Dissidia Final Fantasy / Tropes A to M

This page covers tropes found in Dissidia Final Fantasy, tropes A to M. You can find tropes N to Z here.

---

A

• Action Command: During the EX Bursts. While most are button mashing or inputting a sequence of buttons, Squall and Tidus use the systems from their own games (with Ultimecia and Jecht having obvious variants). Onion Knight, Gabranth, and Shantotto have unique non-button-mashing systems, with Shantotto and Onion Knight using a menu-based command system while Gabranth uses the Quickening system from XII. And in Dissidia 012 the tradition continues. Lightning uses a series of four attacks from her Gestalt mode, each one involving a different input and in a randomized order, and as a sort of a Shout-Out to the original game, it's the only EX Burst that requires you to use the analog stick to input the directions, instead of allowing you to use the D-pad. Tifa has a slot-machine style system where timed button presses stop the reels. Vaan uses the Quickening as Gabranth does. Laguna uses a first-person shooting style attack to fill up a bar and finish with the GREATEST ATTACK EVER! Yuna uses basic timed button presses. And lastly, Gilgamesh must select the Excalibur out of the mix of swords (the others being Excalipoors) on a revolving reel.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Garland is the best example of this. Remember he said "I will knock you all down" in the original Final Fantasy and ended up being a pushover? Well, now he's a hammy Blood Knight with a BFS. Firion, the Emperor and the Warrior of Light have been upgraded from little to no personalities to being a Hot-Blooded rebel, a Magnificent Bastard, and Knight in Shining Armor, respectively.
  • Laguna is getting shades of this treatment in Dissidia 012. So while he remains cute and silly in the plot, gameplay-wise, it looks like the man is to firearms what Firion is to conventional arms and indeed possesses one of the greatest attacks ever.
• Adaptation Expansion: The backstory of the original Final Fantasy is heavily expanded on to tie into the backstory of Dissidia, to the point Dissidia almost gives more plot for the first game than the first game itself did.
• Advertised Extra: Despite Gabranth and Shantotto appearing in trailers, the opening and on the game cover for Dissidia 012 on equal footing with the rest of the cast, they only appear in optional scenes in the Reports, and a small handful at that. They play absolutely no role in the main storyline.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • Unless it's a very high difficulty AI (like the ones in the Labyrinth), most AI opponents have serious troubles dodging Yuna's Energy Ray and Mega Flare. One can level Yuna from level 30 to 100 in about an hour by abusing this.
  • The second fight against Feral Chaos is incredibly difficult if you fight him properly... Unless you're a Yuna player and an avid spammer of Mega Flare, in which case you can absolutely waste him if you're patient enough. Also, Onion Knight against Feral Chaos. By spamming Meteor, you can keep the man running, and he will not attack as long as that attack is in the vicinity of him, which, considering his boss stage, it almost always is, and windshear will also cause him to dodge wildly due to his big size and small arena.
  • Kefka can do this too, provided the area is big enough for him to stay at a distance and lob spells. Due to the AI's preference for dodging instead of blocking, it's inevitable they'll dodge the wrong way eventually.
  • The AI very rarely stands any chance against Feral Chaos' Via Dolorosa, which is a pair of quickly advancing huge flame pillars: they either can't dodge the first one in time or dodge the first one and get hit by the second one which targets their new location 90% of the time. The average human player can fall for this as well unless they can figure out the very narrow timing window for dodging it.
  • In 012, absorb attacks have increased in suction ability. This leads to an A.I. Breaker in the form of Exdeath's black hole and Vaan's tornado. Both of them are absorb moves that will keep going even while the user is using other attacks. Basically put, the A.I. is programmed to take advantage of any attack animation by the enemy by responding with an attack, but both of the attacks, since they have absorb, will end up pulling the enemy in during the middle of their attack animation. Due to being in the middle of an attack themselves most often, they can't dodge out of it, so they will end up being hit.
• A.I. Roulette:
  • The game randomly determines the equipment of the AI in Quick Battle and Arcade mode, and sometimes the equipment set-up they give your opponent is horrible. Sometimes you'll face an opponent with an awesome equipment set, great Boosters, and accessories that all work well together. Other times, you'll face a heavy physical fighter equipped with Excalipoor (physical attacks do 0% damage), Ensanguined Shield (HP: 95%, Brave starts at 0), or the Bone Mail (cannot absorb EX Force), equipment which is generally useless except in very specific character builds. The AI is also liable to equip eight or nine random Boosters with one or two "Special" accessories (Boosters only enhance Normal accessories), thereby making their Boosters useless. Or you could get the AI equipping a bunch of otherwise great EX Force accessories like Pearl Necklace, Gold Hourglass, Gravitorb... then equip the aforementioned Bone Mail so they can't absorb EX Force, rendering those accessories useless. They'll also equip accessories to boost magic damage to physical fighters and physical damage boosting accessories to mages.
  • In Dissidia 012, the AI still does all this and also combines EX-boosting accessories with Assist boosting accessories. EX-boosting accessories reduce Assist effectiveness and vice-versa, resulting in the AI equipping accessories that more or less cancel out each other's effects. In worst-case scenarios, they'll equip the most extreme Assist and EX accessories, which have the side effect of completely negating the other's existence, leaving the opponent with neither Assist nor EX. There is nothing quite like Quickbattle Random giving you as your opponent Gabranth (who cannot deal damage outside of EX Mode or chases, which none of his attacks initiate) who is equipped with the Side by Side accessory (which completely disables the EX gauge). Your inevitable victory almost feels like a Mercy Kill.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The epilogue of the 013 story in 012 is a flurry of all previous manikin types you've faced before, along with all ten villains as bosses, and enemies will use accessory line-ups taken from the ten storylines beforehand. One gateway, for example, has five Strange Battle Pieces, each one using a different set-up that you've already experienced Strange enemies using before.
• An Aesop: Several across the Destiny Odysseys, pertaining to the character they center on:
  • Warrior of Light: Screw Destiny, and never give up hope.
  • Firion: Follow your dreams.
  • Onion Knight: Cold logic will only get you so far. Follow Your Heart, even if it leads you to hardship.
  • Cecil: There is a difference between relying on your friends and aiding your friends.
  • Bartz: There are no shortcuts to realizing your goals.
  • Terra: Conquer your fears.
  • Cloud: Follow your dreams, and make one if you don't yet have one for yourself.
  • Squall: There's only so much you can accomplish on your own.
  • Zidane: Believe in your friends.
  • Tidus: Pursue your dreams to the ends of the earth.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Onrac
• Anti-Frustration Features: Unlike every other board in the game, Shade Impulse Chapter 4 has no Destiny Points or Story Points, meaning that the player can attempt Chaos however many times they need to without worrying about being scored on it. They can also flee from him and rearrange their equipment and abilities without penalty.
  • This is done for every level in Dissidia 012. With Destiny Points swapped for KP, there's never any penalty for fleeing from battle, so if you challenge an enemy and realize you're in over your head, you can run from then, rearrange your equipment, perhaps find a way around them, and try again when you're ready. The only penalty you face is losing your chain if you fight enemies with a chain skill, which is more your choice as a player that you tried to chain enemies for more KP and weren't cut out for it.
• The Anti-God: Cosmos and Chaos are such a pair. No points for guessing which is good and which is bad.
• Anyone Can Die: Dissidia 012 has a body count not seen since the likes of Final Fantasy II: All of the original ten heroes except for Warrior of Light die (due to the rules of the war, they get better), while Lightning, Kain, Tifa, Laguna, Vaan, and Yuna are a hair's breadth shy of being Killed Off for Real. Meanwhile, on the side of the villains, Kuja, the Cloud of Darkness, and Exdeath also die, Sephiroth commits suicide, and Jecht performs a Heroic Sacrifice leaving him an Empty Shell until the next cycle. However, due to the Foregone Conclusion of the game, the effect is somewhat diminished.
• Arch-Enemy: Naturally, the hero-villain pairs.
  • The ten heroes and their respective villains, Chaos and Cosmos, and Shantotto and Gabranth in Dissidia Final Fantasy.
    • More in-depth we have...
    • From Final Fantasy, The Warrior of Light to challenge Garland — the human incarnation of the Big Bad Chaos.
    • From Final Fantasy II is Firion fighting for freedom from oppression against The Emperor who seeks to bring everything under his heel.
    • Final Fantasy III brings us the The Onion Knight, a cowardly child, to face The Cloud of Darkness, an embodiment of fear itself.
    • Final Fantasy IV has Cecil, who must overcome his cynical brother Golbez and show him The Power of Friendship.
    • From Final Fantasy V is Bartz, a none-too-bright wanderer who confronts the monstrous Exdeath, who wants to erase everything.
    • Final Fantasy VI gives us Terra, whose fear of her immense magical power attracts Kefka, who seeks to control her.
    • Final Fantasy VII gives us Cloud and Sephiroth, as mentioned above.
    • Final Fantasy VIII brings Squall, who is forever fated to confront the time witch Ultimecia.
    • From Final Fantasy IX is Zidane, whose motto is to help anyone who needs it, and his brother Kuja, who is unable to see the value of anything but himself.
    • Final Fantasy X has Tidus, who wants to settle the score with his father Jecht once and for all.
  • Dissidia 012 pushes The Emperor into this position towards Yuna, Tidus, and Jecht. The other five new characters get one of the original ten villains as their designated enemy, too — Vaan and Kefka, Tifa and Ultimecia, Laguna and the Cloud of Darkness, Kain and Exdeath, and Lightning and Garland.
  • The prequel Dissidia 012 reveals that the Emperor is actually more an Arch Enemy to the Final Fantasy X cast as an Expy of Seymour — he manipulates Tidus and Jecht into fighting for the sake of his schemes and isn't pleased when Yuna tries to get the two to work out their differences peacefully. In a less direct example, Exdeath is the enemy of the Final Fantasy IV cast, being Kain's designated rival and his death in that cycle being caused by Golbez disrupting his control over the Manikins so Kain can get past them and challenge Exdeath. This also puts a new spin on the scene of Exdeath accusing Golbez of treachery and Cecil protecting him.
• Armor Is Useless: Most of the people you fight in the story mode have things like Charred Helms and Rusted Armor that actually end up lowering their stats.
  • In Dissidia 012, in their new third outfits, Garland, Golbez, and Exdeath take off their armor, Gabranth switches out his suit of plate mail for a lightweight army uniform with armored plates, and Zidane dons a suit of knight armor. None of these outfits have any effect on their gameplay.
• Armor of Invincibility: The Genji equipment, Snowpetal combination, and Adamant equipment — all Level 99, all give the highest stat boosts of their armor type. Also the Maximillian, which ties with other armor for the highest HP booster in the game and tacks on +20% physical defense.
• Art Evolution: The characters of Final Fantasy legend are fully realized in grand, detailed 3D, many of them for the first time, and yet all of them are still immediately recognizable to someone familiar with their base game.
• Artificial Human: The Manikins, Warrior of Light, Chaos, and Cosmos as well. The first game played with the idea that all the main characters are just advanced Manikins, but it's debunked in Dissidia 012 with other characters wondering this for themselves and discovering otherwise through various means.
• Artificial Stupidity: The main handicap all opponents share is that the AI is just not very good. Bosses are better, but only relatively; they still aren't very bright.
  • Lower-level opponents are very unaggressive and will just stand around watching you as you charge up an attack and come at them and take the hit, and will run around watching you and not attack when they have a clear opening. They also tend to block or dodge when you aren't attacking, giving you a free shot.
  • If the computer has an Assist Charge when you inflict Break on them, they will instantly use the Assist to break out of the attack. They will do this even though you've already inflicted Break and thus the damage is literally already done. While there are cases where this would still be advantageous (like to get out of a longer, more powerful attack, or to avoid taking HP damage if it was an HP attack or Brave-to-HP link), the computer can't judge that, and there are many attack where even if they Assist Change out of the way, the attack will keep tracking them and hit them.
  • If you're playing as Gabranth, using EX Charge will cause an AI opponent to make a beeline for you at any cost — even if your EX Gauge is already filled.
  • An AI opponent in EX Mode who lands an HP attack tends to go into an EX Burst if they have anything less than 2/3rds their EX Gauge left, even though for many characters it would be more advantageous to just stay in EX Mode and fight longer, especially if the opponent has a sustained EX Mode build.
  • RPG Mode also suffers heavily from this, to the point that it's often considered unviable to play in. In it, your character is also put under the control of an AI, and while you can guide it to do certain actions with button inputs, very rarely will it ever make the best or even a good decision of how to go about it. Set them to grab an EX Core and they will repeatedly Air Dash into a wall that's in the way without ever grasping the concept of going over it. Set them to attack and they will constantly run into the opponent's attacks as they close the distance, then spam ineffective ranged attacks and leave themselves open even when there's plenty of effective close-range attacks they could use. About the only thing it does right is dodge attacks if set to Defend, but that hardly justifies the lack of control as your character suddenly forgets how to fight properly.
• Artistic Age: When it comes to the heroes, it can be really hard to tell the difference between who's in their teens and who's in their early twenties. The most egregious are probably Bartz (20) and Squall (17) — if you didn't know how old they were, you'd probably think Bartz was the younger one. It's not really helped by the fact that Squall's voice actors from both the Japanese and English version of the Kingdom Hearts games, in which he is indeed in his mid-20s, reprised their roles.
  • Also, it was mentioned that Tidus was redesigned to look younger, nevermind that at 17 he's actually on the lower end of the age scale. Compare to say, Cloud, who was unchanged and is 21.
  • And from the sequel, there's Laguna who, at 27, doesn't look much older than the other heroes, on average a good 10 years younger than he is.
• Art Major Physics: As in the grand Squeenix tradition. For this installment, though, the natural-law-breaking is not just confined to cutscenes — see the jumping tropes and awesomeness-related tropes below.
• Ascended Extra: Cid of The Lufaine. In his original game, he was an extra who was never even seen in the original release of the game, and only added with remakes to fulfill the Running Gag of a Cid in each game. In Dissidia? He's The Narrator, but more importantly, he started the conflict and is working with Shinryu and Cosmos.
  • Manikins in general are more important in Dissidia 012. In Dissidia, they were little more than an excuse to have non-plot-relevant battles between big confrontations; now the good guys are constantly on the run from them, they actually show up in cutscenes, and stopping the flow of them becomes an important part of the plot.
  • Shinryu as well, from optional Superboss in Final Fantasy V to one of the key players in the conflict.
    • Final Fantasy V in general has become a lot more important than one might think of the "silly self-parody" game in the series. Or, at least, the Rift and the Void are. Especially in Dissidia 012, where the Rift becomes a core component of the 012 story.
• Ascended Glitch: In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI, there was a glitch that allowed you to equip any item as a helmet, and the best item to be used as a helmet was a drill. In Dissidia, there's a Machine equipment set, with the piece that goes into the Helmet slot being a drill.
• Ascended Meme: More than a few nods and tributes to the fandom exist in this form.
  • The Emperor's death cry of "uboooooar!" is now his cry when defeated.
  • The special quotes for EX Bursts are mostly references to memetic lines: Exdeath cries "TURTLE!", Golbez cries "Very well!" (the Japanese version of this line in Final Fantasy IV went memetic), Tifa's is the Accidental Innuendo "words aren't the only way to express your feelings", and Vaan's is a reference to Final Fantasy XII's infamous subquest, "I'm Basch!"
  • Square Enix shows in Dissidia 012 that they are well aware of Exdeath's status in the fandom after the first game. First, cue the puns about the VOID:
  Kuja: "Your existence is voidable."
  Jecht: "Your chances are void unless you come and get me."
  Shantotto: "Your defeat is una...voidable." (yes, the pause and the emphasis are just how she says it)
  Prishe: "You make such a big deal outta nothing really."
  • And then they lampshade his walking speed.
  Tifa: "Can you keep up with me, ya big oaf?"
  Onion Knight: "Catch me if ya can!"
  • "GILGAMESH MORPHING TIME!"
  • A possible case could be made for Kain's declaration that he'll show the Manikins "the difference between [them], and a real man!". It Makes Sense in Context, but it's a rather pointed remark considering the "Real Men" machinima for the first game, and Kain's status as a Memetic Badass.
  • Jecht says to Shantotto in 012 "thought you was a ball". Tarutaru punting is a little-known joke among Final Fantasy XI fans thanks to the race being so small.
  • While not direct references, some of the cutscene titles in the Theater in Dissidia 012 appear to be nods to lines from the original game that went memetic, such as "Smack Dab in the Middle of Enemy Territory" and "Turning Darkness into Hallowed Light".
• Assist Character: The most notable new feature in Dissidia 012. You can summon another character to perform either a Brave or HP attack, which will vary depending on whether the opponent is on the ground or mid-air.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Dissidia 012's "God in Fire".
• Awesome, but Impractical: EX Bursts. Sure, they look cool, but using them instantly depletes your EX Gauge, and many characters get significant bonuses to their damage output in EX Mode that they can make better use of. In Dissidia 012, their damage has been nerfed heavily, and thus are treated like Finishing Moves best used when the gauge is almost depleted.
  • Gilgamesh's EX Mode in particular locks his weapons so his attack effects aren't random, but if you're unlucky enough to get weapons like the Battle Axe, which does random weapons anyways, or Excalipoor, which only does 1 damage per hit, you're probably wishing to go back to normal mode, where you randomly get a nice boost.
  • Many of the flashier and cooler moves in the game are too slow to hit reliably and thus are near useless. For instance, Lightning's Army of One is her personal Limit Break, but it has a huge start-up time and ultimately does less damage than her simpler, faster Smite and Launch attacks (though it does smash through blocks and initiate chase, which neither of the others do). And the EX Mode special attacks like Time Crush, Black Fang, and Heartless Angel are pretty much impossible to use. Starfall is about the only Charged Attack you can use reliably because the Emperor is a Trap Master, but even then, it takes time to set up the traps needed to keep the opponent occupied while it charges. And if they have an Assist, well, then it's back to useless.

B

• Back from the Brink: In the intro, you're told in plain terms that Cosmos has all but lost the war; the 10 heroes are all that's left of what was presumably a vast army, and Chaos still has legions of Mannikins at his disposal. Despite these odds, the heroes defeat the forces of Chaos to the last man. This thematic element carries over into the gameplay as well, see that page for details. Dissidia 012's main story, in fact, details exactly how the Warriors of Cosmos fell into the above-mentioned predicament.
• Badass Boast: Most of the heroes get one right before their final battle in their Destiny Odyssey path.
  • Some of the victory quotes after normal fights qualify.
  Jecht: "There's no shame in losin' to me!"
  • Likewise some of the attack audio cues and lines during EX Bursts:
  Kuja (casting Seraphic Star): "I'll bring this to an end!"
  Jecht (during his EX Burst): "This is my show!"
  • Kain specializes in these.
  Exdeath: So, you offer your life in exchange for theirs?
  Kain: Of course not. I offer yours.

  Exdeath: I'm afraid that time runs short for you.
  Kain: Truly. Then let us make this quick.

  Lightning: If you're coming, I wanna see you fight harder than you ever have.
  Kain: Then you've nothing to fear.
  • Lightning herself isn't any slacker in this department either.
  Kuja: So ephemeral, lightning.
  Lightning: Oh I'll show you how lightning strikes.

  Warrior of Light: Toss aside your blade and say goodnight.
  Lightning: No thanks. It's not my bedtime.

  Garland: I will grant you true and utter annihilation!
  Lightning: Bring it on! I don't need a second chance!
  • A very subtle yet infinitely badass one from Yuna of all people:
  Yuna: This is my story, and it has a happy ending.
  • Squall gets ambushed by Ultimecia and Garland. Facing two-on-one odds Squall, with absolute calmness and confidence, just says this:
  Squall: This is better for me. If I can defeat both of you, then it will make it easier for them.
• Badass Crew: Cosmos and Chaos chose their teams well. Pick any badass trope listed under its index, and odds are at least one member on either team fulfills it.
• Bag of Sharing: Dissidia considers the armaments and accessories won/found/purchased over the course of the game to belong to the player, not any one character, meaning not only that every character, no matter their alignment, has access to the entire inventory, but that if the player owns but one, say, Longsword or Robe, it can be equipped by any number of characters in the game, simultaneously. Likely an Anti-Frustration Feature, given that the game has 22 (31 in 012) playable characters and that outfitting all of them separate would be a chore and a half, plus some of the game's accessories are one-of-a-kind—namely, the Boosters.
• Battle Theme Music: Three from each Final Fantasy.
  • The final battle theme subverts the usual Final Fantasy Final Boss music as it's only moderately fast paced and with hopeful-sounding lyrics. The second part of the battle has much faster-paced music, but retains the hopeful lyrics.
    • And in Dissidia 012, Square Enix adds more with a fourth song from each Final Fantasy save for XIII, and stacks even more on top of THAT with DLC music packs.
  • Though some aren't really battle themes. 8-bit town music anyone?
• Beef Gate: In Confessions of the Creator in 012, your characters, assuming you didn't do any level grinding outside the storylines, are going to be in the Level 30-40 range, maybe reaching 40-50 if you played on a calendar day that gave them bonus exp. Running straight to the Chasm in the Rotting Land will see you thrown into a multi-floor gateway full of Level 80 enemies, and not only will you be out-leveled but you'll likely be poorly equipped. Going through the other optional gateways and exploring the world to gain levels and trade accessories is highly advised.
• The Berserker: Instead of having a Limit Break or other such signature attack as his EX Burst, Feral Chaos just chases down the completely helpless opponent and beats the hell out of them until he executes the final attack.
• BFS: Garland, Cloud, Sephiroth, Squall, Tidus and Jecht. Bartz also briefly dual-wields Cloud's Buster Sword and Squall's Gunblade in a cutscene before fighting Exdeath.
  • Garland's sword is so enormous that it dwarfs Cloud's Buster Sword when the two of them fight in the opening of the first game. It's certainly big enough to knock them all down.
    • Garland's sword doesn't just dwarf Cloud's sword, it dwarfs Cloud!
  • But Chaos beats them all with the swords surrounding Brink of Madness, each of which are easily three. Stories. Tall. At least. And he gets big enough to use them during his EX Mode.
  • Jecht is notable for using the sword only in his HP attacks. His Bravery attacks are mainly punch/kick combos.
• Big Damn Heroes: Cloud and Tidus in Firion's story.
  • Zidane in Squall's story, Onion Knight in Terra's story, although these later two might have arguably not been needed (except for the fact that the game only allows one-on-one battles).
• Bizarrchitecture: Rift Castle, especially the Ω version, where parts of the building constantly teleport around in weird positions; you're quite likely to see the main foundation with a bridge to nowhere stacked on top of one of the areas it should connect to, close to an upside-down tower floating in the middle of nowhere.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: The game allows minor brave attacks to be blocked and can reflect projectiles. This is Ex-Deaths entire game plan as a Stone Wall. He can block almost any attack provided the timings right, even otherwise unblockable attacks. According to the developers a player is pretty much invincible if they get his skills down pat.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Dissidia 012, which is just this side of Crisis Core when it comes to Downer Endings—the new characters die fighting off a giant swarm of Manikins.
• Bonus Feature Failure: The Quest Editor in 012. Advertised as a way to create your own storylines and let others play them by uploading them for players to download, it didn't work well outside of Japan. The game only allows 25 characters a line and two lines per text box, with a maximum of ten dialogue boxes in each scene. While 25 characters is plenty to write dialogue with when using a Japanese writing system, in Latin-based languages it's a very tight limit and amounts to maybe four or five words a line. This makes it hard to have substantial conversations between characters, especially if there's more than two talking. Coupled with the arduous task of inputting the text on the PSP (scrolling to and selecting each letter one at a time), and the Quest Editor didn't see much use — it was just too much work within a constricted system to try and tell your own original story.
• Book Ends: With a hint of a non-musical Dark Reprise, as well. The player's first (indirect) introduction to Kefka in the 012 storyline is in the fight between Vaan and Terra—Terra then being magically enslaved to Kefka and used as a weapon of war. Before the fight and in the introductory quotes, she inhumanly says she will "destroy" Vaan. In the end of the 013 storyline, the last we see of Kefka is a boss fight—preceded by Kefka insanely chanting "destroy, destroy, destroy, DESTROY!"
  • For a meta example: The ending of Dissidia shows the Warrior of Light heading to Cornelia, crystal in hand.
• Boring Yet Practical: Some of the attacks you start with just aren't very good, but on the other hand, some characters' default attacks can be devastating and highly effective under the right conditions. And some of the less visually flashy attacks in the game can be among the most powerful.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Ultimate Battle Pieces◊. They are often stronger than the stage bosses, boasting very powerful equipment and strong movesets, and always have a summon with them. In Confessions of the Creator, the Ultimate Battle Pieces that appear are over Level 120+. You may weep now.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Many of Bartz Klauser's moves are mashups of Bravery Attacks from the other Warriors of Cosmos, and some follow this sort of naming convention as a result, such as Reel Impulse (Reel Axe and Storm Impulse), Solid Ascension (Solid Barrel and Ascension), and Slide Shooter (Full Slide and Celestial Shooter).
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The Moogles tend to do this, as do the characters narrating some of the menu screens. Special mention goes to the Moogle at the beginning of 012, who makes you fight the final boss if you try to skip the tutorial!
  • Referenced when initiating Gilgamesh's EX Burst, who crashes into the screen, shattering it.
• Breakout Character:
  • To casual players, odds are the only XI characters they know are Shantotto and Prishe, thanks to the two Dissidia titles featuring them.
  • In general for the older games, characters that were once obscure and overshadowed like Firion or the Cloud of Darkness had have new life breathed into their fandoms with Dissidia reinventing them. The champion of this is certainly Exdeath, who used to be seen a boring, dull, and generally unliked villain. Dissidia's characterization of him ramped up his Large Ham tendencies, made him a Fountain of Memes, and took his obsession with the VOID to near Cargo Ship levels. As a result, the fans love him now.
  • While Kefka already had several fans in the run-up to the first Dissidia game, thanks in no small part due to his Fandom Rivalry with Sephiroth and their games' rivalry as well, Dave Wittenberg's performance as Kefka took what was otherwise a rather generic role and turned it into one of the most memorable parts of the game, with plenty of Ham and Cheese and no small resemblance to Mark Hamill's performances as The Joker. Fast forward to Dissidia 012 and Kefka's role was expanded in almost every capacity. He gained much more prominence in the 012 story, his character was given much more of the spotlight to showcase his Monster Clown Omnicidal Maniac tendencies, he was given far more memorable lines to spout off in the hammiest way possible, and he was even promoted to announcing the game's name on the title screen, along with Terra.
• Broad Strokes: Dissidia 012 makes it fairly clear that the characters have each been pulled from their original games, and the Reports go very in-depth on the origins of the Warrior of Light, Chaos, Cosmos, and Cid of the Lufaine. The Reports also heavily imply that their respective origin stories tie into the backstory of the original Final Fantasy Garland and the Four Fiends. The problem is the hints are vague enough to be left to interpretation, and if the story of Dissidia is directly intertwined with the story of the original Final Fantasy, there's a lot of retcons going on for the latter to make this possible. According to Word of God, Dissidia is a prequel to Final Fantasy, but due to the Timey-Wimey Ball and a few more hints^note like Garland recognizing the Warrior of Light when he first sees him after the Warrior was just created, it could also be seen as something of a sequel.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Inward Chaos in the first game, and Main Scenario 000 in Dissidia 012.
• Bullet Time: Caused by executing "EX Revenge", allowing you to freely smack the opponent around for a short time.

C

• Calling Your Attacks: The characters just don't shut up while fighting. Justified, in that considering the way the game works (camera angles, the sheer size of the stages, etc.), the vocalization can be the only cue a player gets as to what's coming after them, and with some of these moves, a complete blindside can just really ruin your whole day.
  • And then there is Emperor Mateus:
  "Ahahahahahaha! HEAVENS!" [grunt] "WAUGH! HUAH!!" ''[sword to the face] '*
• Cantata: "Cantata Mortis".
• Cap: The "Consecutive Days" counter on the calender screen maxes out at 999 days.
• Captain Ersatz: In-game, a Moogle sends you a chain of letters about "Moglamesh", "Mogka", "Mogbez" and "Mogmos", among many other character, each named just as horrible as the last.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Right. So the majority of the main heroes and villains are male (and attractive) in this series. This trope was inevitable.
• Casting Gag:
  • This universe's incarnation of Chaos is voiced by the ever-talented Keith David - and this isn't the first time he's played a surly winged monster before.
  • As they couldn't get his normal English actor, Gabranth is voiced by Keith Ferguson, whom voiced his own brother Basch. Adding to how appropriate it is, Gabranth swipes Basch's Quickenings for his EX Burst.
• CCG Importance Dissonance: Some attacks and Limit Breaks in Dissidia are much less powerful than they are here. This is usually averted for a character's most powerful attack in their original game, which are almost universally their EX Burst in this game.
  • Terra's HP attacks are Tornado, Flood, and Meltdown, with her HP links as Firaga and Ultima, all high-level spells in Final Fantasy VI. However, she also has Meteor, one of the most powerful spells in VI second to only Ultima, as a Bravery attack.
  • Kefka has Ultima and Meteor as Bravery attacks, while Trine and Havoc Wing are among his HP attacks — in VI, Havoc Wing is a powerful physical attack he has but nowhere near as dangerous as Ultima and Meteor, and Trine is a status attack that doesn't inflict damage at all.
  • Four of Cloud's HP attacks are Braver Cross-Slash, Meteorain, and Finishing Touch, his first and third tiers of Limits in VII. Meanwhile Blade Beam and Climhazzard, his second tier Limits, are Bravery attacks.
  • Tifa's Limits in VII were Beat Rush, Somersault, Waterkick, Meteodrive, Dolphin Blow, Meteor Strike, and Final Heaven. In Dissidia 012, Beat Rush, Waterkick, and Dolphin Blow are Bravery attacks, Somersault is an HP link from Waterkick, Meteodrive and Meteor Strike are HP attacks, and Final Heaven is her EX Burst.
  • Zidane's Free Energy and Tidal Flame, his first two Dyne attacks in Final Fantasy IX, are HP attacks here, while Scoop Art, his third Dyne, is a Bravery attack and not very useful or powerful. Solution 9, his penultimate Dyne, is also a Bravery attack and a very weak one. Meanwhile Meo Twister, his third-to-last Dyne, is his HP link on all of his attacks and thus he is utterly reliant on it. Subverted with Grand Lethal at least — its his final Dyne attack in IX and is the last new attack he learns in Dissidia.
  • Tidus starts with his first and third Swordplay Overdrives, Spiral Cut and Energy Rain, as his initial HP attacks, and learns his second Overdrive Slice & Dice later. Although, he does learn the ground version of Energy Rain after Slice & Dice, even though it's almost useless since he already has the aerial version.
  • Yuna's Valefor has Energy Blast as a Bravery attack and Energy Ray as an HP attack — in X, Energy Ray is the weaker of the two attacks. For that matter in Dissidia 012 Energy Blast is possibly Yuna's most useless attack.
• Censor Steam: A real-life example; the Cloud of Darkness's almost nude breasts were covered up by clouds of dark smoke on the Dissidia 012 English website. And on the NA box art, she's covered up by the game's rating, which is "T". Make your own joke here.
• Character Exaggeration: Everyone, to an extent. It's probably a necessary evil, since almost two dozen main heroes and main villains wouldn't stand out from each other unless their unique traits weren't made more glaring. As well, a lot of the Destiny Odyssey storylines are meant to parallel the plot and character development of their hero's original game, so you've got to squeeze 30-40 hours of character growth into a five-stage level that will take a couple hours tops. Things are gonna be glossed over and left out. Some of the characters even go so far as to point this out,and explain it away as a side effect of the heroes' (and villains') amnesia.
• Character Focus: Warrior of Light and Firion play the largest role in the overall storyline among the heroes, with Firion and/or his Wild Rose appearing in more than half the storylines. On the Chaos side Garland, The Emperor, and to lesser extents Ultimecia and Golbez play the largest roles of the villains. The Emperor in particular has such a large role in the plot he could easily be The Dragon if not for Garland.
  • In Dissidia 012, the six new additions get the most screentime, while the original ten heroes are Demoted to Extra to varying degrees—Terra, Tidus, Firion, and the Warrior of Light are the only ones who feature prominently in the main storyline. The Onion Knight and Squall appear in one gateway each as Assists, Cecil, Bartz and Zidane get brief cameos, and Cloud doesn't appear at all. The Reports show more of their actions during the 12th cycle, but even then they don't do much.
• Chekhov's Gun: To an extent, the World Map in Dissidia 012. At first you're likely to think that the fact it looks like the world map from the original Final Fantasy is just another Mythology Gag, but once you get into the Reports and discover the backstory of the game, it turns out there's an in-universe explanation for this.
  • When completing the Epilogue chapter of the 12th cycle storyline, you can see a series of floating islands leading up to a volcano, but the passage leading to them is blocked. You later revisit the area in the Epilogue of the 13th cycle story, as it turns out that volcano houses Chaos's throne.
• Cherry Tapping: Can be present in abundance, naturally—weak attacks, low-level characters versus high-level ones, the option of going without equipment—and indeed this form of Cherry Tapping is vital to one of the game's Peninsula of Power Leveling exploits. However, the best example of this so far seems to be Gilgamesh's EX Burst in Dissidia 012. With most of the characters, even doing their EX Burst imperfectly results in decent, if lesser, damage before the HP hit. However, with Gilgamesh, failing his EX Burst means that it is performed with the Excalipoor instead of the Excalibur, leading to the flashy Limit Break dealing exactly four points of Brave damage. However, if the opponent already only has single-digit HP remaining...
• Chickification: Terra is much more vulnerable and meek than in her original game, needing to be protected by Onion Knight and being very reluctant to fight and travel alone. Dissidia 012 tweaked her dialogue to make her toughen her resolve earlier and to emphasize friendship more than protection between them, and while in the new 12th cycle storyline she's rescued from Kefka by Vaan and talked into not giving up, she did decide on her own to rush to Cosmos defense rather than hide from the Manikin's. This is also reflective in her fighting style, in VI she was a Magic Knight with the best stats in the game magically and physically, in Dissidia she leans a bit more toward Squishy Wizard.
• Chromosome Casting: Defied, this is one of the reasons Terra was included. If she didn't appear then all the characters on the good side will only be male and that looks really bad.
  Tetsuya Nomura: If it weren’t Terra, then there would be no female characters on the Cosmos team. I was also a member of the production team for FFVI, and based on my feelings from that time I thought it had to be Terra. She’s on the cover image, and Terra appeared in the advert, so really I didn’t have a reason not to choose her.
• Colony Drop: Sephiroth has access to the Black Materia, and the Meteor can get pretty damn big. A variation with Jecht, who can procure a giant meteor-like rock out of nowhere and throw it at you. The Emperor has his signature attack, Starfall, which has an ungodly long charge time to make up for the fact that it's borderline impossible to dodge once it's pulled off. Cloud also has a minor one, "Meteorain". Terra and Onion Knight also have the Meteor spell; theirs are smaller than Sephiroth's, but it's how you use it that matters, not the size.
  • The Onion Knight's Sage Ex-Burst, Spellbook's finishing strike, however, is almost as large as the Emperor's, and is summoned through a hole in space.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Manikins of each game share a color, for example light blue for Final Fantasy V, red for VI, purple for VIII, and so forth. The Crystals are also uniquely colored to a degree—light blue, pink, aquamarine, dark blue, purple, red and black, green, silver, yellow-orange and blue.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer
• Color-Coded Stones: The game includes the twelve birthstone jewels, minus the Garnet and Amethyst, as trade accessories, with their menu icons appropriately colored.
• Comeback Mechanic: The summon Magic Pot changes your Bravery into that of your opponent's. If your opponent is able to land a finishing blow on you, odds are you can do the same to your opponent with Magic Pot.
• Combo Breaker: In original Dissidia, activating EX Mode in the middle of an opponent's combo would do this; in Dissidia 012 it's changed. Now it slows down time for everyone but yourself in a mode called "EX Revenge" without putting you into EX Mode and burns up all of your EX meter, but can save you from the opponent and set them up for a nasty counterattack. Additionally, you can use your Assist to take an incoming hit for you (though doing so will lock your Assist Meter for a time).
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Par for the course in a fighting game, of course, but the computer-controlled characters can do things that are flat-out impossible for human players to do, like equipping ridiculously rare equipment long before the player can craft it, equipping gear for which they haven't reached the level requirement, knowing attacks at levels lower than the player learns them, and they often equip multiple copies of accessories that the player is only allowed to use one of. They also get a bonus to their Bravery if the player is at a lower level, the larger the gap the bigger the boost. The player gets the same when fighting weaker opponents, but how often will you be doing that?
  • Chaos is a SNK Boss, so he does a lot of cheating. Zero-start up attacks let him counter your attacks instantly, his HP attacks require precise timing to avoid properly, he has his own customized set of equipment that have a stat boost dependent on his level, ensuring his stats are as high as can be "fair", and he heals fully during the three-battle match, while players begin the next fight with however much HP they managed to retain in the last fight. If the player loses any of the three battles with Chaos, they have to start the match all over again. Chaos can only be fought in the smallest stage in the game, which has only a ground floor. Chaos's attacks are some of the largest in the game, with wide areas of effect. His attacks take up so much of the stage that it's nearly impossible to dodge, largely because there's nowhere to dodge to.
    • Chaos' unique summon Shinryu. Normally, players can call a summon once per battle. Shinryu can be summoned as many times as Chaos wants to use him, and can choose his effect, because Shinryu mimics the effects of other summons and powers them up. If Chaos really wanted to he could summon Shinryu three times in a row, activating an effect to cut your Brave in half every two seconds, doubling his own Brave instantly, and then lock his Brave so your attacks can't damage him.
    • The battle with Chaos is a bit easier in Dissidia 012: if you die on the second or third phase of the battle you start over from that phase, and you can have up to five characters in your party so if one dies you can continue with the next and Chaos will retain whatever HP damage the defeated character did to him.
  • There is one occurrence of "justified" cheating, if that makes sense. The Laguna ghost the player fights is a Squall in the Level 20 range, equipped with Level 20 armor, but a level 94 weapon. This is justified because the weapon is a Machine Gun, Laguna's signature weapon in Final Fantasy VIII. Its still technically cheating, but there's an actual reason in this case.
  • In Dissidia 012, special Emblems on the boards trigger certain effects in battle, like increasing your Bravery, making Boosters stronger, increasing the critical hit rate of certain attacks, and so forth. In the "Confessions of the Creator" storyline, enemies are often positioned in such a way to force you on an Emblem with a detrimental effect, like disabling your equipment, starting you with no Bravery, and making physical or magical attacks do no damage. This is in addition to the other cheating described above: these mentioned enemies that you must face with no equipment will be over level 100 with top-grade equipment and accessories. Oh, and with most of the Emblems, at least the detrimental ones, only you suffer these drawbacks: should the enemy be positioned on an Emblem, it won't take effect on them.
  • If the AI uses the "random" Moogle summon, it actually knows what exactly what effect it will give them. This is because the AI only uses their summon under certain circumstances, such as Hecatoncheir when they're close to Break. Thus they will only summon Moogle under the circumstances they would normally use the summon the Moogle will copy.
  • The AI is capable of using Level 5 Death (Deathguise summon, an instant break when the enemy's bravery ends in 5 or 0) at any fraction of a second that they please. That includes when you're doing an attack that hits several times in a second. This leads to the AI cheating blatantly when they break you with it while you're in the middle of one of these sorts of attacks. Human reaction times? What's that?
• Commonplace Rare: Get yer Onions here! Only 5 Megalixers!^note Well, they are essential components of Onion Knight's level 100 exclusive weapon, but still. It's also apparently some kind of essence, not an actual onion.
• Continuity Nod: All over the place. Onion Knight's alternate costume even references the DS version of FFIII by looking like Luneth.
  • 012 goes even farther, using costumes for characters in games that aren't even in FF continuity, like Cloud's Kingdom Hearts outfit. They're all named as well, in case you were confused. And my god, the line-dropping!
  • And then confined to Dissidia 012, gateways in the same location usually keep the same names between storylines and have similar board layouts, though the positioning of objects on that board varies.
• Continuity Snarl: The original Dissidia had Garland state outright Chaos will send him back in time to become Chaos, thus tying the plot of the game into the original Final Fantasy. The Reports, which spoke of a child bred for war, were thus taken to refer to Garland. However, Dissidia 012 instead has Chaos as that child, which instead of just being implied is stated outright in his Museum profile. However, the Reports still have Garland's inner thoughts that he becomes Chaos and summons his past self from the future to become the next Chaos. Which really does not make any sense either way.
  • Though Garlands talk with Chaos, as well as his inner thoughts can be brushed off as semi-insane ramblings due to the fact that even his mind is not immune to the effects of the cycle. Or his previous time-travel escapades, which even he admits at one point.
• Cool Mask: It's all about the helms: Garland, Golbez, Dark Knight Cecil, Exdeath, Gabranth.
  • Particularly so in Gabranth's case. His EX Mode's appearance change simply consists of him putting on his helmet (and Dual Wielding his weapon), and he goes from being laughably weak to an unstoppable force of destruction, capable of utterly shaming Chaos.
• Cosmic Chess Game: Cosmos and Chaos play this using the heroes and villains of Final Fantasy.
• Crack Fic Crisis Crossover: Nothing like the end of a world to get a bunch of Final Fantasy characters to beat the crap out of each other.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Especially in the pre-Crystal battle cutscenes, the villains (and heroes, sometimes) exhibit crazy powers that they can't use in-game. Just watch as Ultimecia chain-teleports out of Squall's way and then does what is basically her EX Burst without junctioning Griever. Or watch The Emperor surround Firion on all sides with electric spheres and detonate them in an inescapable explosion. Or heck, watch Terra cast Teleport!
  • To be honest, though, the game (excluding the aforementioned examples) tends to avert this trope for the most part, which is a rarity in the series.
  • And some of those FMV/cutscene-only abilities got implemented as new attacks in 012. For example, check out Emperor Mateus' Dreary Cell HP Attack, the same move he uses on Terra in the opening movie and on Firion during their battle at the end of Firion's Destiny Odyssey.

D

• Damage-Sponge Boss. Feral Chaos is intended to be this, having over 120,000 HP and all, but his Level 1 equipment makes your Bravery attacks actually quite powerful since his defenses are lower than the Level 120 enemies you've fought to get to him. As a result building up Bravery is pretty easy, and his HP doesn't last all that long. Even without rigged builds relying on Iai Strike, Wall Rush or Exp to Bravery, you can kill him in about five minutes. Using one of those builds? Under a minute.
  • Of the final bosses of 012, four of them are around the same level as your characters, the 20-24 range, but have Level 60 armor to give them an extra 2000 HP on you. The only one that doesn't is the actual Final Boss Garland, because he's at Level 39 and thus his HP is that high innately without the need for high level armor. He also comes with a lot more Bravery than the first four too, so Breaking him is harder.
• Darker and Edgier: Dissidia 012 compared to the original. Jecht ends up Brainwashed and Crazy, Warrior of Light is prepared to forfeit his life to keep the war going a little longer, Cloud is subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle with Chaos, and the characters are overwhelmed, outnumbered and disorganized against the Manikins. Oh yes, and we get a Bolivian Army Ending with those six new characters you cheered for dying to try and stop the Manikins from overwhelming Cosmos. You spend much of the game up to that point watching the other characters drop like flies in the meantime—even if someone doesn't die on-screen, you're still told about it.
  • The original Dissidia, the bonus storyline Inward Chaos was just a gauntlet of all playable characters with maxed-out equipment and levels, and had a very weak Excuse Plot. Dissidia 012's bonus storyline Confessions of the Creator decides to show us what happens when the Powers That Be get annoyed with you and decide to Mind Rape you by trapping you in a recreation of your worst nightmare.
  • Chaos' new theme, God in Fire (Begins about three minutes in), very dark and bitter compared to The Messenger, and if you followed the chaos reports, It's pretty much telling you Dissidia Chaos' tragic backstory in song form.
• Darkest Hour: The Epilogue of "Treachery of the Gods" in Dissidia 012. Warrior of Light is facing a massive manikin army to protect Cosmos or else all the heroes will vanish with her death, the six new heroes are on a suicide mission to try and close the portal to the Rift, the other heroes lie dead by various means, and the Warriors of Chaos are none the worse for the wear of it all. It's implied that up to this point, this was the first time the balance of power in the war was so drastically shifted, and it very nearly came to its end.
• Dark Reprise: Sort of. The villains get their own version of the Victory Fanfare. It's in a minor key, begins with a rock riff, and overall has a "mwahaha, evil has won" feel to it.
  • The main theme of Dissidia begins with a remix of the classic Prelude theme. Dissidia 012 begins with a remix of the first Dissidia theme with an overall more intense and boisterous feel, then heads into original territory with the theme getting very deep and dark.
• David Versus Goliath: On the whole the Warriors of Cosmos are outclassed in many ways by the Warriors of Chaos. This is supported by the Chaos rules set.
• Daydream Surprise: Gilgamesh's ultimate triumph over Bartz turns out to be his fantasy of how the fight's going to go, right before he emerges from the Void to discover that Bartz can't remember him at all.
• Deadpan Snarker: Garland: "Am I to be a prisoner of these stupid plans again?" And Squall snarks in his thoughts a lot, such as when he encounters the Warrior of Light: "What a dazzling fellow."
  • In 012, with the introduction of pre-battle banter, a lot of characters turn into Deadpan Snarkers. Especially Kain.
• Death or Glory Attack: Sephiroth and Emperor both have attacks that call a giant meteor to slam opponents to the ground. This obviously does a lot of damage, but they can't defend themselves while charging up the attacks, leaving them very vulnerable. In their EX Modes, Ultimecia, Golbez, and Sephiroth get one of these each—the attacks paralyze enemies, Break enemies, and sap their Brave to 1, but again, have a very long charge time and they've no defense while they charge up.
  • Fortunately, in the US version, they can move with normal speed while charging their attacks. In the original Japanese version, their movement is cut in half while charging up, making them borderline Awesome, but Impractical.
• Deliberately Monochrome: In Dissidia 012, everything but the characters is in greyscale during EX Revenge.
• Demo Bonus: The only way to get Aerith as an Assist Character is to have a completed save for the demo.
• Designated Villain: Chaos. Once you get into the backstory you find out he really isn't evil at all—he's just doing what Garland, Cid, Cosmos and Shinryu have told him to do, and as such this is pretty much an Invoked Trope. It just happens he looks like a monstrous demon, and most of the warriors he calls to serve him are villainous.
  • Justified in the Reports for Dissidia 012, which explain that Chaos was used as a weapon of war, and the event that brought him and Cid to the world Dissidia takes place in was horrifyingly traumatic and anger-inducing. It makes sense that his appearance would be terrible and suited for violence.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Rhymes on a Dime is Shantotto's favorite trope. Yet the game has far fewer then most would hope. They need only look into the sound test. For though her win quotes are just one line. When placed together they fit just fine. Ohohoho!
  • The inclusion of Aerith allowed Square to show off a particularly nasty sense of humor... and they sure as hell didn't miss the chance to pull such a cruel joke.^note Yes, Sephiroth is programmed to use Hell's Gate on Aerith whenever she uses Holy. Make of that what you will.
  • One of the more subtle examples of attention to detail are the slash marks bladed weapons leave on non-destroyable walls and floors when they collide with one, especially when you consider the fact that characters are rarely close enough to any walls for them to occur and few of the stages have walls that reach all the way to the very top of the stage considering how air-based the combat is for most of the time: the most obvious example being the constant trail that Garland leaves on the floor when he drags his weapon around, but even most moves with preset animations can leave different types of marks on the walls depending on the angle of the midair moves and where the enemy is in relation to the wall.
• Diagonal Cut
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The heroes singlehandedly defeat the final boss from their respective games. And of course you defeat a god that can supposedly destroy the world at the end.
  • Firion and Bartz use punch attacks in Chase Sequence, while Jecht has Triumphant Grasp: so against Chaos, they can literally punch out Cthulhu!
    • For Jecht you mean like THIS?
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: The only way you can describe the conversation between Laguna and Cloud of Darkness. Makes a lot more sense when you discover Cloud of Darkness's motivation: to maintain the endless cycles. Telling Laguna how to defeat the Manikins would ultimately lead to the equilibrium that had maintained the previous 11 cycles. Except she didn't know about the crystals.
• Disc-One Nuke: Dissidia 012 completely overhauled the first game's equipment system, and if you know how you can get good stuff very early and put it to good use snapping the story mode's difficulty in half.
  • Downloading Prologus and completing all its achievements can get the player get a Midgar Flower and over fifty Chocobo Colognes when they begin Dissidia 012 and import their save data. Gil is won is smaller quantities compared to the first game, so the player can sell the Colognes for 100 gil a piece and buy themselves equipment that would otherwise be too expensive first-thing in the game.
  • The Cactuar summon. It only has two charges and does exactly 1000 damage to the opponent's Bravery. Useless once you get into the Confessions of the Creator storyline and the other gameplay modes. But in the 012 and 013 stories, 1000 instant Bravery damage is more than enough to seal the match in your favor, even if you're at a level disadvantage.
  • If you can scrounge up the KP to unlock them, you can buy the Bahamut and PuPu summonstones in the prologue of the 013 story. Behemoth instantly doubles your Bravery at the cost of -60 Bravery every second for a while after, while PuPu halves your Bravery in exchange for +60 Bravery every second. At the low levels of the 013 story, PuPu's initial drawback will be cancelled out in a few seconds, while Behemoth makes it easy to deal a One-Hit KO to even the highest level enemies by building up Bravery equal to half their HP, then calling Behemoth just as you deal the final blow. Additionally, after the prologue the game hands you the trade equipment needed to trade for a Rabbit's Foot, an accessory that recharges your summonstones faster and means that when one of these two summons is used up, the other will be ready to go again.
• Divine Conflict: The God of Discord, Chaos, and the Goddess of harmony, Cosmos, continually war against each other in an endless fight, with the heroes and villains as their soldiers. They do this by summoning characters from the FF series to fight for them.
• Dramatic Pause: Some of the characters sound like they're trying to imitate William Shatner and do a very, very bad job.
  Terra: "I won't let you...get away with it!"
  Kuja: "It is likely that...I will hurt you again."
  Zidane: "Or is my help...not good enough for you?"
  Cloud: "Fighting you...would be meaningless."
  • Kefka emphasizes the "dramatic" in Dramatic Pause.
    Kefka: "I'm afraid the mouse is SMACK...dabinthemiddleofenemyterritory."
• Doomed by Canon: You know there's some reason Lightning, Kain and the rest aren't around in the 13th cycle.
• Double Jump: Every character can jump at least twice, and certain equip abilities allow an extra three times on top of that. Zidane's EX Mode ability tacks on ten additional jumps on top of whatever abilities he has.

E

• Earn Your Happy Ending: Whether or not Duodecim's ending is Everybody Dies or Everybody Lives, the six "newcomers" from Duodecim go into the final battle certain they cannot possibly survive it. Some of them (Kain) go through hell just so they can be there to fall fighting with the rest. It doesn't slow a single one of them down, and their sacrifice, whatever its nature, facilitates the heroes' victory in the events of Dissidia.
• Edge Gravity: Characters performing a dodge on the ground will never fall off the edge of a platform. The AI, seemingly unaware of this, will on lucky occasions fail to dodge a player's attack by repeatedly dodging towards a nearby ledge and failing to move out of the way.
• Eldritch Abomination: Exdeath and Cloud of Darkness. Also technically Chaos.
• Elemental Powers: The heroes use the common Fire, Blizzard and Thunder spells. Terra, Shantotto, Bartz, Onion Knight, and the villains have access to higher-tier magic like Holy, Flare, Meteor, and Ultima. Kefka also uses the Fire-Blizzard-Thunder spells, but prefers their higher-tier "-aga" forms over the base forms the heroes use.
• Embedded Precursor: Upon completion of Dissidia 012's story, you can play a redone version of the first Dissidia's story.
• Empty Shell: The Warrior of Light was like this when he first appeared in the cycles of war. He could walk and talk (barely) under his own power but that was about it. When he was first discovered by Prishe it was assumed this was merely a side effect of being summoned. Turns out he's actually a clone and the reason he started out as a walking vegetable is a side effect of the cloning process.
• Enemy Civil War: While not outright war, the villains clearly do not get along and it isn't uncommon to find them plotting against and attacking one another.
• Eternal Villain: Garland is essentially one as a Blood Knight and The Fatalist out of all the other baddies, having been a prisoner of the previous cycles of war against the heroic Warriors of Cosmos summoned by the Gods and his timeless enemy the Warrior of Light since they began, and knows he will inevitably be caught in a time loop in his home world. As far as he's concerned, everything is predestined to happen and the other fighters in the war should accept their fates.
  Garland: As the conflict between the Gods carries on for all eternity, so our battles will be repeated. Forever and Ever!
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: Everyone gains a trail of sparkly magic during their EX Mode. Sephiroth's purple sparkles◊ are particularly amusing.
  • Fun fact: Onion Knight actually has two types of sparkles, depending on what version of his EX Mode he's in. Light blue for Sage, deep purple for Ninja.
• Evil Counterpart: For EX Bursts, anyway. Golbez, Sephiroth, Ultimecia, Kuja, and Jecht all use the same input systems for their Bursts as their heroic counterparts. The most literal examples are Squall and Ultimecia (compare Squall's "Lion Heart" with Ultimecia's "Sorceress Heart"), and Tidus and Jecht ("Blitz Ace" and "Blitz King", where instead of a Blitzball, Jecht kicks a frickin' meteor!)
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Exdeath and Cloud of Darkness, just due to their Eldritch Abomination nature. Kefka and Kuja also appear to suffer from this, being unable to understand concepts like compassion and trust, and showing confusion at their corresponding heroes' attempts to reach out to them. Quite a few of the villains' plans are mucked up by the fact that Machiavelli Was Wrong.
• Evil Is Hammy: All of the villains (especially Exdeath), save Sephiroth and Ultimecia. The Emperor is usually cool and collected, but when he breaks out the ham, he does so in epic fashion.
• Evil Plan: The Emperor's plan for the Warriors of Cosmos to get all the crystlas so that Cosmos' power would die and she'd be able to be killed. Then, by using Jecht's crystal from the previous cycle, he would survive Chaos and the worlds' destruction and become the new god of the universe. It almost works... but Cosmos has the last laugh through a gambit of her own.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Garland, Golbez well, not quite, Exdeath, and Chaos. The last one is voiced by Norio Wakamoto and Keith David, by the way.
• Expy:
  • The Emperor is quite a bit like Seymour (they look alike, use similar weapons, and both have rivalries with Yuna). In fact, when Yuna and Tidus battle him in Dissidia 012's story mode, "Fight with Seymour" is the music that plays.

F

• The Faceless: A good number of baddies hide their faces beneath their helms. See below.
• Fake Difficulty: In Dissidia 012, once you get to the 13th cycle (in other words, the new version of the events of the original game), a "bonus line" is introduced to the enemy gateways. If you don't set your character's level equal to or lower than the recommended level, you'll get a KP penalty and be unable to gain new KP for the Moogle Shops. Made even more frustrating when the character you are restricting to a low level is done so from being at the max level do to data import. Or, inversely, your characters began at level one but you're fighting on a bonus day, resulting in you leveling up faster and going over the bonus lines.
• Fake Longevity: The top-tier equipment pieces need rare trade accessories to buy, in Dissidia you need to play the Colosseum courses to get them and in Dissidia 012 you can find them inside multi-floor gateways in "Confessions of the Creator". Additionally, all equipment pieces require a lower-level equipment piece to trade for, and in Dissidia 012, some need two. This means you'll not only grind for the trade accessories you need to trade for Level 100 gear, you also have to grind for the trade accessories needed for lower-level gear you have to buy just to trade it in for the next tier up. The only way out of this cycle is the Elixir-type items you can use to trade for specific trade accessories you need in the shop, but in Dissidia they're also obtained in the Colosseum, and in Dissidia 012 you can only buy one a week from the Cornelia moogle, when some of them are needed in quantities of up to five to trade for what you need.
• Fan Disservice: Chaos's loincloth.
• Fanservice: Of both the "sexy" kind and the nerdy kind. The cast is packed full of shapely beautiful women and well-built handsome men, both of the Bishōnen kind and the ruggedly manly, and the game is packed with Mythology Gags, Shout Outs and series in-jokes.
  • Just listen to Sephiroth taunting Cloud in the Shade Impulse chapters and try to imagine anyone besides a yaoi fan writing this dialogue. It's impossible.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: It's Final Fantasy. Ranges from Chaos with his lopsided horns to Tidus who is lucky his shoes match each other.
• Field of Blades: The Brink of Madness stage is a war-torn Mordor full of gigantic sword pierced into the ground. And by gigantic, we mean two to three stories tall. Chaos uses as many as four of said blades at the same time for his ultimate attack.
• Fighting Your Friend: Cloud vs. Firion, Squall vs. Warrior of Light, and Onion Knight vs. Terra.
• Fill It with Flowers: Firion's dream is to fill the world with wild roses.
• Finishing Move: Due to game mechanics, EX Bursts often tend to become these. Less so in the sequel, where EX Bursts are less powerful overall. In both games, though, you get a significant XP bonus for ending the match with a Burst.
• Flanderization: Justified. Coming to the world of Dissidia strips a summoned warrior of most of their memories and they recover them as they fight, and when a warrior is defeated in a cycle they lose their memories of it in the next cycle. In both cases though the memory is not entirely gone, and the character may have small fragments left and also retains their emotional reactions to what happened. The result of this is many characters regressing Character Development they went through in their original games because they've lost their memories. By contrast, characters who have been in the cycle for a long time have recovered much of their memories and act more like themselves. Either way, the subplot of the warriors losing and reclaiming their memories is also used to justify why their behaviors in these games is similar to the original title.
  • Firion is obsessed with the Wild Rose and dreams of a world full of roses; he has no memories of the Wild Rose Rebellion and their war with the Palamecian Empire, but he remembers its sigil and associates it with the idea of freedom, even if he doesn't understand why.
  • Cecil is torn over his brother fighting for Chaos and wonders if he can trust him; Cecil just joined the war in the 12th cycle and has barely gotten any of his memories back, so he's focused on reconnecting with Golbez as one of the few things he can recall at all, but he can't remember enough about him to be sure where Golbez's alliegances lie. Kain's status as a traitor to Cosmos is because he learns the truth of the cycles of war and starts striking down his comrades so he can hide their bodies somewhere safe and ensure they'll survive to the next cycle.
  • Terra is afraid of losing control of her powers and doesn't want to fight if she can help it. She's spent most of the previous cycles of war under Kefka's mind control and he used her to fight for him; even though she doesn't remember this, she retains the emotions of having no control over her abilities and being forced to fight against her will.
  • Cloud is unmotivated and doesn't see the point in fighting for Cosmos; he's a veteran of many past cycles and remembered them up until the 13th, so he knows the wars never end and has grown disinterested in perpetuating them. Sephiroth is focused on fighting Cloud and goads him into chasing him; memories return faster when you fight someone from the same world as you, so Sephiroth focusing on manipulating Cloud into fighting him so he can recover his memories makes perfect sense. Tifa is new to the wars in the 12th cycle and she has few memories to hold onto; this results in her loneliness and concern for her friends being exaggerated because she has so little else to worry about and they're the only people she knows.
  • Squall has been around the cycles a few times and knows warriors are coming and going from them often and memories are fleeting, so he doesn't see the point of getting close to his comrades because either of them may forget the other in the next cycle, if they're even still fighting.
  • Kuja had Fake Memories implanted in him by Kefka prior to the 13th cycle to make him more villainous, and his discovery of this is what prompts him to scheme and manipulate as he does to prove he's still powerful and deserving of respect no matter the state of his memories.
  • Tidus joined the wars in the 12th cycle and had no memories at all, until the Emperor fought him and his memories of Jecht awakened; Tidus is focused on beating Jecht because his hatred of his father and desires to surpass him is all he knows.
  • Gabranth fought in enough cycles to know the wars repeat endlessly and he sought to escape them, and ended up trapped in a limbo hell-dimension. This is the source of his hatred and rage to the gods that serves as his main motivation to fight. It is also unclear to what extent he remembers his homeland, but as with other characters, it may be he only has enough memories of Basch to recall the intense hatred Gabranth held for him, but not the cause of that hate.
• Foregone Conclusion: Dissidia 012 is the 12th cycle, and a lot of the events of that cycle were at least referenced during the 13th, so several plot points can be guessed at, if not predicted outright.
  • This means that Sephiroth haters will get to see Sephiroth commit suicide (as mentioned in the original by The Emperor). However this also means that Sephiroth fans will be forced to see Sephiroth commit suicide.
• Foreshadowing: In Laguna's story in Dissidia 012, Vaan and Laguna discuss why Cosmos doesn't use her powers to nuke every Manikin there is, and Laguna reasons it's because she's focusing her powers on the stability of the world and can't afford to divert her energy to fighting. Come the end of the 12th cycle that's exactly what she does to protect the Warrior of Light, and as a result in the 13th cycle she's still weak from the effort.
• Full-Name Basis: In the Japanese versions, if a character has a full name, then they are referred to it in the HUD (ex. Cloud Strife, Squall Leonheart, Zidane Tribal). Overseas, only their first names are used.
• Funny Background Event: After Bartz gets caught observing the Emperor, Ultimecia, and Sephiroth just as they were about to fight amongst themselves. While The Emperor and Ultimecia contemplate what to do with Bartz, Sephiroth takes the opportunity to walk away nonchalantly.

G

• Gambit Pileup: Pretty much every villain has his/her own secret scheme s/he's working on while pretending to work with the other minions of Chaos.
• Game-Breaker: Firion's EX Mode (Blood Sword) and Bartz's EX Burst (Spellblade Dual-Wield Rapidfire) are both nods to invoked game-breakers in their original games.
• Game Mod: Numerous texture hacks have sprung up that alter the appearances of characters to various purposes: some hacks are just palette swaps, others are meant to directly transform a character's appearance into someone else. Unsurprisingly, a number of the latter for Kingdom Hearts characters. Cloud and Sephiroth are common targets for texturing due to their BFS and Badass Longcoat. Though not as widespread, texturing entire arenas is possible too, such as the Chaos Shrine textured as Castle Oblivion.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The original game made frequent references to characters venturing deep into enemy territory or going off alone after traveling with others, which was pretty much impossible to show since there's only 10 arenas usable for storytelling and thus there's never a consistent sense of distance between them. With the world map in Dissidia 012 it is far clearer when characters split because they actually do it, and characters heading into enemy turf actually head to the Lands of Discord now.
  • Dissidia 012, the summon stones the player finds in gateways note they come and go as they please and will refuse the player's commands unless it suits them. This is because the summons the player finds are the Auto versions, which come under pre-set conditions and can't be called manually.
  • Also in 012, in the Epilogue of Light to All, the player finds no enemies outside of gateways, the teleport stone to the main continent is gone, and the Omega arenas begin to be used in battle. The party alludes to the main continent being destroyed (hence no teleport stone to it), the enemies outside the gateways are implied to have been caught in the world's destruction-in-progress, and the Omega arenas are attributed to the same.
  • A meta-example, Cecil learns more Dark Knight attacks than Paladin attacks at earlier levels, and his Paladin moves come at later levels, roughly reflecting his class change in his original game. Assuming you don't level him up prior to his storyline, he'll probably begin to get to that point in level at the end of the storyline, and during all prior cutscenes of his story before facing Golbez he appeared as a Dark Knight, then shifts into Paladin to face Golbez.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: To get through the storylines, of course the player wins their boss battles, but the cut scene right after often shows the villain standing up unharmed and walking away. A particularly noteworthy example is Firion's battle with Jecht, where after the fight ends, Jecht is casually stretching and goading Firion to keep fighting, while Firion is kneeling and panting! This has sparked some dispute over whether Terra beat Cloud, or if Warrior of Light beat Sephiroth, for the same reasons as above.
  • And then there's Gameplay And Gameplay Segregation—A lot of the equippable weapons in the game are used in-battle by characters already regardless of what they have equipped. For example, you need to get Squall to Level 100 to equip his Lionheart, but his EX Mode will say "Equipped Lionheart" regardless of level.
  • A slightly more meta example of Gameplay and Story Segregation occurs in 012. While Tidus, Terra, Cloud and Jecht are initially on different alignments in the story mode, functionally, they're still on their proper teams from the original game, as evidenced by the backgrounds of their EX Bursts and their victory themes.
• Giggling Villain: Kefka (naturally) and Sephiroth of all people (a maddening little "Hmm-hmm-hmm" that he does constantly), primarily. In fact, about half of the villains' Dodge "quotes" are this, with the exception of Garland ("NICE TRY!"), Golbez, Kuja ("WELL NOW!"), Gabranth, and Chaos.
• Glass Cannon: The "Gold" Manikins have little to no HP (often just a single point left) but ridiculously enhanced Brave and an aggressive, fast AI; you can kill them in one hit, but good luck actually connecting.
  • Dissidia 012, the Final Strike and Ancient Weapon equipment sets. Final Strike gives considerable boosts to your EX and Assist, but the three armor pieces are Level 1 so you have pitiful defenses. Ancient Weapon has high-level stats for all four pieces and grants an offensive boost of 50%, but with a penalty of:40% defense.
    • The infamous Iai Strike accessory build. Reduce your character's level to 1, remove their equipment, and then equip Smiting Soul along with level and equipment-centric Boosters. Against level 91+ enemies, you can achieve a Multiplier of 99.9 with the right Boosters, resulting in guaranteed Iai Strikes that will put you at 9999 Bravery with one attack. However, you also have a Level 1 character with no equipment, and a 20% defense penalty due to the Smiting Soul, multiplied by 99.9%. Though if you factor in a Safety Bit...
  • Gabranth to a degree. He's a Lightning Bruiser in terms of combat once he gets into EX Mode, but landing an Assist attack on him will inflict EX Break and deplete his gauge.
• Global Currency Exception - Dissidia 012 has a number of moogles floating around the map, each of which can sell you a variety of items. Instead of accepting gil, they use the KP (Kupo!) that you accumulate inside enemy gateways.
• Godhood Seeker: Kefka lampshades how many villains (including himself) believe themselves to be gods or aim to become them after getting particularly flustered at Sephiroth.
  "He's just another sadist with a god complex. Like that's anything special."
• Golem: The Manikins, artificial soldiers in the shape of the various characters, commanded by Chaos. The Chaos Reports reveal that they are the result of failed attempts to give physical bodies to spirits drifting through the Rift.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Let's see: characters, cleared chapters, summons, accomplishments, battlegen items, weapons, equipment, accessories, icons, Cosmos reports, Chaos reports, mastered abilities... this could take a while...
• Guide Dang It!: Standard fare for a Final Fantasy game. Some examples include where to get most of the trade accessories, the passwords for the Ghost battle cards that drop the aforementioned accessories, how to properly time the attacks of some characters (especially Jecht), and more. Almost mocking are some of the game's 151 Accomplishments, some of which state outright what to do to complete them, others of which give only vague hints like "trust the totema" or "the end of the journey".
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: As the Chaos Reports reveal, the cycle of Dissidia had already happened 12 times before when the heroes finally break it during the 13th time through.
• Grind Boots: Nearly all of the stages have "grind bars" of some sort. What they look like depends on what stage you're on, the can be arcs of light, walls, stone ridges, or the freaking Lifestream itself!.

H

• Ham-to-Ham Combat: With characters like Garland and Kefka in the mix, it's inevitable.
  Garland: Nothing but a jester!
  Kefka: You battle-obsessed nimrod!
• Head Bob: Characters seem to spontaneously lose control of their neck muscles when they talk. Exhibit A.
• Heroic Willpower: Golbez reveals to Cecil that this is the secret of the crystal. That they show themselves to those who exhibit the strongest will.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Garland is knocked down by Zidane who was created by a Garland from another world/universe/reality.
  • In game example: Most magical Bravery attacks can be reflected back at the opponent, damaging them and potentially Breaking them as though it were your own attack. Some projectile-based HP attacks can also be deflected, allowing Terra to be killed by her own Meltdown, or—the one you're most likely to see—the Emperor killed by his own Flare.
  • Certain summon effects can easily backfire, like Kraken (switches the Bravery of both fighters after a period of time) or Marilith (freezes opponent's Bravery after a period of time).
• Hopeless Boss Fight: An optional one at the beginning of Dissidia 012. You say you've "mastered Dissidia" to that Moogle? Come and get your ass kicked. Strictly speaking it isn't entirely hopeless, as a player using cheats successfully defeated the opponent, proving that victory is at least hypothetically possible. However given the massive strength difference it would take mastery of the game far beyond reasonable levels to win fairly.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted by Firion, who is shown carrying his weapons. And he carries a lot of weapons, though he does activate it from time to time, such as when sparring with Cloud in order to prevent his thrown daggers from hitting his ally. Everyone else plays this fairly straight (they carry their weapons in battle, but other cutscenes have them no where to be seen), but this is exemplified by Bartz, who constantly summons and dismisses everyone else's weapons as needed.
  • In the sequel, Lighting also averts it by carrying her Gun Blade in a holster behind her at her waist (just like her original game, her victory pose is putting it away) while Vaan is up there with Bartz due to the sheer number of weapons he summons, though they're all unique to him.
• Hypocritical Humor: Oh man, where do we start? Combined with all of the Mythology Gag humor, this is what makes up just about half of the game. Shining examples:
  • Quistis claiming equipment and accessories are the most important thing in combat (Final Fantasy VIII caught a lot of flak for not including equipment at all)
  • Cecil stating that Golbez is not the same as Exdeath (It's a running gag in FF fandom that the two look the same and have roughly the same plot battle scenes. True, Cecil was talking about morality here, but still...)
  • This statement showing Kefka's meta-humour:
  "[Sephiroth's] just another sadist with a God complex... like THAT'S something special!"
  • When facing Yuna, Squall will ask her "Can't you fight alone?" This is coming from the guy who couldn't use items in battle without junctioning a GF first.

I

• I Am Your Opponent: Warrior of Light to Sephiroth. Zidane to Garland. Ultimecia to Firion. The Emperor to Tidus... Basically, this happens a lot.
• Improbable Age: In the first game, the oldest hero with an explicit age (Cloud) is twenty-one. The Warrior of Light, who doesn't have a canon age can't be much older, if indeed he is older at all. Firion, by the way, is 18. Most don't know because it's hidden so deep in old Japanese game books.
• Improbable Weapon User: Garland's massive sword which can be extended on a chain, split in two and transform into an axe. Also Squall's Gunblade.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Rather literally, depending on the build you're using the more generic Level 99 weapons, (Heaven's Cloud, Excalibur II, Earthbreaker, Nirvana, to name a few), are superior to the exclusive Level 100 weapons as mentioned below. If you really want to get out there, the Level 85 Imp Equipment and Level 81 Heike equipment have their uses too.
  • Special shoutout to the Lufenian gear:- it was a reward from the Bonus Dungeon in the original, in 012 it's farmable in Confessions of the Creator and will be your best gear until you get to the optional multi-floor gateways where you can get the trade materials needed to trade for comparable equipment.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Firion, Cloud, Squall, and Tidus get theirs from their games during their EX Modes. Also, Bartz gets the Brave Blade for the final attack of his EX Burst.
  • Subverted with Cecil and Zidane—Cecil's two EX Mode weapons, the Mythgraven Blade and the Deathbringer, are strictly early-game weapons, being the Sword of Plot Advancement and the last Evil Weapon used before the Heel–Face Turn, respectively. Likewise, Zidane's weapons (the two daggers are the Mage Mashers and the fused sword is The Ogre) are strictly disc-one weapons in the original game.
  • Every character has at least one Infinity +1 Sword in their arsenal in the form of their lvl-100-exclusive. (They all also have a lvl-50 and a lvl-ninetysomething-exclusive, that functions either as a Infinity -1 Sword or another Infinity +1 Sword depending on character build). In yet another series of Mythology Gags and Continuity Nods, these exclusives are often named after Infinity Plus One Swords in the character's original game.
• Instant Expert: Since Experience Points are assigned in real time, characters can level up in the middle of a battle: and do, with associated increases to their stats. This is particularly noticeable if you use the Exdeath level grinding technique, where after landing an HP attack your own HP will jump up a thousand points or more as you level up several times at once.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Actual characters, of all things, in Dissidia 012. In some Gateways your Assist character will block access to enemies or other items, forcing you to go around them instead of you being able to just get them to move. The bonus storyline takes notice of this by giving you the option to remove your Assist from the map by challenging them to battle, then deliberately puts them in the way of items or enemies. Have fun fighting Gabranth without an Assist because you just had to get those two chests they were guarding.
• Interactive Narrator: The narrator is actually Cid of the Lufaine. In the secret ending, he carries on a conversation with Cosmos. His position as narrator is actually justified in the Chaos Reports. He sold his body in a deal with Shinryu for power over the conflict.
• Interface Screw: The World of Darkness Omega stage randomly shifts from the normal stage to one of two alternate stages, signaled by flakes of darkness appearing around the arena. Any attacks that a character was performing will cease, and against AI opponents they're liable to attack you during the shift before you even get a chance to gather your bearings in this new arena. Additionally, while attacks are interrupted, any projectiles out and about remain, they just change over with the arena, so it's possible to dodge an opponent's projectile attack just as the arena changes, then in the new arena have that same projectile hit you from behind before you even know it's there.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • In Dissidia 012 Team Cosmos now has a blue backdrop for the EX Bursts, while Team Chaos keeps the orange backdrops. Terra, Cloud and Tidus have a blue backdrop while Jecht has an orange one, despite their change in alignments. Of course the respective Heel Face and Face Heel Turns are a Foregone Conclusion.
  • In the original game, the end piece of a stage would either be a Chaos Piece or Cosmos Piece, so the sight of one is a tip-off a boss is coming. This continues into Dissidia 012; while the Cosmos Piece is now exclusively reserved for the entrance to Order's Sanctuary and doesn't necessarily indicate a boss, the new Engima Piece is supposed to represent a mystery opponent, but most of the time indicates a fight with a warrior of Cosmos. Though this does make it a genuinely effective surprise in Kain's chapter — given that he's known to be taking out his allies and the opening says he's hiding them in the desert, you're expecting the boss of his chapter will be Firion, since he takes Firion to the gateway in the desert and the boss piece is an Enigma Piece. However, Kain takes out Firion in a cutscene and the real boss, Exdeath, arrives.
    • Also used for an effective double subversion in Terra's chapter of the 013 storyline. The end piece of one of her gateways is an Enigma Piece, and if you played the original Dissidia you know you're at the point in her story where she ought to be fighting Cloud, so you're going to be expecting that. The Enigma Piece instead initiates a battle with a Phantasmal Harlequin, a normal Manikin. But when it is defeated, the game immediately segues into the cutscene where Cloud arrives and he and Terra have their fight.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Though game is coy about how the continuities work.
• Ironic Echo: When Squall returns Bartz' feather to him, he speaks Bartz' line when he gave Squall the feather before. Thus miming the mime.
  • In Shade Impulse, shortly before fighting the Emperor:
  Emperor: Insects may swarm, but they are insects nonetheless.

  • And then, after beating him (if you happened to be playing as Firion):

  Emperor: How could I lose... not once but twice? Who are you?
  Firion: Just a swarm of insects.

  • Some other characters will have their own Ironic Echoes for the Emperor:
  Cecil: Insects with a sting.
  Bartz: I heard you call us insects!
  Cloud: Just another bug.
• I Will Fight Some More Forever: One of the central plot points. The war has been going on for many cycles, and the secret reports indicate that Cosmos has never won. The amnesia means that most characters don't realizes this, but when they do reactions vary. In the twelfth, the Warrior and Kain decided to just reset the cycle rather than suffer a permanent loss, hoping for a better outcome on the next round.

J

• Jiggle Physics: Tifa bounces considerably. It's especially noticeable in her taunt and EX-burst. During her victory pose, her boobs move up and down when she is standing still.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The plot of each individual story chapter is fairly straightforward, but the overarcing mythos and history of the Dissidia world is cut up between the three storylines, the Reports, and the "Official Quests" that were only released in Japan and playable through the game's Custom Quest mode. Once you have all this information available and know how it fits together, most of it all makes sense, but getting to that point is a struggle, and the plot is still very convoluted and has some elements that are not fully explained and left open to interpretation. This is not helped by the fact that, due to the nature of how memories are distorted in the Dissidia world, everyone is an Unreliable Narrator, and this is evident several times when someone says something that is demonstrably false. Further complicating things is that the voiced cutscenes in Dissidia were not redone for Dissidia 012, and 012 Retconned a couple things, so the information given in some cutscenes doesn't line up with what happens elsewhere in the story, especially the scenes concerning Garland and Chaos — once again, one must assume Unreliable Narrator is in effect to Hand Wave such things away.
• Jump Physics: Everyone gets at least one double jump, and certain characters are themselves an exercise in giving gravity the finger, particularly the Final Fantasy IX characters — Kuja gets to glide freely in the air and Zidane gains ten additional jumps on top of the base double jump.
  • And naturally, Kain Highwind, who's signature attack and EX Burst are jumps of varying height.
• Just Between You and Me: The villains simply cannot resist invoking this trope, though it's a good thing since a lot of the plot would be much more vague if their side of the story wasn't explained. The only villains who don't invoke this are the Cloud of Darkness and Sephiroth, who prefer to deliver their rivals a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Jecht, who has no secret schemes to talk about, and Kefka (in Shade Impulse, at least), who seems to taunt the heroes about having knowledge about what they did to Cosmos, but if they wish to know, decides not to tell as a means of further taunting.

K

• KidAnova: Zidane Tribal from Final Fantasy IX is 16-years-old, and even though his love interest Garnet shares his age, he hits on much older women as well. In Dissidia Final Fantasy he hits on Shantotto, who, while tiny, is somewhere in her 30s, Tifa Lockhart, who's in the 20-23 range, and even Cosmos, the Goddess of Harmony. Then there's his choice to tackle Garland over a gap that few of the characters can cross without aerial evasion abuse ^note to elaborate: Garland's sword dwarfs Cloud Strife and his Buster Sword, Garland is bigger than his sword, and he is covered head to foot in armour bar one of his alt costumes because he "didn't feel like fighting a lady"—referring to Ultimecia, the time witch.
• Killed Off for Real: This is the true threat of the Manikins. If Warriors of Cosmos die fighting Warriors of Chaos, they will be reborn in the next cycle to fight another day. But the Manikins fight relentlessly and will keep attacking until there's nothing left to be reborn, promising a true death.
• Koan: One type of the materials required to make each character's ultimate weapon has a Koan relating to each of the characters', well, character. Some can be seen as Ice Cream Koans, though.

L

• Lampshade Hanging: A lot more than you would expect from a Final Fantasy title. Given this game is a celebration of 20 years of history, there's a lot of in-jokes and self-referential humor.
  • Vaan remarks on the inexplicable rose petals that appear when Lightning does some of her attacks, and he doesn't know where they come from but they look cool.
  • Zidane makes a quip in 012 that "there's not enough females in this world" — he says this in the 013 cycle, where Terra is the only female Warrior of Cosmos left, but there were more in earlier cycles.
  • In her storyline, Shantotto offers the player a choice of to help her or not. A text box appears to agree or refuse, but the cursor won't move and the player has no option but to say yes. Shantotto then laughs that "that illusion of choice was a mere formality."
  • In one of the Reports for 012, Garland muses on the Stable Time Loop in the original Final Fantasy of Chaos pulling his future self 2000 years into the past to become Chaos, and that such a time loop is impossible — he couldn't have pulled himself back at first, some other force must have pulled him back at the start of the loop. Given that Garland as he arrives in the world of Dissidia is the one the Warriors of Light just defeated, and it is implied that when Garland fades away upon his final defeat he's returning to his own world 2000 years earlier, the implication is that this is how the time loop began.
  • Sabin comments on how the character viewer doesn't let you rotate the female characters up and down, but his brother said something about the in-game battle replay viewer "being useful for that".
  • Kefka repeatedly pulls Not-So-Different Remarks on other villains who look down on his antics, pointing out that a lot of them are also mass-destructive maniacs with God complexes — the only difference is that he's having fun with it.
  • Dissidia 012 also lampshades the original Dissidia a bit.
    • Many characters mock Exdeath's walking speed and obsession with the Void after such things became fandom jokes in the first game.
    • Firion's obsession with the "wild rose" was played strictly serious in the first game. In the prequel, a few characters remark on how silly it is that he's deeply interested in a flower, and Firion himself is a bit embarassed, to the point it takes him time to work up the courage to ask Lightning to give it back when she finds it after he loses it.
    Firion: A grown man asking for his flower back...
  • Exchanging letters with the Mognet moogles allows such gems as mocking Ultimecia's clothing as ridiculous, applauding the graphical improvements between the PS2 and PS3 allowing for more detailed facial hair between Auron and Snow, calling Quistis hot and smart (possibly because of her glasses), and more.
• Large Ham: Many characters have OVER THE TOP dialogue, particularly Garland and Exdeath.
  • Kefka at least has the excuse that he's totally insane.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The warriors of Cosmos (and maybe Chaos) have varying degrees of this; some can remember a fair amount about their pasts while others only retain snippets. While this was only implied in the first game, Dissidia 012 confirms it, and gives it more explanation. When the warriors of Cosmos and Chaos are summoned to the world (or if they fall and are revived in the next cycle), they lose their memories, but begin to regain them the more they fight.
  • With that said, the losing side of any cycle loses all memory of that cycle, resulting in things like Bartz finding that he can mimic abilities that none of his immediate allies can use.
• Last Stand: The ending of the main 012 scenario.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Though you don't have to have played the main series games to understand the story of Dissidia, it doesn't have any problem spoiling those games, such as casually mentioning that Cecil is a Paladin and he and Golbez are brothers, Gabranth is Basch's Evil Twin, and Garland and Chaos are the same person. Heck, half the characters' EX Modes are spoilers for their respective games: Kuja can enter Trance, Terra is half-Esper, Exdeath is actually a tree, etc. The very existence of the Cloud of Darkness and Ultimecia also count. For some cases it's understandable since the games are quite old and knowledge about them is likely widespread, and depicting the characters accurately demands a level of foreknowledge about their original appearance. Dissidia 012 however takes cues from Final Fantasy IV: The After Years by giving Golbez a Man in Black outfit and Kain a Hooded Man outfit; The After Years came out a mere two years before Dissidia 012 and the identities of the Man in Black and the Hooded Man are major end-game plot twists. Whoops.
• Legion of Doom: The Warriors of Chaos.
• Left Hanging: The Reports mention four warriors in a past cycle, one with a deep connection to Shinryu, and the other three were too badly weakened and were destroyed by Shinryu's purification. Though the warrior connected to Shinryu could possibly be Exdeath, since he and Shinryu are so closely related to the Void and come from the same game, the identities of the other three are unknown.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Part of the whole contrast and conflict between the good Cosmos (light) and Chaos (dark).
• Limit Break: EX Burst; also referenced in Cloud's and Sephiroth's EX Bursts where the phrase is actually used (since, y'know, the game they hail from is the Trope Namer).
• Lip Lock: Most of the characters suffer from it to some degree at various times, but Cloud in particular has a horrible case of this, with random awkward William Shatner-esque pauses in the middle of half his lines (contrast with the same actor's performance in Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts, where he... didn't talk... like this). The way Kefka says one of his lines seems to be a parody of this trope.
  • Thankfully, however, the quality of the dubbing is much better in Dissidia 012, including Steve Burton's performance, which doesn't suffer from the awkward pauses this time around. Unfortunately, the higher quality of the new material only manages to highlight how bad the old scenes, which are included in the game, were.
• Locomotive Level: The Phantom Train in Dissidia 012.
• Loners Are Freaks: Squall is openly mocked (and in one case, outright attacked by one of the heroes of Cosmos) because he refuses to travel with his True Companions and fights all of his battles alone. Of course, he has reasons for this beyond selfish solitude. Though initially it appears this is because of Ultimecia, the Warrior of Light also comes to understand this after they fight. Of course, the Warrior of Light is also traveling alone and Squall calls him out on it.^note For the curious, Squall travels alone so that he can draw more enemies, thus taking some of the burden off his allies. He gets better.
  • Sephiroth also gets a bit of this when refusing to cooperate with the Emperor and Ultimecia.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • As covered up Fake Longevity, a lot of your time in the end-game will be spent grinding out trade accessories so you can get the high-level equipment. However, enemies can drop their equipment, and you can also Battlegen the components for their equipment, including the other equipment pieces. So the option is available to just go into Quickbattle and reset until the enemy is equipped with something you want, and fight them over and over until you get it. Friend Cards actually encourage this — the developers released "official" Friend Cards equipped with trade accessories that can't be obtained otherwise, so you have to fight them in order to get them, but you can also create and fight your own Friend Card, so as long as you have at least one copy of what you want to farm in large numbers, you can create the perfect punching bag to grind against.
  • In Dissidia 012, the KP Chances in Scenario 000 are ridiculously difficult, and in some gateways the KP Chance can be to beat opponents in under 30 or 60 seconds - opponents who are Level 100 or higher and have top-level equipment, lots of Bravery to get through to inflict Break, and summons. Having trouble? Weaken them with your first party member, then let them kill you — the second party member in line will begin a new battle, the enemy will have however much HP the first party member left them with, but the KP Chance timer will start over and reward you the KP.
• Lost in Translation: The English translators caught a great deal of the allusions to the original translations of the games and fit them in. It just makes it all the more painful to notice the allusions that are Lost in Translation. One example is Ultimecia's victory quote "Reality is harsh, is it not?" being a direct translation of the original Japanese version of Edea's speech, but it ended up only vaguely paraphrasing the original English version of the same line, "This is reality, no one can help you." As another example, the Final Fantasy IV stage is called "Lunar Subterrane," while the stage is quite clearly the moon's surface and not the cavern's under it.
  • Played pretty much straight in the Spanish version of the game, which translated many, many things ignoring whatever they were called when the game appeared on Spain.
  • An arguable case seen in every version: During the end credits, a montage of all the player characters in their pre-boss-battle cutscenes is shown, with remixed music from the ending themes of their respective games. When it gets to Terra's segment, it plays a remix of of the first part of Final Fantasy VI's ending theme- which just so happens to be a remix of Cyan's leitmotif. This might have been deliberate, as it was the first part of the original song, but there was also a remix of Terra's leitmotif later in the same song so it's still an odd choice.
  • One could very easily argue that the writers of the Chaos and Cosmos Reports only briefly skimmed a plot synopsis of Final Fantasy.
  • Shinryu's museum profile in Dissidia 012 listed him as appearing in Final Fantasy XII...and he didn't.
  • Lesser examples exclude simple erroneous translations, like Cecil's Saint's Fall and Kain's Sky Rave, meant to be named after Band attacks in The After Years, Saint Dive and Sky Grinder.
  • Tifa's "Orthopedic Underwear" accessory is bizarrely translated as "Stretch Boxers".

M

• Made of Iron: Everyone. Blast them with forbidden ancient magic, slash and impale them repeatedly with swords and spears, crush them with meteors, knock them halfway across the arena face-first into a wall that breaks from the force of the impact. They'll just walk it off. Less so with the manikins, which are shown to visibly shatter into pieces in cutscenes and during gameplay if the HP attack that killed them was close to ground.
• Malevolent Architecture: The majority of the ? versions of the stages are out to hurt you. For example, the active version of Castle Pandaemonium has spikes popping out of random parts of the ground.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Duh...
• Mecha-Mooks, Evil Knockoffs: The Manikins, crystalline clones of each character that make up Story Mode's not-so-random encounters.
• Meanwhile Scene: The villains run this tropes to its extreme, with about half the dialogue scenes in each Destiny Odyssey storyline focusing on the villains scheming against the heroes, and entire cutscenes in Shade Impulse.
  • Dissidia 012 introduces The Reports, a series of written notes that work like a Cliff Notes version explaining the origins of Cosmos, Chaos, Garland and the Manikins. They also allow you to view scenes that occur parallel to the main story but aren't seen. Kuja's entire character arc for the 12th cycle is contained within these reports, as is Cloud's encounter with Tifa and Golbez's meeting with Cosmos.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Most characters fight using Bravery attacks to build up Bravery, HP attacks to deal HP damage, and landing attacks generates EX Force that fills an EX Gauge, when filled the character can enter EX Mode for a temporary power boost. With Gabranth however, his Bravery attacks are slow and weak and his HP attack automatically charges up his EX Gauge. When it fills and he enters EX Mode, his entire moveset changes, turning him into a Lightning Bruiser with powerful attacks and high movement speed, but only until the gauge depletes, at which point he goes back to normal and has to charge it up again.
• Mêlée à Trois: Subverted when Garland and Kuja decide it's not worth fighting if Jecht is going to join in.
• Mind Control: At two points in the main story, Terra's mind is taken over by Kefka, forcing her to fight two of her allies, Onion Knight and Cloud. It is also heavily implied that she previously fought on the side of Chaos, under Kefka's control, reflecting her initial situation in Final Fantasy VI.
  • Cloud actually fights her to cool her off, as he later explains. Terra understands and appreciates the fact that he essentially let her beat the crap out of him.
  • Jecht, nearing the end of 012, gets brainwashed by the Emperor and Chaos.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The Crystals yet again. As an interesting set of throwbacks, each hero's Crystal is modeled after a Crystal, or crystal-like item (Magicite, Materia, Spheres) from their own world, or, failing that, some important motif of their game.
  • Squall's is the only one that looks out of place until you realize they're feathers. And Rinoa has a feather motif.
• Min-Maxing: All characters have 450 CP with which to equip attacks, action commands like dashes and jumps, and support skills. This means characters like Jecht and Ultimecia will have lots of CP to spare because of their small movesets, while characters with larger movesets like Cecil, Lightning, and Gabranth will have less CP to devote to support skills. Characters with multiple movesets will often also have discounts on CP costs, though.
  • This trope is pretty much the only thing that balances Feral Chaos—his moves are obscenely strong, but they have about twice the CP cost of other characters, and his support and action skills like dodging, dashing, etc, cost more than normal characters. 450 CP goes fast when Bravery attacks are 30 CP and HP attacks are 50. Even with Accessories to boost max CP, it's impossible to equip him with a full set of attacks without sacrificing other skills.
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: The box art and PSP theme.
  • The box art itself (the paper insert in the box's plastic cover) is actually reversible, too. One side shows the heroes gathered together; take it out, flip it around, and put it back in, and your box art now has the equivalent shot done by the villains on a black background. ^note Even the screenshots on the back are changed. Cloud or Sephiroth showing off an attack, for example.
    • There is also a limited edition cover art insert that does the same thing, only with embossed images and more overall aesthetically pleasing but vague art.
• Mirror Match: In Dissidia 012, a new type of battle piece in the Confessions of the Creator storyline pit you against an enemy party consisting of the same five characters with the same equipment, moveset and support abilities, set in that character's related arena.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: Dissidia 012. Granted the sheer amount of extra content is quite staggering, but it doesn't change the fact that it's almost the exact same game as the first, but with more characters, modes, etc.
• Mordor: In 012, the Lands of Discord are these, full of nasty-looking lava flows (of course).
• Mr. Fanservice: And how. Dissidia 012 even added in a "completely shirtless" version of Tidus who runs around in Cycle 012 that way.
• Musical Nod: All over the damn place, but Zidane is interesting because he does them without actual music. For instance, his story mode is called "Melodies of Life", and he sometimes refers to "a place he has to go back to"...
• Musical Spoiler: The only way you can truly tell who is the fake Cosmos. The real one appears with a leitmotif.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: There are all sorts of rules about what equipment may be used, how abilities are earned, and that sort of thing. None of these rules apply to the computer opponents. Which the game is only too happy to show you in the pre-fight loading screen.
• Mythology Gag: The game is full of them, enough to fill a page...so here it is.