dragon should have thought of that before he attacked and killed the students of the magical college they were investigating the ruins of. This is apparently his response.
* SiblingTeam: Agares Bishops are two twin sisters with opposite approaches to magical combat. [[ForceAndFinesse One specializes in large AOE spells, while the other in precise single-target ones]]. The rationale is to have two specialists that cover for each other weakness and rely on Devil Teleportation to swap places if necessary. [[spoiler:The TeleportInterdiction for the Rating Game against Sona's Peerage naturally played against that.]]
* SiblingTriangle:
** Sona×Harry×Serafall is a type 11 or type 13 TriangRelations, depending on whether or not you buy Harry's reluctance. Both girls like Harry, Serafall seems to have a more-than-sisterly affection for Sona, and Harry likes both girls, but has issues. Unlike most Sibling Triangles, it's very unlikely that this one will require one of the siblings to be dumped.
** It's later revealed that [[spoiler:Sona and Serafall are [[GenerationXerox mirroring their parents' relationship]] where half-siblings Duncan and Coira Allocer (their father and aunt, respectively) both married Anna Sitri (their mother).]]
* SimpleYetOpulent: {{Discussed|Trope}} by Harry about the Sitri private car in the train to the Underworld:
-->I've seen opulence before. Everything from fake opulence, to accidental opulence, to cheesy, trying-too-hard opulence, to casual opulence. The latter I had seen in Hades' sitting room, and in the private parts of Mab's castle. The places most people were not to see, so she did not feel the need to impress. That was the kind of opulence the Sitri private car had. Which is what made it all the more impressive. It was in a freaking train car. Something almost constantly in motion, much more prone to accident or theft than a room in a castle.
* SitcomArchNemesis: Saji and Harry, after Sona got the former to tone down his [[TheResenter resentment]] to the other guy. For his part, Harry doesn't like Saji very much either, but he's a lot more lighthearted about it and generally just tries to avoid trouble. Harry's not above petty complains, though -- like remarking on Saji's snoring and sleep-talking when they had to bunk together during the school trip, or his tendency to sing anime openings off-key, or the unspeakable crime of not handling anime JustForFun/{{Spoilers}} with enough care.
* SleepLearning: A variation. Lash watches anime at night while Harry, or rather his consciousness, gets his rest.
* SlippingAMickey: Squared in the HalloweenEpisode. Serafall put some booze in the punch to live up the party, without realizing that Azazel added Extract of Sleep so it wouldn't end too early. Problem is that the mix of schnapps and fruit punch turns the magical stimulant into an aphrodisiac that very nearly turned their costume party into APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy.
* SneezeCut: Happens to Azazel in ''A Storm Gathering?''; Harry mentions learning about Sacred Gears from "a certain otaku Fallen". Cut to Az sneezing and Serafall offering him a hanky.
* SoapOperaDisease: {{Subverted|Trope}} in Misla Bael née Vapula's medical case. It turns out that there's a ''lot'' more to the sickness that put Sairaorg's mother in a coma than just creating drama like in canon. See SyntheticPlague below for details.
* SoBeautifulItsACurse:
** {{Defied}}. Serafall uses {{Glamour}} at all times to hide her true form, which used to cause her no end of trouble because of all the jealousy and lust that it evoked in others.
** Also {{Deconstructed}}. Serafall makes a point of [[YouDidntAsk not mentioning this to Harry]], afraid that he would ask her to show him her true appearance and become completely besotted by it regardless of the person underneath. [[spoiler:When Harry gets wind of it from other sources -- he ''is'', after all, a detective -- he instead asks her to never drop the {{Glamour}} in his presence because he wants to be certain of his feelings for her regardless how their relationship may evolve. Or at least not until he can say the L-word to her properly out of his own free will. This doubles as a MilhollandRelationshipMoment for them.]]
* SoreLoser: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Tsubasa is quite competitive at videogames and knows it. That's why she tries to subtly avoid games that put her at a disadvantage, like playing against Harry in a LightGunGame because of his proficiency with firearms, and she's not above {{Invok|edTrope}}ing DistractedByTheSexy when he's doing too well against her.
* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: InUniverse. When Harry suggests making Kiba's fictional equivalent "Darkness Knight Fang" a ReverseMole in ''[[ShowWithinAShow Oppai Dragon]]'', Azazel likes the idea in part because it allows him to make this a JustifiedTrope by saying that he was throwing increasingly strong baddies at the hero on purpose to train him up.
* SpeakOfTheDevil: An InUniverse example. Harry's [[ShowWithinAShow fictional counterpart]] never says nor lets others say his real name around him, "or ''she'' may notice", implicating that "he's some sort of reverse [[Literature/HarryPotter Voldermort]]" that he can be tracked down that way. The script writers themselves (namely Azazel and Serafall) admitted that they haven't decided yet just who "she" is yet, and came up with this as a plot hook and a way to explain away why the Wandering Wizard doesn't use his real name.
* SpitTake: Harry and Duncan's simultaneous reaction in "…Flag Setting?" at [[spoiler:Coira Sitri née Allocer, the latter's half-sister and his wife's other spouse, asking Harry to be her ChosenConceptionPartner.]]
* SpookyPhotographs: A fanboy taking a picture of Harry and Serafall in costume gets more than he bargained for when the dark, incomplete form of Lash shows up as well.
* {{Squick}}: InUniverse. Harry refers to [[spoiler:Fenrir and Hela]]'s biological children as the "Trifecta of Squick," given how their existence implies VillainousIncest, BestialityIsDepraved and ILoveTheDead occurring all at once.
* StalkingIsFunnyIfItIsFemaleAfterMale: InUniverse example. ''[[ShowWithinAShow Miracle Levi-tan]]''[='s=] creative team decided to write Georg's fictional counterpart as [[GenderBlenderName "Georgia"]] because his fixation on Harry plays out better as a girl.
* StalkingIsLove: {{Discussed|Trope}} for fun. Harry muses aloud about possible first date plans for Serafall and himself, and comes up with the idea of stalking Sona together. Then he takes it back because [[ComicallyMissingThePoint it sounds more like a third date plan to him]]. Sona grabs a cushion from a nearby couch and {{Dope Slap}}s him for it without uttering a word.
* TheStationsOfTheCanon: [[spoiler:Despite the other differences with canon Volume 9, Ise still takes a parting shot at the retreating Cao Cao, with help from Sun Wukong, and still destroys Cao Cao's right eye. Presumably for the eventual rewrite of Volumes 11 and 12.]]
* StatOVision: A King can measure how many points, in the chess scoring sense, an individual would be worth if they joined their peerage. This value can vary from one King to the next. For example, Harry would be worth six points in Rias' Peerage and seven in Sona's, denoting how the latter stands to gain more from his hypothetical recruitment than the former.
* StatuesqueStunner: Besides the canon ones (Rias, Rossweisse and Tsubaki), there's Behemoth, who is currently around the same height as Harry.
* StealthHiBye: Serafall teleported to the party held by Rias and Sona's Peerages for New Year Eve, got her midnight kiss from Harry -- while giving a ShoutOut to the [[SignatureScene iconic upside-down kiss]] from the first ''Film/SpiderMan1'' movie because how could [[PopCulturedBadass she]] not -- and then she immediately teleported back to her formal New Year event with the other Maou.
* SternTeacher: {{Invoked|Trope}}. Harry makes himself a target of his students' ire because he knows it's good motivation. Literally so when he instructed the magic users in Rias and Sona's Peerages to use him as a moving practice target to improve their accuracy with offensive spells. The prospect of getting back at him after a day of putting them through the grind was enough to give them all a second wind.
* StraightGay: [[spoiler:Oakley]]. Harry only realized because he noticed her gaze lingering on Tomoe's butt once.
* {{Stripperiffic}}: During the Oppai Dragon stage show, Koneko, Momo, Tomoe, and Ruruka (a.k.a. Hellcat-chan and the Hellines) wear what Harry calls "stupidly revealing fur swimsuits", while attacking the heavily armored title character.
* SubordinateExcuse: [[spoiler:D×D!Lasciel works as Azazel's assistant because she has a crush on him. She even fell because of it (along with Wrath towards Raynare for managing to seduce him once).]]
* [[SuicideByCop Suicide By Dragon]]: [[spoiler:The Delta-2 Beholder did this in guilt after killing their evil sibling with Delta-5.]]
* SuperBreedingProgram: Intrinsic to Devils' nobility where SuperpowerfulGenetics plays a critical role in a Noble Family's social standing for the next generation. This combined with their LawOfInverseFertility problems and AuthorityEqualsAsskicking culture creates serious issues when a suitable heir cannot be produced.
** Sairaorg and his mother were held in contempt by most of the Bael family because he never exhibited signs of having inherited their signature Power of Destruction unlike his cousin Rias Gremory.
** Duncan and Coira are the [[LastOfHisKind only surviving members]] of the Allocer family, and the last users of their family's highly regarded signature FountainOfYouth powers after his daughters Serafall and Sona [[RecessiveSuperGenes didn't manage to inherit it]]. This puts Coira under a lot of political pressure to have children of her own in hopes of passing down the Allocer power despite being uninterested in men and even married to another woman for a very long time, to the point she's seriously considering artificial insemination [[spoiler:and Harry as her ChosenConceptionPartner.]]
* SuperIdentikit: {{Justified|Trope}}. Harry was able to provide his allies with perfectly accurate portraits of the core members of Hero Faction after they briefly kidnapped him during the Kuoh Conference in the original fic, but that's only thanks to Lash's PhotographicMemory and her ability to borrow Harry's hands with his permission to draw the sketches.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial:
** After being told Kendra is probably mostly or completely naked while laundering the only clothes she has with her, Harry narrates "I am not to blame for any dreams I might or might not have had that night."
** When Harry commented on his travel arrangements to come back from the Underworld right after the Young Devils' Tournament, he mentioned that it had absolutely nothing to do with avoiding Sona and Serafall's parents. Really.
* SyntheticPlague: It's heavily implied that Purgatory Malaise, better known as the sickness that put Sairaorg's mother in a coma, was artificially developed 9,000 years ago [[spoiler:to ''[[TheCorruption Nemesis]]''[='=] likeness. While ItCanThink like the original, it seems locally developed and a ''lot'' dumber -- only smart enough to resist getting killed, never mind [[MoreThanMindControl subtly influence its host]] into the Outsiders' cause like the Contagion that Harry knew and feared in his home world. Furthermore, Purgatory Malaise can only infect Devils, and it's markedly more effective on people suffering mental distress, suggesting that it was intended as an anti-Devil biological weapon and psychological warfare agent all in one package.]]
* TakeThat:
** [[spoiler:Harry's spirit daughter]] didn't have a CanonName in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' when she was mentioned in the fic, so the author came up with "Sophie" for her, which was a somewhat popular FanNickname at the time. Much later Creator/JimButcher provided a less flattering name for her in a Website/{{Reddit}} AMA that the author didn't seem to like. So, when the CanonName was mentioned later in passing in a mostly unrelated context, Harry couldn't help but remark [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude "poor girl"]].
** During his stay in the Underworld, Harry found out that while there's no Burger King, [=McDonald=]'s nor Wendy's in the Devils' territories, they do have Carl's Jr. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Make of that what you will]].
* TakingTheBullet: [[spoiler:Knowing that Reya wasn't going to react in time against BB's TK beams, Harry jumped in front of them with his coat open in order to cover the widest area possible. Seven of them hit him before he could cast a shield, one on the side of head and rendering him unconscious before he even fell onto the ground.]]
* TakingTheHeat: [[spoiler:[[Manga/ShinozakisanKiWoOtaShikaNi Akina Shinozaki]] took the full blame for the [[WillingChanneler ghost-]][[PowersViaPossession assisted]] serial robberies in the Phantom Thief case. Harry realized that her friends were most likely in it too because Akina doesn't have the abilities to contact or bind the ghost on her own, and her lack of recent psychic scarring proved that at least the previous week's robbery wasn't her doing. Harry told the police detective in charge about it, but they had to let it go because they lacked non-magical evidence to prove it.]]
* TakingYouWithMe: After being ambushed by BB and racking up some nasty injuries, Harry prepares to take punish BB with his death curse (by blinding the Beholder). Luckily, Serafall shows up in time to make this unnecessary.
* TalkingInYourSleep: When Yubelluna cast a [[ForcedSleep powerful sleep-inducing spell]] on Reya, she almost instantly fell into REM sleep and started having an EroticDream about Harry. Sona's [[LuminescentBlush face went bright red]] after hearing her, but the faux pas went mostly ignored because they had bigger concerns at the time.
* TallPoppySyndrome: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Issei, Sanji and even Azazel complained to Harry that his GrandRomanticGesture in the ChristmasEpisode made them look bad in comparison after his LoveInterests told (read: bragged to) the other girls about it. Harry called the guys out on their BS by first pointing out neither Sanji nor Azazel have significant others at the moment (the girls gave them grief about it because of how ObliviousToLove they are), and that it wasn't his fault that Issei didn't plan ahead despite being official with his girls longer than he has. Harry then further {{defied}} the trope by advising Issei to prepare himself for Valentine's Day because most of his girlfriends aren't likely to follow the [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseHolidays Japanese custom]] of [[ChocolateOfRomance giving him chocolate]] and they could be expecting something more along the lines of flowers and dinner.
* TangledFamilyTree:
** {{Downplayed|Trope}} with the Sitri family, where Serafall and Sona's paternal aunt's [[ExoticExtendedMarriage simultaneous marriage to their mother Anna]] makes her their stepmother as well.
** They would be a straighter example if Harry ever marries and has children with both Serafall and Sona, given how each of their kids would be cousins and half-siblings to each other at once.
** [[spoiler:Things would get even more tangled if Serafall and Sona's maternal aunt's plans to make Harry into her ChosenConceptionPartner ever come to fruition too. Let's enumerate the ways: in this scenario Coira's children would be Sona and Serafall's cousins because she's their paternal aunt, their stepbrothers and stepsisters because Coira is also their mother's spouse, and their ''stepchildren'' as their husband's biological kids. Have fun figuring out the exact kinship between the sisters' hypothetical children and Cora's besides all being half-siblings through their father. Quite the TangledFamilyTree for a scenario with no divorces nor any inbreeding whatsoever.]]
* ATasteOfPower: A curious non-videogame, InUniverse example. Sona got to have Harry as her Bishop for exactly one Rating Game, and sure enough, he ended up becoming a big part of the reason her Peerage triumph over Riser's.
* TeacherStudentRomance: Harry's magical study sessions with Sona tend to take this kind of turn as they get closer. Who's the mentor or student in the equation depends on the subject.
* TheTease:
** Tsubasa is something of a {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion. Harry observes that she's naturally a flirt and falls back to it when she's nervous just like he does with his snark.
** Serafall teases Harry all the time since [[spoiler:their Soulgaze]]. PlayedWith in that it's all in good fun [[spoiler:except for the few times when it isn't, like the first time Harry called her "Sera-chan" and she completely dropped the teasing and heartbeat later she was straddling him in his bed and kissing him.]]
* TextualCelebrityResemblance: A strangely {{Justified|Trope}} example. Several of the members of Serafall's Peerage look like popular characters from manga and anime, but only because they're Resurrected Devils who originally didn't have a humanoid form and gained one with her help. Serafall, [[BunnyEarsLawyer being]] [[PopCulturedBadass Serafall]], directly or indirectly influenced their appearances. Also a borderline {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion, since they are all fully described in their first appearances and only in a later chapter Lash catches the resemblances and tells Harry.
** [[StatuesqueStunner Behemoth]] went for a look similar to Kalifa from ''Manga/OnePiece'' thanks to what she calls Serafall's "pirate phase." It also lets her crack "that's sexual harassment" jokes.
** Shizukesa, better known as [[spoiler:Rini the pink Beholder]], looks like Ram from ''LightNovel/ReZero''.
** [[spoiler:Oakley]] is an accidental example. She didn't change much after becoming a Devil, but she originally already looked a lot like Isuzu from ''LightNovel/LogHorizon''. Serafall didn't notice until Harry pointed it out.
* ThatCameOutWrong: To his chagrin, Serafall commented to Harry that "you and Azazel-chan seem so close since you did it." She means a Soulgaze, by the way.
* ThatManIsDead: Due to her time with Harry, along with her attraction towards Azazel, Lash no longer considers herself a shade of Lasciel, but her own entity.
* ThoseTwoGuys:
** Like in D×D canon, there's Matsuda and Motohama, Issei's perverted friends. In this fic, they constantly pester Harry for magical aid in peeping on their female classmates. Harry goes out of his way to sabotage their efforts.
** Since Issei's more focused on his harem, and not leching after random girls at the school, he's not counted among the Trio anymore, leaving it a Perverted Duo. Katase suggests adding Aika in with them to keep the name, to which all three protest against in perfect unison.
* ThrowAwayGuns: {{Reconstruct|ion}}ed with 2nd Amendment. Harry picked up the habit of simply discarding it when it runs out of bullets, which returns the MorphWeapon to its idle form, and then summoning it again as a fully loaded gun to his hand. The particularities of the Artificial Sacred Gear make this a much more efficient alternative to reloading and gives the user a tactical advantage in a shootout.
* [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks Throwing Your Axe Always Works]]: Remus can do this because his weapon is literally bloodthirsty and won't stop until it strikes a foe.
* TitleSequence: ''Miracle Levi-tan'' is given one. It contains examples of:
** AndStarring: "With Heidi Klum as Principal Jane Behemoth And Alec Guinness as Azazel"
** AnimeThemeSong: The opening is a peppy song in a split of English and Japanese.
** EvolvingCredits: The credits contain the new characters (based on Sona and company) who weren't in the previous season.
** OpeningNarration: "You might think I look like an ordinary high school girl. But I've always been strong, and loved fighting for the weak. So when my Principal and a mysterious old man approached me and said my power was for protecting the Underworld, of course I jumped at the chance!"
* TokenGoodTeammate: Jeanne is the most sympathetic of the Hero faction shown so far (possibly aside from [[HeelFaceTurn Oakley]]). Georg, Siegfried and Cao Cao are all KnightTemplar, Leonardo has received little to no characterization yet, and Heracles is a huge JerkAss who'd be a NominalHero if they were the protagonists.
* TorsoWithAView: Harry gets a hole straight through his right thigh, front to back. Including, in his own words, a femur ground into powder. He covers his leg in a layer of ice to help him stand and so the thin flaps of skin and muscle still holding the limb on don't tear.
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: While Harry is far from a picky eater, he has a notable preference for burgers, especially Burger King. He also prefers Coke over Pepsi, reacting to the latter in {{Faux Horr|ific}}or.
* TrainingMontage: Rias and Sona hire Harry, [[Characters/TheDresdenFilesTheChurch Shiro Yoshimo]] and Takako/Kendra to train their magic users, weapon users and hand-to-hand fighters, respectively, prior to the [[TournamentArc Young Devils' Tournament]] in the Underworld.
* TransformationSequence: Serafall does one in reverse. Except being live, she does not have the benefit of the editing department over painting her skin with magical sparkles. As a result she flashes all of Sona and Rias's Peerages, and Harry.
* {{Transgender}}: Shizukesa counts, since her original form had NoBiologicalSex despite her having a gender identity.
* TranslatorMicrobes:
** His reading sessions with Reya helped Harry to figure out the exact limitations of Language. While it allows a Devil to [[{{Omniglot}} converse in any language]], it does nothing for writing, even for phonetic languages. It handles slang fine enough, but poorly for made-up words like "mithril". BluntMetaphorsTrauma is in full effect, and cultural references are completely LostInTranslation. Language also does the pragmatic thing with names and avoids {{Dub Name Change}}s by leaving them as they sound, but that obfuscates what they were supposed to mean or allude -- for example, for Reya, [[Literature/{{Dragonlance}} "Burrfoot"]] was just a proper noun; she didn't realize it was supposed to be a PunnyName and a "combination of 'burr' and 'foot', meaning a prickly annoyance" until Harry broke it down for her.
** There's a spell that allows the affected individuals to both speak and read/write in a chosen language, but takes away their ability to understand any other until it wears off, deactivating even Language. Sona and Reya tried it on themselves, but it went past the expected duration and they couldn't read the spellbook to figure out what went wrong.
* TrustPassword: Sona demands Harry to prove he's not an enemy under a disguise during the Rating Game against Riser. Harry complies by grumbling that she ''had'' to ask such a question because they didn't agree on a TrustPassword beforehand among other petty complains. If the insider information wasn't enough proof of his identity, taking advantage of the situation to give her some lip was just too [[DeadpanSnarker Harry Dresden]] [[SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay for him to be an impostor]].
* TruthInTelevision: It turns out that having an actual theater at home where [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney rich]] and [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections well-connected]] people can watch movies on the release day like Sona does is a real thing. It's called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Air_Circuit Bel Air Circuit]] and it costs around $100k to join and a $4k/month membership.
* TwerpSweating:
** Tsubasa's dad to Harry. Even though Harry is roughly the same age (chronologically), has two daughters of his own, and regularly fights people and non-people vastly more dangerous than the {{Salaryman}}, Harry is still intimidated. He admits that he knows what he would do for his own girls.
** {{Subverted|Trope}} with Sona and Serafall's father, who instead of trying to intimidate Harry, he tried to [[spoiler:bribe him to break up with his daughters and disappear from their lives for good.]]
* UncattyResemblance: Shizukesa's familiar, a bugbear named William, is, like her former appearance, a creature with a body dominated by a single eye.
* UnSorcerer: Sairaorg's MuggleBornOfMages status is a bit different from canon. Instead of failing to inherit the Bael Family's Power of Destruction, he lacks ''any'' capacity for magic whatsoever, something that both Harry and the Beelzebub himself observed should be impossible for a Devil. While this makes Sairaorg more vulnerable to magic than every other Devil, it also means that he could still possess the Power of Destruction and just be unable to use it without magic of his own to fuel it. If Harry is right about the latter, this would mean that Sairaorg could still pass on the Bael Family's signature power to his children, which is of ''great'' political importance for the Devils' nobility and his position as the heir apparent. He is still able to use ki like in canon, though.
* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: The narration skips over the explanation of "Plan B" to [[spoiler:save Alice White from the Hero Faction]] until it went off without a hitch. It consisted in [[spoiler:Harry tricking Cao Cao big time by making him think the magical procedure to DePower her was a success.]]
* UnusualEuphemism: This fic inherits the "Dangerous" euphemism[=/=]AuthorCatchphrase from Gabriel Blessing's works -- always properly capitalized to differentiate it from the regular, life-threatening version of the adjective -- which is used as LampshadeHanging when, let's say, one of the protagonist's LoveInterests is getting ready to end his LetsWaitAWhile approach to romance. Yep, ''that'' kind of Danger.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Harry hypothesizes that [[spoiler:Gasper and his Forbidden Balor View]] was the whole reason why Argus deployed his Beholders in Japan. The first time, three years ago when Gasper arrived to Kuoh, thus making [[spoiler:Tsubasa Yura]] a victim of opportunity for BB. And then in the present a little after [[spoiler:Gasper rejoined Rias's Peerage]], just in time for Argus to hear rumors of -- [[spoiler:or be ''[[GambitPileup made]]'' to know about]] -- Harry's Soulgaze and order BB to bring his eyes to him as well.
* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler:Harry suspects that either Ophis or someone who has her ear in the Chaos Brigade is either working for or with the Outsiders.]]
* UrbanLegendLoveLife:
** Harry wasn't able to quite convince the Student Council in the original fic that he never participated in an orgy (long story). From then and on, the bit of gossip that he's into group sex [[BrickJoke tends to resurface from time to time]], seemingly getting confirmed by his [[{{Polyamory}} dating situation]].
** For an extreme example, Kuoh's Pervert Duo propagated a series of rumors about Harry using BlackMagic to {{Brainwash|ed}} Sona, Tsubasa and Reya into joining his harem, and leaving at least one broken hotel room in the wake of their ritualistic-themed orgies. When Asia heard about it, she [[HopeSpot immediately jumped in his defense]], remarking that Harry would never tamper with a person's mind. Harry dryly remarked that she never objected any other part of the rumor, suggesting that the sweet former nun finds the idea of the four of them having orgies for fun and [[SexMagic magic-related purposes]] at least plausible.
* VerbalBackspace: Harry jumps up "getting ready to turn whatever had alarmed my girls in a block of ice. The girls. 'The', not 'my'." He does this on occasion in the early parts of the story, referring to Sona/Reya/Tsubasa in the possessive, and then quickly switching to a more neutral term.
* VicariouslyAmbitious: [[spoiler:Knowing that she can't do anything about her crush on Azazel, Lash decides to help the D×D version of Lasciel get his attention.]]
* VictoriasSecretCompartment: Kendra has the {{Hammerspace}} variation. Unusually, she pulls things from the bottom of her bra rather than her cleavage.
* VillainessesWantHeroes: It's been hinted that Jeanne of the Hero Faction has a crush on Harry. She described him as "handsome, in a scary way" [[spoiler:to her little sister]], [[FoeYay flirts with him]] whenever they meet, and when she's the victim of Dress Break, doesn't care at all about her nudity until she notices that Harry is watching and immediately becomes embarrassed and covers up.
* VillainousIncest: [[spoiler:Fenrir and Hela have kids. Harry and Reya are both grossed out when they realize this.]]
* VillainsOutShopping: After the Ratings Game, Riser's peerage remain in the city to have a night out. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, one of Argus Beholders catches Mihae by surprise and costs her an eye (temporarily).]]
* ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend: While Harry is far from helpless, he's a good deal more breakable than his harem, who have come to his rescue several times already when he's been about to be overwhelmed, most notably during the Beholder StoryArc. On a more humorous note, they're also a bit of the jealous type and tend to get pissed when other girls flirt with Harry.
* VirginityMakesYouStupid: Riser references this trope when Harry and Sona walk into his trap. Harry quickly points out that they were ready for the trap; but he is also not a virgin -- ironically making him the only confirmed non-virgin on the hero side.
* WallPinOfLove: Chapter 9 starts with a couple doing this, only for Harry to suddenly appear and blast the guy away, who was actually a Stray Devil about to attack the unsuspecting girl.
* WeHaveWaysOfMakingYouTalk: Harry uses a fairly creative variant of this mixed with BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork with a suspect who refused to give them his intel on [[spoiler:the Loki faction]] because TheMobBossIsScarier. The wizard simply [[spoiler:lets him go while noting that while the two of them know he didn't fess up a thing, the Loki faction isn't likely to buy it just like that, making them bound to track the suspect down and torture him in other to find out what exactly he allegedly told Harry about them. Unsurprisingly, the suspect immediately decides to cooperate.]]
* WeirdnessCensor: Unlike Harry's original world, D×D's Japan, while it does ostensibly have a Masquerade, has supernatural beings appear in public a lot more often with no real consequence, and several Muggles are aware of the supernatural without really being part of it (the Devils at Kuoh actually use ''summoning flyers''). Probably helped by the fact that Japan's spiritual culture is a lot more interconnected with society than the secular west.
* WeirdnessMagnet: Azazel calls out Harry and Issei on being this, saying that they're the worst trouble magnets he's seen in a thousand years, and with them on the Kyoto trip, things going wrong is a matter of ''when'', not if. He's right.
* WhamEpisode: ''The Inevitability of Death?'' heavily implies that [[spoiler:the sickness that put Sairaorg's mother in a coma is an anti-Devil SyntheticPlague created 9,000 years ago to resemble [[TheCorruption Nemesis]]. It's unknown whether some faction at the time researched the Contagion and developed the biological agent for their own objectives, or if the Outsiders themselves had a hand on it.]]
* WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway: Oakley isn't exactly happy about her LivingLieDetector powers at first. Being made aware of the truth behind TheMasquerade as a child without anyone to guide her certainly didn't help that opinion.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** Harry's girlfriends are not the least bit impressed that he put himself in needless danger by leaving the protection of his house and attracting the attention of BB, especially since it's clear to everyone, including the readers, that he didn't really need to run his errands, and just wanted an excuse to leave the house, and he himself admits he should have at least gotten someone to go with him.
** Harry calls Oakley out when she says that the Hero Faction is working for the "good of humanity".
* WhipItGood: Saji trained how to wield his Absorption Line as a whip. While [[ImprobableWeaponUser too impractical in a real-world fight]], his opponents have to remain careful of its {{Life|Drain}}[=/=]ManaDrain effect, meaning that even light brushes allows Saji to recover energy while sapping his enemies' and thus making it a good tactic to against hand-to-hand combatants.
* WhiteMagicianGirl: {{Deconstructed|Trope}} to a point. Asia is so attuned to healing magic that she sucks pretty badly at any offensive spell. Harry compared the difficulty of teaching her a minor cutting spell to "pulling dragon's teeth without a painkiller." When she showed a real interest in branching out, Harry suggested support spells like Buffs/Debuffs to help her allies turn the tide of the battle.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Bob the (female) Tengu resents her parents for naming her after Bob Dylan. Takako also dislikes being reminded that her name references [[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Hawkgirl]] in more ways than one.
* WildCard: PlayedWith. Harry's loyalties are clear to the reader and his friends, but not so much to the rest of the world. For example, some elements among the Fallen pointed fingers at Harry as a likely spy/agent working for the Devils and were concerned of what influence he could have on Azazel. To mitigate this, one of the latter's subordinates started the rumor that Harry is in fact Azazel's apprentice and he's [[TheMole spying on the Devils for him]]. Complicating matters, the Angels got wind of this and ArchangelRaphael thought that Harry was pushing the Fallens' agenda when the three of them, plus Ajuka and Athena, gathered to [[spoiler:learn how to reverse Cao Cao's {{Brainwash|ed}}ing from Harry.]]
* WorldsMostBeautifulWoman: ArchangelGabriel. It's said that Serafall's true form would give any goddess of beauty a run for their money.
* WorldsStrongestMan: Harry has been called the strongest known human on Earth without a Sacred Gear. [[spoiler:Even getting [[MorphWeapon Second]] [[ClingyMacGuffin Amendment]] doesn't detract of this reputation any because all the Artificial Sacred Gear can do is to turn itself into mundane firearms.]]
* WorthlessTreasureTwist: {{Subverted|Trope}}. The Occult Research Club's exploration of the recently found ruins of a medieval magic academy somewhere in the Alps didn't get Azazel the treasure trove of magical knowledge he was looking for. Mostly because a dragon's rampage and subsequently fire burned most its library away. However, they did find a chest filled with gold and silver coins that the last Headmaster intended to use to fund his research on Sacred Gears. Harry's share alone was enough for him to buy himself a house next to the Hyoudou's and completely furnish it.
* WorthyOpponent: In a light-hearted way, Koneko sees Mister as one after he refuses to submit to her authority unlike any other feline -- including large wild ones like lions and tigers -- who bow to Nekomatas as their superiors.
* XanatosGambit: One played by the good guys for a change. Harry hands over his research on anti-Beholder magic to High-Class Devils Alexandra Furcas and Valentina Marax, who promised to make it publicly available in the Underworld. If someone tries to hinder their efforts, it will be a strong indication of said party likely involvement with the Chaos Brigade in an attempt to keep Argus' servants relevant. If no one gets in the way of its distribution, Harry's research will reach a wide audience and Beholders will lose many of their tactical advantages.
* YinYangBomb: In Kiba's match of the Gremory-Bael Rating Game, He purposefully creates daggers with two mutually opposing elements, and makes them deliberately unstable and weak to essentially turn them into grenades. The trope name is even dropped.
* YouAreNotAlone: What Harry's friends, especially his LoveInterests, have been trying to drill into his skull. Much of his hesitation comes from the fact that, as he puts it, he's been "not alone" before and it never seemed to stick.
* YouAreNumberSix: Done twice for the Beholders. They do not have names, they are given a designation consisting of a number and a Greek letter. The number is the order of their creation, while the letter is their sub-species, also assigned in the order it was created.
* YouHaveFailedMe: Argus [[LetsYouAndHimFight forces the Delta Beholders to pair off and fight to the death]] for questioning his orders. After he compelled them follow said orders anyway.
* YouKilledMyFather: The reason Jeanne ended up with the Hero Faction is that her father died saving two others from a fire in the bar he worked a chef caused when a Devil entered and took offense to the Fallen owner. She already killed the Devil, and Harry gives her info on the Fallen after the mess with Alice. [[spoiler:Whether or not she acted on it is left [[WordOfGod deliberately ambiguous]].]]
* YouOweMe: Harry is trying to {{Invoke|dTrope}} this by helping Kiba out so he will owe him a favor. Knowing how big Harry is on paying his own debts, it's likely that he's doing this in preparation to fulfill the terms of his contract with Tsubaki when he hired her to exorcise the Akiba Phantom Thief by playing TheMatchmaker between Queen and Knight.
** Sairog is certainly feeling like owes Dresden for [[spoiler:healing his mother]], and thus feels guilty when he learns that the lightsaber that Kiba was using was Harry’s.
[[/folder]]

* SecondYearProtagonist: While Harry arrives to Bizarro World a year and a half prior, the main storyline doesn't begin until he's a second year at Kuoh Academy and his classmate Issei Hyoudou gets himself a girlfriend named "Yuuma".

* {{Adorkable}}: Believe it or not, [[spoiler:the Bizarro World version of freaking ''Lasciel'']] is this in spades. She even ''blushed'' when Harry called her by name because she isn't used to be recognized and ''stuttered'' when he teased her about her obvious crush on [[spoiler:Azazel.]]

So, [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10202330/1/Beyond-the-Outer-Gate-Lies read on]] as [[ShellShockedVeteran Harry]] rediscovers [[HormoneAddledTeenager how much he hates hormones]], [[PoorCommunicationKills bullies]] [[SatanIsGood innocent]] [[OurDemonsAreDifferent school devils]], and indulges in [[BuddyCopShow Buddy Cop antics with]] [[HearingVoices the voices in his head!]] The omake containing the GenderBender episode starts [[https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/88086/107502467/2/Compilation-Beyond-the-Outer-Gates-Lies-Dragons-by-Gabriel-Blessing#117735341 here]].

The [[RecursiveFanfiction recursive fanfiction]] [[ContinuationFic continuation]] by [[FanFic/AGrowingAffection Xavon Wrentaile]] is [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10752206/1/Beyond-the-Outer-Gates-Lies-A-high-school-library here]].

* AngelsDevilsAndSquid: Adds ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''[='=] [[EldritchAbomination Outsiders]] as the Squids to the existing ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD'' Angel and Devils.

-->[[HumanoidAbomination And I wasn't a very nice person these days.]]

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: This {{Crossover}} and its ContinuationFic explore the implications of the Devils' cultural acceptance of [[HaremGenre harems]] a bit more seriously than the [[LightNovel/HighSchoolDxD original material]], as a result of having a protagonist who ''isn't'' a HormoneAddledTeenager LovableSexManiac HaremSeeker. Namely, it takes Harry a while to figure out why it is so – according to Azazel in the unpublished fourth chapter, it's a combination of the Devils' AuthorityEqualsAsskicking and TheHedonist mentalities, together with their [[ImmortalProcreationClause centuries-long lifespans and extraordinarily low birth rates]] – and then some more to accept that Sona and Tsubasa are actually okay with the other pursuing him romantically and not at each other's throats for it, like his common sense tells him they should be.

--->'''Harry:''' [[{{Touche}} Well played, Webweaver. Well played.]]

'''Harry:''' You're all crazy. [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere I'm leaving now. My life has too much crazy in it as it is.]]

* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Harry mentions facing more than a few of them. It's gotten to the point where he can tell the quality of a villain's outfit by the quality of its ashes – this ''is'' [[PlayingWithFire Harry]] [[KillItWithFire Dresden]] we're talking about, after all.

'''Harry:''' [[ContinuityNod Three. Hundred. Ises.]]\\

'''Harry:''' [[Music/TheRollingStones Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name.]]\\

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Hero Faction, made up of the descendants and reincarnations of great heroes like Hercules, UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc, Sigfried and so on. Their goal is to give humanity a position of power in the world, but unfortunately, they also want to kill Great Red, who is basically the BigGood of the setting, and the worlds biggest defender against the Outsiders. They want to kill him mainly because he's a dangerously powerful dragon, despite the fact that he's almost never out of the Dimensional Void. They also dislike supernatural beings overall, regardless of alignment, despite their Chaos Brigade affiliation, and are perfectly willing to put civilian humans in danger if it means achieving their goals. They are even worse in the continuation, where Harry learns they brainwash members so they can't reveal anything about the group, and Cao Cao even considers young Heroes their property, given his words about [[spoiler:Alice White]].

** The same spell later returns ''again'' when [[spoiler: Sona uses it in a Ratings Game to keep members of the opposing team from being able to understand each other by making it so that each one only understands a ''different'' language, while using a modified version to allow her Peerage to temporarily be able to speak and understand both English and Klingon, since Language doesn't work on ''artificial'' languages]].

** Harry and Mihae – one of Riser's Bishops – have a moment of CommonalityConnection from the opposite sides of a Rating Game because they both call a plant monster a [[ContinuityNod "chlorofiend"]].

* CooldownHug: Harry to Tsubasa to keep her from going off half-cocked after [[spoiler:a Beholder]] in her blind rage [[spoiler:to avenge her own death]].

--->I partially shielded my dates from the polite observers and well-wishers. Most just wanted to offer congratulations or thanks. But I stood beside them, and glowered down at the handful of men, teen, tween, and adult, who seemed to be less interested in Tsubasa and Serafall's gaming skills, and more interested in how they filled out their somewhat revealing workout outfits. They seemed to get the idea. [[DeathGlare I have a pretty good glower.]]

** Harry pranked Kendra for trying to get him in trouble with his girlfriends by dyeing her hair and skin bright pink. He wasn't overly concerned about the consequences because his "Brillo-us" spell was perfect to get her back to normal if waiting for the dye to wear off wasn't an option. What he didn't take into consideration – that is, until Rias ''gleefully'' pointed it out – is that the spell needs Harry to "vigorously scrub the area to be cleaned with [his] hand." Given that ''all'' of Kendra's body was affected, you may see why this was poor planning from his part. Akeno quips that perhaps that was ''exactly'' he was aiming for.

* DoomMagnet: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Azazel rather rightfully calls Issei and Harry "the two biggest trouble magnets [he's] seen in a thousand years" and starts to make plans for ''when'' – as opposed to "if" – major problems will hit their school trip to Kyoto just because the two of them are in attendance. The Fallen Angel is, of course, proven right.

* EndangeringNewsBroadcast: A sports broadcast variant. Harry is greatly annoyed that Azazel went into details of the Artificial Sacred Gears that he developed for Reya in his role as CombatCommentator. Sure, the rulebook forbids the opponent they're currently facing from hearing him, but Sona's future opponents would be plain stupid if they don't take notice and plan ahead how to counter it.

** Sona has hers from canon about [[BestHerToBedHer only marrying a man who can beat her in chess]] that she used to get out of an unwanted ArrangedMarriage in the past. This conspicuously was not once mentioned around Harry until a reporter did during the Sitri/Agares pre-Rating Game press conference in ''A Star's Life''. The implication is that she wanted to quietly dismiss the requirement when Harry entered the picture, and that her friends caught on that and kept it to themselves.
** Sona's father isn't overly fond of Harry, so he tried to use the above agreement with Sona to try to break them up by setting them up for an unexpected chess match. Not only Duncan's ploy was ''painfully'' obvious – so much that his wife apologized in his place and reassured them that he's not actually bad at playing others when his daughters' love lives aren't involved – but also Harry and Sona trivially turned it on its head by LoopholeAbuse. After all, no part of her agreement with her parents said a thing about her ''having to'' play to win, so when the EngagementChallenge came about, she simply set her pieces to be taken by Harry's until her king was captured in a trivial checkmate.

** [[spoiler:Yoshimo Shiro's Bizarro World version, aka Tomoe's grandfather, is famed even in the supernatural world]].

* FriendlessBackground: Shizukesa. Argus wasn't the type to let his "children" make friends. Her siblings died a long time ago. Her cousins are all soulless killing machines. As a result she spent the last few hundred years basically alone.

* HyperCompetentSidekick: [[spoiler:Maleficent]] to her ditzy boss [[spoiler:Queen Mab]].

* NoSocialSkills: Shizukesa has had plenty of opportunity to observe human interactions, but very little chance to use them. Since it goes back centuries, she can be a little of. In addition, she has almost no knowledge of pop culture. Finally, she is naturally shy and doesn't expect people to like her [[spoiler: given her past as a Beholder]]. As a result she is more than a little hesitant around other people. Though she is getting better.
* NoiselessWalker: When Michael was hiring Harry to find the Angel making counterfeit TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} cards in Serafall's office, she suddenly appeared right behind him and accepted the case in his stead without him hearing her approach.

* UnSorcerer: Sairaorg's MuggleBornOfMages status is a bit different from canon. Instead of failing to inherit the Bael Family's Power of Destruction, he lacks ''any'' capacity for magic whatsoever, something that both Harry and the Beelzebub himself observed should be impossible for a Devil. While this makes Sairaorg more vulnerable to magic than every other Devil, it also means that he could still possess the Power of Destruction and just be unable to use it without magic of his own to fuel it. If Harry is right about the latter, this would mean that Sairaorg could still pass on the Bael Family's signature power to his children, which is of ''great'' political importance for the Devils' nobility and his position as the heir apparent.

* MentorShip: Harry's magical study sessions with Sona tend to take this kind of turn as they get closer. Who's the mentor or student in the equation depends on the subject.

* {{Nosebleed}}: [[spoiler:Harry's AttractiveBentGender form gave [[BiTheWay Tsubasa]] one.]]

* BiTheWay: Anna Sitri casually reveals that in addition to her husband (Sona and Serafall's father) she also has a wife. The fact that her spouses are siblings gets much more attention than her sexuality.

'''Harry:''' You might not have heard what I told BB. But your Beholders are already done. I have the spells to track them, to block them, and to kill them. I am going to make those spells available to every magician, Devil, Fallen, Angel, Valkyrie, and any other supernatural being that wants them. Their days of being near mythical phantoms, untraceable and untouchable, are over. With any luck, in a year you won't dare send a Beholder anywhere that there might be any kind of magic user. And as for you, ''maybe'' I can't kill you on my own. But I'm on good terms with the leaders of the three factions. Most of them owe me some favors, and I'm friends with the two you seem to fear the most. And I know five True Longinus users. Two of them would help me if I asked and the other three I might not be all buddy-buddy with, but I can easily push their buttons to get them to do what I want. And that's just the simple connections. Give me a reason, Argus, and I will gather up every god, demi-god, and god-killer I can, and I will sic them on you. We will find whatever hole you are hiding in. And then you won't have to worry about Hera's curse anymore. Comprende?

* NeverLiveItDown: Harry suspects that Lash won't ever let go that the [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Winter Mantle]] made him plan on forcing himself on Sona while roughly grabbing her by the hair.
-->'''Lash:''' ''[laughs]'' I didn't think you'd take my comment so seriously. Harry Dresden, have we perhaps found a fetish for you after all?\\
'''Harry:''' ''[sighs]'' I am never going to live this down, am I?

* EyesAlwaysAverted: Like in canon, Harry always avoids looking people in the eye out of fear of triggering a [[WindowsOfTheSoul Soulgaze]]. Among other problems, this makes people who meets him for the first time think he is untrustworthy, which is an especially bad thing when [[MeetTheInLaws meeting Tsubasa's father, and later on, Serafall and Sona's]].

* NoiselessWalker: When Michael was hiring Harry to find the Angel making counterfeit TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} cards in Serafall's office, she suddenly appeared right behind him and accepted the case in his stead without him hearing her approach.