Final Fantasy / Tropes I to R

This page covers tropes in Final Fantasy.

Tropes A to B | Tropes C to D | Tropes E to H | Tropes I To R | Tropes S to T | Tropes U to Z

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I

• I Ate WHAT?!:
  • Final Fantasy IX: During the feast after the Hunting festival in Lindblum everyone, save for Garnet and Steiner suddenly collapse after taking a few bites. Garnet hasn't been eating at all, and Steiner, who has, and now noticed that everyone had collapsed, dramatically falls on his knees and gasps that the food was poisoned and he is dying for his princess... that until Garnet says there shouldn't have been any in his plate. Upon hearing it, he utters that now that she mentioned it, he suddenly feels much better and stands up again. The alleged "poison" is revealed to be sleeping pills.
    • Later in the same game there's a cooking scene and you have the option to put an "Oglop" (a kind of insect) into the recipe. Doing so will cause the I Ate What? reaction from the other characters when they eat it.
  • Final Fantasy XIV
    • A very dark example in Shadowbringers: early in the main story, it is shown that the powers that be in Eulmore, a decadent society of idle nobles who while away the time while waiting for The End of the World as We Know It, keep the population of the city and the surrounding shantytowns appeased with "Meol", a mysterious foodstuff that look like bread rolls and that those who eat it find irresistible. Later on in the story, when you and your companions return, your allies who can detect the power of the primordial Light discover that Meol is actually made from sin eaters, the selfsame Eldritch Abominations and, in many cases, monsters of humanoid origin that you're fighting against. The implications are highly unsettling even before you figure out that the Arc Villain who can control sin eaters can also control people who ate them.
    • A lighter example in the sidequest line starting with "A Costly Meal", which begins with a newly-sapient amaro unthinkingly eating a Nu Mou's "porxie" familiar. While porxies look (and apparently taste) like flying pigs, they're actually made of enchanted clay, a fact the amaro is appropriately nauseated to hear.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate:
  • Shadow's flashback dreams in Final Fantasy VI shows him being asked by his partner Baram to kill him, as he was mortally wounded and couldn't do the deed himself. Shadow freaks out and runs away, leaving Baram to die slowly and painfully.
  • Pretty much the reason why Angeal from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII transformed and fought Zack to the death. ^note Because SOLDIER are people infused with Jenova cells and Mako energy for experiments and Angeal is one of them.
  • Final Fantasy X: Tidus' father, Jecht aka the monstrous Sin, although it doesn't come as a surprise to Tidus, who spent most of the game coming to terms with the fact that he'll have to kill his father. Still, even though Tidus always claimed his dad was an idiot, it hurts him when Jecht asks him to do it quick, because there's not much of his own mind left.
    • And then the other Aeons follow suit as Yu Yevon possesses them one by one.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, this trope is the driving force behind Barthandelus and Orphan's plan to use Pulse l'Cie to destroy Cocoon. Since fal'Cie in general lack the free will to perform actions outside those predefined for them (hence the reason why l'Cie exist in the first place) and Cocoon fal'Cie cannot assign a Focus that would endanger Cocoon, they needed a Pulse fal'Cie, who could assign such a Focus without issue, to create l'Cie of its own to do the deed.
• An Ice Suit: Shiva is usually in rather revealing clothing.
• Iconic Outfit: Many of them, but the most famous and iconic are the outfits of the three core mages — the striped blue robes and yellow pointed hat for the Black Mage, the white robe with red triangle trim and Cat-Ear Hood for the White Mage, and the red and white robe with a red hat and white feather in it for the Red Mage. Various other jobs have recurring costume motifs, for example Summoners usually have horns or horned headbands, etc.
• Iconic Sequel Song:
  • The Chocobo theme makes its first appearance in II, and later gets expanded in III.
  • The Moogles theme, which makes its first appearance in V.
  • Dancing Mad and One-Winged Angel don't appear until VI and VII respectively despite being the poster-children for final boss themes across the franchise.
• I Didn't Tell You Because You'd Be Unhappy:
  • Tifa of Final Fantasy VII avoids telling Cloud about what actually happened at Nibelheim. Considering the likely outcome of that knowledge it's understandable, but it really does cause a mess.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Yuna doesn't tell Tidus about her impending death because he would hate it and couldn't do anything to stop it. Also, she understandably didn't want to talk about committing suicide. In the finale, Tidus doesn't tell her that he'll fade away soon for exactly the same reasons.
• If Jesus, Then Aliens: Several games have gods, demons, dragons, sorcerers, Standard Fantasy Races, genetically- or magically-engineered Super Soldiers, and space aliens (usually of the scary dogmatic and/or Starfishy type) coexisting.
• I'm Having Soul Pains:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: Cloud's Geostigma seemed to be I'm Having Soul Pains as a tic. He would suddenly cringe, run short of breath and flinch as if an invisible force were causing him pain.
    • Final Fantasy VII Remake: has Cloud suffering this. In Hojo's lab, just after meeting Red XIII, getting too close to Jenova triggers something in Cloud, causing him to stumble forward slowly towards the elevator before collapsing. During this time, Cloud is Hearing Voices of Sephiroth, telling him that "they have come again."
      Cloud: Je... No... Oh... Ah... Mo... ther... [collapses]
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Pictured above is Lightning, experiencing some intense pain caused by her Eidolon's first summoning. Other Eidolon hosts appear to feel some discomfort with their initial summonings as well, with Hope outright losing consciousness. Later summonings do not seem to cause any discomfort at all, however.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: In the Shadowbringers expansion, the Warrior of Light absorbs all of the primordial light of the defeated Lightwardens in order to bring the night back to an otherwise endless day in Norvrandt. They're fine after the first couple victories, but they soon begin to suffer from pangs due to the stress this is causing their soul, to the point that it's on the verge of shattering by the last one.
• Ineffectual Loner:
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Squall Leonhart is a hero version, and he never wanted to be the hero anyway.
  • Final Fantasy IX: The trope is borne out normally where Amarant is the Ineffectual Loner, and Zidane tries to teach him The Power of Friendship, or at least of discretion.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Subverted with Delita, who exhibits the philosophy and behavior of the Ineffectual Loner, but proves not to be ineffectual at all. This can be attributed to the title's uncharacteristically (for Final Fantasy) heavy emphasis on the "cynical" end of the scale' — The Hero Ramza would be Messianic Archetype if he could, but in Ivalice, it just doesn't work that way. But it could also be considered to be played straight anyways; for all his effectiveness, Delita never really gets what he was looking for and ends up alone and unhappy, while Ramza gets what he was looking for and lives his life free, with his sister.
  • Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light:
    • Brandt tries to go on his own, ditching Yunita so he can turn himself into a badass lone hero after feeling inferior to Krinjh. It lasts exactly until he reaches Arbor, whereupon the town's defenses turn him into a plant. (Fortunately, the little white cat following him was really Aire, who found a way to turn him back... after a few steps.)
    • Jusqua and Aire (which is to say, every single main character except for Yunita, who keeps getting ditched by her teammates) also qualify. A big chunk of the game's plot revolves around the team's inability to work together. For the first half of the game, they spend more time bickering and blowing one another off than acting like proper heroes.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain:
  • Final Fantasy V had Gilgamesh, the Big Bad's enthusiastic, melodramatic, and ultimately Affably Evil sidekick, who, despite being a reasonably tough boss to fight, really talked himself up to be a lot more than he was...and eventually, after deciding that he liked the heroes a lot more than his boss, he blew himself up to take out another boss that was attacking them - but not without a cheesy and confusing farewell speech.
    • He's proven so popular with fans that he's made reappearances as a summon in VIII, a sidequest character in IX, an unrelated character with the same name in XI, and appeared in all his original glory as a comical quest-character/bonus boss in XII, retconned into the rereleases of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy VI as a secret boss/summon, a playable character in Dissidia Final Fantasy Duodecim 02, and a DLC Superboss in Final Fantasy XIII-2. The best part? Every time, it's the original Gilgamesh, hopelessly lost in limbo and popping out from time to time..
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Biggs and Wedge, those two Galbadian soldiers who are defeated and get demoted whenever the heroes fight them. Nobody cares about them, and they bail out of the army after a while.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 had Lablanc and her cronies.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Cid in Final Fantasy II wants to make it perfectly clear that he's lending you his airship. But seeing as those are his last words...
  • Locke of Final Fantasy VI. He's not a thief, he's a treasure hunter. And he'll rip your lungs out for saying otherwise! What makes this one line particularly funny is that the SNES translation is so aggressively kid-friendly that it refuses to acknowledge the existence of pubs and the word "death" and its variants... but threatening to pull out somebody's internal organs is A-OK?
    • He's much less violent in the GBA remake. He'll just beat the crap out of you.
  • Ashe from Final Fantasy XII, leader of La Résistance - not the Insurgence.
• Insufferable Genius:
  • Palom from Final Fantasy IV is an overconfident and arrogant Black Mage whose attitude doesn't improve much even after his puberty as he becomes a jerkass mentor. Nevertheless, he is still a genius in his field.
  • Shinra in Final Fantasy X-2 fits this as well, though when pushed about something he doesn't know he responds with "I'm just a kid."
• Invulnerable Civilians:
  • Final Fantasy XI has a few areas with NPCs in dangerous areas. While most of them are in areas that don't have monsters spawn there, if you run a mob over there and manage to lose aggro, do they attack the NPCs? Nope. The only time the mobs seem to notice the NPCs is when you are supposed to escort them somewhere for a quest. In fact, during the early years of the game, there were almost no player-race enemies whatsoever. In fact, the only player-race enemy you fought at that time transformed into a monster.
  • Justified with Namingway in Final Fantasy IV's DS remake: he has the ability to always appear in whatever location the story mandates your party to visit next, complain about his current situation, find a new calling, change his name to <Insertcurrentsituationhere> way and ask Cecil to help him out in some way and possibly reward him somehow, in no particular order. Said locations are invariably filled with lots of dangerous monsters, and the one time you actually need to fight him a good way into the game, he only has a measly 32 HP. So how does he survive? Simple: after you complete his subplot and find him in one of the randomly chosen locations afterwards, he gives you his good luck charm that he's apparently carried with him the entire time: a Safe Travel augment, which eliminates all random encounters. The game doesn't bother to elaborate if the very first monsters he runs into afterwards kill him brutally or if he barely manages to escape to a nearby town, realizes the danger he's been in the entire time, and spends the rest of his life sobbing in the corner of a nearby inn.
  • He's still alive and well in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and has settled with setting up challenge dungeons in each character tale, which might or might not mean he's learned his lesson. There's another member of his species that pops up during various dungeons to sell you items which might or might not be him, though.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has an interesting version, as many NPCs will attack enemies that appear near them on the overworld, but that's purely visual and has no bearing on the actual battle, nor will anyone ever die to these monsters.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has several camps and other points of interest where many of an NPC populate them. While it is possible to drag monsters over to them, they won't attack them and even if you get them to use an AOE attack, the NPC will not get hurt at all. The only time an NPC can get hurt or attacked directly is if they're part of an Escort Mission.
• It Has Been an Honor:
  • In at least the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy IV, Rubicante's last words are, "Farewell, valiants."
  • Final Fantasy X: Wakka delivers this as his contribution to the party's collective Crowning Moment of Awesome just before the fight against Yunalesca:
    Wakka: I can't believe we're gonna fight Lady Yunalesca! Gimme a break!
    Lulu: You could always run.
    Wakka: Hah! I'd never forgive myself - no way! Not if I ran away now. Even in death, ya?!
  • In Final Fantasy XII:
    Dr. Cid: Let him by, Venat. It is done. Ah, how I have enjoyed these six years.
    Venat: The pleasure was all mine.
  • In Final Fantasy XV in a mid-credits scene, showing Noctis' last night with his friends as he comes to terms with his destined Heroic Sacrifice.
    Noctis: Well... What can I say? You guys... are the best.
• It Was a Gift:
  • As is eventually revealed in Final Fantasy VII, the Buster Sword was a gift from a dying Zack to Cloud, which sort of explains why it can never be sold (polygonal limitations explains the rest). In Crisis Core, the Buster Sword was a gift from a dying Angeal to Zack, who then used it exclusively (but only the blunt side, in order to "prevent wear, tear, and rust"). Even before that, the Buster Sword was a gift from Angeal's very poor parents to Angeal when he joined SOLDIER.
    • Mentioned briefly in Dissidia Final Fantasy:
      Cloud: It's not heavy, it's a memento.
  • Tidus of Final Fantasy X also had his signature weapon, the Brotherhood, as a gift from Wakka, who originally made it for his dead little brother Chappu, who coincidentally (and remarkably) resembled Tidus. Chappu's refusal to use the weapon was something of a sore point with Wakka, as Chappu chose to fight with an Al Bhed machina weapon instead, and eventually died fighting Sin.
    • Tidus also gets a longsword in the beginning from Auron, a "gift" from Jecht. Considering you can sell it as soon as you acquire Brotherhood, it tells you a lot about how Tidus feels about his Dad.

J

• Jerkass:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud Strife starts out behaving like this when he first meets AVALANCHE, driving Barret up the wall due to his abrasiveness, and getting called out by the other members for his behavior, which stems from his being an Ex-SOLDIER. It isn't until he meets Aerith that he begins to become somewhat nicer, though he still behaves in a very cocky manner from that point on. Deconstructed in that he had never been in SOLDIER in the first place, and he had constructed the persona of an arrogant jerk-off who was a part of SOLDIER in order to get over the combined trauma of watching Sephiroth burn down his hometown, being tortured and experimented on for five years by Dr. Hojo, and having to watch his best friend, Zack Fair, get shot to death by Shinra Infantrymen.
    • Cid Highwind is definitely this to Cloud and the rest of the AVALANCHE team, as well as his wife Shera when you first meet him in Rocket Town. In his flashback, he does show some concern about his wife's safety and well-being as she is inspecting the oxygen tanks, aborting the mission to save her life. But in the present setting, he's not very hospitable, telling the guests to "Sit down and drink your goddamn tea", and treats his wife like dirt, as he feels it her fault he didn't make it to space. He completely changes his demeanor to her after making it to space, and the oxygen tank she was inspecting explodes, pinning him to the ground. He apologizes for his treatment of her earlier.
  • Algus/Argath from Final Fantasy Tactics. He starts off as a knight in a bit of a predicament, since his lord was kidnapped, and he constantly demands that his lord be rescued ASAP. When that's finally done, he then shows a very classist superiority complex that deems commoners trash and deserving to die in the name of nobles, brushes off all opinions that don't match with his, belittles Delita and his sister constantly (never mind that Delita was just responsible for his lord's rescue), and on top it all of, has no qualms about killing Delita's sister in front of him, still demeaning him and Ramza in the name of his ideals of a world only for nobles, and commoners can die for all he cares. In fact, he is so reviled (and designed that way, to be sure) that, in the PSP Updated Re-release, you can kill him again. And no, his attitude between the first death and the second doesn't get any better.
  • Seifer from Final Fantasy VIII (and in Kingdom Hearts II) starts out as this before becoming a Rival Turned Evil after his Face–Heel Turn. When you first use him in Final Fantasy VIII, he literally kicks a dog.
  • Jecht from Final Fantasy X during the first half of the game. He's emotionally abusive toward Tidus (a mini-game involves Tidus trying to suppress memories of his father's abuse while trying to make a shot), initially a surly, disrespectful drunk while in Spira, and, while drunk, is responsible for accidentally attacking and injuring a shoopuff.
• Jerkass Gods: If Final Fantasy has proven one thing as of late, is that the gods are immense jackasses. (Even the so-called ones.)
• Joke Weapon: A series tradition, starting with the Spoon weapon and all of its appearances.
  • Usually it's parasols/umbrellas, though. This started with VII, where there was a joke weapon for every character.
  • Excalipur/Excalipoor makes common appearances. It's just like Excalibur, except it only hits 1s, and it's usually found by Gilgamesh. Sometimes, it features a boost in magic so as to not make it completely useless, and at times you can use it as a form of Loophole Abuse to hit enemies that normally avoid all physical attack but have single digit HP or are vulnerable to a status effect that can be inflicted on them via a Spell Blade.
  • Sometimes it unintentionally extends to items due to bugged stats. For instance, the goggles in VI, which do nothing.^note They were supposed to make you invulnerable to blind. But blind was bugged and didn't work in the original release. Did get fixed in subsequent releases, however.

K

• Kamehame Hadouken: Aura Bolt from VI, and the Scathe spell from XII.
• Keet: Lots in the series:
  • Final Fantasy V: Bartz is the first protagonist to start a trend of cheerful heroes throughout the series.
  • Zack Fair, the protagonist in the Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core, is enthusiastic, bouncy, and friendly to the point that people start sticking him with the nickname "puppy".
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Zell, whose character introduction is literally him back-flipping into the room. He apparently used to zoom down the hallways on a hovering skateboard and has been known to throw really aggressive tantrums when the cafeteria is out of hot dogs. Adding to the effect, he also talks like he's Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
    • Laguna is another example, as in the past he was incredibly energetic and always eager to do things and help others. Deconstructed somewhat in that others consider his acts of passion foolish at best. Ironically enough, Squall ends up being a brooding and stoic introvert who even considers his own father a moron on the first flashback.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Zidane overlaps with The Casanova. His genki side really comes out whenever he's trying to woo the princess. It's no surprise that Eiko (mentioned above) develops a crush on him.
  • Final Fantasy X: Tidus certainly fits. Our first proper impression of him is him enthusiastically signing autographs for his fans and he manages to shock all the people of Spira with his attitude. Lulu remarks that he "really do[es] come from a world where there is no Sin" after having experienced a few weeks with him. Surprise surprise, he and Rikku (mentioned above) are Like Brother and Sister.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has Gippal; whose theme is an energetic guitar riff, he's endlessly bright and cheery and doesn't seem to have a sense of personal boundaries. He has Ship Tease with - you guessed it - Rikku. His English voice actor Rick Gomez is one in real life too.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Vaan fills in this spot alongside Penelo in an otherwise very no-nonsense group. His enthusiasm is driven by his desire to become a Sky Pirate, and he's easily the most cheerful member of the group full of brooders.
  • Snow Villiers from Final Fantasy XIII is not a little boy at all — in fact, he's a positively huge rough-and-tumble looking guy — but he's got the personality pretty much down pat.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Prompto is easily the most energetic (and somewhat childish) out of his four friends, and is the photographer of the group and very easily smitten with women. Though the reason for this may be because he's not quite as skilled as a warrior compared to his companions and uses his cheery disposition to make up for it. Then it's later revealed through his own episode that he was meant to be one of Niflheim's super-soldiers cloned from a Mad Scientist before being spirited away to Lucis, and after fighting the said scientist decides he does not to live his life based on what others think of him.
  • Final Fantasy Dimensions: Sol, whose optimistic energy is impossible to dent. This is meant to contrast Nacht, who is stoic and tight-lipped.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0: Jack is perhaps the most energetic guy out of the entire Class 0.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Tidus (Final Fantasy X) feels like this. But it's a different play on this trope — he is not overly upbeat, but when you put him with the rest of the game's cast, he is a damn good machine of mood-lightening...unless you bring up his Father, in which case he becomes a Ball of Angry Angst. Zidane (Final Fantasy IX) counts as well, though he can occasionally get serious, and Bartz (Final Fantasy V) rounds out the trifecta of cheerful FF heroes in the 13th Cycle. And let's not forget Vaan (Final Fantasy XII), who would have been a fourth.
    • In the sequel (which does include Vaan), he ends up being pretty laid back about things, along with Laguna (Final Fantasy VIII). When he's in battle, however, he's extremely loud, self-confident, and boisterous.
• Killer Rabbit: Movers, Cactuars, Tonberries and two actual rabbits (Vorpal Bunny and Fury), in Final Fantasy XII.
• Kill It with Fire: Fire, Fira, Firaga, sometimes Firaja, sometimes Flare, and the Ifrit summon being the most common.
• Kill It with Ice: Blizzard, Blizzara, Blizzaga, sometimes Blizzaja, the Shiva summon.
• Kill It with Water: Water spells only occasionally show up, and even then only comes in one level (no -ra or -ga variants) or the Blue Magic Aqualung. The mid-to-late-game summon Leviathan makes up for this shortcoming.
  • The trend was broken in Final Fantasy X, which had three levels of water spells and no water-elemental summons.
• The Klutz:
  • Yuffie, from Final Fantasy VII, is... interesting. During the Bahamut Sin fight in Advent Children, she leaped from building to building, effortlessly catching her shuriken no matter what happened to it in flight, and even doing crazy acrobatics. In Dirge of Cerberus, she set off a flash bomb, darted in and dragged away someone who should be much heavier than her in the space of a few seconds, and virtually disappeared. After that, she spent most of her appearances in the said game falling over and hurting herself. She seemed to vary from ditzy to deadly competent in the original game, too. Maybe she just doesn't use her ninja agility until it's needed? Or perhaps she's just Obfuscating Stupidity?
  • Selphie in Final Fantasy VIII plays it straight with an obligatory Crash-Into Hello.
  • Rikku in Final Fantasy X falls on her rear end so many times it becomes a plot point in an Final Fantasy X-2 sidequest.
• Kirin:
  • Final Fantasy VI: The kirin appears as a summonable beast, and it resembles a silver unicorn (but with two horns). In keeping with its benevolent reputation, summoning it casts a spell that gradually restores HP.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has Kirin be the prize mount you receive by obtaining all of the rare mounts across the Extreme Primal trials. The Wandering Minstrel takes you to where the elemental horses' aether together is enough to summon the Lord of Steeds.

L

• A Lady on Each Arm:
  • ''Final Fantasy VII Remake: This happens to Cloud by Aerith and Tifa. When both girls try to convince Cloud to enter the haunted train yard first, Aerith possessively grabs Cloud's arm while making a catty remark to Tifa. Tifa's reaction is to grab Cloud's other arm. What sells it completely is Cloud's reaction, or more specifically, the lack thereof.
    Aerith: [grabbing Cloud's arm] It'll be fine! We've got a bodyguard, don't forget. Mine!

[camera cuts to a very unamused Tifa]Tifa: [unhappy noise]Aerith: [to Cloud] Right?Cloud: [hesitantly] Ghosts aren't my thing.Tifa: [grabbing Cloud's free arm] You're just being modest! After you!Cloud: [deadpan] Mind letting me go then?

• In Final Fantasy VIII, Casanova Wannabe Irvine suggests the team of 6 split up into two squads of three to reach two important checkpoints. He puts Quistis and Rinoa on his team, surrounding him, leaving Zell and Selphie with Squall. You have the option of changing the order or giving Squall's trademark "Whatever" and letting Irvine live his fantasy.

• Lady of Black Magic: As the Trope Codifier for the Black Mage, there have been many throughout the franchise — Rydia, Lulu, and Ultimecia are a few notable examples.
• Lady of War:
  • Final Fantasy V has Lenna, a plucky, kind-hearted princess who can wield any weapon thanks to the job class system. She is made to look feminine in all of them and is portrayed as much more graceful and feminine than her more tomboyish sister Faris. Yoshitaka Amano and the CGs from Anthology also depict her with a sword.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Celes is cool-headed, graceful and looks beautiful in an opera dress. She is also a skilled fighter who can use swords, knives and maces. Her artwork even shows her striking an elegant pose while holding a sword.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Beatrix and Freya. Freya is calm, polite and dignified even when dealing with opponents and is an excellent fighter while Beatrix is a gentlewoman who looks feminine without being over the top about it and is a skilled swordswoman.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Lightning. Cool, or even cold, and calmly collected even when taking down mooks with her sword/gun while spinning in the air acrobatically. Relatively simple clothes for Final Fantasy, yet radiates style.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Agrias is an elite soldier whose beauty is noted by some characters. She even accepts a gift of balm in an optional cutscene in the re-release.
• Land, Sea, Sky:
  • The three Weapons awakened in the original Final Fantasy VII conform to these states. Diamond is the land, Sapphire is the sea and Ultima is the sky. The international releases added Emerald and Ruby breaking the trend.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV the Conjurer and White Mage class use the life-giving elements of Earth, Wind and Water as part of their attack moveset in comparison to the Thaumaturge and Black Mage classes focus on the destructive Fire, Ice, Lightning elements.
• La Résistance: The Wild Rose Rebellion, the Returners, AVALANCHE, the Forest Owls, The Resistance and NORA, just to name a few.

• Lava Magic Is Fire: The recurring summon Ifrit's attack often involves lava, such as in VII and X. As there often isn't a ultimate fire spell, Ifrit usually has the buck in portraying high-power fire attacks.
• Left Hanging:
  • Final Fantasy VII has references to "Techno-Soldiers" replacing human agents of Shinra early in the game, but is never elaborated on and is forgotten once Sephiroth is introduced into the game. It is believed by many fans that the original plot of the game would have revolved around a Turned Against Their Masters scenario, which was abandoned in favor of Sephiroth. The techno-soldiers themselves finally turned up in Dirge of Cerberus, and even that game's storyline is an example of this trope with its secret ending, where Genesis Rhapsodos appears in a cave and flies away with Weiss in his arms, his motives and goals still unknown. And the next game he appears in is a prequel.
  • Early in Final Fantasy VIII, the heroes are assigned to help the city of Timber gain its independence from the Galbadian Republic. This storyline is quickly folded into the main plot, but the question of whether Timber becomes free in the end is never addressed. However, since the Timber mission was a low-paying and therefore low-importance goal, when the sorceress showed up and became a threat to Garden and the world itself, it sort of makes sense that no-one cared about that so much when the main plot kicked off.
  • Final Fantasy XII at some point completely forgets to resolve the Occuria situation. Yeah, the Sun-Cryst is destroyed, but why can't they make another? Why do they just seem to give up without any word? The sequel does not address this at all either. If the canceled sequel Fortress might have expanded on this issue is now a mystery for the ages.
• Legacy Character: A fair few familiar names crop up across multiple installments.
  • Every game in the series has a character named Cid. In almost all cases, Cid is an engineer who builds and/or pilots airships.
  • Many games have a duo of characters named Biggs and Wedge. Some of their appearances include being Terra's fellow soldiers in VI, members of AVALANCHE in VII, and Cid's fellow engineers in XIV.
  • Introduced in V, Gilgamesh has appeared across multiple games, in each one searching for the sacred sword Excalibur. Depending on the game, he may be an enemy, an ally, or a summon. Somewhat different from other examples in that, in many cases, Gilgamesh is implied to be the exact same guy as in V, and not a separate individual with the same name and a similar character premise, as is the case with the previous examples.
• Leg Focus:
  • In Crisis Core, the former owner of 7th Heaven said he was looking for a new bartender with (quote): "big breasts and long legs!" to take over the place. Tifa ends up getting the job.
  • Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 both introduced Rikku with lingering pan shots up her very long legs. Further emphasized by her preference for hot pants (FF X) and her infamous micro-skirt + thong bikini combo in X-2.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Vanille's promotional pictures show her stretching her legs.
    • The cover of the game features Lightning showing off her legs.
• Lethal Joke Character: Often, the "weakest" character in the game turns into the most powerful under the right circumstances, though a combination of the right equipment and proper leveling.
  • Final Fantasy
    • Thieves feature weaker physical stats than almost every other class, but only their speed stats stand out, which only really helps when attempting to run from enemies. Come their promotion to Ninjas, their ability to wield powerful magic and weapons turns them into one-man armies to rival the likes of Knights and Masters.
    • White Mages are only really effective against the undead with the Dia spells, until they gain access to Holy, after which they turn into pure and total forces of destruction. Plus, they can potentially use Fear on the final boss, Chaos, to make him run away, rather than fight him to the end.
  • While the original game did not feature being able to use him past his story departure, Final Fantasy IV featured Edward, the former Trope Namer for Quirky Bard. He was the weakest and slowest character of your group and got one-shot way too often to be useful. Later releases that featured being able to switch party members around gave you the option to bring him back, and if properly leveled and given Apollo's Harp, he becomes the fastest and strongest character, capable of dishing out 9999s every few seconds. Even in the 3D remake, where he's demoted back to Guest-Star Party Member status, he learns a number of songs that make him quite valuable as a Support Party Member during his tenure as one of Cecil's companions.
  • Cait Sith, the robotic cat riding a moogle doll from Final Fantasy VII was objectively the most useless character. He has the worst stats, as well as the weakest weapon type (aside from Aerith's staves, although in her case it's forgiven due to her being heavily magic-focused anyway), and it doesn't help that few players really like his character. But if one knows how to use his slots, he can break the game.
• Level Grinding: Required for several of the Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV, but averted with some others.
• Level-Map Display: Present in various forms in all the games.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Light-themed warriors (sometimes referred to as the "Warriors of Light") opposing the darkness-themed enemies is a common theme throughout the franchise.
  • Final Fantasy has the "Warriors of Light" defeat the evil Chaos. The juxtaposition is mentioned in the opening prophecy.
    "When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come."
  • Final Fantasy III focuses around the fabled "Warriors of Light" banding together to put a stop to the evil Cloud of Darkness. Near the end of the game, when the Warriors enter the Cloud of Darkness' own dimension, they come across the Warriors of Darkness. It's only after battling against each other that they learn that the Warriors of Darkness were the chosen fighters of this universe, who once had to save it from a Flood of Light. The two sets of Warriors have the same end goal, balance, and the Cloud of Darkness can't be beaten without both of them.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, you play as the Warrior of Light, chosen champion of Hydaelyn, goddess of Light, to oppose the servants of the dark god Zodiark. There's even an entire parallel world, The Void, that's the remains of a world that was swallowed by Darkness with all its inhabitants twisted into demonic Voidsent as an example of what could happen if you fail. But then in the Shadowbringers expansion, you're sent to a different parallel world facing the opposite crisis: a Flood of Light, as in Final Fantasy III. To fight that, you must switch roles and become a Warrior of Darkness.
  • In Final Fantasy XV Noctis and his party serve this function. Noctis is supposed to cleanse the world of Eos from a curse that lengthens nighttime and creates dark demons.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy brings back the Warrior of Light from the original game, but also refers to the heroic Warriors of Cosmos as the "Warriors of Light". They aim to defeat the "Warriors of Chaos".
• Light/Fire Juxtaposition: Fire spells are the archetypal Black Magic, while Light/Holy spells are associated with White Magic.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: In Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, scrolls can be used exclusively by ninja to cast elemental spells.
• Living Structure Monster: The Demon Wall is a recurring enemy in the series.
• Loners Are Freaks:
  • Final Fantasies VII and VIII are stellar examples of the first, while Final Fantasy IX provides an example of the second (who lapses briefly into being the first type and is then snapped back out of it). Almost all of the other games in the series feature at least one brooding loner learning that he needs to come out of his shell and join the hero crowd.
    • Then Dissidia Final Fantasy goes and turns the trope on its ear, setting Squall up in the same "brooding loner" role he occupied in his own game, only to then reveal that he chooses to travel alone because he believes in the Power of Trust and feels he can support the others from a distance. His explanation of his reasons is enough to convince the Warrior of Light... not that it prevents everyone else from continuing to pick on him about it, even after he ends up joining forces with Zidane and Bartz after all.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: The franchise games are all around this trope.
  • Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII started as the anti-social protagonist loner who throughout the course of the game developed friendships and has hidden feelings for Rinoa.
  • Amarant Coral of Final Fantasy IX was initially a loner who works as a bounty hunter living by the honor code of "only the strong survive". While he was the last character to join Zidane, he was still dismissive of The Power of Friendship, but that didn't last long when Zidane saved him from falling into his death, which is what changed his heart.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality:
  • Squall in Final Fantasy VIII is a classic example. He's a very down to earth SeeD member who likes to focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately for him, he's forced into dancing at a graduation ball by a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. And things just keep getting stranger from there.
    • This is brought up again in Dissidia Final Fantasy, where he keeps running into Bartz and Zidane and keeps getting caught up in their own quest to find the crystals.
  • Paine from Final Fantasy X-2 is to some degree a female version of Squall. She's been reserved ever since the horrific event in which she was split from her Crimson Squad teammates Nooj, Gippal and Baralai after the investigation of the Den of Woe. The defeat of Sin at the end of Final Fantasy X has led Rikku to fully unleash the bubbly side of her personality, and Rikku's influence has largely led Yuna to embrace this as well. Throughout the game, they slowly begin to draw Paine out more and more.
• Lost Technology: That the schizo tech is frequently based on.
• Lovable Jock:
  • Jules from Final Fantasy VII Remake is very much this, being nothing but supportive and encouraging to Cloud, Tifa, and everyone else in his gym, he also shares his brother Andrea's open-mindedness and appreciatively commends Cloud's dance performance at the Honeybee Inn. In fact, going one step beyond, he even chastises Ronnie, one of his bodybuilding buddies, for being a Jerk Jock, pitting him in a squat-off against the considerably skinnier Cloud for the sole reason of serving Ronnie a helping of humble pie and teaching him not to be so superficial and full of himself.
  • Tidus and Wakka from Final Fantasy X. Really most of the Besaid Aurochs count. The Kilika Beasts are also shown to be nice enough.
• Love Hurts:
  • Final Fantasy IV has Kain and his unrequited love for Rosa. All Love Is Unrequited hurts by itself, but then you factor in how he lost her to his best friend Cecil, and it gets really painful, especially since he clearly wants them to be happy, but is still full of jealousy and sorrow.
  • Final Fantasy VI has this with Locke and Rachel, where Rachel accidentally loses her memory and her parents blame Locke for the whole mess, he blames himself because Rachel in her memory stricken form tells Locke to leave because her parents are yelling at Locke, afterwards, he learned that at the time of the village's demise, she regained her memory, and called for him... Then, he asked a doctor to preserve her body, while he searches for a way to save her, while still blaming himself for everything... Damn....
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Sir Fratley, the love of Freya's life leaves on a journey of epic training. When she doesn't hear of him for some time, she embarks on the world to find him. During the events of the game, she eventually runs into him but he is suffering from amnesia and doesn't remember her. Ouch.
    • It's even on her quote in the game's manual. Quite a Player Punch when you find out what it means:
      Despair. To be forgotten is worse than death.
    • In the game's ending, his memory never returns, but he falls in love with Freya again, anyway.
• Low-Level Run: It is quite common to see players on YouTube perform these runs. Several games have the option of doing so to the end.
  • Final Fantasy VIII, since the monsters level up with you, can be played to completion at single-digit levels. It's actually regarded as being much easier than a high-level run.
  • Final Fantasy IX never gives the characters any EXP during boss fights, so it's entirely possible to reach the end of the game with every character, bar Zidane, at level one. This is done by avoiding random encounters, being inflicted with the Virus status that disables experience and AP gain and by only using Zidane during the forced, story-based encounters that end up giving you EXP.
  • Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII have the NSG (No Sphere Grid) and NCU (No Crystarium Usage), respectively. The idea behind both cases is to use equipment and abilities as effectively as possible.
  • A low-level run of Final Fantasy XII is commonly called a "122333" run, after the lowest possible levels the party can be ^note specifically: Vaan at level 1, Fran and Balthier at level 2, and the others at level 3. There are also No Augment runs (i.e. everyone's stats say the same with no situational bonuses etc.) and No License Board (i.e. everyone is more or less stuck to their starting equipment, also there are no Quickenings or Esper summons).
    • One of the two New Game Plus modes in the International version of XII locks everyone's level at 1.
  • Final Fantasy XV has a few features designed deliberately to facilitate this. First, the game doesn't actually apply EXP earned from battle until the party rests at a campsite or lodging establishment, making it possible to play through the whole game at level 1 simply by never using any of those facilities. Additionally, later updates added an accessory called the Nixperience Band which, while equipped, prevents EXP from being tallied even when the party rests for the night, making it simpler than ever to keep the party at level 1.

M

• MacGuffin: They're everywhere.
• Magic Is Rare, Health Is Cheap: As a general rule, MP-restoring items are very rare in any game, and tend to fall into the realm of Too Awesome to Use.
• Magic Missile Storm: The recurring spells Matra Magic and Holy are sometimes depicted in this manner.
• Magic Skirt:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Tifa's skirt is just one black texture with no details underneath as seen in all her Kick Chick moves, Dissidia Final Fantasy on other the other hand averts this during some of Tifa's special moves where a Panty Shot can be achieved. The remake fixes this as Tifa is now wearing some Modesty Shorts underneath her skirt.
  • Also in the remake, this trope now applies to Aerith as well as unlike the original or Crisis Core it's possibly for Aerith to get knocked upside down or sent flying by attacks, but her long dress always stays in place. Then again she's the White Mage of the party and could probably keep herself covered with her magic.
  • Final Fantasy VIII allows the player to cast Scan on their own party members and rotate their models up and down, and around. However, Selphie can only rotate around, not up or down, and thus, her panties remain safe. At least as far as Scan is concerned.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Lightning has what appears to be a short skirt but she remains covered throughout. Somewhat justified. The box art for the game revealed that she's wearing what appear to be very short biker shorts underneath the skirt.
    • Serah's miniskirt also appears to be magical, as it manages to cling to the back of her legs as she jumps onto a platform in a flashback cutscene.
    • Averted for a split-second when Vanille's l'Cie brand explodes before her Eidolon Battle, and you can see she's sporting orange panties. It's also possible to play around with the camera and high ground to see up her skirt (it's easier said than done, though.)
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah wears a dress of some sort in the second game. You can actually see up it in the ending, but there is nothing to see, because she wears modesty shorts. Strangely enough, her dress has holes on the hips, showing pure skin so... how can she be wearing Modesty Shorts if she supposedly is going commando underneath that sheet of cloth called a dress?
• Magic Staff: Staves and rods are generally exclusive to caster classes.
• Make Some Noise: Silence is a Status Effect across all the games in the franchise that prevents the user from speaking and thus casting magic.
• Mama Bear:
  • Averted and then played straight in Final Fantasy VI. During the first Humbaba fight, Terra attempts to stand up to the demon to protect the orphans of Mobliz, having become their surrogate mother. However, the emotional turmoil she's gone through has robbed her of her Esper powers, and Humbaba easily defeats her. When the party returns, Humbaba attacks again... but he didn't realize that not only were two of the (teenaged) orphans going to have a baby together, but also that the annoying party attacking him was Terra's True Companions. The ensuing fight has Terra in Esper Mode for the entire battle.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Hope's mother, Nora Estheim, Unfortunately, she dies mere moments later. But it's the thought that counts.
      Nora: "Moms are tough."
    • Lightning gets a Promotion to Parent for her younger sister, who gets kidnapped and turned into a L'Cie. Lightning is a Super-Soldier military woman who blows up a train, decimates a military unit, hijacks equipment to break into an ancient temple, and takes on a god-like being to rescue her in the first hour of the game.
    • Lightning starts out dismissive of Hope and impatient with his neediness born from the trauma of the above spoiler. In a fit of frustration, she tries to abandon him. This triggers the appearance of her Eidolon Odin, who tries to strike down Hope. At the moment of truth, Lightning defends Hope from Odin, passing the challenge all L'Cie must face. From that point on, Lightning acts as a Mama Bear to Hope as well, though Hope eventually outgrows the need for one thanks to his own Character Development.
  • Cosmos of Dissidia Final Fantasy, who often acts as the Team Mom for her warriors. Especially when you take into account the fact that she deliberately allowed herself to be weakened enough to be killed by Chaos to give her warriors the power they'd need to survive her death and last long enough to defeat Chaos and escape the war.
• Mana Potion: Usually the ethers.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl:
  • While it tends to get de-emphasized in later works (in favor of her Incorruptible Pure Pureness), Aerith from Final Fantasy VII absolutely fits the bill. Slowly defrosting the consummate and brooding mercenary Cloud. Re-emphasized in Final Fantasy VII Remake.
  • Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII is a subversion: she comes off as a classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl at first when she's playfully urging Squall to dance at the SeeD graduation ball, and while it soon becomes clear that she does in fact have her own problems as a member of La Résistance against the Galbadian occupation of Timber, she has much more well-meaning enthusiasm and optimism than she has the skill and experience needed to follow through with her big plans. However, she gets a rude awakening as to just how high the stakes are by the end of the first disc, and while she continues to encourage Squall to open up to her and others throughout the game, it's no longer in the manner of this trope.
  • Tidus from Final Fantasy X is a rare male protagonist example for Yuna. He came into her life out of nowhere when she's about to go on a pilgrimage that will more or less make her a glorified human sacrifice, and his cheerful and somewhat goofy outlook and his tendency to keep asking questions about parts of her culture that she just took for granted helps her grow as a person. He's also a literal dream boy.
• Manly Tears:
  • Zack cries in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII after he's forced to kill Angeal — certainly a sniffle-worthy moment. Later, Zack is back in Midgar visiting Aerith. As he is sitting on the floor in Aerith's church he starts to cry. Aerith consoles Zack by hugging him from behind as he sobs.
    • Hell, the tagline for the game is 'Men cry not for themselves, but for their comrades.'
  • Final Fantasy VII Gives us the scene at the end of the Cave of the Gi. Even in Stone, Seto sheds Manly Tears for his son's acceptance. You may find yourself with your own afterward.
    • Barret cries Tears of Joy when he reunites with his daughter, Marlene, after believing she has died along with his comrades in AVALANCHE when Sector 7's plate was dropped on the slums below.
    • Cloud is heavily suggested to be crying when he tells Sephiroth to "shut up" after later kills Aerith. Due to the technical limitations of the time Cloud's emotions are conveyed by having his shoulders visibly shaking, and by having him mention how his eyes are burning.
  • In the ending of Final Fantasy VIII, apparently as a last attack from Ultimecia, Squall is shown several illusions, ending with a shot of Rinoa dying that breaks him and a fast shot shows a tear falling from his eye.
  • Tidus of Final Fantasy X cries after defeating Jecht and gets to say "I hate you Dad". The earlier time he cries in the game, when he discovers Yuna will die at the end of her pilgrimage it's considerably less manly. Also after Operation Mi'hen, either Luzzu or Gatta will die depending on the player's decision. If Luzzu dies then Tidus will find Gatta on the beach sobbing. If it's Gatta instead (and Tidus will cry when he finds his body) Luzzu will snap and break down. The Al Bhed males also shed tears as they sing the Hymn of the Fayth just before they blow up their Home.
  • In Final Fantasy XV (and its anime offshoot), Noctis breaks down crying a number of times. When Regis dies, he's able to hold his tears back initially, but he sheds angry tears when confronted with his duty to take his father's place as king (in the game) and collapses to his knees sobbing after finally acknowledging the fact that his father is gone (in the anime). He sheds a single ambiguous tear during Lunafreya's speech in Altissia, apparently out of a mix between relief that he was able to see her, sorrow over what had happened in Insomnia, and concern about the darkness she'd foretold. He later breaks down in tears three times more after her death, once as a crying child in a vision, once desperately looking through her notebook after waking up to receive confirmation of her death, and once falling to the ground and weeping after seeing her ghost. And, in the end, he struggles to admit that he intends to sacrifice himself — he tears up, trembles, and eventually weeps openly as he tells his friends how much they mean to him. Of course, by that point, everyone else is crying, too, including the audience.
    • One of the game's teaser trailers included an extended shot of King Regis holding Noctis and mourning the fate of his son.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The Bard, Dancer, Songstress and all their variants in the series. The specifics vary per game and can get complex, but these classes usually focus on entering a state where the player loses direct control of them, and they begin inflicting random effects on the party or enemies. Each song/dance has a specific list of effects they can cause.
  • The Mimes, present in various games, whose specialty is the "mimic" abilities where they copy the attacks used by others. They are nearly always an end game class as they can mimic spell and item use at no cost in terms of mana or items, or even charge time in some cases.
• Meet Cute:
  • Final Fantasy VII had Aerith meet Cloud when he fell through the ceiling of her church into a flowerbed - from a terminal height, mind you. Also, Crisis Core reveals she met previous love interest Zack in the exact same way. Ironically, Aerith and Cloud's real first meeting was a subversion of the Crash-Into Hello where she was knocked over - by a random NPC - before calmly asking Cloud if he wanted to buy a flower as he wandered past.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall first meets Rinoa at the SeeD ceremony. He looks up at a shooting star and looks where it came from, and his eyes lay on Rinoa, who seeks the same shooting star and looks where it's headed to, and her eyes meet Squall's. Rinoa goes over to him and gets a rather reluctant Squall to dance with her. She leaves him open-ended at the end of the dance when she sees someone she knows, leaving a slightly disappointed Squall.
• Memento MacGuffin:
  • The Memento Ring in Final Fantasy VI is the source of many Epileptic Trees. It's described as a memento of Relm's family. So naturally, Relm can equip it. Except Shadow can too. Other in-game cutscenes make it pretty clear that, yes, Shadow is Relm's father... so why the hell can Gogo equip it?
    • Perhaps s/he mimics being a member of Relm's family? Or maybe s/he's some long-lost relative?
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith's materia was given to her by her biological mother and she keeps it as a memento, unaware that it is in fact the extremely important White Materia.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: The "reed flute" is more of a skill (the ability to turn a leaf or blade of grass into an instrument) than an actual memento, but it's something that binds Ramza and Delita both to each other and happier days. (Ramza also bonds with Princess Ovelia when she reveals that Alma had taught it to her.)
• Mercy Kill:
  • The flashback nightmares Shadow from Final Fantasy VI suffers from revealing that he became The Stoic because his emotions caused him to chicken out of mercy killing a wounded friend.
  • Final Fantasy Adventure makes the player do this to Amanda — she's cursed to turn into a Medusa that will victimize the nearby village, but her curse also means that the hero can gather her tears to cure her brother, who was turned into a parrot. She's already transformed to the point where she cannot commit suicide; the player must attack her to end her misery.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics: Ramza kills Zalbaag, who's being possessed by lucavi demons and can't commit suicide to avoid harming Ramza.
• Messianic Archetype:
  • Aerith of Final Fantasy VII—Half-human, half-supernatural, the planet is ultimately saved through her prayers and her death, and humanity is kept alive. In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, she cures Geostigma from beyond the grave, which is effectively cancer. The disease is notably uncurable by any other means.
  • Yuna from Final Fantasy X. Worshiped and loved by everyone around her? Check. Heroic Sacrifice? Check. Walking on water? Check. Tidus also qualifies: Son of a wrathful Godlike figure who professes love even for those in Spira who face discrimination, also associated with water (to the extent that his love scene involves both himself and Yuna going underwater baptismal-style), also gets a Heroic Sacrifice and resurrection. Somewhat ironically, this is all present in a game that showcases the dangers of an organized religion.
  • Claire "Lightning" Farron from the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy goes from human granted magical powers by a demigod (XIII) to Valkyrie in the service of a goddess (XIII-2) to a super-powered, possibly transhuman servant of another god whose job is to save souls of the living so they can be reborn in another world (Lightning Returns). Lightning is even explicitly referred to as "The Savior". Her friend and ally, Oerba Dia Vanille, is also a messianic character in the third game, tasked unwittingly with guiding the souls of the dead to oblivion.
  • Final Fantasy XV's protagonist, Noctis Lucis Caelum, fits this trope to a T. He's chosen by the Crystal to bring an end to the Starscourge (a disease which is very similar in both name and appearance to the aforementioned Geostigma) by fulfilling the Calling of his royal line, seeking the favor of the Astral gods, and using the power of the Crystal. Near the end of the game, he learns of his true purpose — he must give his life to call forth divine Providence if he is to destroy the Accursed and end the Scourge. And so, the game ends with his ritual sacrifice on his throne, after which he and his dead fiancee's spirits are shown appearing as if at their wedding. He's sometimes referred to by titles like "King of Kings" or "the Son" to make sure no one overlooks the connection.
• Metal Slime: Cactaurs. They have low health and usually give pretty significant rewards when defeated, but their high evasion makes them near-impossible to hit with either magic or physical attacks, and they often run away after a few rounds if you're unable to defeat them.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Comet and Meteor frequently appear as one of the game's most powerful Black Magic spells, calling down a bombardment of falling space rocks to deal massive non-elemental damage that's usually second only to Flare, Mega Flare, and Ultima. Final Fantasy IV ups the ante with the Twin Meteor spell, in which two casters work together to call down an even larger meteor storm for even greater devastation.
• Mind Rape: The series falls to the "Psychic Assaults" type
  • Final Fantasy VII had Sephiroth doing this to Cloud to the point where he could no longer function. He needed "rape counseling" from Tifa in a Journey to the Center of the Mind before he was able to do anything at all.
    • There's even a Does This Remind You of Anything? scene in Gongaga where Cloud's lying on a bed, clearly severely traumatized, while the others try to convince him that what Sephiroth forced him to do wasn't his fault and doesn't mean Cloud wanted it. Let's add into this the way Sephiroth tells Cloud "I am always by your side", and the bizarre sexual symbolism of Cloud being forced to find Sephiroth's Materia coffin in the center of a pink, pulsating, ring-shaped structure, and penetrating it to give him the Black Materia.
  • On a similar note, Final Fantasy IX had Zidane suffering a BSOD... not from finding out that he was an alien who was meant to be the Angel of Death for his adopted homeworld, but from actually having the man who created him rip his soul out. Fortunately, that just made him miserable until his friends could give him a sequential pep talk.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has Shuyin, who was trapped in a psychic prison and forced to relive not only his own murder, but the murder of his lover... for a millennium. Understandably, on getting out, his only goal was to destroy absolutely everything just to keep that from ever happening to him again.
  • Somewhat dissimilar to the previous three Final Fantasy entries but, the second MMORPG entry in the series, Final Fantasy XIV, has an ability called 'The Echo', granted to anyone who witnessed a strange, meteor-shower like the event at the start of the game's story (this includes player characters). The Echo allows the user to touch souls, granting the ability to speak to all sentient beings and enter and change their memories. The people on whom it's used without their consent - and are able to recognize someone invading their memories - have at times angrily highlighted the Unfortunate Implications.
• Mind Screw: Initially limited by technology, but most games (FF1 included) had it in some capacity.
  • Not helping much is the barrier between America and Japan's culture, mannerisms, and, above all else, LANGUAGE.

• Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: V, VI and IX allows you to allocate different party members to different controllers. Naturally, this is only for battles; Player 1 does all the exploring, conversing, and menu navigation.
• Modesty Shorts:
  • Tifa in Final Fantasy VII Remake has a visible pair of black shorts under her skirt, perfectly fine considering the embarrassment Tifa went through when ascending the Absurdly Long Stairway at Shrina HQ with her mini skirt in the original game. It’s also more sensible compared to Dissidia Final Fantasy where getting a Panty Shot while playing as Tifa is unavoidable. Remake Tifa even has a Modesty Bra under her top in this version as well.
  • Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII and Serah Farron in Final Fantasy XIII-2 both wear black bike shorts under their miniskirts.
• Moe:
  • Tifa from Final Fantasy VII can get pretty Moe at times, especially when she acts shy and awkward around Cloud.
    • Aerith is quite Moe as well.
    • Cloud himself even displays many Moe characteristics. Final Fantasy VII Remake is where his social awkwardness and Sugar-and-Ice Personality are most noticeable, though even his characterization in the original game still qualifies. Cloud is also a Woobie. It is difficult not to feel for Cloud when Sephiroth's presence is able to reduce him to terrified, childlike whimpering.
  • Vivi from Final Fantasy IX is the best example in the series. He has many of the standard moe traits: he is clumsy, shy, young and innocent. Add in existential angst to justify his social awkwardness and a doll-like appearance and you have a character that most players just want to give a hug to.
  • Can't forget Yuna and Rikku from Final Fantasy X, especially with how Woobie they both are.
  • Final Fantasy XIII- Hope and Vanille
    • Yeuls in Final Fantasy XIII-2
  • Prompto from Final Fantasy XV, due to being a Keet who happens to take selfies frequently.
  • Dissidia makes Terra so moe it's adorable, unless you hate her for it.
• Momma's Boy:
  • Would Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII be a twisted take? Thanks to Advent Children, it's even more twisted!
  • Extra credit for being a more spiritual sort of "motherhood" courtesy of the Jenova cells Sephiroth was originally infected with, and also courtesy of Jenova not even being determinately female or necessarily even fully aware of it. It's definitely how Sephiroth acts about the whole affair, though.
    • He might just have delusions that his imaginary Mother loves him and would like him to turn the planet into their own personal family barbecue, then using it as a transport to go to new planets to eat at, as it is unknown how Jenova can even communicate with him.

• Money Mauling: Several games across the franchise feature the "Spare Change" skill, where the character throws money at the enemy to kill them.
• Monster Closet: Several games have the "Monster-in-a-box!", special encounters (often with a special opponent and rare loot) whom you face when you open a seemingly innocent treasure box. Why, exactly, are the monsters hiding out in the boxes?
• Monster Is a Mommy:
  • Final Fantasy VII allows you to examine a nest of chicks with treasure inside. Attempting to take the treasure forces you into an easy fight with the chicks' mother, after which you can steal it freely. However, even Cloud is guilty about doing it, and he becomes a lot less popular with his team-mates afterwards. Hacking into the relationship mechanics shows that this scene has no effect on anything driven by relationship points.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, there is a quest sequence concerning endangered monster species. One of the missions has you protect an attacking Mamatrice and her chicks in a bar fight from the corrupt bar-owner.
• Monster Modesty: The Seeq often wear just loincloths instead of pants and when they wear shirts they cover very little. Somewhat odd when compared to other races such as the Moogle, Bangaa, Garif, and Nu Mou who are fully or mostly clothed.
• Morale Mechanic: Enemies in some games opt to run away when faced with overwhelming odds.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The maw of Malboros had a lot of teeth, the better to focus on their Bad Breath.
• Multiple Endings: Some of the games feature this:
  • In Final Fantasy V, any characters who are unconscious at the end of the final boss battle are presumed to have been Killed Off for Real and are omitted from the closing sequence, only to come back just before the credits.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, it is possible to finish the game with only Celes, Edgar, and Setzer; any characters you don't have in your group don't appear in the ending.
    • Terra will be forced into the ending regardless of whether you recruited her in the World of Ruin or not. There is an additional scene before the final battle to allow this scenario to make sense, even.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 had "segmented endings".
    • X-2 also had a "Bad Ending" that you got if you lost the Final Battle or didn't win it fast enough.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a bit weird. There are eight "Paradox Endings," most of which are bittersweet (and one of them is just weird). There is also a Secret Ending obtained after getting all 160 fragments, in which Caius taunts the player by telling them that all possible timelines lead to him winning.
  • World of Final Fantasy is an odd example of this trope, in which the bad ending (Lann seals himself and Brandelis away, with Reynn contracting a Heroic BSoD, returning to Nine Wood Hills depressed) needs to be completed in order to reach the good ending (which follows up from that by having Tama sacrifice herself to go back before the fake final battle, Reynn and Lann going to recruit the Pleiad, then retrieving Tama during another quest, then defeating Brandelis, while going through the Ultma Gate to fix the problems they caused (long story), while promising they'll be back someday. And the true ending is essentially the good ending, but, after completing all the Intervention quests, it ends on a post-credits scene where Hauyn and Tama receive prismariums containing the twin's clones, sent to protect Grymoire, courtesy of Enna Kros.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Pretty much any Final Fantasy game eventually.
  • Seymour in Final Fantasy X wants to kill everyone in the world to end global suffering (or maybe just because he's a psychopath).
• Mythology Gag: Starting around IX, Square started including references to previous games all over the new installment. Some being as subtle as special move names applied in different contexts, some as elaborate as characters being composites of those from other installments (such as Snow being modeled off of Seifer and Zell.)
  • Gilgamesh seems to turn up rather often since his debut in V.
  • Garland and Chaos have made irregular appearances since I.
  • Nevermind the giant swords and magical holocausts, it's the kitchen knives you should be afraid of. You get to wield their devastating might once and only once in the fourth installment. Otherwise, avoid so much as being poked by one. This gag was mostly lost thanks to the weapon being translated as a spoon.
    • Bards being referred to as spoony, referring to the infamous line from Final Fantasy IV.^note To the point where it's never been removed from any English translation of the game during a remake

N

• Named by the Dub:
  • The dancer girl found in Cornelia in Final Fantasy had no name in the original Famicom version, but in the NES localisation she is called Arylon. Later localisations for the remakes render her nameless again.
  • Final Fantasy XII had two "imperial soldiers" who gained the names Gibbs and Deweg in English, becoming that game's incarnation of Biggs and Wedge.
• Never Say "Die":
  • Final Fantasy IV is a pretty egregious example, being bound by the same prohibition of d- and k-words.
  • The English translation of Final Fantasy VI was forced to avoid explicit mention of death, at least most of the time. One dungeon is the tomb of Setzer's girlfriend, Daryl. In a flashback, she states that Setzer can have her airship, the Falcon, if "anything happens to her". You even get to see Rachel's preserved corpse, and hear the story of her death, but again, no d-word - she's said to have been 'saved' using magic herbs and put into a sort of magic coma. The suicide attempt scene especially has any mention or notion of suicide removed and it was replaced with the notation of people jumping off a cliff if they were feeling down so that they could "perk up" again. The Instant Kill Death spells are renamed things like X-fer and X-Zone. Kefka spends Dalek-like amounts of time ordering his men to 'exterminate!'. Sabin and Cyan's brief accidental jaunt fighting ghosts on the Afterlife Express is framed in terms of a train that takes you to 'the other place'. One really painful moment is the scene where Sabin refers to the murder of his master as 'doing [him] in'. There are a few exceptions that occurred; when Shadow told Terra that, “In this world are many like me who've killed their emotions”; after Kefka gives Celes a sword on the Floating Continent, as he tells her: "Kill the others and we'll forgive your treachery! Take this sword! Kill them all!"; and lastly, when Kefka asked the party about how they’ve "...find this ‘joy’ in this dead world of ours?" The revised script in the GBA port uses concepts of killing and death much more liberally.
  • Most games would also avoid using words related to death early in the series when it came to your party's status after their HP hits zero, using words like Swoon, Disabled, Stun, etc. Final Fantasy VII referred to knocked-out characters as Dead. However, using Dead led to confusion when one of your party members was killed off due to the plot and people wondered why a Phoenix Down wasn't used to bring them back to life. The series then use KO (knocked out) to describe defeated party members, dipping back into the trope.
  • Final Fantasy IX has an in-universe example: most of the Black Mages who gained sentience actually don't know what death is, and as Vivi starts to work out what it means when they "stop moving", he starts to use the term himself—only to be told not to do so by the one Black Mage who actually does know what death is. Later, when Kuja explains (offscreen) what is really happening when the Mages "stop moving", they don't take it particularly well.
  • Final Fantasy XI's flavor of blue magic involves "absorbing the essences" of foes who use the proper moves.
• Signature Headgear: Mages have hats that correspond to their school of magic.
  • Black Mages have conical straw hats resting upon their heads that covers their faces in shadows.
  • White Mages have white hoods with red fringes.
  • Red Mages have red hats with one large white feather.
  • Time Mages have pointy red hats, usually emblazoned with stars.
  • Green Mages (although they haven't appeared in many titles) have green berets.
  • Blue Mages are the lone exception - they get Cool Masks instead. Though they occasionally get hats to fit with a theme based on the game. In most instances it's buccaneer themed, in 11 they wore turbans.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: Most status spells are of this type. In addition, there will be a plethora of spells used by enemies that inflict no damage but will inflict negative statuses on a party member in a given game. For instance:
  • Lilliputian Mages will often cast Tiny on your party members, shrinking them down to nullify their physical damage.
  • The Malboro enemies have a signature attack called "Bad Breath" which afflicts any unlucky party members with every negative status effect in the game.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech:
  • Delivered collectively by the heroes at the end of Final Fantasy VI as they're about to fight Nietzsche Wannabe Kefka.
  • Yuna delivers a good one to Lady Yunalesca in Final Fantasy X, when she announces her intention to Take a Third Option rather than complete the Final Summoning.
    Yuna: I will stand my ground and be strong. I don't know when it will be but someday, I will conquer it. And I will do it without false hope.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy:
    • The game is full of these, often combined with a Heroic Second Wind moment. In fact, pretty much all of the cutscenes in the ten Destiny Odyssey storylines before the battle with the villain, consists of the hero giving one of these: Cloud refuses to let Sephiroth psyche him out, Terra learns not to let her powers define who she is, Cecil decides to fight for what he really cares about, etc. Here's Firion's for an example:
      Emperor: You should have disposed of your fantasy and accepted me as master.
      Firion: There is no meaning in strength only used to hurt others! I have dreams... dreams worth dying for!
      Emperor: What will an insect like you do?
      Firion: Believe in the future! And persist in the present! That's what I'll do!
    • And here's Onion Knight's. Bit of backstory. Throughout his Destiny Odyssey, Onion Knight acted as a bit of a Straw Vulcan, arrogantly trusting only his intelligence, running from every encounter with people that he thought he "can't defeat", and pushing Terra to go to the source of strange power, to prove that he wasn't "without valor" despite that. So, after that backfires horribly, he's learned a little more about how to be a hero, and faces the Cloud Of Darkness, who multiple people said is too powerful for him:
      Onion Knight: I finally got it. I was a fool to defy my heart, just to bind myself to reason. I will protect Terra with my own strength. That's what's most important to me! Don't get me wrong—I still won't fight against anyone I can't beat. But I've decided in my heart to fight. That's why I'm going to beat you!
    • For the Warrior of Light, there's the end of his personal journey, where he meets his rival Garland, who tells him that they are fated to continue fighting forever and ever Because Destiny Says So, and that all that's left for them is to find some grim enjoyment in it; in response, the warrior stoically refuses to fall into despair, declaring he will fight to bring the cycle to an end.
      Warrior: Garland, I pity you.
      Garland: Pardon?
      Warrior: You are bound by the chains of destiny and steeped in despair. And for that, I pity you. Indeed, we have repeated our battles time and time again. You could say that we have been caught in the cycle of battle. But now that I know the truth, I can overcome it. All that is left to do now is fight to end the cycle!
      Garland: You can defeat me here, but that would only be another step in the cycle!
      Warrior: Whatever destiny the world may hold for me, I can never give up! This battle shall come to an end, and I shall save you, too!
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Marche, after being captured, accidentally gets teleported into the fourth crystal room. While the totema cannot defend the crystal, Babus stands in Marche's way and Cid reminds him that he's alone, asking him if he believes he can do it. Marche notes that he hasn't always been confident in himself, but while he enjoys the world, it isn't real and he must destroy the crystal to go back home.
    Cid: You're alone now. None of your friends can help you. You would fight even with the odds stacked against you? Are you so sure of your abilities?
    Marche: Not at all. I'm always nervous. But... I can't afford to let that stop me. I love this world... there's magic and the clan is fun. Sometimes, I'm not sure I really want to go home. But I am sure that this place isn't real. It's a game! It's just a dream— an escape from the real world! But you can't just avoid problems forever... I have to go back! I have to destroy the crystals!
    Babus: And I suppose you think we're just going to stand here?
• Non-Elemental: Most weapons and enemies, but the strongest spells are usually non-elemental, like Flare (sometimes) and Ultima.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: Very often used together with Guide Dang It!.
  • The Blue Mage job is basically this. While the rest of the jobs usually learn their skills by by gaining AP, leveling or buying in stores, Blue Mages don't. There are certain monster skills that the Blue Mages can learn. To learn these skills, the Blue Mage needs to be hit by the skill and survive (some games do it differently, like eating the monster). The problem is, the game won't bother telling which skills can be learned and which one can't or which monsters carry which skill. And if you want more than one Blue Mage where possible, they all need to learn the skills individually (though thankfully in some games they can teach one another by hitting them with those spells).
    • The survive part can be especially headache-inducing when it comes to Instant Kill skills. Having a status immunity won't do, you'll generally need to have Auto-Raise on the blue mage. In some games, getting paralyzed by the skill also prevents learning, so you'll need a status immunity for that. And a way to charm monsters for the skills they normally only use on themselves.
  • Summon Magic, in general, is this trope. They are often learned through defeating the summoned monsters in battle, but there are many other means.
  • Also Limit Break. Each character usually have their own methods of obtaining their ultimate attacks.
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • Yeul in Final Fantasy XIII-2. Which makes Caius' centuries-long Xanatos Gambit to "save her" somewhat unnecessary — too bad he doesn't realize it until the end. Also, Serah by the end: when Caius tries to unnerve her by saying she'll die if she continues on her path, she says she doesn't care anymore, and that if the future is saved, she's not afraid to die.
  • Lunafreya from Final Fantasy XV expresses this sentiment in the prequel film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV when Nyx points out that she's going to end up killing herself if she keeps pulling stunts like running headfirst into danger instead of away and jumping off airships.
    Lunafreya: Not all miracles are made by magic; I do not fear death. What I fear is doing nothing, and losing everything.
    • In the game, it is revealed that she is aware that she will die once she fulfills her calling to help Noctis. It is likely that her lack of fear of death is a result of having known about her death since she became the Oracle at 16, and having made peace with it by the time of the film.
• Not Blood Siblings:
  • Final Fantasy II mostly contains only hints of love interests but the No Export for You novel does have Maria harboring feelings for her adopted brother and the story's main character, Firion.
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy VIII: When Quistis suddenly remembers that she was raised in an orphanage with Squall she stops hitting on him. In fact, Selphie and Irvine are the only ones who actually remain inside their raised-together group for romance. Everyone else from the orphanage looks outside the group for romance, as Zell hooks up with Library Girl and Quistis gets shafted.
• Not Himself:
  • In Final Fantasy IV, it is said at the beginning of the game that the King's behavior changed. Of course...
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • Zidane displays this for a short while near the end of the game. Given his normally cheerful personality, this moment is notable as it hints at what he was really capable of if he had been acting towards his intended purpose — i.e., an angel of death and destroyer of worlds.
    • A good chunk of the game's first half is driven by Princess Garnet wanting to find out why her mother was not acting like herself. Turns out she was being influenced by Kuja.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: in an early mission, you find a man being menaced by bad guys. You have a choice to either prioritize beating up the bad guys, or saving their victim. Choosing the former prompts the main character's best friend to ask if he's flipped his lid.
• Not the Intended Use: Quite a few examples throughout the series. One common one is hitting yourself to cure Sleep or Confuse, as opposed to waiting for your opponent to hit you.
  • More encouraged with certain rods in some of the games that work as a Healing Shiv.
  • Using Reflect to essentially negate Reflect on your enemy: Cast it on a party member, then cast damage spells on them to be reflected at the enemy.
• Not So Stoic:
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall Leonhart starts out as The Stoic, but his stoicism breaks down spectacularly as his coping mechanisms prove increasingly inadequate, starting with the short meltdown he has over the way people talk about Seifer after his supposed death. When Rinoa ends up in a coma, he breaks down completely.
  • Final Fantasy X: Auron, after Kinoc's death, gets very pissed about it, and Lulu's deadpan demeanour cracks badly upon learning the teachings of Yevon were lies.
    • Auron also loses it when he sees a memory preserved by the pyre-flies of the moment he failed to prevent Braska and Jecht from going through with the Final Summoning. He furiously attacks the image of his past self, enraged at his helplessness.
    • More light-heartedly, Auron chuckles and joins the others in playfully ribbing Yuna over her apparent bed-hair, as she is frantically apologizing for oversleeping at the Djose Temple. Much to her surprise.
  • Balthier in Final Fantasy XII is full of snark and wit, even when he has a sword pointed directly at his neck. Nothing ever makes the man flinch and he always keeps his cool. The moment someone brings up nethicite or the laboratory within the empire's home city, Balthier drops the act and becomes more upfront and direct, which surprised everyone when he started to act as such towards Larsa after the kid mentioned the subject. At the Phon Coast, he becomes very open with Ashe and tells her how his father became extremely obsessed with nethicite to the point that it was all the scientist cared about. Balthier quit his job as a Judge and became a sky pirate to run away from his past. He tells Ashe, who was becoming obsessed with using nethicite to fight The Empire, to not follow the same path as his father did. When Balthier does meet his father again, he becomes very serious.
  • The player character in Final Fantasy XIV is pure stoic and pure badass. He/she doesn't express much emotion beyond a simple head nod (which other characters lampshade repeatedly) and they never say anything except for what is chosen by the player in a dialogue prompt. However, the Heavensward 3.0 expansion has the player character slowly showing off more emotions like sadness and anger and is a lot more blunt in their response choices, showing that they may not be as stoic as everyone thought at first.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Occurs several times in the series:
  • When everybody is shown praying for the cast before the final battle of Final Fantasy IV, old Tellah appears.
  • And in Final Fantasy V, five dead characters get to actively protect the heroes against an all-devouring über-spell.
    • Galuf gets a more immediate example of this when he keeps fighting even after his hit points reach zero.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, it is all but stated outright that Aerith's will is the driving force behind Holy to work with Lifestream to save the Planet from Meteor.
    • This idea was at the core of the Japanese-only novella The Maiden Who Travels the Planet where Aerith and other characters who had died during the course of the game really do drive the Lifestream to save the Planet.
    • She shows up again in Advent Children as the final link in the chain of Cloud's Combined Energy Attack.
    • Used yet again in Advent Children Complete when Zack gives Cloud a mental pep talk in the middle of his fight against Sephiroth.
    • Since Cloud spent some time in the Lifestream during the game piecing his fragmented psyche back together with help from Tifa, it's quite possible they were speaking to him directly from said Lifestream.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV during the Final Coil of Bahamut raid, it is revealed that a death which had been presented as a given part of the backstory was actually not quite that simple. Louisoix the Archon, who tried and failed to reseal Bahamut at the very end of the 1.0 version storyline, suddenly turns out to be much less dead than reported. All previous cutscenes depicting the Calamity show only Louisoix facing down the Elder Primal, smiling, then Fade to White. Death was heavily implied or outright stated by the characters each time, and the fine details of why Bahamut failed to raze the entire continent or why the falling space prison did not do more damage than altering a few landmarks are left to the players' imagination. As the raid progresses, it is discovered that the Louisoix figure that has been blocking their way, tempered to the will of Bahamut is not a clone or a ghost, but the actual man himself. Saved from annihilation by the excess of aether lingering after his failed spell, and reborn as the Demi-Primal Phoenix, he singlehandedly destroyed Bahamut's physical body in the missing half of the Battle of Cartenau cutscene. However, no one in the world at large may ever be told how the battle ended, because the desperation of the people still facing post-Calamity reconstruction and Imperial incursions would surely prompt someone to a misguided attempt to re-summon Phoenix for aid. As this would literally drain aether from the land instead of replenishing it, it is the last thing Louisoix would ever want.
• Numbered Sequel: The main series is numbered for your convenience.
• Nurikabe: The recurring Demon Wall boss, which also acts like an Advancing Wall of Doom. In Final Fantasy IV it lies in the Sealed Cave and blocks the way to the last Dark Crystal, and in Final Fantasy VII it's the last obstacle in the Ancient Temple.

O

• Oculothorax: The Ahrimans monsters often are winged eyeballs.
• Odd Couple:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Serious, stoic Rude partnered up with easygoing, chatty Reno. Not only do they work very well together, but they actually are good friends.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: The quirky pair of Fujin and Raijin fit this trope. They both have weird speech mannerisms and are highly eccentric.
  • Vivi and Steiner in Final Fantasy IX. Steiner is a knight captain, and he's very loud, very chivalrous, hilariously misguided, and prone to making an utter fool of himself. Vivi is a black mage, and he's quiet, introspective, under-confident at times, and pretty much universally agreed to be the most adorable thing in the series. They're insta-bros from the start of the game to its very end, and they have an awesome team-up attack they can only perform when they're both in the party. (Vivi enchants Steiner's sword, basically adding an element and a little extra oomph to Steiner's already devastating physical attacks.)
• Official Couple:
  • Cecil and Rosa in Final Fantasy IV.
  • Locke and Celes in Final Fantasy VI.
  • Zack and Aerith in Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core.
  • Squall and Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII, whose relationship is so integral to the game's plot that the game's logo is the two of them embracing.
  • Zidane and Garnet from Final Fantasy IX. Beta Couple Steiner and Beatrix as well.
  • Tidus and Yuna from Final Fantasy X, as well as Wakka and Lulu who receive confirmation in Final Fantasy X-2.
  • Serah and Snow from Final Fantasy XIII.
  • As of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Noel and Yuel are also canon.
  • In Final Fantasy Type-0, there's Machina and Rem. The epilogue says that they are married after the events of the game.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis and Lunafreya who are Together in Death.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Done rather marvelously in Final Fantasy V; after repeatedly failing to save the other crystals your party finally reaches a crystal that didn't shatter shortly after their arrival. Galuf finally recovers his memory, and is reunited with his granddaughter, Cara/Krile. Then Lenna/Reina and Faris are reunited with their father, King Tycoon. So the crystal's secure and three of the party members were reunited with their loved ones... Things are looking up now, right? WRONG. After the final crystal shatters anyway, giving the entire group a huge wake-up call, and the Big Bad Exdeath makes his grand entrance, ominous entry scene, Leitmotif of Doom, Evil Gloating, and Evil Laugh in all thier full glory. Bartz muttering "Shit!" as the entire scene quickly goes downhill doesn't even touch how much of an Oh, Crap! moment this was.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • You can't see the infantrymen's faces, but it's pretty easy to imagine this look on their faces when Cloud brings out whatever sword he happens to have equipped.
    • Cid gets one (his cigarette even falls out of his mouth) when the WEAPONS are flying out of the Northern Crater from the deck of the Highwind.
    • Sephiroth is probably responsible for causing half of these moments within the game itself, be it when he makes an appearance, does something horrible, or when the heroes discover the aftermath of something that got in his way.
    Cloud: [upon discovering the impaled body of a giant Zolom] "Did Sephiroth...do this?"
    • Happens several times in the Final Fantasy VII movie Advent Children:
    • Cloud has a perfectly understandable moment when Sephiroth first appears, literally inches from Cloud's face.
    • Sephiroth gets one of his own when Cloud brings out the new and improved Omnislash.
  • Final Fantasy VIII Squall after feigning emotionlessness for a good portion of the game, and finally warming up to Rinoa, has a rather sharp wake call right about here in Time Compression. Made worse by various interpretations of the scene most notably this theory about everything being a Dying Dream. Regardless, whatever he sees during this montage freaks him out.
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • The look on Black Waltz No.3's face when he realizes that he's accidentally set his own airship on fire- just before he crashes into the South Gate. [1]
    • Queen Brahne's horrified expression a split second before Bahamut incinerates her ship.
    • Kuja, upon realizing that Garland has arrived in the Invincible.
    • Hades is the second-hardest Optional Boss in the game. However, Ozma, the hardest, can be fought and defeated before you even meet Hades. Do so, and Hades has one of these moments right before the battle begins.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, the look on your party's faces when Galenth Dysley reveals himself to be the fal'Cie Barthandelus is this trope in its purest essence. For the first time in the entire game, all six of them are visibly terrified, and considering some of the crap they've already been through up to this point, that's saying a lot.
• Oh, No... Not Again!:
  • Final Fantasy XIII has one funny case. Early in the game, Hope finds a Pulse Dreadnought mech that can be piloted, and uses it in the Vile Peaks to allow Lightning and him to quickly bust through some enemies and barriers. Flash Forward to Chapter 11, while the party is exploring a mine on Gran Pulse, and have to come up with a way to hitch a ride on the Fal'Cie Atomos. Hope, once again manages to find another pilotable Dreadnought mech, and struggles to control it just like before, with the plan to use it to stop Atomos, leading to an exasperated Lightning to note "It's the Vile Peaks all over again".
  • In Final Fantasy Dimensions, Styx, one of the Four Generals of Avalon, bursts in on the reunion of Eduardo and his mother to gloat about how the Warriors of Light have fallen right into her trap. This follows Vata of the Wind saying the same thing, as well as the general of Fire, so Sol just groans "Not again!"
• Omnicidal Maniac:
  • Chaos, who came into existence thanks to the Fiends, who were already destroying the world to begin with.
  • Xande is pissed about being made mortal and wants to put everything into suspended animation, forever. Cloud of Darkness, a personification of the Void wants to reduce everything in both worlds to nothingness.
  • Zemus wants to exterminate all human life on Earth so that he (and the other Lunarians, maybe) can rule. Zeromus is just evil. Or something.
  • Exdeath is an arbormorphic personification of evil. Neo Exdeath, a personification of the Void wants to reduce everything (including itself) to nothing... wait...
    • This was touched upon in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Cloud of Darkness's "Void" is the destruction of everything, leaving nothing. Exdeath's "Void" is the return of everything to its original state, the realm of the Void. Cloud = Empty universes (AH Class X5), Exdeath = No universes (AH Class Z).
  • Kefka, who is already quite insane but just got worse due to his acquired power from the Statues, and when the Heroes reveal that despite the fact that he has caused The End of the World as We Know It, they still harbor hopes for the future, he decides to destroy reality and "create a monument to nonexistence."
    • His pre-fight quote against Exdeath in Dissidia: "Destruction without death? BORING!"
  • Final Fantasy VII has one, and surprisingly, it’s 'not' the Big Bad Sephiroth, but rather, his father, Professor Hojo. Aside from the fact that he was the one who created Sephiroth in the first place (both naturally, and artificially, due to being his birth father and injecting him with Jenova's cells while he was still a fetus, respectively), he also was heavily implied, if not outright stated, to have manipulated Sephiroth into doing this course of action, both before and during the events of the game, and if the novellas are anything to go by, he even possessed Sephiroth afterwards, all for the sake of seeing his research prove successful, which is implied to result in the total destruction of the planet, or at least severe damage. It's not even the last time he attempts to do this, either, as Dirge of Cerberus revealed that he also ended up possessing Weiss the Immaculate's body with the intention of tricking the Omega WEAPON, a WEAPON that activates when the end of the world arrives and leaves the planet, into awakening, and it is heavily implied that destroying the world was indeed his intention that time as well.
  • Ultimecia wants to compress time into a Timey-Wimey Ball so she can recreate the entire universe because she's pissed off about centuries of oppression against her kind. Even though she has a Freudian Excuse it is hardly valid, since these centuries of oppression were really set off when she went back to the time of the story, and pissed everyone off.
  • Kuja freaks out upon discovering that he is mortal, and thus will eventually die and decides to pull a Taking You with Me on the world to ensure it doesn’t outlive him.
  • Seymour thinks that life is nothing but suffering, and that the only way of escaping Sin, the cause of it is that everyone should die.
  • Shuyin was subjected to Mind Rape for a thousand years, so he decides to destroy the world out of anger that it let him and his lover die.
  • Kam'lanaut and Eald'narche trying to "Open the Gates to Paradise". Which would just have the side effect of killing every non-avatar and non-Zilart on Vana'diel. Promathia wants to release the Emptiness on Vana'diel killing everything so he can finally die.
  • Galeth wants to destroy all life on Cocoon and Orphan, the fal'Cie who rules over it. Orphan himself just wants to destroy everything.
  • Caius wants to destroy Etro, the goddess of time and death, in order to save Yeul from a Vicious Cycle of early death and reincarnation. Problem is, Etro's death will cause a Time Crash in which a wave of primordial chaos washes over the world and eventually reduces it (and all of its inhabitants) to nothingness. Caius thinks that this is an acceptable sacrifice to make.
  • Chaos (again) chooses to destroy the world and himself, after finding that a world without Cosmos was a much emptier existence than he thought it would be.
  • Dissidia actually has the "take over the world" villains conspiring against the "destroy the world" villains on their team. The take over the world villains wanted Sephiroth, but he really doesn't care one way or another because he's obsessed with fighting Cloud.
• One Curse Limit: While Revive Kills Zombie, being afflicted with the status ailment Zombie grants immunity to Poison and Petrify.
• One-Time Dungeon: Nearly every single game in the series (I being the only exception) has several dungeons that the player only gets one shot at visiting. Naturally, there are items that can only be found in these dungeons, so they're Permanently Missable if the player leaves without picking them up.
• One-Winged Angel: Most games have at least one boss who does this. The Trope Namer, Sephiroth, is from Final Fantasy VII.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Bartz in Final Fantasy V is much more normal than his companions—an amnesiac old goofball, a cross-dressing pirate, and a recklessly altruistic princess. Granted, he has his moments too, but he's usually the one not involved in whatever high melodrama the others are engaging in.
    "Geez-oh-pete, every one of you guys is always going overboard!"
  • Invoked with Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII, who is a character who thinks he is the Only Sane Man. Considering his past and his views on relationships with others, not to mention that he is surrounded by a rather quirky mixture of people, and it's not hard to see why he feels this way. In reality, he has suffered from memory loss from Guardian Force usage and his personality is built around how a child believes an adult should act. The real Only Sane Man in the party is Irvine.
  • Sazh Katzroy from Final Fantasy XIII is very sane even if he does wear a chocobo on his head. He's just a civilian pilot dragged along with the vengeful, guilt-ridden, and actively delusional members of their little gang of the doomed.
  • Wol in Mobius Final Fantasy, due to being a Blank Slate, is the only person who appears to be aware of how weird Palamecia is and how he's being railroaded by the plot into doing stupid things. He mostly expresses this with good-natured brutal sarcasm.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Cloud's retelling of the events that happened in Nibelheim five years ago in Final Fantasy VII, his personality is usually weirdly hyperactive and dim. Much later on, it is revealed that Cloud has been recounting the actions performed by Zack, a very different person.
  • Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Fujin's sole line of dialogue that isn't Hulk Speak is pleading with Seifer to reconsider his loyalty to Ultimecia.
    • There are several scenes where Squall, normally keeping himself completely under tight emotional control, will suddenly flip out with little warning when something happens that deeply upsets him. Early on it is after he's told Seifer was killed and he starts wondering what others would think about him if he died. Later on, he flips out when NORG tells him that Garden and the SeeDs were nothing but expendable troops, and he finally starts jumping violently at anything that threatens Rinoa after he admits his feelings for her.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Auron is the perpetually stoic Cool Old Guy par excellence. He loses his cool three times: when Seymour kills Kinoc, when he sees the sphere image of himself failing to save Jecht and Braska, and when the group confronts Yunalesca. Two are bad, one is awesome, all three are very significant.
  • Final Fantasy X-2:
    • Whenever Rikku and Brother agree on something, the general reaction is "take cover."
    • This trope is why "I don't like your plan. It sucks." became one of Yuna's most famous lines. In-game, the camera cuts to the other characters suddenly looking to her in shock.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, after Sazh's son enters crystal stasis and Jihl Nabaat reveals that it's technically Vanille's fault, Vanille breaks down and literally begs Sazh to kill her, and is visibly angry when he refuses. Though this is not the first time Vanille's cheerful persona has slipped, this marks the first time her true personality is fully revealed.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis' train is boarded by an Ardyn who hums the Chocobo theme and calls Noctis 'dude', as well as seeming somewhat confused by what is going on. Due to the actor's sleazy performance and Ardyn's normal personality, it's actually quite easy to miss this at first, but once it's revealed that Ardyn has used time magic to temporarily switch his appearance with Prompto, the content of 'Ardyn's' words are a giveaway.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket:
  • In Final Fantasy V, Faris' pendant is not a Plot Coupon, but does serve as a really obvious foreshadowing to Luke, I Am Your Father.
  • Relm's Memento Ring in Final Fantasy VI. It can also be worn by Shadow.
    • Also Terra's Pendant. Though it's never really referred to in the plot, it is sitting there in your Key Items inventory.
  • The Holy Materia in Final Fantasy VII which belonged to Aerith's (biological) mother before her.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Eiko and Mog have a matching pair of ribbons given to them by her grandfather before he passed away leaving her all alone, save the moogles, in the ruins of their hometown. After a certain Heroic Sacrifice, it becomes a very useful accessory that she can learn her most powerful summon from.
  • The user-named girl's pendant in Mystic Quest (a.k.a. Final Fantasy Adventure, the first game in the Seiken Densetsu/Mana series).
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: Dark matter usually takes the form of a rare item that's used in high-end item combinations.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Plenty of dragons, including Bahamut as a summon monster, usually the most powerful or second-most powerful summon of the game, especially since he deals non-elemental damage.
• Our Imps Are Different: Imps are recurring enemies resembling small purple humanoids with bat wings and long, arrow-tipped tails; a more unusual version occurs in Final Fantasy XIII, which is fat, neckless and with a wide mouth and a single central eye. They're usually fairly weak and described as cowardly, but can use a variety of elemental spells in combat.
• Out-of-Character Alert:
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall realizes that Edea is, despite all appearances, not the same person who raised him when she calls Seifer, another of her former foster children, "worthless" after he failed to defend her. It soon turns out Squall's right. Edea is being possessed by the sorceress Ultimecea.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning's first clue that Hope is Not Himself happens during their conversation about blowing up a stage and breaking into Yusnaan's palace. She says the first part of their personal motto and waits for Hope to finish the saying. Except, he doesn't. This makes Lightning pause and ask him about the second half, to which he still doesn't respond correctly. The harshness in her tone makes it clear she knows something is wrong. Hope is God's puppet, and while Hope does have his memories, Bhunivelze does not know the significance of this phrase.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Act 2, Chapter 7: After Sephiroth takes Materia's throne, he created Jenova versions of the warriors to break their wills along destroying them. Ignis is able to recognize the Jenova versions of Prompto and Noctis as fakes because neither of them are capable of talking about their feelings.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • Can happen in Final Fantasy VI. Due to the huge Ensemble Cast, the game assigns a standard, canned dialogue to whomever the player has in the party leader slot, whether it's Sabin or Gau. One example early in the game makes it possible for Shadow, at that point an assassin/mercenary who can leave the party at any time, rage about inhumane acts. This is especially notable for Umaro, whose only scripted dialogue consists of grunts, but becomes perfectly articulate when given one of the aforementioned character-neutral lines. This also throws up continuity errors when Sabin or Edgar, whose mother died in childbirth, mention (thanks to a potted line shared with several other characters) that their mother told them about Espers.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Justified: Cloud is surprisingly upbeat and anxious to get into battles during his Nibelheim flashback; the only time you see him in his more familiar, mellow persona is when he visits his mother. It turns out that this is because outside of that one scene and the brief stop in Tifa's home, what you're seeing is what Zack did in Nibelheim, but Cloud is narrating the events as if he, himself, did them.
    • Vincent's icy, melodramatic vibe will disappear in some of his party dialogue, where he's cheerfully introducing himself to randoms and showing a slight Hot-Blooded side. These are probably left over from an earlier draft of the script where Vincent was an Unlikely Hero private detective.
    • While optional sidequest party leader dialogue is fully rewritten for Tifa and Cid's stints as leader, averting the worst of this, the inability to change blocking and the overall flow of scenes makes it obvious in some cases that the scenes were written for Cloud. This is particularly obvious with Tifa, usually a passionate and caring Team Mom, who will suddenly act aloof about whether to save a helpless baby bird from an army of mercenaries from a company she hates more than anything in the world, or repeatedly neg Yuffie before marching off without asking for her name.
    • The PC version had a bizarre programming error that led to Vincent doing a twirly dance of joy after Aeris's death, then spin-kicking her corpse in the head. This was fixed for all later versions.
    • Dialogue in the more obscure, less playtested scenes tends to be a bit 'off' due to using slightly older versions of the characters' speech patterns. It's only in your date with him that Barret will call Cloud "foo'", and some of Cid's speech if he loses the Grand Horn battle at the final Fort Condor invasion, or Cloud's speech if his submarine gets destroyed, come across as being extremely strange (Cloud: "Shinra dog! I'm gonna dognap you!").
  • Final Fantasy XV: Episode Prompto has a weird line in the coda where Noctis suggests abolishing all borders between nations, referring particularly to the border between Lucis and Niflheim. This is a political opinion that wouldn't make sense for him to have (as the Prince of Lucis, whose subjects and own father were murdered by Niflheim forces at the start of the game), and would be a gobsmackingly terrible idea in the context of his Kingdom being the only government in Eos that does not entirely consist of literal demons by that point.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2: In one side story, Montblanc asks Hurdy to bring him a bottle of wine. Hurdy thinks he's out of his "pom-pom" because he had never seen his big brother drink.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Cloud of Darkness (III), Zemus (IV), Exdeath (V), Jenova (VII) and the Terrans (IX).
• Overflow Error:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, through the Sketch Glitch it is possible to obtain 256 copies of items. Attempting to sell them all at once rolls over from 255 to 0, and the shopkeeper will pay you nothing for them because the game thinks you're selling nothing.
  • Final Fantasy VII has an overflow glitch that causes the game to think that enemies have so much HP that it had better fix the problem and instantly kills them.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics has an infinite Job Point glitch that can be invoked by selecting a skill to learn, pressing Page Down, then confirming. If the skill under the cursor after the Page Down cost more Job Points than were available, the number was subtracted from the current number of Job Points, rolling it over negative and giving the player thousands of free job points instead.
• The Overworld: The series had the overworld until X, where they started to replace it with tube-like "road" locations.

P

• Pain & Gain:
  • The stat system in II works by improving the more you use it. Building up the HP and Defense stats requires you to take damage. A common tactic is to intentionally hit themselves in combat to abuse it.
  • Auron from X has an ultimate weapon that works off this principle. While most of the group has ultimate weapons that are at their strongest when the members have fully charged hit points or Mana, Auron's becomes more powerful as Auron's health is depleted due to injuries. When he's wielding it, any monster or boss that hits him hard enough to cause damage quickly comes to regret it.
• Path of Greatest Resistance: If you get stuck, pick a direction and if the enemies are challenging again, you're going in the right direction again.
  • Averted horribly in II: in most other Final Fantasies, the sequence in which you visit towns is mainly enforced by geographical features the player cannot overcome until the right transportation is found. In II, you know you strayed from the sequence because the next random encounter killed your party in seconds.
• Papa Wolf:
  • In Final Fantasy V, Galuf is a grandpapa wolf. When Galuf sees his granddaughter about to be killed by Exdeath, he single-handedly breaks free of Exdeath's paralysis magic, tanks every high-level spell Exdeath throws at him (to the point that even being reduced to 0 hitpoints doesn't stop him), and sends the evil tree-man running. Sadly, he exhausts himself beyond the aid of healing items or magic and dies.
  • One of the most touching examples is Barret Wallace of Final Fantasy VII, towards his adoptive daughter Marlene. Four years before FFVII began, Corel Village had a Mako Reactor installed to the north despite the protests of the local leader, Dyne. A few days later, the reactor had an accident (and was cleaned up enough so that it seemed normal by the time the game rolls around), but it was reason enough for Scarlet to burn the village to the ground. The only survivors are Dyne, his good friend Barrett Wallace, and Dyne's daughter Marlene. With Dyne presumed KIA, Barrett adopted the infant Marlene and raised her as if she was his own daughter. Had Dyne not crossed the Despair Event Horizon and spent those years either in a psychotic state or festering in Corel Prison, he would be the one exhibiting Papa Wolf tendencies instead. In his last words, Dyne asks Barrett to keep taking care of Marlene before he either jumps to his death or lets himself die.
    • Advent Children: Once Cloud decides to earn his forgiveness (and gets over the idea that anything he does to help will be too late, not enough, or both), he shows definite signs of this trope. He uses his sword as a boomerang to take out the shadow creepers attacking Denzel while chopping through buildings to rescue Tifa from being crushed. And all he has to say about it is, "Sorry I'm late." It is immediately followed by the fight against Bahamut SIN and the entire team tossing Cloud through a Mega Flare at Bahamut.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Laguna spends much of his life doing anything he can to find Ellone.
  • Sazh Katzroy from Final Fantasy XIII definitely qualifies. His son Dajh gets branded a l'Cie; shortly afterwards, Dajh's new powers uncover the Pulse fal'Cie Anima in Bodhum. Sazh comes to the logical conclusion that Dajh's focus is to kill Anima, and not-so-logically decides to do it himself.
    • If one interprets Caius' feelings towards Yuel as those of a father towards a daughter (he is the one who raises her each time she reincarnates), then he is probably the most extreme example of this trope ever. He's willing to kill Death, kill gods, and break time if it means he doesn't have to watch Yuel die again.
  • In Final Fantasy X Auron is a Papa Wolf to his charge Tidus protecting him from fiends and training him in swordplay, it’s revealed later Tidus’s biological dad Ject tasked Auron in looking after his son in Zanarkand. Auron is similarly protective of Yuna.
    • Kimahri adores Yuna and goes above and beyond to protect her as one of her guardians including pulling off a You Shall Not Pass! against Seymour at one point to save Yuna.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: While he Warrior of Light often comes across being authoritative and strict when dealing directly with his allies, he still shows a great deal of concern when any of them is in danger. Sephiroth learned this the hard way after attempting to harm Firion.
• Parental Marriage Veto:
  • In Final Fantasy IV Tellah refused to let Anna marry Edward, so they eloped.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Lighting object to Snow and Serah's engagement until a good ways into the game. As her and Serah's parents are dead and she cares for Serah, it's very much this trope despite them being sisters.
• Parental Substitute:
  • It's pretty clear Gau from Final Fantasy VI sees Sabin and Cyan as his father figures in Gau's own father's absence. Heck, the only reason Gau joins to party in the first place is because he became attached to Sabin and Cyan.
  • Barret Wallance to Marlene in Final Fantasy VII after her own father Dyne seemly fell into a chasm and died, Barret is all around bruiser but becomes a gentle Family Man whenever Marlene is around. Tifa Lockhart is also a mother figure for Marlene and looks after her whenever Barret is off being a Rebel Leader, Marlene also begins to see Cloud Strife in a similar light to Barret especially in Advent Children or older brother figure at very least.
    • Elmyra Gainsborough to Aerith, to the extent that the latter gets her surname. Elmyra, having lost her husband, cherishes Aerith after her dying mother Ifalna hands her over at the train platform, and successfully protects her from Turks for years. That why it's all the more heartbreaking when Cloud and company have to come back to Midgar and inform Elmyra of Aerith's death at Sephiroth's hands. Strangely, Tseng of the Turks could be considered a father surrogate to Aerith, given their mutual care for each other, though he does slap Aerith at one point... so less than favorable parental substitute.
    • Bugenhagen to Nanaki aka Red XIII who even calls the village elder "grandfather" affectionately, surprisingly none of AVALANCHE question how a red lion/wolf beast could have an old dude for a grandfather since Red XIII doesn't explain that they are obviously not related.
  • Auron to Tidus in Final Fantasy X Auron is the one who looks after Tidus when his father Jecht vanishes aka becomes Sin and his mother becomes apathetic. Auron trains Tidus in swordplay and is the one to bring him into Spira, it also notable while Tidus frequently badmouths his father, he shows Auron the utmost respect. In return, while other adults (e.g. Lulu) get annoyed at Tidus's childish behavior, Auron lets it slide, as it amuses him over how similar Tidus is to Jecht - which, of course, pisses Tidus off whenever Auron points it out.
    • While Auron plays father surrogate to Yuna and even Rikku at times, it's Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri who are Yuna's primary guardians having looked after her throughout her childhood and when Yuna decides to go a Summoner's pilgrimage which will result in her death via sacrifice Lulu and Wakka begged her not to.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning is this for Hope. Although it could be seen as a Cool Big Sis relationship, they only act like this after Hope's mother's death, and she spends much of the story being his Resentful Guardian. Also inverted. While Lightning clearly becomes a stand-in for Hope's late mother, Nora, Hope is just as much a stand-in for Lightning's younger sister, Serah, who Lightning raised.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Minfilia, whose father was killed at the very start of 1.0 has two parental substitutes. F'lhaminn was actually responsible for her father's death (though accidentally) and took to raising her as penance for it. Minfilia despised her at first but eventually came to consider her as a mother. Her second parental substitute is Thancred, a member of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn(and initially the Circle of Knowing) who helped take care of her when he was unable to save her father from the event that killed him. He and F'lhaminn aren't a couple, but he does clearly have a crush on her though it doesn't go anywhere. But they are both extremely dedicated to Minfilia and both are heartbroken when she is sent by Hydaelyn to the First Shard to save it, possibly never to return to their world.
• Pause Scumming: Many games with the "Active Time Battle" system (4 thru 9, and X-2) have an option to pause the ATB clock when a player accesses an in-battle submenu (magic, items, etc.), but any in-progress attack animations will continue to execute. As a result, the player can gain a slight speed advantage by opening the menu whenever a party member executes an action, to prevent enemy turns from coming up while the attack animation takes place.
• People Jars:
  • Final Fantasy VI had espers... in jars.
  • Final Fantasy VII had Zack and Cloud stuck in tanks during their years of experimentation at the hands of Mad Scientist Hojo.
    • In the spin-off game Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent gets this treatment as well when he is put in a tank by Lucrecia to save his life. This one's a more benign example, but he wouldn't be in that tank in the first place if it weren't for Hojo shooting him and performing horrendous experiments on his half-dead body. Especially jarring in that the cutscene is shown in first-person POV from Vincent's perspective, so essentially the player is the one inside the tank, looking out of it and unable to move.
  • Final Fantasy IX had the Genome, some of whom are seen in jars. They also have creepy tendencies, but they aren't clones since they have sex.
• Percent-Based Values:
  • The recurring Ultima Weapon, from the third game onwards, and extending to the remakes of the first and second, is a special sword that deals damage proportionate to how much health you have remaining. When you're topped up, it's by far the most powerful weapon in the game. When you're low on health, it does piddling damage.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the Step Mine spell deals damage equal to 3.1% of the total steps your party has taken throughout the game, up to 9999 HP. Furthermore, its MP cost is also equal to 3.33% of the number of minutes you've been playing the game, up to a maximum of 255 MP.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage:
  • Final Fantasy XII has the marriage between Princess Ashe of Dalmasca and Prince Rasler of Nabradia, with the two of them truly in love despite the union being arranged for political reasons. They even lampshade in a cutscene how people are assuming it's all to do with politics.
  • The Final Fantasy XV characters Luna and Noctis were friends before international diplomacy demanded they marry, though they didn't know the other reciprocated their feelings. This was convenient both politically and cosmologically, as Luna and Noctis are also fate's bitches, and the world depends on their ability to cooperate.
• Personality Blood Types: Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy VIII have this trope along with the characters blood types.
  • Type A: Cyan Garamonde, Banon, Yuffie Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, Quistis Trepe, Irvine Kinneas, and Ward Zabac.
    • Best Traits: Earnest, sensible, reserved, patient, responsible, cautious.
    • Worst Traits: Fastidious, overearnest, stubborn, tense, obsessive, and pessimistic.
  • Type B: Celes Chere, Relm Arrowny, Gau, Cid Highwind, Tifa Lockhart, Laguna Loire, Zell Dincht, and Selphie Tilmitt.
    • Best Traits: Passionate, active, creative, animal-loving, flexible, cheerful, optimistic.
    • Worst Traits: Irresponsible, forgetful, selfish, lazy, impatient, unreliable, and "going own way."
  • Type AB: Setzer Gabbiani, Cloud Strife, and Squall Leonhart.
    • Best Traits: Cool, controlled, rational, sociable, adaptable, intelligent.
    • Worst Traits: Critical, indecisive, unforgiving, two-faced, aloof, and "split personality."
  • Type O: Locke Cole, Edgar Roni Figaro, Sabin Rene Figaro, Strago Magus, Leo Cristophe, Aerith Gainsborough, Barret Wallace, Zack Fair, Seifer Almasy, and Kiros Seagill.
    • Best Traits: Confident, self-determined, ambitious, strong-willed, intuitive, agreeable, competitive, athletic.
    • Worst Traits: Self-centered, cold, aggressive, unpredictable, arrogant, envious, and ruthless.
  • Unknown Types: Terra Branford, Shadow, Gogo, Mog, Umaro, Red XIII, Cait Sith, and Rinoa Heartilly.
• Pillar of Light: The usual appearance of the Holy spell.
• Please Wake Up:
  • Easily one of the most heartbreaking moments in the Final Fantasy franchise, in Final Fantasy V. Galuf has just given his absolute all to save the heroes from Exdeath. The rest of the group tries absolutely everything they can to bring him back, from cure spells to resurrection magic to elixirs, all the while begging him to get back up. He doesn't.
  • Celes's reaction to Cid's death in Final Fantasy VI, assuming you let the old guy die (or killed him deliberately).
  • Subverted in the ending of Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa does this wordlessly after finding Squall's apparently lifeless body in a wasteland beyond time. Her Sorceress powers kick in, bringing them both back to their own time, and possibly bringing him back to life as well (open to interpretation as to whether he was dead, as there is no dialogue).
  • In Final Fantasy IX, you meet a Black Mage who's just buried his friend after he 'stopped moving'. "I sure hope he wakes up soon. I'm going to wash him off in the pond'. Semi-subversion in that most of the mages look like adults and don't understand death (or much about the world), while Vivi, the one that looks like a little kid, understands exactly what's going on and only avoids calling it death out of politeness. Some of the mages eventually grasp the concept but continue to use the term anyway.
  • Subverted in Final Fantasy Tactics. Rafa wants the dead Malak to wake up to watch the sunrise... and that prompts the one time that God acts through a Zodiac Stone instead of the Lucavi, resurrecting him.
• Polar Opposite Twins:
  • Final Fantasy IV: Palom and Porom. Palom is the bouncy, mischievous user of black magic, and Porom is the serious-minded user of white magic.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Edgar and Sabin Figaro. Edgar is smart, The Strategist and a Gadgeteer Genius, while Sabin is not much of a thinker and prefers to act with his hands since he's an incredibly powerful martial artist.
  • World of Final Fantasy: Lann and Reynn. Lann is bright and energetic, while Reynn is calm and calculated.
  • Final Fantasy Dimensions contains gender-swapped Expies of these characters in soft-spoken, serious white mage (at game start) Dusk and his snarky, energetic black-magic-using (again, at game start) twin sister Alba.
• The Pollyanna:
  • An argument could be made for Aerith from Final Fantasy VII, who was orphaned by violence, raised in a dirty, dangerous slum, ekes out a living for herself and her mother through selling flowers on the street, lost her first love in tragic circumstances (that are only probably unknown to her) and is being relentlessly watched and sometimes chased by the Yakuza-esque enforcers of a tyrannical Evil Corporation. Despite all this, she has a cheery, upbeat personality and only occasionally shows glimpses of sadness and/or oddness that are more connected to her unusual powers than her past. She's The Pollyanna, and that's probably why she had to die.
    • Tifa is like this too: Eternally optimistic, despite having a backstory involving getting sliced with a sword, watching her father die, having her hometown burned down, and not only having her childhood friend skip town on her a few years previously, but not even helping her after the aforementioned slicing, due to Heroic BSoD. Not to mention almost having a city dropped on her when she's an adult.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Laguna Loire finally hits it off with his longtime crush and the very next day he's forced to jump off a cliff in order to escape a group of enemy soldiers. He's later seen in a quaint village and finds out that said crush thinks him dead, and has moved on and gotten married. Then he falls in love again and gets married, only to have his adoptive daughter get kidnapped, forcing him to search for her and leave his pregnant wife behind. He finally finds his daughter and has to send her, alone, back to his wife. Unfortunately, his wife dies in childbirth and since no one can find Laguna (who didn't even know she was pregnant), both of his children are sent to live in an orphanage and he doesn't see either of them again until they're adults. Despite this, he's as cheerful as ever years later and rambles about needing love and friendship to complete one's mission when he isn't being totally psyched about being on a spaceship.
    • Selphie from the same game. Relentlessly cheerful, to the point of announcing that breaking a friend out of a government facility will be "like a picnic! We're going to have fun!" Some lines seem to show that she's scared of not being happy.
    • Selphie is more like the original Pollyanna in that she's more of The Woobie. Once she's in battle, that sunny attitude goes away and she does have her sad moments like when Trabia Garden is destroyed.
  • Tidus from Final Fantasy X is perhaps the best-known male example. Despite everything he's gone through with an abusive father, then losing everything he has ever known, he remains positive and upbeat. A refreshing change from the usual Final Fantasy hero (although he does have his moments every now and then).
    • And then there's Shelinda, who is the single most upbeat priestess in the entire Church of Yevon.
  • Final Fantasy XIII gives us Vanille; it becomes increasingly apparent as the plot unravels that it's a coping mechanism, although she's most certainly an honest bubbly person to some extent, as she retains the trait when her issues are settled. She breaks down twice: once when it comes out into the open that she indirectly ruined Sazh and his son's lives by keeping Fang uninformed of their Focus, and again when Fang tricks her into admitting she's faking amnesia. The second time almost gets her killed.
• Porn Stash:
  • Final Fantasy IV has a VIP room in one of the cities where you find a porno mag on the bookshelf. The screen turns pink and the music changes to reflect the mood.
  • Final Fantasy VI, in the updated translation for the GBA port, reveals that the 'Book of Secrets' in Cyan's treasure chest in the World of Ruin is actually a copy of 'Bushido in the Bedroom'.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has you finding a copy of "The Girl Next Door" early on in the game. You trade it for a Shiva Card for the Triple Triad game later on.
• Posthumous Character:
  • In Final Fantasy V, Enuo was a dark wizard who was killed 1000 years before the game starts. He summoned the Void and his actions split the world into two, before he was swallowed by the void. His past deeds set into motion the events of the main game.
  • Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII is the entire reason Cloud becomes the main character, yet we only find out about his existence after Cloud realizes he was pretending to be Zack the whole time.
    • Sephiroth was this as well. Cloud killed him long before the game starts, though he eventually wills himself back to life in the end just in time for the Final Battle. Every time you encounter him outside of flashbacks prior to the end it's just another Jenova clone.
  • Jecht of Final Fantasy X although we eventually learn that Jecht isn't dead.
    • Also Braska, although Braska doesn't get as much character development and did leave a Video Will, if you happen to find it.
  • Serah in Final Fantasy XIII turns to solid crystal only seconds after she appears for the first time at the end of the first act. As the game progresses, more details are revealed about her and her past. Her fate is a major motivation and driving force behind both Lightning's and Snow's diverging storylines, and she played a major role in the events that led up to the beginning of the game.
• Power Crystal: Frequently represent the force of "light" or "life". They are sometimes sentient, but almost always drive the plot.
• Power of the God Hand: Godhand is a common name for a powerful fist-type weapon (usually with a Holy attribute).
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Many Final Fantasy bosses have these before the Boss Battle.
  • Final Fantasy: "I, Garland, will knock you all down!"
  • Final Fantasy VI:
    • "My name is Ultima... I am power both ancient and unrivaled... I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form... Feeble creatures of flesh... Your time is nigh!"
    • Kefka, right before the final battle. "Life... Dreams... Hope... Where do they come from? And where do they go? Such meaningless things... I'll destroy them all!"
  • There's several of them in Final Fantasy VII, its sub-franchise, and crossover appearances, particularly from Sephiroth.
    • From Crisis Core: "Traitor... you will pay!" (Cue Octaslash)
    • From Kingdom Hearts II:
      Sephiroth: Well, that's an interesting sword you're carrying. [indicating Sora's weapon]
      Donald: It's the Keyblade.
      Sephiroth: I see. So that's a Keyblade. [to Sora] And I suppose you must be its chosen wielder.
      Sora: So what if I am?
      Sephiroth: I wonder if it won't change its mind, once I defeat you.
    • From Advent Children after impaling Cloud on the Masamune: "Is this the pain you felt before, Cloud? Let me remind you... this time, you won't forget."
    • Zack Fair, a non-villain example: "...and above all... protect your honor... AS SOLDIER!! COME AND GET IT!!!" To a whole army.
  • Final Fantasy IX: "Then allow me to shatter your delusions of grandeur!"
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • The game in general has the characters say one-liners before casting spells and using skills. Lulu is particularly known for that.
    • "Your hope ends here! And your meaningless existence with it!"
  • Final Fantasy XV has Noctis give a good one to the Final Boss.
    Noctis: Off my chair, jester. The king sits there.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy has all characters say something when the battle starts, and a good part of the time it'll be this trope, or some sort of mocking comment about the opponent. The prequel Dissidia 012 went further with custom introductory quotes for storyline battles where both characters speak. For example, this gem from the Final Boss:
    Garland: I will grant you true and utter annihilation!
    Lightning: Bring it on! I don't need a second chance!
    • Kain is also particularly adept at delivering these before his battles:
      Exdeath: So you offer your life in exchange for theirs?
      Kain: Of course not. I offer yours.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Though it's not as vulgar as the other examples on this page, the normally G-rated language Final Fantasy VIII has three notable instances.
    • When one minor character very nearly kills another by accident (by hanging him with a fishing line, no less), the almost-victim understandably berates his idiotic pal, finishing up by calling him "DUMBASS!" Complete with red text and a slashing sound as the word is said, to drive home the point that yes, this is as foul as the language is going to get. Maybe they were trying to avoid what happened with Final Fantasy VII.
    • When Zone, one of Those Two Guys, lays into Squall for letting Rinoa get hurt: "YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
    • When Squall and party overhear fatherly and normally ineffectual Headmaster Cid arguing with Garden Master NORG:
      Headmaster Cid: Greedy son-of-a-bitch! [...] Dammit! I should've never trusted you! I wish I could go back ten or so years. To tell myself that you're nothing but a money grubbing son-of-a-bitch!
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Tidus calls Jecht a "self centered old bastard".
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Sazh's baby pet Chocobo actually pulls one of these off when "The Pulsian Chocobos are being attacked by your mission target", which Sazh can easily translate.
  Sazh: Hurry the what up?
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  • Lulu does this in Final Fantasy X before casting elemental spells if they're one-shot kills.
    • The Death spell has the delightful "Nice knowing you."
    • Everybody except Kimahri has a premortem comment. Similarly, Tidus may deliver a one-liner when using Flee.
  • At the start of a battle in Final Fantasy X-2 (and occasionally before casting spells or using similar special abilities), the girls toss one-liners between themselves, which are context-sensitive depending on the enemy. Clearly the spirit of Woolsey had a hand in them, because there's Shout-Out after Shout Out.
    • And at the end, you get some good ones too, including a Marx Brothers reference:
      Yuna: Duck soup!
      Paine: Duck what?!
  • Final Fantasy XI has Odin and his Zantetsuken speech, complete with Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe with a side of pork.
    Odin: Mine obsidian blade shall split attain the threads of thy future, whilst its crimson fuller shalt channel the lifeblood of thy past. Now wail as thy soul is strewn across the plains of Valhalla!
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: Beginning with Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation, the Final Fantasy series became famous for its high quality pre-rendered cutscenes that integrated flawlessly with the pre-rendered backgrounds. The high production values and visual spectacle of these cutscenes were crucial to popularizing Japanese RPGs with western audiences, who found previous games' 2D sprites unappealing for conveying complex plots and characters.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel:
  • Final Fantasy XII is notoriously longer than previous games in the series, having longer dungeons, and a ton more side-quests.
  • Of the Final Fantasy games for the SNES/Super Famicom, Final Fantasy IV had roughly 12 hours of gameplay, and Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI were significantly longer.
• Punk Punk: After 5, the series got down on one knee and asked punk to marry it. 6 and 7 were both Dungeon Punk, with 6 leaning towards Steam and 7 leaning towards Cyber; as was 8. 9 went back to cuddling with steampunk, and it seems to be Dungeon for "the duration" afterwards.

R

• Rage Judo: In some games, there's a skill called Provoke that effectively functions as an inversion of this trope: Making the enemies angry at you to keep them away from other party members.
• Ragnarök Proofing; You can't swing a sword in Final Fantasy games without hitting a fully functional relic of a lost civilization.
• Random Drop: Enemies give items after battle.
• Random Drop Booster: The games have Treasure Hunter (also known as Master Thief, Rare Item, Item Collector, Pickpocket, or Bandit) ability, that typically allows players to increase the chance of gaining rarer items, from battle, either via item drops or stealing, or both. In terms of its functionality, it shares its traits with the Thief Gloves and the Thief's Hat which also increase the rates of stealing.
• Random Effect Spell: Numerous throughout the series.
• Randomized Damage Attack: In several games there's a high-level spell called "Comet" or "Meteor" with a huge variability in its damage output — it could do 100 points damage one turn and 9999 the next, when other spells are more consistent from one use to the next.
• Real Men Hate Affection:
  • In Final Fantasy V, Bartz, Galuf, and Faris might not hate affection, but they are absolutely terrible at expressing it to each other, whereas don't have issues being emotional with Lenna and Krile. Case in point, Galuf asks Bartz why he, Lenna, and Faris leave their homeworld without knowing if they can ever return, in order to help Galuf protect his own planet. The reply?
    Bartz: ...No particular reason.
  • Final Fantasy X: Jecht, Tidus' emotionally abusive father, truly did love his son, but was merely bad at showing it. This forms a major part of Tidus' character arc. At one point, the party can find a sphere Jecht left behind in which he tries to give a sentimental message to Tidus, but ultimately gives up:
  Jecht: Remember, you're my son. And... well, uh... never mind. I'm no good at these things.
• Real Men Wear Pink:
  • A lot of the older male heroes of Final Fantasy (the first through sixth games - all of the characters designed by Yoshitaka Amano) utilize scarves and heels in their outfits. Special mention goes to Cecil Harvey, who wears purple lipstick of all things.
    • And a tiara, once he becomes a Paladin.
  • Cloud from Final Fantasy VII really fits the trope. Because real men crossdress.
    • There is also Sephiroth. As Crisis Core tells us, real men use a whole bottle of perfumed shampoo and conditioner daily and then smell of roses and vanilla.
    • There also Angeal (Sephiroth's Best Friend) from Crisis Core tells us real men loves dogs, cooking and gardening.
    • The movie sequel, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, shows that all members of the party wear a pink ribbon tied around their arms in memory of Aerith. This includes uber-badasses Barrett and Vincent.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Reddas - real men wear pink pants.
• Recruitment by Rescue: Starting with Final Fantasy III, this was the standard way to gather party members. Almost every game since then has had some party members recruited in this way.
  • Variation in Final Fantasy VI, whose large character roster is a Venn diagram of characters who are originally recruited via this trope, those who are re-recruited via this trope in the World of Ruin as Celes puts the band back together, and those who are recruited this way both times.
    • Terra is first recruited into the Returners when Locke rescues her from Imperial enslavement and Mind Control in the game's opening minutes, although she doesn't "officially" join up until she runs into a But Thou Must! a bit later. In the World of Ruin, she doesn't get her fighting spirit back until she and the party have freed the town of Mobliz from the threat of Phunbaba, a roving monster.
    • Cyan is recruited when Sabin (and possibly Shadow) help rescue him from an Imperial attack on his homeland.
    • Locke, who definitely has a "saving people thing," recruits Celes to the team by saving her from her own Imperial captivity.
    • Mog is taken hostage by a desperate thief, and his attempt to break free results in both of them clinging desperately to a cliff face. The party can choose which one to save; saving Mog recruits him, saving the thief gets you a rather crappy Relic. (Not to worry, the thief survives the fall.)
    • Relm and Strago are recruited after the party saves Relm from a burning building. They are re-recruited after the party helps Relm exorcise a haunted painting and Relm snaps Strago out of a Cult-of-Kefka-induced stupor respectively.
    • Sabin is re-recruited in the World of Ruin after Celes relieves him of the burden of holding up a collapsing building by rescuing the child trapped inside.
    • Edgar is re-recruited after you help him rescue Figaro Castle from being trapped underground.
    • Shadow doesn't join the party permanently until you rescue him from the Cave on the Veldt in the World of Ruin, where he's been injured searching for a legendary weapon (which winds up being kind of lame anyway).
• Recurring Element: Cid, people named Highwind, moogles, chocobos, summons such as Ifrit and Bahamut, monsters such as Bomb and Cactuar, Ultima and Omega Weapons, Gilgamesh, Genji equipment, and crystals.
• Recurring Riff:
  • The Final Fantasy theme. The song is unusual in that it usually plays over the opening and/or closing credits, and sometimes not at all. Employed as a connecting thread between games, it's considered to be the theme song of the Final Fantasy as a whole; these days, however, it takes a backseat to original pieces of music, and only pops up during the credits because fans expect it to.
  • Every random battle theme for the first six games starts out with the exact same bassline. It was largely dropped in VII and VIII (beyond appearances in "Birth of a God" and "The Extreme", respectively), made a return in IX, and then dropped again.
  • The victory fanfare also starts on the same tune in many of the games. To the point that the only game to date which fully replaced it rather than altered the second half (i.e. 7 and 8) was 13.
  • The "Prelude"^note informally known as the "Crystal Theme" appears in one form or another in every mainline game from the very first entry onward, frequently on the title screen or an intro beforehand.
• Red Herring:
  • In Final Fantasy VII. The illusion of player control on the first disk. Specifically the date mechanics, and Cloud's personality.
  • The hunter-killer in Final Fantasy XII has everyone in Clan Centuro suspect Monid because the killer is a bangaa and he's a bangaa that always disappears from the group whenever a hunt is posted. During the Belto hunt, Monid appears to have turned against you, but it turns out that he was talking to Ba'Gamnan, who appears from behind the party and is overjoyed that Balthier finally showed up. Ba'Gamnan reveals that he is the one who had killed the hunters in order to lure Balthier out so he could kill him. After Ba'Gamnan is defeated, Monid reveals that the hunt you signed up for was a phony hunt set up by Montblanc to lure out the killer. Because everyone had suspected Monid already, he used that opportunity to investigate the killings on his own by Montblanc's request.
  • The "YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse" raid questline from 'Final Fantasy XIV throws one to players who previously played NieR: Automata: the end boss of the first raid dungeon is 9S, who underwent Sanity Slippage in the later chapters of Automata'' and is shown trying to kill 2P, the apparent heroine of the questline. The player is led to believe that 9S has gone mad by the time they fight him. In the lead-up to the second raid dungeon, however, it is revealed that 2P is actually an evil clone made by the Machine Lifeforms, and 9S is Good All Along in this questline.
• The Red Mage: Trope Namer
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Final Fantasy IV's Palom and Porom are Polar Opposite Twins who also fall into this trope. Palom uses Black Magic; he's brash and always getting himself into trouble. His twin sister Porom uses White Magic; she's studious, dutiful, and constantly smacking her brother upside the head to get him to behave.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Terra is not as extroverted and forceful as a typical Red Oni, but is much less reserved and more interested in understanding her emotions than Celes, who is an intellectual, reserved former general and initially adverse to socializing and expressing her emotions. In a game without a true main character, the two are the closest candidates for the position of protagonist. It helps that the two have Personality Powers: Terra naturally learns fire magic while Celes naturally learns ice magic. Also, there are traditionally three females in each playable party: first being red, second being blue, and third somewhere in between.
    • Also, there's General Leo being the Blue Oni to Kefka's Red Oni.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Tifa as the Blue Oni in dark clothes and Aerith as the Red Oni in red clothes. Played even straighter with their Wall Market dresses, respectively blue and bright red.
    • Cloud, while he'll show off whenever he gets the chance, is collected and thoughtful, with his flashiness being mostly a self-consciously cool persona. He's generally associated with purple, blue, white or black, and comes equipped with Ice magic at the start of the game. Barret is a loud Hot-Blooded Large Ham who wears his emotions on his sleeve (there are several occasions where he's explicitly described as crying, while the closest Cloud ever comes is acknowledging that his eyes were burning). He wears mostly warm tones, uses bullets and fireballs as weapons, and has a tattoo featuring fire. Note also that Cloud's highly personal Duel to the Death quest is patterned after samurai tropes while Barret's is based on Spaghetti Western tropes, suggesting Samurai Cowboy.
    • Zack's optimistic, vibrant, Hot-Blooded, more experienced than Cloud and (in the original game, anyway) goes out with women without letting them tell their mothers. In Crisis Core he uses the blunt edge of his sword and is motivated by justice and heroism. Cloud's pessimistic, thoughtful, sarcastically witty, and more innocent - but he can be ruthless, is motivated by revenge, and always uses the sharp edge of his sword.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, protagonist Squall is The Quiet One, does his best to be a Consummate Professional, and wears black, while his Rival Turned Evil Seifer is dramatic and impulsive, models himself after his "romantic dream" of knighthood, and wears white. On a smaller scale, the Biggs and Wedge pair in VIII are also a colour-coded example of this, Biggs is brash, aggressive, and ambitious; Wedge is his cool-headed, reserved, and long-suffering subordinate. Raijin and Fujin also qualify.
  • Final Fantasy IX has Zidane and Kuja, which sort of makes sense when you consider they're brothers. It is later subverted: Zidane becomes a lot more responsible and thoughtful, while Kuja becomes an Omnicidal Maniac. Even the planets Gaea and Terra are color-coded according to this convention.
  • The colors are reversed in Final Fantasy X, with Hot-Blooded and impulsive Tidus as a red oni associated with the color blue and The Stoic Auron as a blue oni associated with the color red. Seymour, the main onscreen villain, also plays blue oni to Tidus' red.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has Yuna positioned between red Rikku and blue Paine.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning is outwardly cold and professional with a former past in the military. Fang is flirty and cocky and comes from an ancient tribe of warriors. Lightning's outfit is white with a red cape, while Fang's outfit is black with blue sashes. The parallels extend to their Eidolons - a white knight and a black dragon. The game also plays with this in another way: Lightning acts like a blue but her plan to save cocoon basically involved going nuts and killing anyone who stood in her way, whereas Fang acts like a red but was the only l'Cie that had anything resembling an actual plan to save humanity. Also, Snow and Hope invert this trope. Snow, the Hot-Blooded character in blue clothes, is the Red Oni in comparison to Hope, the level-headed character in yellow and orange clothes, who is the Blue Oni.
    • Fang and Vanille also play with the trope. Vanille has pink-orange hair, wears pink, and is the more outwardly emotional, but it's she who makes the Needs Of The Many decision to abandon her Focus and let herself turn Cie'th for the sake of Cocoon. The blue-wearing Fang is generally more mature and level-headed, but it's she who is willing to endanger millions of lives in order to save Vanille.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Noel is a Blue Oni relative to Snow (complete with color-coding), but a Red Oni relative to Caius.
  • In World of Final Fantasy have the twin protagonists, Lann and Reynn are also have their color reversed. Lann is wearing blue but really focusing on fighting and rather Book Dumb. While his sister, Reynn is wearing red but focusing on the enemy's weakness before attacking and rather Smart.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith is drawn to Cloud because he reminds her of her former boyfriend, Zack Fair who turns out to have been Cloud's Big Brother Mentor before his death. Aerith's kind and gentle demeanor (though she is quite spunky at times) reminds Cloud of his late mother. Aerith even lampshades the trope in the Gondola Date, then adds that she would like to know Cloud better for the guy he actually is.
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • Halfway through the game it's revealed that Princess Garnet is actually one of these. She's actually a summoner born in Madain Sari and washed up in Alexandria Port not too long after the real Princess Garnet died of an illness. As they looked similar she was raised to believe she was the princess.
    • It's strongly implied that Vivi dies during the epilogue, but a whole crowd of his children are seen who look identical to him.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent
  • Bangaa examples:
    • The Bangaa in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance are pretty cool guys, and have some incredibly badass job abilities. However, the NPC Bangaa in the game are almost all soldiers and jailers in the employ of the evil government.
    • In Final Fantasy XII Vaan's adoptive father figure Migelo is a Bangaa. But, then you have Ba'gam'nan's all-Bangaa hit-squad after you. Tellingly they are common enemies while the cuter tribes of Viera, Moogle and Nu Mou are not.
    • Bangaas are the race best integrated within the humes, hence why they're so common in the game. Contrast with the Seeqs who also appear as enemies and are treated like second-rate citizens.
  • Final Fantasy XI has a few different reptile and amphibian enemies, and none are on any peaceful terms (Half the time because people did something stupid):
    • The Lamiae are snake-woman hybrids that routinely slay people and then raise the corpses to make an undead army.
    • The Mamool Ja are lizardmen who had once paid tribute to The Empire of Aht Urhgan, but have since tried to destroy it.
    • Poroggos are frogs that were able to walk due to magic, and actually were nice to the Tarutaru, thinking they were on good terms with the main races... too bad Windurst got scared of talking, magic-casting frogs and tried to kill them all. Now the Poroggos go around and hit adventurers with party-wiping magic.
    • Quadav are turtle beastmen who actually had a nice life and weren't very nasty. This, of course, all went to hell when Bastok started taking and destroying the Quadav's homes so that the Republic could get more resources. Now the Quadav attack pretty much anyone they see, defending their homes with extreme prejudice.
  • Final Fantasy II introduced Firion to a half-human half-snake hybrid called the Lamia Queen, an encounter he won't soon forget.
  • Final Fantasy XIV also has elements of this; there are several types of reptilian beastmen, including the game-original Amalj'aa and the returning Mamools, and they all have a fairly rough time of it in Eorzea (though the Amalj'aa are not helped by being Ifrit worshippers, and Ifrit having a tendency to "temper" his followers into fanaticism).
    • It also seems like Lady Yugiri of Doma is attempting to dodge the trope; she keeps her face covered specifically to "avoid shocking [Eorzeans] with her appearance", but her hands and tail suggest that these hidden facial features would be reptilian in nature.
• Rescue Romance:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Tifa Lockhart actually wants to invoke this with Cloud, because she thinks it'd be cool. When they were younger, he told her he was planning to join SOLDIER, so she made him promise to save her if she was ever in a pinch. Which becomes a recurring theme with them throughout "The Compilation".
    • In Final Fantasy VII: The Last Order, he keeps his word by coming to her rescue at the Mako 5 reactor (seen at 0:40-1:18). But the moment is ruined, when Sephiroth recovers and comes looking for revenge against Cloud.
    • While in Advent Children, Cloud finds her unconscious after her fight with Loz. She regains consciousness long enough to tell him he's late.
    • Just before their battle against Bahamut SIN, however, Cloud arrives in the nick of time to save her from being crushed by falling debris. When he apologizes for being late last time, she smiles and says it's fine (seen at 3:05-3:29).
    • While the events of Dissidia 2 are non-canon, the scene after Cloud saves Tifa from Sephiroth contains a Call-Back to their promise and lampshades the trope (seen at 1:55-2:08).
      Tifa: (to Cloud) "Anyway... thanks again for saving my skin. The way you showed up and fought that guy off... It was a pretty cool thing to watch. You were like a hero charging in to save the girl."
    • Tifa also sorta manages to return the favor to Cloud during the original game itself. When Cloud suffers an incredibly nasty Angst Coma after being subjected to a Trauma Conga Line, Tifa stays behind to take care of him and, after they fall into The Lifestream, she helps him put the pieces of his psyche together.
  • Final Fantasy IX. Zidane stole Garnet from the castle, and One Thing Led to Another.
    • It should also be noted that the romance between them only really begins to show through after Zidane (and Co.) save Garnet from the Alexandria Dungeon during Disc 2.
  • Turned in weird directions in Final Fantasy VIII; Rinoa's interest in Squall is visible well before any rescue scenarios, but it takes Squall saving her several times before he really starts to warm up to her.
• Revenge:
  • The Tonberry is the Moe Anthropomorphism of this concept: (aside from their One-Hit KO move once they come up close) their attack Karma/Everyone's Grudge deals damage proportionate to the number of enemies its target has killed.
  • Tellah from Final Fantasy IV wants to kill Golbez in retaliation for the death of his only daughter, Anna.
  • Revenge is a key theme in Final Fantasy XII, specifically whether or not the princess Ashe (Ashelia B'Nargan Dalmasca) will or should take revenge against the Archadian Empire for their subjugation of Dalmasca and the death of her husband, Prince Rasler.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Tellah from Final Fantasy IV seeks revenge on Golbez for ultimately being responsible for the death of his daughter, Anna. To do this, Tellah seeks the world's strongest black magic spell, Meteor. Several characters warn him not to go through with it, seeing his advanced age makes him too weak to use it. He also never gets enough MP to actually cast it. When Tellah finally confronts Golbez, he uses what's left of his life to cast Meteor, and dies as a result of the strain. It's not quite a Senseless Sacrifice, however, since the power of Meteor broke the hold Golbez had over Kain.
  • Princess Ashe from Final Fantasy XII spends most of the game plotting revenge against the Empire for conquering her kingdom, and killing her husband and her father before the events of the game. Her thirst for revenge leaves her blind to the fact that her "Resistance" is unlikely to accomplish anything, and that she is being manipulated by outside forces that are the real enemy the Empire is fighting. At one point, she acknowledges that "reason" says she should try to negotiate with the Empire instead of continuing her war, but it's a bit longer before she finally accepts that revenge won't solve anything.
  • One of the antagonists for Final Fantasy XIV is Nidhogg, the current leader of the Dravanian Horde. He is consumed with rage and has waged war with the nation of Ishgard for over a thousand years over the loss of his eye and his sister at the hands of Ishgard's founders. Even when both man and dragon come to the point where they're ready to atone and make peace, Nidhogg would sooner spill his own kin's blood than ever allow peace with his sworn enemies.
• Revisiting the Roots:
  • VI was a steampunk world that coined the term Magitek, VII and VIII shifted to a modern-esque setting with electricity spaceships and cities. IX then brought things back to a medieval setting of castles, airships, and villages. As well, while VII and VIII had a three-character party system where they were as unique in battle (or not) as the player customized them, IX went back to the style of four party members with pre-set skills as earlier games had done.
  • The class system of the original game was revisited in some form or another every couple of games starting with III and the first instance of the famous job system. The 6 classes from the first game are usually the first ones you get access to in those games (even Bravely Default stuck to that).
  • The Pixel Remaster series does this for the original six games, bringing them closer to the original NES and SNES spritework and stripping out most of the extra content introduced in later rereleases while also including some quality-of-life updates and rearranged music. I and III also get back their Vancian Magic instead of using MP.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Moogles, who are little white fuzzballs that fond of saying "kupo". In Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, we can visit a Moogle village.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy Not even Terra can resist the cute◊. Lightning can.
  • Chocobos, yellow birds used as mounts, may or may not be ridiculously cute depending on the Art Shift of the game.
    • In Final Fantasy XI, not only do you have cute chocobos, you also have the even cuter BABY chocobos. Baby chocobos have also made it as merchandise as a noisy but oh so cute toy◊.
    • There's a number of Final Fantasy spinoffs known collectively as the Chocobo series, all featuring the same ridiculously adorable protagonist◊.
    • From Final Fantasy XIII, Sazh's baby chocobo fits into this trope. It's essentially a fluffy infant chicken that can fly. Amping this up is an optional scene on Gran Pulse in which Sazh's baby chocobo meets baby chocobos of Gran Pulse.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Moombas, apparently an evolved form of the big ugly humanoid Shumi.
  • Tonberry is certainly cute as he slowly waddles across the battlefield, pokes you with his cute little knife, and you fall over dead.
  • Final Fantasy VII has Cait Sith. He's essentially a bipedal cat, but with an oversized head to make him even cuter.
  • The Carbuncle, in the games where it is portrayed as a cat (or fox)-like mammal with huge ears, beady eyes, and rounded snout, like Final Fantasy VIII or Final Fantasy XI. Not so much in Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy VI, where it's more reptilian (and is actually a large and menacing boss monster in the former.) Or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, where it looks like something entirely different. Double Subversion with Final Fantasy V: You have to fight a very feral-looking one at first, but then you summon it and instead get the adorable, Reflect-buffing, shiny-Espeon-esque creature that's pretty much standard for the later games. Yes, including Final Fantasy VI. Dissidia Final Fantasy outright lampshades how increasingly adorable it gets with each game.
    • Even in Crystal Chronicles it's pretty adorable, looking like some big fluffy green Totoro◊.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, they threw in some literal Killer Rabbits by introducing some bosses in the form of the game's terribly cute Dream Hare creatures (imagine a tiny bunny with a giant puffball tail and feathers for ears, and that's about the gist of it). Fury, one of the optional mini-bosses, is one of those.
  • The Nu Mou race from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. They got big furry tails, long and droopy ears like a dog, and their face finishes the rest of their cuteness. Of course, these cute factors run away when you start to see them slaughter your team with powerful magic spells if you find them as enemies. Their Final Fantasy XII incarnations goes the complete opposite end of cute.
  • The Lalafels of Final Fantasy XIV are an entire humanoid race that seems devoted to this concept. They have the largest, most expressive eyes of any playable race in the game (and even a choice to have shimmering pupil less jewel eyes), tiny beady noses, and large pointed ears. Also, they max out at about three feet tall. Even their battle cries will make you want to drop your weapons and give them hugs!
    • In the same game, there's the Namazu, which are a beastmen race that are modeled after catfish . Their googly eyes, short and chubby stature, doofy personalities, and the squeaks they make when they waddle make the Namazu ridiculously cute. There's also merchandise made after them.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • In Final Fantasy IX, this is what prompts Kuja to change course from gathering Summon Magic to harness the game's Limit Break system instead. As Zorn and Thorn attempted to extract Eiko's Eidolons at Kuja's command, Mog (her best friend, a Moogle) comes to the rescue by revealing her true identity as the Eidolon Madeen, which Kuja interprets as the Moogle having gone into a Trance. He then decides that attaining a Trance of his own will give him the power he needs to take revenge on Garland. It turns out he was right, to say the least.
  • The plot of Final Fantasy X-2 is kicked off when Yuna and Rikku discover a Sphere recording of Tidus imprisoned and yelling at the guards. Even though Tidus died at the end of the last game, they conclude that he might be out there somewhere, and Rikku recruits Yuna as a Sphere Hunter to look for him. Much later, it turns out that the recording isn't of Tidus at all; it's a millennia-old recording of Shuyin, his Identical Stranger (which is much less of an Ass Pull than it sounds for long, spoilerific reasons ^note Shuyin is from the city of Zanarkand, which was destroyed a thousand years ago. Zanarkand was then recreated in a magical, spectral simulation, which is where Tidus was born. The implication is that Tidus is a sentient simulation based on Shuyin, which is why they're nigh-identical). However, getting the good ending results in the Fayth bringing Tidus back as thanks for saving the world again, so Rikku was right in that pursuing Spheres would help them find him, just not in the way they expected.
  • Lann from World of Final Fantasy. When searching Castle Cornelia with Reynn and Tama, he deduces that Castle Cornelia is at the top of the city (which is built into a ridiculously steep incline)... by mishearing it as "Casa Cornelius" and assuming that "Casa" means "up".
    Tama: Well, you've the-got the direction correct, even if the rest of that was completely off the-base.
• Rival Turned Evil:
  • Cecil and Kain in Final Fantasy IV. Kain was being (at least partially) mind-controlled, and he repents eventually, but his jealousy over Cecil (mostly regarding Rosa) makes him that much easier to control.
  • Seifer Almasy in Final Fantasy VIII, who starts off as a Jerkass rival to protagonist Squall Leonhart before going all in and siding with the Sorceress Edea.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Final Fantasy VI: After his wife, his son, and his king (along with almost everyone else in Doma castle) are killed by Kefka's poison, Cyan rampages through the Imperial camp. Partly subverted in that Sabin and Shadow come to Cyan's aid and the three end up escaping from the camp.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth learns the "truth" that he's a descendent of the ancients, then goes berserk & burns down the town of Nibelheim. He later learns the truth behind the "truth," but continues with his plan to become a God, transferring "descendent of the Ancients" to "descendent of Jenova." A good deal of his actions—which also become his downfall—are also that he wants to get revenge on Cloud for defeating him in a fairly humiliating fashion.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics:
    • Delita's reaction to his sister's murder. It is to be noted while he acts that way towards the immediate person who dealt the killing blow, his revenge on the corrupt society behind the killing was much more planned.
    • Zalbaag goes into a murderous rage against his brother Dycedarg when he learns that their father's death was caused by Dycedarg secretly poisoning him.
    • Meliadoul's reason for trying to destroy Ramza is because she thinks he was the one responsible for her brother Isilud's death. She stops when she finds out who the real murderer is.
    • Argath has a less subtle version that crosses the Moral Event Horizon. After being resurrected by the Lucavi, he loudly declares to Ramza that he's going to kill all commoners, presumably in part to get back at Delita for killing him.
• Roc Birds: In various games, you get the Zuu — gigantic birdlike monsters — as random encounters. The Rukh are more powerful palette swapped Zuu.
• Royal Brat:
  • Mewt in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance when he becomes prince of the fantasy Ivalice. Cid makes the laws stronger whenever Mewt wants it, Queen Remedi/his mommy comes whenever he wants her, and has people seeking Marche out for a bounty just so he can stay in the fantasy world forever.
  • Aire, the princess of Horne and one of the party members in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is like this before her Character Development: she berates her bodyguard for not rescuing her fast enough, insists that her guest house in Liberte be as comfortable as the castle, and eventually drives Jusqua to leave with her antics.
• Ruder and Cruder:
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake features bit more casual swearing in contrast to the original game, where it was just Barret and Cid who were really foul-mouthed. Even Aerith up does a Precision F-Strike once in Remake, when previously she was viewed as being the Incorruptible Pure Pureness in past media.
  • The fact that the original Final Fantasy VII even has actual swearing-in contrast to the previous installment Final Fantasy VI. This, of course, was due to the previous game being localized under Nintendo's moral guidelines at the time.
• Rule of Three: Before Final Fantasy XV broke the trend, exactly three numbered games ^note that is, games which introduced a new universe; sequels and remakes are exempt from this were released for each home console system to host the series ^note  I, II, and III for the NES, IV, V, and VI for the SNES, VII, VIII, and IX for the PlayStation, X, XI, and XII for the PlayStation 2. XIII and XIV hold PlayStation 3 grounds, but XV'' went to Development Hell long enough for the PlayStation 4 to come out.
• Rummage Sale Reject:
  • Tidus, the main character of Final Fantasy X. Most of Tetsuya Nomura's character designs for VII and VIII were at least plausible, but many of the characters from FFX (the aforementioned Tidus and Lulu with her belt-dress being prime offenders) have costumes that are simply strange. Nooj◊, from the sequel Final Fantasy X-2, takes the cake with an outfit that is nothing short of bizarre.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Basch. The national costume of Dalmasca appears to be "pastel BDSM wear", Vaan never puts on a shirt, Fran wears a merry-widow with thigh-highs, Penelo has bizarre leather wing-things on the back of her costume, Ashe has a Chippendales collar and the world's shortest skirt, but Basch takes the cake by showing up in multiple ridiculous outfits: bright orange shorts under armour, a leather thong on the outside of his clothes that seems to be riding up rather a lot, and an open-fronted shirt and jacket combo set off with what appears to be a potholder or a scrap of his favourite childhood security blanket strapped to one side of his chest.
  • Ivalice is prone to these, as Final Fantasy Tactics A2 provides the page image with Luso Clemens. Even though he's wearing overalls, he still has two belts, along with a sash that's more of a ragged green blanket, double-decker boots, elbow guards that look like plates, a decorative bandage, some other kind of strap, a clover pin...