Tropes D to F / Final Fantasy XIV

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Damager, Healer, Tank: Enforced. Every class is specifically assigned one of three roles - Tank, Healer, DPS - and the "Duty Finder" auto-matching feature will slot players into either a "Light Party" consisting of one Tank, one Healer, and two DPS, or a "Full Party" of double that (some duties replacing the second Tank with a fifth DPS) depending on the content. That said, these requirements don't apply to premade groups. Also the 3 categories of skills your chocobo can learn.
- Despite these pre-assigned roles, everyone is expected to maximize their damage output while performing their role in the party. A Tank like the Warrior or Gunbreaker can put in some serious DPS—potentially rivaling the DPS classes—despite being primarily a class that focuses on taking hits instead of dealing them.
- Averted with the Blue Mage limited job. Since it is highly versatile due to the breadth of skills they can learn from monsters, they don't neatly fit into any of the three roles, and as such, cannot join random parties in Duty Finder. Blue Mage does however gain access to a skill that allows it to "copy" a role, effectively taking on traits of that role. For example, copying a healer will boost healing spells, and copying a Tank will increase defense.
- Averted with the Variant Dungeons, introduced in patch 6.25. In these dungeons, up to four people can play, and can be any combination of roles that they want. Do you want to go into a dungeon with four healers? Four tanks? Four DPS units? Go ahead! There's even "Variant Actions" that allow a class to do something it couldn't ordinarily do, like restore HP or Draw Aggro.
Damned by Faint Praise: When starting a new crafting class, your work on the first few quests is generally regarded as "not bad for an amateur". Inverted in the Goldsmith's Guild quests. The Genius Ditz Guildmaster tries to be encouraging, but her assistant pronounces your first work "unfit to make a chamberpot" and your second "an affront to the gods themselves". When you turn in the level 10 quest, he replies "I've seen worse", which is immediately lampshaded as a sign that he likes it.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The winning numbers of the Jumbo Cactpot are, like Japanese text, read from right to left. Lottery games based in English speaking countries read winning numbers from left to right instead, which can trip up many players when they read the cactpot's winning numbers.
Dance Battler:
- The Vanu Vanu, a beast tribe that appear as large, bird-like humanoids of substantial girth, perform a number of Haka-like dances. In battle, when they aren't attacking, they even perform a haka with weapons drawn.
- As of Shadowbringers, the Dancer class allows the Warrior of Light to become one of these.
- 2020's Moonfire Faire centers around fighting off a giant man-shark by way of a summoned bombard, with players using special dances to empower and heal the bombard in question.
Dangerous Device Disposal Debacle: At the end of the 3.3 story quests, Alphinaud and the Warrior of Light toss Nidhogg's eyes into the nearby abyss — which predictably end up in the hands of the Ascians by their next appearance. It wasn't explained until 3.5 that they were expecting them to be destroyed in a torrent of eternally clashing wind and water aether that resides at the bottom of the abyss in question. Defied much later, the next time Team Good gets their hands on the things — Estinien notes that they're completely depleted of aether fueling Shinryu, but takes no chances and destroys them for good on the spot.
Dark Is Not Evil:
- The Dark Knight class, introduced in Heavensward, is played as a defender of the weak and downtrodden from corrupt elements in the Holy See. Played with, since the actual quest is far more about just how "evil", or not, a person's "dark" emotions and desires are.
  Dark Knight Job Description: "...their greatswords act as beacons to guide the meek through the darkness."
- The Black Mage job storyline delves into just how unsavory the powers of void and destruction are, which can nonetheless be wielded for a noble cause.
- The Shadowbringers expansion revolves around this combined with Light Is Not Good, where the Warrior of Light travels to a reflection of their world ravaged by a calamity of Light, resetting the balance by becoming the Warrior of Darkness. At one point during the expansion's story, Urianger espouses that the Balance Between Good and Evil in the Source and its reflections isn't specifically between Light and Dark, but rather between "astral" and "umbral", where Light and Dark can fit either one; a surfeit of either leads to catastrophes like the Flood of Light, which is most easily demonstrated by the fact that the Sin Eater enemies in Norvrandt heavily resemble voidsent from the rest of the game, which were created from a similar flood of Darkness overtaking another reflection and turning it into the Void.
Darkest Hour: Just when things get comfortable after the last big conflict, the story knows how to yank the rug under your feet and have you tumbling down six flights of stairs or so.
- Before the Fall – Part II (Patch 2.55). The wards surrounded Ishgard are broken, opening it to Dravanian attack; Sultana Nanamo Ul Namo is assassinated, and the Warrior of Light and the Scions are framed for it; Lolorito and the Monetarists seize control of Ul'dah; Ilberd and the Crystal Braves turn traitor; Raubahn loses his arm in a fight against Ilberd; the Scions, including Minfilia, sacrifice themselves one by one to help you escape; the Rising Stones is taken; the Hope Spot of a united Eorzea shatters; all that’s left of your strongest companions is Tataru, Alphinaud, and Yugiri, huddled in a cold room in Camp Dragonhead. Even Tataru’s attempt to cheer your team up is heart-wrenching. The Stinger twists the knife even further: Lord Lolorito is hinted to have helped plan Nanamo’s murder; the Ascians are still plotting and have turned their sights on Coerthas; Urianger has been in contact with Elidibus; and as the Warrior of Light looks upon the gates to Ishgard, Midgardsormr is at your side, taunting you.
- Prelude in Violet (Patch 4.4): It seems as though the Eorzean Alliance is poised to strike a massive blow against Garlemald. Suddenly, however, the Scions have a painful experience wherein a mysterious voice warns them of a coming catastrophe, after which they begin to fall comatose one by one. To make matters worse, the founding emperor of Garlemald is revealed to be an Ascian, the Empire has started using deadly chemical weapons against their enemies, and a new war is breaking out between the Empire and Ala Mhigo shortly after the conquered nation regained its freedom.
- On a comical note, during the Further Adventures of Hildibrand, you have to massage an elderly villain (who has already forgotten who you are) until he falls asleep, steal his armor off his sleeping body, and leave him in the middle of a wilderness filled with bears and morbols. Your journal notes that this may be the lowest point in the Warrior of Light's career.
- "A Requiem for Heroes", the last MSQ questline of Stormblood leading into Shadowbringers: War has completely broken out after Eorzea ends all diplomacy attempts with Garlemald after learning Emperor Varis's ultimate goals. After claiming victory for the Alliance, the Warrior of Light and Alisaie hear the voice yet again, with Alisaie losing consciousness, leaving the Warrior of Light as the last Scion left standing who has heard the voice. Afterwards, Elidibus as Zenos takes the field, and the Warrior of Light engages them. Just as they are about to cinch victory once more, they are called away, with Elidibus ready to kill them, to another plane of reality where they learn of the First, an alternate world that is about to be destroyed by the power of Light. After recovering (it is only thanks to Estinien and the good people of House Fortemps that they escaped death), they prepare to venture into another world that is on the brink of utter ruination. With the Warrior of Light gone to another world, and the Scions incapacitated, Eorzea's future as the Garlean Empire breathes down its neck has never been less certain...
- In Shadowbringers itself: After defeating all the Lightwardens, the Warrior of Darkness becomes infused with so much light they they start to turn into a Sin Eater, and all the lands are once more bathed in light, undoing all the hard work you went through to restore the night sky. The Exarch tries to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to take the light into himself and go into the void, but Emet-Selch shoots him in the back and kidnaps him, cruelly mocking the heroes. Ryne manages to temporarily suppress the Warrior of Darkness's transformation, but it only delays the inevitable; they will soon transform completely and once more plunge the first into despair, and by extension cause the Eighth Umbral Calamity in the Source, and there doesn't seem to be any way to cure them.
Darker and Edgier:
- The final arc of the 2.0 Hildibrand story, believe it or not. It starts with you being informed that the charismatic and (mostly) benign Thief of Many Faces has resorted to murder and procured alchemical powder that zombifies victims, and it just gets worse from there. The thief is revealed to be Ellie and her previously unseen sister Cecy, who are descendants of Sil'dih, Ul'dah's sister city that was wiped out several generations ago. History attributed horrible magic and alchemy to them, but in reality it was Ul'dah who made the powder, and the destruction of Sil'dih was just a senseless war of extermination. They were driven to vengeance out of hatred towards Ul'dah, and especially the "arbiters of truth" who perpetuated falsehoods about Ul'dah's history to keep the city from looking bad. Also, the ending gives us another disturbing revelation about Primals in the form of Gilgamesh accidentally summoning Enkidu as one completely by himself.
- The game itself is this compared to XI. While that game's main quest and its various expansions ended on unambiguous happy endings or, at the very least, a Bittersweet Ending, XIV loves to subvert the happy endings of their initial main quests by having the post-launch main quests end in an unambiguous Sudden Downer Ending that involves the heroes suffering devastating, tragic losses, most, if not all of their victories being either undone or rendered completely pointless, the Warrior of Light seemingly powerless against the new threat, and the Ascians coming closer and closer to their ultimate goal of resurrecting Zodiark.
- The Shadowbringers expansion is much darker and more melancholy than the storylines that came before. The First is just at the edge of destruction and everyone you meet has lost things that were precious to them. Everyone is just trying to survive with the knowledge that the world could end at any time. Thancred and Y'shtola are both in a darker state of mind than they were before, and for the first time the Warrior of Light has to confront the very real possibility of dying when all the light aether they are absorbing from the Light Wardens they've killed slowly begins to overwhelm them.
- Endwalker manages to be even darker. Though it finds time to have moments of levity, it goes to some pretty dark places, which makes sense considering it involves the end of the world. Highlights include a Garlean general shooting himself in the head out of despair at the realization that the Empire of Garlemald is truly and irreparably gone, a father watching his son get turned into a monster, said son getting crushed underfoot by another monster moments later, then watching his country's beloved leader get eaten by said monster all in the span of seconds, and a mother that the Warrior of Light is attempting to save get brutally killed, with her baby nearly suffering the same fate. On top of that, the monsters created during the End Times are different from others in that they outright destroy aether. While normally, dying has the small consolation that your soul returns to the Aetherial Sea where it will one day be reborn in a new form, having your aether destroyed means your very existence comes to an end, making simply dying rather than becoming a monster a small mercy in of itself. And it turns out that the Big Bad was brought to despair by the fact that during her many selves' journeys through the cosmos, every single planet they found life on had destroyed itself in one way or another, and that every civilization that thought it had found happiness self destructed because of it in some way. All of this pushed her into insanity and convinced her that the only path to true happiness is through true oblivion.
A Day in the Limelight: Some questlines feature side characters from other questlines prominently.
- Alisaie, who is absent through most of the ARR and Heavensward MSQ, is a key character in 2.0's Binding Coil of Bahamut questline.
- Briarden, the deutertagonist of the 2.x Hildibrand questline, plays an important role in 3.0's Scholasticate questline.
- The MSQ for Stormblood is a big one for one of the Scions: Lyse - who had been going by her sister's name, Yda, until the end of the Heavensward MSQ. The story of Stormblood follows Lyse as she aids - then later leads - the Ala Mhigan resistance.
- The Newfound Adventures storyline is one for Y'shtola, giving her some more comedic and lighthearted moments to expand on her character and, after a few set up quests, the titular adventure quickly becomes her mission.
Days of Future Past: Late in Shadowbringers, the Warrior of Light has an Echo vision that, contrary to the norm, shows them a vision of the future as Hydaelyn is plunged into chaos. The vision they have is, actually, of the Crystal Exarch's past, since he hails from a Bad Future.
Dead-End Room: Mordion Gaol is a single instanced room with only one door that can't be opened. As the name implies ("gaol" is an archaic word for "jail", pronounced the same way), it's mostly used as a place to store players who've broken the Terms of Service, and as such the only way for a player to get out — or in, for that matter — is for a GM to move them.
Deadly Gaze: Several enemies can cause paralysis or petrification with a gaze attack. You can typically avoid such an attack by running out of its area of effect, but there's also a second way of avoiding the attack as well; don't look. Simply turning around and not facing the monster lets you avoid their gaze attack every single time, which is a method that was also used in the Final Fantasy Tactics series.
Death Is Cheap:
- Though the game isn't averse to properly killing off characters, lot of character deaths in the main scenario have a tendency to not stick, either because the character in question is stated to have suffered only 'nearly' fatal wounds or are simply brought back to life. One very notable example is Nanamo Ul Namo, whose death near the end of the 2.x storyline leads directly into the events of Heavensward and had far reaching ramifications. It is later revealed, however, that she had not actually been poisoned, but had been given a sleeping potion that merely put her into a death-like slumber; she is given an antidote, and is back in action about halfway through Heavensward.
- Zenos, in particular, exaggerates this by actually dying (by his own hand) at the end of the initial MSQ for Stormblood, only to unknowingly use his artificial Echo to hijack another mortal body and, by the end of the initial MSQ for Shadowbringers, retake his original body - which at the time had been possessed and reanimated by Elidibus - and come fully back to life.
Death of a Child:
- In the 2018 Little Ladies' Day event, you learn that human traffickers once disguised themselves as seneschals decades ago to lure in young girls who come to Ul'dah to enjoy the festivities. These girls were then sold to the highest bidder, never to be seen again. The lost girl that you help during this event is the spirit of one of these children. By helping her find her parents' jewelry and acting as her seneschal for the day, you grant her spirit peace and allow her to move on from her Unfinished Business.
- In Endwalker, a cutscene has a a man watch his own child be stomped into paste under a monster's foot when Radz-at-Han is overtaken by the events of the Final Days.
Decomposite Character: Due to the fact Tiamat is in this universe a subject to Adaptational Heroism, her previously planned for this game◊ design◊ was used for two other bosses, Hydra and Five-Headed Dragon, respectively. Although Tiamat was for long connected with the Hydra enemy group, and the original Two-Headed Dragon was already an Expy of her.
Deconstruction: Some typical ones manifest in the main storyline, about Adventuring and the deeds thereof:
- Many Adventurers think it's an easy way to fame and glory, and find out the hard way - either dying ignoble deaths, like Dolorous Bear after his party rush a Giant and end up literally crushed, or devolving into petty bickering and jerkassedness, like poor Edda's party blaming her for the death of the tank and winding up setting her down the path to insanity.
- One of the reasons the innkeepers of each city are so defensive of the Adventurers is because many of them get hurt or die in their lines of duty, and they've seen too many friends and mentees bite the dust.
- With Edda again, typical party arguments about blaming the tank or the healer are treated as a life-and-death situation... because they are.
- Dressing it up as "adventuring" sounds nice but don't expect people to forget that what you're doing is travelling to a foreign land and getting paid to fight various enemies. Especially early on before the Warrior of Light gains much acclaim, people will often look down on you for being a mercenary, because that's what you are.
- Being Good Sucks, no ifs, ands or buts about it, and would-be heroes are either torn apart or crack under the sheer pressure of Eorzea's troubles. The Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are not only targeted by enemies abroad, but manipulated and framed because they weren't controllable by the Monetarists as they are forced through immense hardships that occasionally break them, and throughout the game numerous characters meaning to do good end up either becoming a Well-Intentioned Extremist or lose their way with them Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
- The constant refights of various bosses that the Warrior of Light and various adventurers and guilds undergo is not simply Gameplay and Story Segregation; the very nature of Primals as beings summoned by worship and energy means they can come back so long as someone is there to will and supply it, among other potential methods. Most non-Primal battles are canonically one-off encounters besides specific exceptions, whereas the Primal threat is a major plot point of conflict, one of the points of contention that the Garlean empire will always target, and seemingly neverending. These boss fights going up in difficulty is also because more crystals were supplied or other such measures.
Defeat Means Friendship: Participants in the Naadam, a yearly battle royale between the Xaela tribes of the Azim Steppe, must first complete the trials of Bardam's Mettle and tame a yol, an enormous Noble Bird of Prey, to ride into combat. How does one tame a yol? By defeating it in single combat while it does its damnedest to kill you.
Deity of Mortal Creation: This is a major plot point and plot twist:
- Primals (also known as "eikons") are divine entities that can be summoned with sufficient quantities of aether as well as belief or passion. The process is often even unintentional; on more than one occasion, a strong emotional response combined with an abundance of aether has created or summoned a primal despite not being intended. Once summoned, primals invariably consider themselves above all other beings, including the ones that summoned them and usually even other primals. No matter how "recent" their creation, they usually consider themselves ageless and eternal, embodying concepts or ideas that have lived long before and and will live long after the people (or even civilizations) that spawned them.
- In the Shadowbringers expansion, it's revealed that the two highest known deities — Hydaelyn and Zodiark — are both primals that were summoned by an ancient civilization. This comes as a shock to the protagonists, who have spent most of the story finding and slaying any primals they come across. It also gives the story's main villains, the Ascians, much more credibility to their motives. While the heroes and most of the world consider Hydaelyn to be a benevolent mother goddess, she was created for the sole purpose of keeping the Ascians' own god Zodiark in check. The Ascians, meanwhile, consider Zodiark (as the first primal ever summoned to embody the will of the planet itself) the "one true god".
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Not that this doesn't exist throughout Eorzea in various ways (from Ul'Dah's classism to Gridania's xenophobia), but the isolated nation of Ishgard is hit with this especially hard. They are so dedicated to their Forever War with the dragons to the north that they have based their entire culture around fighting them. Thus, we get stories like that of the Carpenter questline where a man's father is considered a disgrace that he himself tries to shun the memory of because the man was apparently killed by random beasts in Gridania. It is only after he finds his father's spear head lodged in the scales of an infamous dragon that he is able to restore his father's name. After all, he didn't die fighting some dirty beast, he died fighting one of Ishgard's enemies!
Denser and Wackier: The Hildibrand quests are this to the rest of the game, being much more lighthearted and comedic in nature.
Department of Redundancy Department:
- During the last fight of the Alexander raid series the fight takes place inside Alexander, the boss is Alexander. To top it off, Alexander summons... Alexander. It's a fight of a primal within itself, who summons itself.
- One of the Island Sanctuary landmarks is a sanctuary (as in a sacred building); in other words, a "Sanctuary Sanctuary".
Despair Event Horizon:
- Early on in the main story line, you meet a party of adventurers that give their healer, Edda, a hard time due to her lack of skills as a healer. Sounds like a jab at the players who gone through similar situations, but it then takes a nasty turn. Avere, Edda's fiance and the party's tank, dies in Tam-Tara Deepcroft, causing the surviving party members to blame Edda for her incompetence. The archer of the group even flats out admit that she only stuck with the group because it had a healer. Much later on, you find out that Edda is planning to hold a wedding inside the same dungeon that her fiance died in, which is the basis for Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard). When you eventually find her, it turns out she's used dark magic to revive Avere as a monster.
- In Patch 3.4, you run into a Kobold named Ga Bu who is seeking to prevent the revival of Titan to protect his parents. The Warrior of Light, Alphinaud and Alisaie join in on his quest, ultimately leading to the room where Titan is brought in. There, Ga Bu finds his parents' bodies and, in his grief, accidentally summons a child-like Titan. Though Titan is defeated, everyone is unsure of poor Ga Bu's mental state and are worried he might need to be killed if he was Tempered.
- At the end of the 3.x storyline, Ilberd exploits the desperation of the Ala Mhigan resistance, deliberately leading them against magitek armor that slaughters them before using their despair and hatred, combined with his death while holding the aether-packed eyes of Nidhogg, to summon the primal Shinryu.
- In Stormblood, you learn that Fordola's inability to think things through ended up leading to the daughter of the Garlean-Allied Qalyana Ananta tribe's broodqueen being taken hostage and later killed, sending the broodqueen into this trope and summoning Lakshmi. She's so far gone that she can't accept the fact that her daughter, though alive thanks to the Primal, will never truly be alive and plots revenge against the Resistance when the Warrior of Light is forced to kill Lakshmi.
- The people of Eulmore in Shadowbringers have crossed this and have dedicated themselves to lives of decadence and excess while awaiting the end of the world.
- Endwalker: This is actually weaponized by the Big Bad of the expansion. Succumbing to the Despair Event Horizon causes people to transform into a horrible monster, which usually has the effect of causing other people nearby to cross the DEH, frequently setting off chain reactions of people transforming.
Developer's Foresight:
- The game has a staggering amount of dialogue changes that acknowledge connections and interactions with NPCs you've previously met, as well as accounting for uncommon scenarios. Some of the dialogue is subtle recognition, but there's also lines that gives little extra touches within cutscenes. There are also many instances of characters from past expansions or zones who will have new text that acknowledges things you otherwise wouldn't expect, such as Little Ala Mhigo having the characters there discussing the events of Stormblood even though they are a full expansion past use. In particular, after Endwalker, numerous characters in previous expansions locations have updated lines about the story.
- Tending to crops while the weather is clear leads to an animation involving your character watering them. If you water your crops while it's raining (which you'd have no reason to do, since they're watered automatically by the rain), the Warrior of Light just turns the soil instead.
- "Misery" is a debuff that indicates a character is overcome with negative emotions. You can use the /comfort or /rally emotes on these characters, and it will remove Misery.
- Multiple Trials have mechanics that will instantly wipe the party if you have too few members. However, if you turn on the "Unrestricted Party" options before starting the fight, such mechanics will be changed or removed. For instance, Titan's Granite Gaol seals the player in rocks, which needs outside help to escape from; if you're doing the trial with just one player, Titan will never use this attack.
- Every player has a daily Cap of one hundred Duties; when this cap is reached, the player can't register for anything else until the following day. Most players will never even come close to hitting this cap — dungeons take a minimum of fifteen minutes to clear, with later dungeons taking up to half an hour. This isn't just a form of Anti Poop-Socking; it's intended to stop bots from running instances over and over to grind for items and/or Gil that can be transferred to someone else.
- During 2.55, there's a point where Tataru wants to become an Arcanist. When you visit Thubyrgeym to check up on Tataru, Thubyrgeym tells you that she's currently embarked on a trial. If you haven't unlocked Arcanist yet, she explains the trials to you. If you've unocked Arcanist and done the quest already, she gives an As You Know. However, if you're an Arcanist and haven't done the quest yet, she explains the trial and then suggests that you and Tataru accomplish it together to aid your mutual training. Considering that you can get to level 5 and get the quest done ten minutes after you unlock the class, it's an impressive bit of foresight.
- During the 3.0 story of Heavensward, if the Warrior of Light is wearing a helmet during Haurchefant's death scene after clearing The Vault for the first time, the game will remove the Warrior's helmet. No taking the edge off of the moment by dressing in a bunny suit.
- In the patch 3.4 story quest, "Two Sides of a Coin," Alphinaud and Alisaie will speak about how well you know each other depending on your progress in the Coil of Bahamut raids. If it has never been started, then this will have been the second time the Warrior of Light will have met her. If you've made some progress, Alphinaud will make a comment about how he knows you and Alisaie have been looking into that, while if the Final Coil of Bahamut is cleared fully, the two of them getting together is treated like it's old times.
- In the Weeping City of Mhach, the Ozma Shade casts Doomsday that will instantly kill everyone if they don't beat it and return to Ozma fast enough. In the slight chance that you manage to avoid the attack by having dead players revive at just the right time, Ozma will then endlessly pelt the survivors with smaller meteors that give stacks of Magic Vulnerability Up until they die as well.
- The dwarves of Tomra in Shadowbringers are a race of Little People, and everything is appropriately sized to them, including their homes. This is reflected in a dwarven house in Tomra which can only be accessed if you're playing as a similarly-sized Lalafell; a character of any other race can't enter because they're too big to fit through the house's front door. However, even that gets its own bit of foresight; even though a Lalafell can fit inside the dwarf's house, the Lalafell can't summon any mount while inside said house, because their head would hit the ceiling.
- The Chocolate Korkappor is a Japanese-exclusive Mount that can be redeemed from a code for making purchases at a chain of convenience stores. However, the code is not region locked, and anyone outside of Japan can obtain it. The mount still comes with the relevant flavor text despite the exclusivity.
- Trusts, introduced in Shadowbringers, can only be run with the characters available during that part of the story (Holminster Switch can only be run with the Crystal Exarch, Lyna, Alphinaud, and Alisaie for example). However, leveling Trusts up allows you to use all the core cast, and the developers accounted for this by having all the playable cast have unique reactions to mechanics they normally could not see. For example, in Dohn Mheg, all the Trusts have unique reactions to the final boss's Tightrope Walking mechanic, including Y'shtola (who joins right after this dungeon) and the Crystal Exarch (who doesn't become a permanent Trust member until three patches worth of content later). Similarly, during Endwalker, the dungeon Ktisis Hyperboreia has three unique Trust character only usable in that dungeon (Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and Venat), who all have unique interactions with the first boss's mechanics. Running it with the Scions, however, has them all react to it even though they originally aren't involved in the story.
- Trials also account for scenarios where they would be defeated be far sooner than normal. For example, the encounter design in the Jade Stoa would normally have Byakko send you into the sky with a tornado, bringing ruin to the arena. If you take him on with Unlimited Party active and defeat him before the transition phase, the arena maintains its visual integrity upon clear. There's no tornado to wreck the Jade Stoa, after all.
- During the crossover questline with Monster Hunter in the Stormblood expansion, the Warrior of Light can express surprise at a Palico that can talk. If the Warrior of Light is a Miqo'te or a Hrothgar, the Palico will call the Warrior a Hypocrite, since they're also a talking cat.
  Warrior of Light: A talking cat?!
  Palico: Oh that's rich, coming from you. Have you looked in a mirror lately?
- In the 6.0 mission "Bonds of Adamant(ite)", the allies who show up or are mentioned helping will change depending on the post-MSQ Raids you've complete.
  - When Alisaie looks up to the skies to see a group of flying crafts soaring by. Normally, it's Manacutters piloted by Ishgardian Knights. If you completed the Shadow of Mhach Alliance Raid series, it's the Redbill Sky Pirates instead, focusing on Leofard and Cait Sith.
  - When Soroban and Hancock join the Scions, what they say changes depending on if you completed the Four Lords story and Return to Ivalice raids. Without them complete, Soroban just comes with a Kojin relic and learned that Hancock was on his way to Sharlayan and decided to join him. As well, Hancock just looks back at the massive airship in the air when he says that he needed a particular type of transport to get everything there. Complete them and the katana with the relics is revealed to be Tenzen's Phoenix Blade and that the other Lords urged Soroban to take it to aid them in saving the star. As well, Hancock will add in that the Majestic Company offers their greetings to the Warrior of Light, happy to accompany them on another adventure, complete with the Prima Vista hovering in the background in one cut. Completing both Eureka and Save the Queen will also have Hancock mention how the Bozjan Resistance and Ejika Tsunjika both chipped in to help out, though with a bit of grumbling from the latter on how he would have liked a bit of forewarning. The latter's presence is also dependent whether or not you let him sacrifice himself, and if you brought him back if sacrificed.
  - When Cid and the rest of the Ironworks show up, the number will increase slightly depending on if you complete the Omega storyline. Doing so adds in Alpha and toy form Omega. Additionally completing the Sorrow of Werlyt will get you a message and care package from Gaius: an Allagan artifact salvaged from Valens' Weapons project.
  - Horary Boulder got his adamantite from Mor Dhona, but with some help. If you cleared the Alexander raids, the Idyllshire mercenaries that helped out include one Slowfix and his fellow goblins to gobbiebomb the hell out of the Allagan security systems.
- Just before the final raid in the "Myths of the Realm" storyline from Endwalker, you can speak to the Twelve at their respective shrines. Whichever one of the Twelve is your character's Patron God will note this upon speaking to them. In addition, completing certain requirements will affect what the Twelve say to you, such as Byregot complementing your crafting prowess if you have a Disciple of the Hand class at maximum level, or Rhalgr noting your completion the Temple of the Fist optional dungeon from Stormblood if you've done so.
- According to the description of the fish known as Navigator's Brand, Llymlaen the Navigator — the Patron God of sailors — threw a knife at Oschon when he peeped on Llymlaen in the nude. In the Thaleia raid, should the player use the Hug, Dote, or Blow Kiss emotes on Llymlaen (which a player has no reason to do), Llymlaen will throw a dagger at the offending player as an Unblockable Attack while telling them to cut it out.
- The Fall Guys event has a three-minute timer to complete each event. This prevented matches from extending too long if everyone was having trouble, and to allow a chance to fail even if someone was somehow able to enter the show alone.
- In the Final Fantasy XVI crossover quest "A Land on Fire", XVI protagonist Clive can be found limp after the Warrior of Light uses a spyglass, with the Warrior checking on Clive to see if he's alright. However, if the player is using a Healer class at the time, the Warrior will try to use healing magic on Clive instead.
- A Realm Reborn and onwards is coded in such a way that you must equip a weapon, as your weapon determines your current class. In the extremely unlikely scenario where you played the 1.x version of the game, unequipped your Main Hand weapon, went offline during that version, made the transition to the current version of the game, and somehow also managed to bypass multiple in-game checks that force a player to equip a weapon, the game will have a fail state class called Adventurer (ADV). Being a fail state, the class can't equip anything, can't hand in any quests, and can't progress beyond the starter city, necessitating GM intervention to equip a weapon to get out of it. But the fact that the development team thought of needing the ADV class is impressive, considering that the 1.x version of the game went offline in 2013.
Developer's Room: 2015's "The Rising" anniversary event adds one (called "The Eighteenth Floor") to the game world for the duration.
Diabolus ex Machina: The end of the Little Ladies' Day questline for 2014, in which the doll loses the contest after all your effort. This ties into the themes of the quest line, but the fact that there's absolutely no explanation for how or why the doll goes from a steadily increasing lead to losing in the space of half a quest pushes the affair into this category.
Didn't Think This Through:
- Effectively the crux of the problem with the Crystal Braves. Alphinaud and the Warrior of Light have truly noble intentions amidst the entire process, and yet don't think twice about recruiting individuals such as Laurentius, a man who sold out Gridania to the Garleans for bribes, with little vetting or oversight. Just as well, Alphinaud himself brings up the rumors and concerns about Syndicate funding getting into their organization, something he personally looks into but ultimately deems a Necessary Evil. Both problems combined lets the Monetarists nearly kill the Scions in one fell swoop by bribing key Crystal Brave members, Laurentius included.
- A moment of this underpins the entire plot in Endwalker. Hermes sent the Meteia out into space to find an answer that would ease his concerns about the Ancients' society. Not only were the Meteia wholly unprepared for their mission, Hermes never stopped to consider what might happen if he didn't get an answer he liked, or what might happen if he didn't get an answer at all.
Diligent Hero, Slothful Villain:
- The central conflict for the first Leatherworker questline pits Geva Storke against Dauid. Geva pioneered a special cutting technique to reduce leather waste and environmental harm while retaining the quality of her goods, resulting in higher prices for a superior product. Meanwhile, Dauid is wasteful and produces cheaply-made, unreliable products at bargain prices, resulting in overhunting and poaching. While Geva is no saint given her treatment of her employees, she's undeniably the hero of the story when it comes to reducing the environmental impact of leatherworking and providing a product to be proud of.
- Inverted in the Kobold quests. The "hero" of the quests is Gi Gu, a lowly grunt too lazy to do more than the bare minimum of effort needed to keep himself out of trouble. The villain is Zo Ga, an ambitious fugleman near the top of the Kobold pecking order who tries to develop new weapons with which to attack Limsa Lominsa. The questline involves whipping Gi Gu into shape and giving him enough motivation to defy Zo Ga and win over his longtime sweetheart, Bi Bi.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
- The Warrior of Light has personally slain every primal on the face of Eorzea and beyond, destroyed the Ultima Weapon, Omega, and any other number of Physical Gods that have threatened the world for decades if not centuries. While they usually aren't alone in this endeavor, their martial strength becomes the stuff of legend, and there is no one else more trusted to take on the latest monster threat than them.
- Subverted during the Crystal Tower raid questline. Despite their best efforts and the twenty-three of their fellow adventurers backing them up, they only manage to inconvenience the Cloud of Darkness by destroying her physical form rather than slaying her. For this reason, Doga and Unei sacrifice themselves to sever Xande's contract with her while granting G'raha Tia full access to the Allagan royal bloodline, making him the keeper of the Crystal Tower.
- This reaches its apex in Endwalker: The Warrior of Light manages to destroy Zodiark, one of the most ancient and powerful of Primals, in the first Trial. Later, they best Hydaelyn, the other most ancient and powerful Primal and one of the most powerful and skilled Ancients to exist, and culminates the Expansion off by defeating a reality-warping eldritch entity of pure emotions who can affect things on a universal scale. By this point, Primals that would have been Trials in previous expansions, such as the Magus Sisters and Anima, are relegated to just being dungeon bosses.
Dirty Cop: Ul'dah's Brass Blades, mostly. One poor Lalafell By-the-Book Cop is horrified when he runs to tell his captain of a number of Blades involved in some local thuggery and finds that the captain was in on the job too. Pretty much everyone knows how corrupt they are, and the Blades don't bother covering up their activities that much as a result. Much of Ul'dah's storyline revolves around having to deal with the corruption.
Disappointed by the Motive:
- In the main story quest of the base game, Thancred and the Warrior of Light manage to catch Ungust trying to rob them when they were dressed like beggars. Thancred demands to know why Ungust is selling out people to the Amal'jaa, who are using the people Ungust drags away as offerings to Ifrit, the flame primal. Ungust responds that it was because "the coin was good" and he was making more money from selling people off to be sacrifices to Ifrit than he was at farming. Thancred is thoroughly unimpressed, calling Ungust pathetic for leaving people to die because he wanted money.
  Thancred: You sacrificed innocents so that you could line your own pockets? Words fail to express the contempt I feel for you.
- At the end of the Shadowbringers expansion, Emperor Varis is attacked and mortally wounded by his son Zenos. Varis assumes that Zenos is assassinating him in a bid for the throne and scornfully tells Zenos that he is unfit to rule the empire. Zenos retorts that he doesn't give a damn about the empire, and reveals his motive: his father's plan to unleash the Black Rose against the Eorzean Alliance would rob Zenos of his planned rematch with the Warrior of Light. Zenos has become so obsessed with beating the Warrior of Light that Varis has to die all to make absolutely sure that this rematch can still happen. Varis is left utterly dumbfounded in his final moments that Zenos would kill him for that.
- In Endwalker, the actions of Zenos have effectively destroyed the Garlean empire, its capital left in ruin, and its citizens dead, tempered, or freezing in the harsh climate. When his motive is brought up to Jullus, he's livid that Zenos ruined the lives of millions of people just to goad one person into a fight. Zenos responds by asking Jullus if he'd be happy with the outcome if he had a "better" motive.
Disc-One Final Boss:
- Nidhogg seems like he will be the Big Bad of Heavensward, as much of the quest is an attempt to either make peace with him or, failing that, put him down. Then you defeat him in battle. But the story is only halfway over, and the real villain, the Heavensward led by the Archbishop, step into focus. And then Nidhogg, with both of his eyes returned and possessing Estinien, returns and becomes the true villain of the entire Heavensward expansion.
- Innocence in Shadowbringers. Being the final and most powerful Lightwarden, it makes sense that defeating them will end the threat of the Sin Eaters and the Flood once and for all, right? Of course, the biggest clue this isn't the case is the fact you fight it at level 79 rather than 80, plus you have a whole zone remaining to explore in Norvrandt.
- In Endwalker there's Zodiark, who at this point has been posited as the Big Bad of the entire series. But you fight him as part of the level 83 Trial. But once you beat him, you find out there's another force to be reckoned with that is really bringing The Final Days.
Disney Death: Despite previous appearances (and a rather grisly death scene), Nanamo ul Namo is found to have been merely placed into a deep slumber by the poison in her wine, rather than death. She is revived by a rescued Raubahn midway through the Heavensward storyline.
Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Heavensward introduces T-Rexes and other dinosaur types to the setting, and they can usually be found in areas tangentially related to dragons, such as in the cave to the north of Anyx Trine in the Dravanian forelands. Word of God is that they're a lesser dragonkin, which means that they share an ancestry, but lack sentience like true dragons.
Disowned Sibling: Ugetsu, the rogue, violent revolutionary who seeks to plunge Hingashi back into the Age of Blood, is revealed to be Makoto's brother. However, his sibling rejects him and his cause, as his extremist actions led their entire family to be executed as per Hingan law.
Distinction Without a Difference:
- The intro to the Frontlines plot contains this lovely explanation of circumstances:
  Yellow Serpent Flyer: It's less “war” and more “organized violence to resolve a territorial dispute.”
- The Griffin well, his body double assures you that he and his did not smuggle vast quantities of crystals to summon a primal. No, they smuggled them to trade to the Amalj'aa for military aid, and they will use the crystals to summon a primal.
Diverging Evolutionary Phases: All dragon hatchlings have the same basic body shape: four legs, a pair of wings, and a long tail. However, their bodies adapt to their way of living and the environments they grew up in. A dragon with a talent for manipulating wind aether who spends most of their time flying may develop into a wyvern and later an elder wyvern with larger wings fused to their arms to have an easier time to soaring among the clouds. By contrast, dragons who spend most of their time on the ground and manipulate earth-aspected aether may lose their wings entirely and become tortoise-like carapace dragons. Ehll Tou, a dragonling who takes a strong interest in crafting, develops a bipedal form with pronounced and dextrous front limbs to better use crafting tools.
Divide and Conquer: This becomes the plan of attack against Lord Zenos in Stormblood. Since the Alliance and Resistance just can't beat the full might of Garlemald head on, they plan to rekindle active rebellion in Doma as well as Gyr Abania to force Zenos to fight a war on two fronts and stretch out his resources.
Divided Deity: Nald'thal, god of commerce and the afterlife, is worshipped as one of the Twelve, a pantheon of deities who are said to be the patrons of Eorzea. However, in the Ul'dahn tradition, Nald'thal is in fact a pair of Conjoined Twins: Nald, who presides over commerce and the living, and Thal, who presides over the dead. The Myths of the Realms raids reveal that Nald'thal was in fact created as one entity, but mankind's prayers and legends split him into Nald and Thal.
Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The quest "Not Easy Being Green" features two lovers, a Miqo'te and a Hyur, who were kicked out of their village for being "different", and go on a bit of a Character Filibuster on how cruel it is to treat people badly for "being different". While the dialogue strongly implies that their differing race was the issue, the fact that they're both men brings to mind the obvious parallel in anti-LGBT discrimination.
- In the Dark Knight class line, when you and Sidurgu learn that Rielle has Dravanian power inside of her (something that is normally obtained by drinking dragon blood, considered a gigantic heresy in Ishgard), Sidurgu awkwardly tries to comfort Rielle saying that she isn't a bad person if she was force fed dragon blood. It almost sounds like he was trying to comfort a rape victim who contracted something.
- During Endwalker, the Eorzean Alliance enters the Garlean empire to save them - and while it's from Primal Tempering as well as their oppressive regime, the Garleans are very much skeptical and distrustful. One of them even asks if the Eorzeans have come to spread their faith, and the others deny their charity. While this primarily comes from the fact that Eorzeans ARE actually invading and have killed hundreds if not thousands of the very citizens they're trying to save in the past, it also end up bringing to mind how religious Missionaries have been viewed by Indigenous people around the world.
- Around the mid-point of Endwalker the Warrior of Light will be visited in their room at the Baldesion Annex, at night, by one Scion of the player's choosing for a personally intimate conversation. The subtext of this being a romantic visit is obvious enough and things like Y'shtola telling you the night will grow cold so be sure to stay warm aren't terribly subtle. But the cake has to go to Estinien's visit, where he greets you by saying it's good you're alone and when the conversation is over asks that you not tell anyone he was here and leaves out the window, having strong overtures of a lover trying to avoid being caught in a tryst.
Doppelmerger:
- The Ascians' plan is to do this to every single living thing on the planet, their ultimate goal being to undo the Sundering that split their "perfect world" into the Source and its thirteen reflections. But to do this to entire worlds requires enormous planet-wide Calamities that will inevitably kill all life on the reflections as their aether is absorbed into the Source.
- Alternate Selves Ardbert and the Warrior of Light willingly merge to oppose Emet-Selch in the climax of the 5.0 story. As the reincarnations of the sundered soul of Azem, their combined strength allows the Warrior to contain the Flood of Light within their body long enough to weaponize it into a Blade of Light powerful enough to kill Emet-Selch.
Double-Edged Buff:
- The blue mage spell Diamondback offers a massive 90% damage reduction buff and nullifies most draw-in and knockback effects while in use. But it also prevents the user from moving or using any actions, leaving them stuck in place until the buff wears off.
- Another blue mage spell, Moon Flute, offers a huge 50% damage bonus to all of the blue mage's spells and abilities for 15 seconds. But once those 15 seconds are up, the blue mage is locked out of using any actions besides moving around for the next 15 seconds.
Double-Meaning Title:
- Heavensward: Not only is it the expansion to introduce flying mounts, but the ultimate goal of the main story is a race to find and wrest control of the lost flying Allagan continent, Azys Lla — literally, a race towards the heavens. To double down on this, the primary adversary is an organization of Ishgardian knights called the Heavens' Ward, so named either because of their being the personal army of the head of Ishgard's Church Of Evil, or for their Forever War with the dragons of Dravania.
- Shadowbringers has several possible meanings to its title. Foremost, the overarching goal of the expansion is for the Scions to bring "shadow" (night) back to Norvrandt before the world gets consumed by primordial light. However, the expansion's theme song also mentions "one brings shadow, one brings light" — which can also refer to Emet-Selch and the Warrior, who represent Zodiark (the god of shadow) and Hydaelyn (the god of light) respectively, or it can also mean the inverse of that, since the machinations of the former are what caused the Flood of Light while the latter seeks to undo it. It can also refer to the Warrior and Elidibus, as Elidibus deliberately takes on the identity of the original Warrior of Light to oppose the protagonist's adopted moniker of "Warrior of Darkness". Lastly, it also refers to the Ascians - whose name means "those without shadow" - being defeated for good with the deaths of Emet-Selch and Elidibus crippling them beyond repair.
Double Unlock:
- Several optional dungeons require this, being locked behind sidequests that almost always consist entirely of "talk to someone who points you towards the dungeon" and then "go to where the dungeon's entrance is and talk to the guy out front to gain access".
- Patch 2.1 enforced the trope in spades for many end-game dungeons. Not only do you have to meet certain criteria to unlock their related quests, but now you also need to meet the minimum average gear level to be able to take on the dungeon. The change was most likely made to counter people who were paying other players (through gil) to carry them through the tough fights so that they can win easily without needing to worry about having good gear.
Do Well, But Not Perfect:
- Though it should only ever really matter in overleveled unsynced play, there are certain Extreme and Savage bosses where you have to pace your damage, as you can potentially shoot straight past certain mechanics that have to be done, causing the boss to instant wipe the party. Ifrit (Extreme) is probably the earliest example of this. If you ignore the needles Ifrit spawns and push his health to a certain threshold, he will instantly cast his party wipe attack regardless of how much time was left on the needles.
  - In some cases if the boss doesn't have instant wipe if you push past a certain HP value, it's still faster to hold off attacking so there are more phases to do damage against it. An example of this is Byakko (Extreme). If you push too hard, you end up doing the lengthy phase-change bullet hell section and making the fight take much longer.
- It doesn't take long before it's easy to consistently make high-quality items as a Disciple of the Hand, yet the class quests for every one generally require you to turn in normal-quality items until about halfway through the ARR level cap. It's not too big a deal, however, since you can simply reduce an item's quality to normal if you accidentally made it high-quality.
- As it turns out, this is a major component of the Ascians' plans. In order to trigger the Rejoining and bring their dark god Zodiark to power, they need to trigger calamities on each of the shards so that they will remerge with The Source. The Balance Between Good and Evil however, means that no shard can be filled with too much of either light or darkness lest either force consume the shard entirely. Darkness completely swallowing the Thirteenth shard resulted in the creation of the Void, while the opposite happening on the First Shard resulted in the Flood of Light. In either case, both shards are practically useless to the Ascians' plans, since they're completely unable to merge with The Source due to said balance being thrown entirely out of whack.
Downer Ending: After the Earn Your Happy Ending of each main storyline, the post-story quests end up transitioning to this (in order to set up the next expansion.)
- The Legacy storyline ended like this: The Bad Guy Wins, Bahamut is free, one of the more well known characters is (presumably?) killed off, and a large majority of Eorzea's population is laid to waste. A Realm Reborn makes this more of a Bittersweet Ending.
- The A Realm Reborn post-release storyline ended this way too: So you've thwarted all the Primal summonings, blunted the Imperial offensive, destroyed their greatest superweapon, and laid the foundation for a lasting peace between the members of the Alliance. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn even start the process of putting together the Crystal Braves, a small army of their own, to help keep the peace. Then, the Braves turn out to have been bought out by the Monetarists to help launch a coup; the Sultan of Ul'dah, Nanamo Ul Namo, is poisoned; the player is framed for her murder; General Raubahn Aldynn loses his left arm fighting off the Braves' leader in an attempt to avenge her death and gets branded a traitor for it; the Braves seize Mor Dhona from the Scions of the Seventh Dawn; all of the Scions save yourself, Tataru, Urianger, Yugiri, and Alphinaud are missing; and the circumstances force all of you to seek asylum in Ishgard, just as the Ascians decide to accelerate their plans for Ishgard as a result of all the chaos.
- Heavensward also ends on a downer note: After a long, grueling struggle, with many harsh losses along the way, you've successfully put an end to the Forever War that has plagued Ishgard for centuries, struck up an uneasy peace between mankind and dragonkind, overthrown the power-mad leader of Ishgard's theocracy who kept the war going for their own benefit, and set Ishgard on the path to slowly, painfully rebuilding. It's even come out that Nanamo Ul Namo is actually alive, and the Scions are cleared of wrongdoing for the Braves' betrayal. While this is happening however, news spreads of an anonymous Ala Mhigan revolutionary who has been raising hell against the Empire. Not necessarily a bad thing...however, not long after, the Griffin launches a False Flag Operation against Garlemald at Baelsar's Wall, with the (apparent) goal of framing the Alliance and forcing them into war. When you and the Scions go to intervene, it's revealed the Griffin is actually Ilberd, the traitorous leader of the Crystal Braves. Worst of all, however, he reveals that not only was the attack a False Flag Operation, but also a deliberate Suicide Mission for the Ala Mhigan resistance; he intentionally led his own people into a massacre, planning to channel their pain, rage, and despair at their hopeless cause to summon the primal Shinryu. He hopes to use Shinryu to liberate Ala Mhigo...by committing genocide against the Empire, and given his lack of concern for collateral damage, likely the Alliance as well. Even defeating him doesn't work, as he uses his own death as the final catalyst to finish the summoning. In order to give the Scions more time to figure out how to deal with Shinryu, Papalymo sacrifices his own life to call upon the Twelve to put it in a cocoon, similar to the same magic Louisoix cast upon Bahamut. This leaves Yda utterly devastated, and the Scions now have to figure out how to deal with Shinryu before it breaks free and ravages Eorzea - while also dealing with the almost-certain outbreak of war between the Empire and the Alliance as a result of all this.
- Stormblood: Zenos Yae Galvus is dead. Ala Mhigo and Doma are both free, while the Empire is reeling from the sudden loss of one of its best leaders, strongest warriors, AND its heir apparent. Shinryu has been defeated, and despite the bloody road to get there, peace seems to be on the horizon. Then, The Scions other than you start to fall comatose one by one. The Empire has restarted production of "Black Rose", a weapon of mass destruction which Gaius had stopped the production of, but Emperor Varis has no qualms about using. Despite the setbacks of the loss of Doma and Ala Mhigo, the Empire is already rallying, and are planning to field the "Black Rose" against the Eorzean Alliance as soon as it's ready. Varis, who in recent scenes has been swallowing his pride and biting his tongue after finding himself no more than an Ascian pawn against his will, now sports a Slasher Smile after his most recent interaction with them. The rebellion's allies are shaken as rumour has spread that the Warrior of Light fell in battle. Zenos survived thanks to his false echo (in a new body) and is carefully laying out plans to retake his position, with his crosshairs firmly fixed on the Warrior of Light. Elidibus (in Zenos's resurrected body) demonstrates that he can not only impersonate Zenos flawlessly and wield the full might of Garlemald with ease, but can also use Zeno's own strength to a far greater degree than Zenos ever could. Attempts to broker peace fail, and in the ensuing conflict, you end up crossing blades with the false Zenos, before a mysterious masked figure (who turns out to be the one rendering the Scions comatose) claims to need your help to prevent an impending Calamity, and causes you to collapse before the battle is finished. In the end, all the other Scions save you are out of commission, the war is at a bloody stalemate, and the Empire has a clear advantage; the only hope is a mysterious beacon linked to the Crystal Tower, whose purpose and effect are completely unknown...
- Shadowbringers: The First is safe. The Flood of Light has been prevented, and Norvrandt can start to rebuild. The Eighth Umbral Calamity that threatened to annihilate the Source and everyone on it has been averted, and all of the Ascians who could try again have been defeated. The Crystal Exarch succeeded in his goal, and he didn't even need to make a Heroic Sacrifice like he expected; he even gets to return to the Source and become an Ascended Fanboy by formally joining the Scions. You and the rest of the Scions had to bid your temporary home and all of your new friends goodbye so you could return to the Source, which also means leaving Ryne behind; however, everyone is optimistic, Ryne is looking forward to forging her own path to help Norvrandt, and you, at least, still have the ability to go back whenever you want. And for a while, upon returning to the Source, things get even better; the "Black Rose" that threatened Eorzea was destroyed, Alisaie develops a working cure for tempering, and between that and some careful negotiating, Eorzea manages to strike up the first tentative steps to a full, PROPER Grand Alliance, with even the Beastmen included, paving the way to a fully-unified Eorzea. All good things must come to an end, however, as strange towers have cropped up throughout Eorzea, which appear to temper anyone who comes close...but not to a primal, but to Garlemald. They appear to be the work of a new, never-before-seen white-robed Ascian named Fandaniel, who makes himself known by doing no less than summoning Lunar Bahamut. It soon comes to pass that all of these strange towers not only temper their victims to be loyal to Garlemald, but are also being used to summon Lunar primals on an industrial scale, by way of horrific Lotus-Eater Machines. In the process of investigating these towers, and stopping Lunar Bahamut at Paglth'an, Scion ally Arenvald is permanently crippled, leaving Alphinaud guilt-wracked. Fandaniel reveals that unlike the other Ascians, he doesn't care about the Rejoining; he just wants to burn everything down. Oh, and Zenos is still around...lurking in the darkened Garlemald capital, which the tower-tempered are reshaping into a techno-organic tower that would make H.R. Giger blush. His goal is ever-the-same; one more transcendent battle with the Warrior of Light. The backdrop, as promised by Fandaniel? The Calamity. Not "a" Calamity, THE Calamity; the Final Days, the apocalypse that wiped out Amaurot and ended the Ascian civilization is coming to Eorzea. After narrowly-preventing a premature apocalypse by fighting off a near-literal tide of Lunar primals, the Scions one-by-one gaze up at the moon, which has turned an eerie (and ominously-familiar) shade of red...
- The Gladiator quest chain. Aldis is saved and Leovolt is killed, but Leovolt goes out on his own terms after having already accomplishing what he truly wanted all along (publicly disgracing Aldis). In addition, the Gladiator's Guild is disgraced for interfering with a royally decreed execution, and Mylla cannot exonerate Aldis for his supposed crimes without further disgracing the guild. Aldis is forced to continue Walking the Earth, all of Eorzea aside from you and Mylla continuing to believe he is a disgraceful fraud and never knowing that he never abandoned his honor. Thankfully subverted in Stormblood's Paladin questline, where both Aldis and the Guild are finally officially pardoned for their "crimes".
Dramatic Irony: During the Endwalker MSQ "Helping Hands", Thancred interprets the description of Argos as the guard dog of Zodiark's prison as probably meaning "Blood red eyes, slavering maw, and built like a behemoth". The player has already met them at this point, and knows he's really a Big Friendly Dog.
Dramatic Wind: Some of the more free-flowing garments will billow dramatically while a player is casting magic.
Dressing as the Enemy:
- One of the late game 2.0 quests has you dressing up as soldier from The Empire in order to sneak into their base. However, you're only given the chest piece and visor, which is apparently good enough to fool the soldiers since you can wear anything else with the required gear. Or wear nothing at all.
- The level 64 quest "The Will to Live" in Stormblood has you doing so again, sneaking into a Garlean stronghold in Doma to steal another uniform (a full set of armor, this time), then using it to trick other soldiers to leave their guard posts so you can free the captured Domans.
Drowning My Sorrows:
- There's an untargetable NPC on the bottom floor of the Forgotten Knight Inn in Ishgard draped over the bar counter mumbling incoherently with a tankard in his hand. The barkeep tells you that the man recently lost his little girl to sickness, and to let him mourn.
- In Shadowbringers there is Magnus in the town of Twine. He lost his son to the Sin Eaters and his wife in a mining accident and now spends all his waking hours drinking to cope. Snapping him out of his despair is the objective of the story quests in the town.
Dualvertisement:
- In 2016, FFXIV collaborated with another MMO, Phantasy Star Online 2, to bring costumes to the latter game, in addition to an exclusive boss fight with Odin.
- In July 2016, FFXIV did cross-promotion with Yo Kai Watch, where players could earn a Yo-Kai Watch for their character to win, as well as Yo-Kai minions and weapons based off of each Yo-Kai. It ran twice more, once starting in September 2017 (which was a straight repeat of the first time) and yet again in August 2020 (which added more Yo-Kai and weapons for the Stormblood and Shadowbringers jobs).
- In 2018, Square Enix teamed up with Capcom to bring in Monster Hunter: World, with Rathalos being a new trial and mount, along with various items inspired from the game. And while not customizable, the Palico is obtainable as a minion.
- In 2018 and 2019, Square-Enix did a two-way crossover with Final Fantasy XV. After including a special sidequest in XV that has Noctis and his friends team up with an Eorzean to defeat Garuda, a campaign was added in XIV which has Noctis cross over into Eorzea. Players could earn Noctis's hairstyle and costume, in addition to the Regalia as the game's first four-person mount.
- The 24-player raid questline of Shadowbringers is a crossover with NieR: Automata called "YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse". Yoko Taro, the creator of NieR, collaborated in the creation of the questline.
Dude, Not Funny!:
- When the Warrior of Light and Ysayle return from fighting Ravana, Estinien pokes fun at Alphinuad's fretting over their safety. Ysayle rebukes him for picking on a mere boy and the Warrior nods their argeement, though if spoken to again Estinien admits he still thinks it was funny.
- When touring Kugane, Hancock talks about how brutal the Sekiseigumi are and warns them not to piss them off, lest they decide to join their old friend Teledji Adaledji. The player character and the Scions react in shock as Hancock laughs.
- A group of Night's Blessed surround the Scions and while brandishing weapons demand their identities. The player can pretend to be a Moogle, which Thancred notes is going to be a lot less funny if the situation escalates and the Scions are forced to kill the Night's Blessed in self defense.
- After yet another extremely dangerous battle for the Warrior of Light, Y'shtola can guess that they did something to grossly offend the gods in a past life and were cursed to live the kind of life where such fights are typical. After a look from the Warrior, she admits that was a poor attempt a humor she made because she was worried about them.
- When the Scions are caught plundering an ancient treasure vault and in particular are about to meddle with the Void Gate sealed within it the player can try to blame Y'shtola for everything. She hits them with a death glare so intense it comes with its own scare chords and promises to deal with them later. An intimidated G'raha tells the Warrior this is not a good time for jokes.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: In more places than you'd expect. Sure, there's a couple of times where NPCs still treat you like rubbish, but there's just as plentiful cases where people honor your deeds.
- Despite being living proof that you felled Ifrit, a primal god, some quest givers still treat you as nothing more than a common adventurer and/or they have you do tedious/menial tasks to prove your worth before deciding to help you. Even the city guards will still threaten to kick you out/put you in jail/etc, even if you've reached a point in the story where everyone is singing praises about all of your accomplishments.
- Averted in the main story line. Even as early as level 15 (by the main quest level requirements) you'll be famous for your work to the point other adventurers will call you an inspriation to them and you will be selected by your starting City-State to be their special envoy. By level 20 and the aforementioned Ifrit slaying, the Grand Companies will be specifically headhunting you.
- The portion of the story regarding your first fight with Titan zig-zags this a bit. Most of the quests involved are preparations for what seems to be little more than an ill-timed banquet. It turns out, however, that while the NPCs involved know exactly what you're capable of and the importance of what's going on, they also saw a lot of friends die when they themselves fought Titan a few decades ago without the benefit of the Echo that you have, and want to be absolutely sure you're up to the task and know what you're getting into before sending you into danger. It's also turned around on you at the end of that quest line, where it turns out the banquet you've been helping them put together turns out to be in honor of you, the soon-to-be Titan's Bane.
- Other times, characters will remember you from past quests you participated in. Someone who has completed the level 50 job quests will receive glowing praise from the guild members and job trainers. For the Lost City of Amdapor, the White Mage trainer will be happy to learn that a player who has done any of the White Mage quests is taking up the cause of clearing it out.
- Averted with Legacy players who played during 1.0 for the main story line. Even with Laser-Guided Amnesia keeping them from recognizing any of the former Warriors of Light, the various Grand Company leaders often remark that you look familiar, citing that you remind them of the Warriors of Light. Minfillia notes that she remembers you, but asks that you keep it a secret for the safety of the Scions. Cid, during his combined use of help from the player's power of the Echo, and his own Third Eye, remembers you, and his complete history, of helping flying the Legacy players into battle against Nael Van Darnus. By the time the player completes The Praetorium, Hydaelyn restores the memories of the others, they're all ecstatic to remember the Legacy player as one of the Warriors of Light who disappeared 5 years ago.
  Raubahn: No wonder he/she seemed so familiar! He/She is one of the Warriors of Light! What are you smiling at Cid? You knew, didn't you?
  Cid: (grins) Oh, sorry, did I forget to mention our friend was one of the Warriors of Light? Saved Eorzea, twice, you know.
- Averted harshly as of the 2.3 patch cycle, your exploits have made you a Living Legend that gets showered with praise almost everywhere you go. Even doing the errands in the dungeon-unlocking quests aren't because they don't respect you, it's because they respect you too much and know that you above all people will succeed in helping them.
- Averted even with holiday-specific NPCs. Players who participated in the 2014 Valentines day event will be greeted warmly as an old friend by Lady Lisette de Valentione again in later events.
- Averted after the events of patch 2.55. Despite your character being branded a murderer of the Sultana and traitor of Ul'dah, the people who know of your exploits refuse to have the wool pulled over their eyes and many express support to your character, even some of those of the Brass Blades and Crystal Braves who were part of the actual plot. Because of this, your character can freely walk around the major cities despite the events that happened during the quest suggesting that you should be getting locked up on-sight.
- There's even a very minor instance of this with a pair of NPCs who you can't talk to in Ishgard's Brume. They're a pair of kids endlessly pelting one another with snowballs, and when you first arrive in Ishgard, getting close to them will have them start pelting you until you go away. By the time you're nearing the end of the MSQ and you've done so much to help everyone in Ishgard, those two kids now salute you whenever you pass by.
- This gets very heavily deconstructed during the Dark Knight job quest chain: you've always had a voice in the back of your head frustrated at helping people and receiving little or no thanks or sometimes even being punished for it, in particular what happened to you in Before the Fall, where your deeds didn't mean squat to the monetarists who saw you as simply a pawn. This anger and frustration just needed a spark of the darkness to be able to manifest in a significant way - the brutal, pragmatic Anti-Hero Fray.
- Also averted at the end of Stormblood where the soldiers at the base military camp in The Lochs will pause to turn and cheer you on if you walk by. Even the Grand Company leaders will stop what they're doing to acknowledge your presence.
- Played deliberately straight during one quest during the Ivalice raids storyline. At one point you ask Jenomis if there is anything you can do to help while he is working on researching a place you are looking for, he tells you his theater troupe's writer needs your help. As the entire troupe is filled with Garleans (who are sort of defectors), they don't seem to really know or care who you are, and the writer sends you on a very long and tedious quest for a bottle of very rare wine. When you finally come back with it, it turns out he just wanted it to celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife, and they ultimately don't even drink the wine. And to add insult to injury, Jenomis and Ramza basically tell you to stop screwing around when you get back since there are more important things to be doing than hunting down a wine bottle. The Warrior of Light is pretty clearly pissed at the end of all of it.
- Played with in regard to the Disciples of the Hand quests. While later quests will acknowledge your achievements within that discipline, they will never acknowledge anything else. This is particularly egregious when the people in question act like they have no idea who you are when they clearly should by that point.
- Subverted in a pixie daily quest — a Covetous Pixie who has a bauble you need starts protesting "just because you're the hero who brought back the night"... and then realizes mid-sentence that actually, yes, that is a very good reason for them to share with you.
Duel Boss:
- Quite common for class quests, such as the level 30 Lancer one.
- In one of the story quests for patch 2.3, you fight a paladin from the Scions of the Seventh Dawn as a way to show the children from Doma how you fight your enemies. Halfway through the fight, the paladin's thaumaturge friend joins the fray to assist him and turns the fight into a Dual Boss. Neither of the two show regret when you defeat them and they take their loss gracefully.
- The climax of 3.2's story, the Grand Melee—a friendly mock battle between the city-states of Eorzea to welcome Ishgard once more to the Eorzean Alliance—ends in one between Flame General Raubahn and the Warrior of Light.
- In 5.35, the Bozjan Southern Front was added to the game, an open area where you participate in the war between the IVth Imperial Legion and the Bozjan Resistance. By winning certain Critical Engagments (semi-instanced battles with a limited number of players) without taking any avoidable damage, you become eligible to duel one of the Imperial commanders in a difficult 1v1 battle; this takes place in a sealed area of the open world so that other players in the instance can watch. Winning the duel grants several rewards, one of which is a "High Morale" buff for all the spectators.
- in the 6.1 update to the A Realm Reborn main story, the fights against Rhitahtyn and Lahabrea became this.
Dungeon Town:
- The Dravanian Hinterlands serves as this. What was once the settlement of the Sharlyan scholars is now an abandoned town filled with crumbling ruins, overgrown fauna, rabid wildlife, and the Illuminati goblins.
- At the end of the Stormblood launch MSQ, the final dungeon takes place in the streets of Ala Mhigo, with the players fighting through Imperial forces before contending with Zenos.
Dwindling Party:
- The Scions' numbers rise and fall throughout 2.x and don't really stabilize until about 3.5 - the Garleans murder a bunch of them and hold most of the main Scions hostage (you don't find out that two of them escaped capture until around when you rescue the rest of them); they recover just in time for everyone to scatter when they're accused of regicide and don't fully reunite until 3.4. By the end of 4.0, half of the original Scions have been replaced — Minfillia (who Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence), Papalymo (who performed a Heroic Sacrifice) and Yda/Lyse (who quits the group to lead the Ala Mhigans in rebuilding their country) are replaced with Alphinaud, Alisaie and Krile — and the other half is up in the air.
- This also happens concerning the Omega sidestory. When you go into the Interdimensional Rift for the Deltascape portion, it's the Warrior of Light, Cid, Nero, Biggs, Wedge, Alpha and Midgardsormir. When Deltascape ends, Biggs and Wedge are injured by Omega and taken out of the team. When Sigmascape concludes, Nero finally collapses due to being attacked by Omega and Midgardsormir goes to sleep when he expends his energy freeing the Warrior of Light.
- Starting in 4.4, the Scions begin falling into deep slumbers with their souls torn from their bodies one by one. First Thancred, then Y'shtola and Urianger, then Alphinaud, then finally Alisaie, leaving only the Warrior of Light and Krile remaining among the "major" members of the Scions by the end of 4.5 part one.
- Throughout the final area of Endwalker the Scions gradually sacrifice their physical bodies to influence the dynamis which composes Ultima Thule, allowing the others to continue on. First Thancred, then Estinien, then Y'shtola and Urianger, then G'raha, and finally Alphinaud and Alisaie, leaving the Warrior of Light to confront Meteion alone. Thankfully, Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus subsequently shake Meteion's control of the area, allowing the Warrior of Light to summon the Scions back for the final dungeon.

Early-Bird Cameo:
- Before Krile Baldesion was mentioned at the end of the 2.1 story, Minfilia makes a linkpearl call to her after the escape from Castrum Centri. It's hard to spot because it's going on in the background while Alphinaud's talking.
- Hildibrand's mother Julyan gets hit on by Ultros in the patch before her official introduction.
Early-Installment Weirdness: Since the release of 2.0, it took some time for the dev team to settle on a standard formula. Naturally, there's so many changes that it has its own section.
Earn Your Happy Ending
- Heavensward: It took being betrayed and losing many friends, but the resolution of Ishgard's story sees Man and Dragon finally co-existing once more, Ishgard's corrupt theocracy replaced by a Republic senate of both noble and commoners who immediately make the city a better place, and there's a long series of side quests that involves retracing your steps to find out how sincerely and massively you've made the world a better place. And while there are quite a few casualties in the battle with Nidhogg, the worst that happens to a named character is Hraesvelgr losing a wing, but as an impossibly powerful elder wyrm it proves little more than an annoyance once he heals. After the events of Before the Fall, it's beautiful to finally see your efforts bear fruit, turning Ishgard into the closest thing Eorzea has to utopia.
- Shadowbringers: You attempt to save The First from being completely swallowed by the Flood of Light. While there are some innocent casualties along the way, in addition to it being revealed that the Ascians goals are more tragic and well-meaning than originally thought, the fact is that your effort to save The First is a complete success. You managed to defeat all of the Lightwardens in Norvrandt and purge the eternal light consuming the world, simultaneously preventing the Ascians from triggering a calamity on The First and allowing the people to finally see the night sky for the first time in over a century. All of your efforts give the people of the First the hope and motivation they need to focus on rebuilding their world now that the omnipresent threat of the sin-eaters is gone, and the souls of Ardbert and his fellow companions are now at peace, having merged his soul with the Warrior of Light and the rest being able to move on to the afterlife.
- 5.3: The questline ends with the Warrior of Light killing Elidibus after one of the most climactic battles of the story, with G'raha aiding in the process, albeit at the cost of his life, bringing a permanent and decisive end to the cycles of Calamities and Rejoinings as the sundered Ascians don't have the power or motives to restore the old world. After a tearful farewell from the First, all of the Scions are properly restored to their bodies on The Source with no lingering ill-effects. And G'raha's sacrifice is undone when his younger Source body accepts his older soul vessel, allowing him to come back and properly join the Scions as they relax and recover under a sunny scene in Mor Dhona. Many fans have noted that if not for Zenos and Fandaniel still being active as the next plot thread, the storyline could have ended then and there with no complaint.
- Endwalker: The expansion starts with you trying to save those captured by the Telophoroi from the towers without triggering the alarm systems that will kill them, while also trying to understand the thusfar inscrutable actions of the Sharlayan Forum. It takes you to save Thavnair and liberate Garlemald and then to MOON where you face Zodiark - controlled by Fandaniel - and win - only for him to kill himself to undo Zodiark's protective magicks. THIS is where the real threat - a force of emotion that dissolves the aether that makes up living beings and turns them to beasts - comes to call, forcing us to travel back in time to meet Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and Venat, the heart of Hydaelyn, and learn the secrets of oblivion - a creation of our Fandaniel's past life, meant to explore space and make friends with the life out there only to find that the life she meets is either dead or wanting to die from some horrid revelation. When we eventually return home, we join forces with Scions, the moon bunnies, the Garleans and Thavnairians we've met, and damn near alll the allies we've made along the way, help the Forum finish their evacuation space ship, descend to the Underworld to prove ourselves to Hydaelyn as worthy of saving the world, and take said spaceship AND the mothercrystal as its fuel (converted into Primals, our onetime scourge turned obedient with Creation magic) so we can fly to the edge of space to face the harbinger of the heat death of the universe. Our allies give themselves up to reshape the world at the edge of the universe, and we in turn rescue them when we reach our goal and help Meteion find her happiness again. The despair manifests as a harbinger of oblivion and threatens our friends, whom we save by using our emergency teleport to rescue - but drop ours at the last moment so we can stay and try and forestall the end. Before we're annihilated, though, Zenos returns as Shinryu, to help us end the distraction that keeps us from our final battle with him, and acts as the stage for us to summon Azem's magic and destroy the Endsinger, letting life return to the universe - and then we have one last beatdown with Zenos, killing him but almost dying before we are rescued and return home.
The Earth-Prime Theory: In Heavensward, it's revealed that the planet Hydaelyn is also known as "The Source" and is the Earth Prime for thirteen other versions of the world called "shards" or "reflections". The Shards are linked to the Source through an interdimensional flow of aether. Should the Source be destroyed, the Reflections will shortly followed.
Easter Egg:
- Inside the Palace of the Dead, there's a rare chance that a Unique Enemy will spawn in the form of a zombie with the look of specific NPCs that had died in the main story or job quests. Killing them has them utter their Final Words to give a further hint to who they were.
- When a player has their companion chocobo summoned, they can put it into one of four stances to adjust its behaviour in combat, each of which the chocobo responds to with a different chirp. If the chocobo is cycled through all four stances one after the other in the order Healer, Attacker, Defender and Free, it turns out that the chirps are actually segments of the chocobo theme.
- According to the description of the fish known as Navigator's Brand, Llymlaen the Navigator — the Patron God of sailors — threw a knife at Oschon when he peeped on Llymlaen in the nude. In the Thaleia raid, should the player use the Hug or Blow Kiss emotes on Llymlaen (which a player has no reason to do), Llymlaen will throw a dagger at the offending player as an Unblockable Attack while telling them to cut it out.
- After clearing Tam Tara Deepcroft (Hard) and seeing Edda's tragic demise, there's a tiny^noteless than one percent! chance that her ghost will spawn for a few moments in any of the three main cities. This can only happen at night.
Eat Me: The trick to defeating Cerberus in World of Darkness is when it breaks free, one party stands in a ball of magic it throws up that shrinks you, and then deliberately let it swallow the alliance whole to attack its stomach lining, causing it to throw you up and stunning it so the other alliances can bind it again. This only works if you're shrunken, though - if not, he tears you open for a One-Hit Kill.
Ecocidal Antagonist:
- In the Conjurer questline, the conjurers of Stillglade Fane regularly battle the corruptive influence of voidsent on the Twelveswood. Conjurers wield the powers of nature to purge voidsent corruption of the earth, water, and air, clearing pollution that would render the land infertile, the rivers murky, and the air poisonous.
- Subverted in the White Mage questline. Alaqa is a Xaela thaumaturge who raise the body of a fallen dragon to spread taint, corruption, and disease in Coerthas, bringing her into conflict with the white mages of Gridania when that taint reaches into the Twelveswood. While she's initially depicted as a wicked witch-like figure, the heroes discover that she's a refugee from Othard who fled Garlean occupation of her land, only to watch her loved ones be slaughtered by Ishgardians who mistook her kind for Dravanians. Her actions, while destructive, are framed as the sympathetic Roaring Rampage of Revenge born of a senseless massacre, with the damage to the Twelveswood being an unintended side effect. She later atones for her actions by becoming a conjurer, protecting the land she once harmed.
- In the Blue Mage questline, Whastrach coerces the Whalaqee leaders into signing over their sacred, ceruleum-rich lands in exchange for the treatment of a plague ravaging their people. This infuriates the Warrior and Martyn, who wager everything to put a halt to Whastrach's environmentally destructive plans.
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors:
- Averted in the current game. Even from the start, it only applied to players via elemental resistance stats, but they turned out to be so useless that they were removed in patch 4.2. The game otherwise has had no proper elemental weaknesses, which is an odd thing to see considering that the Final Fantasy franchise made elemental weaknesses a common strategy to exploit. You can cast Fire on a Bomb monster (which are usually composed of fire) and it will take normal damage. Word of God says having no elemental strengths or weaknesses was intentional so that all classes could have a fair shot in battle and not be outdone by certain classes.
- Originally played straight in a few instances in regards to poisonous or non-biological creatures being immune to the Archer's Venomous Bite attack, or the Arcanist's Damage Over Time spells, though this was changed shortly after the release of 2.0.
- Played straight in the Palace of the Dead with the Pomander of Resolution, which transforms the user into an angelic being and can blast enemies with a holy based spell. Said spell does massive damage towards dark and undead based foes. Strangely, the White Mage's Holy spell does not have the same effect.^note
- Downplayed in the Forbidden Land, Eureka. Enemies have elemental alignments, and you have a magia board slotted with magicite that gives you an elemental alignment, but only the configuration of your magia board comes into play; the elements of the attacks you use are irrelevant.
- This concept exists in the lore as the elements are arranged as a hexagon.
- Blue Mages have this in effect in the Masked Carnival, with damage types being split between the six elements, unaspected damage and physical damage. Bringing the right element to an enemy's weakness can make the fights significantly easier to beat. Outside of the carnival though, their spells don't act any differently besides graphics and area of effect.
Elevator Action Sequence:
- The first two phases of the final boss in A Realm Reborn take place in an elevator that conveniently never ends.
- Additionally, Turn 4 of The Binding Coil of Bahamut pits a full party against several waves of enemies on an ever-descending elevator, in the grandest tradition of Square's SNES titles like Chrono Trigger.
The Empire: The Garlean Empire is a fascistic and expansionist autocracy that by the start of A Realm Reborn whose lands not only span a grand part of their own continent, but by the start of the plotline also have put a good chunk of the Far East and the kingdom of Ala Mhigo in Eorzea under their heel. For obvious enough reasons, they serve as recurring villains in the game.
- There is also the Allagan Empire which has disappeared before the start of the game, but was so powerful and evil that many quests revolve around their lasting debris.
Endless Daytime: Due to the flood of Light within the First World, it is perpetually day time in the few areas that haven't been claimed by the light.
Endless Winter: Ever since the fall of Dalamud, the northern land of Coerthas has been trapped in one of these. Worse, an unnatural wall of ice has blocked off the only pass from the Central Highlands to the rest of the region. The storyline of Patch 2.3 hints that Shiva, the primal of ice may be involved in a lot of the region's problems. The release of Heavensward, has since allowed players to explore the Coerthas Western Highlands, which have fared even worse: most of the lakes and rivers are frozen over, and nearly all the old settlements are abandoned ruins.
End of an Age: With patch 5.3, the age of piracy has finally ended in Limsa Lominsa, with all of the major pirate factions transitioning into much more peaceful careers such as escorting ships or shipping cargo. However, it was already on the way there as under the leadership of Merlyb; pirates were already only allowed to attack the ships of enemies of the Eorzean Alliance (read: Garlean ships).
- Endwalker will be this for both the plot and on a meta-level; it will conclude the 10 year Ascian plotline started back in Legacy/1.0, and be the start of a whole new story.
Enemy Mine: A quest named Enemy Mine has you forming one of these with the Red Wasp Gang and Coeurlclaw Poachers in Gridania, they mention having heard the stories about you and look forward to fighting you, but they choose to help you for the time because they hate the Garleans more and the fact the one who let them through the borders was a traitorous Wood Wailer.
Entertainingly Wrong:
- The antagonist of the Stormblood Summoner job quests is Sari, a summoner of ancient Allag and creator of Principia, the book familiar that has been the player's guide. However, being from the time of the Allagan Empire, Sari should be centuries dead. Knowing that the Allagan Empire was big on cloning technology, the characters' initial conclusion is that the Sari they're up against is a clone of the original. What is not revealed until later is the original Sari was researching how to use the computational power of machines to increase the power of summoning. This resulted in a machine capable of summoning Egi. The Sari they have been up against until this point is an Egi of Sari, and the final boss of the questline is the machine that has been doing the summoning, who acknowledges that "clone of Sari" was a valid theory, given what they knew at the time.
- After Louisoux summons the power of the Twelve in an attempt to avert the Calamity, the similarities between that ritual and the summoning of Primals does not go unnoticed. People, most noticeably Gaius but even some among the heroes, begin to suggest that maybe the conventional view of the Twelve as true gods in comparison to Primals is mistaken and they are all Primals. This is eventually proven to be untrue. The Twelve do exist, as gods, and are quite adamant they are not Primals. What Louisoux summoned were indeed Primals, but were merely based on the Twelve and were otherwise unconnected to the deities.
Empathic Weapon: Implied for the Zodiac Zeta weapons. During your quest to create one, every Mahatma attached to the weapon gives it some form of sentience (juxtaposition, conviction, etc.) from a lore perspective and said sentience is what makes the Zodiac the true arm used by the Zodiac Braves.
Epic Fail: In the FATE quest "Giant Enemy Crab", the Qiqirn brought the monstrous Karkinos into the area so they could harvest its eggs. Unfortunately, they didn't realize Karkinos was male. Or that the gigantic crab would eat every other egg in the area.
Equipment-Hiding Fashion: You can "glamour" your weapons and armor (except belts, which are always invisible), changing their appearance to another item of the same type.
Escort Mission: Several side quests involve you calling an NPC every few steps to get him/her/it to follow you to the destination while protecting them from enemies. Luckily, the escort missions are not frustrating. Some story quests also have an NPC that must remain alive for the fight. If the NPC is slain, the boss will unleash a One-Hit Kill on your party.
Establishing Character Moment: The speeches each Grand Company leader gives at their city's memorial service, alongside Alphinaud's commentary, serve as this for each city before the player has to choose which one they want to join.
- Ul'dah is wealthy and powerful, but its people are unscrupulous and more concerned about their own profit than their fellow man or even Ul'dah itself as a whole.
- Limsa Lominsa is industrious and free, but they haven't really shed their pirate roots and looking deeper aren't that much better than their Beast Tribe neighbors.
- Gridania is peaceful and in-tune with nature, but also dependent on the Elementals who aren't concerned with human affairs and have lost a lot of their power recently.
E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: The magitek used in Eorzea and other nations in the modern era, most especially Garlean magitek, was largely reverse engineered from Allagan discoveries of ages past. Though they have an understanding of their own developments, they haven't figured out all the secrets of the Allagan tech. This is actually twice the case for the Allagans themselves. For one thing, some of THEIR tech, such as the Heart of Sabik, wasn't fully understood to them, or held secrets they didn't know of, in large part thanks to them being given it by the Ascians; for another, much of their tech was reverse-engineered from a literal alien entity in the form of the crashed Omega, a visitor from a distant world.
Ethnic God: Throughout the various worlds, dimensions and nations within FFXIV, there are many "primals"—which are godlike entities born from huge amounts of aether, embodying the hopes, dreams or raw emotions of whatever group of people brought it into being. For example, Ramuh is associated with the Sylphs, Susanoo with the Kojin, and Lakshmi with Ananta beast tribes. Most of the "enlightened" playable races of Eorzea have either abandoned worshipping primals, never worshipped them, or are actively opposed to their very existence, due to fact that primals by their very nature require so much aether to exist that they will strip the world bare of life if allowed to exist long enough, as well as the fact that when a primal "tempers" a mortal, that mortal is permanently and irrevocably devoted to that primal's service. These factors have led to numerous wars and battles being waged between races who serve a particular tribal and others who either serve a different one or reject them altogether.
Even Evil Has Standards: In the Heavensward Fishing quest line, the Warrior of Light gets involved in a dispute between two brothers over who rightfully owns their anscestral manor and surrounding land. The older brother has the lawful claim, but is an absentee landlord who spends most of his time at various fishing competitions around Eorzea. The younger brother hires an assassin to kill his older brother. However, the assassin also turns out to be an avid fisher, and exclaims that they could never kill another fisherman no matter how much they got paid.
Everybody Knew Already: In the finale of Shadowbringers, everyone in the Crystarium reveals that they'd already figured out that the player is the vaunted "Warrior of Darkness", despite the Exarch's attempts to keep it secret. They felt it was rather obvious that the mysterious stranger that arrived from the same world as the Exarch, who was personally welcomed to the city by said Exarch shortly before night returned to Lakeland, and whose travels to each region of Norvrandt invariably preceded the defeat of their respective Lightwardens was the most likely candidate.
"Everybody Laughs" Ending: The end of the 2.2 Hildibrand Quest chain at Hildibrand and Briarden's antics.
Everyone Is Bi: At least a lot of them. Several story key characters seem to develop romantic feelings for the Warrior of Light (explicitly for at least two of them), no matter what the Warrior's gender is. There also doesn't seem to be any prejudice towards same-sex couples in general in the game's world, quite a number of Non Player Characters being actually involved in same-sex romantic or physical relationships. Some in-game negative reactions appear towards interracial couples instead, as seen with the two male lovers involved with the Wanderer's Palace quest, one being a Hyur and the other a Miqo'te. They state they were kicked out of their village for being lovers, seemingly setting their village to be homophobic, but it's quickly revealed the outrage was because they were different species - the fact that they're gay goes entirely unmentioned.
Everything's Cuter with Kittens: You can get a baby Coeurl, which comes with a red ribbon and a bell. It even plays with the wolf pup if another player has theirs out.
Everything Fades: Defeated enemies will fade out of existence after a few seconds. Most bosses also evaporate in dark purple and black smoke after their defeat. Often justified in that primals are magical manifestations enchanting the world around them, And thus consist entirely of aether.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
- In the quest, "A Feeling in the Belly" cynical potion-maker on the outskirts of Eulmore's Gatetown sarcastically tells the Warrior to fetch him some bark in a monster-infested area if they want medicine to help a boy who has been poisoned by contaminated water. He's dumbstruck when the Warrior actually does it, asking what they could possibly gain from such a thing in a rotten town like Eulmore. This provokes a Jerkass Realization in him and he decides that he gave his word to make medicine, fulfilling his end of the deal. He then says that it might not feel bad to help the poor and needy for the sake of it.
- A possible choice in Endwalker, depending on what the player says to the Final Boss. Zenos asks the Warrior of Light if, at the end of the day, they just want to fight and kill strong opponents like he does. One of the possible responses is a Shut Up, Hannibal! to this line of thinking, with the Warrior saying that Zenos is nothing like them. Should the player pick this option, Zenos keeps insisting that he's right anyways, because he can't comprehend the idea that anyone would want to fight for any other reason.
Evil Old Folks: Mimiroon Leafgrinder appears to be a kindly old Qiqirn who in one FATE begs your aid in rescuing his "shrew-mates", who were apparently kidnapped by their meat-eating counterparts. That is, until he leads you into a clearing where you're subsequently besieged by a dozen meat-eating Qiqirn at once, revealing the whole thing to be a scam. Once you beat them back, he takes the field himself as "Mimiroon Bonecruncher".
Evolving Music: Endwalker's Ultima Thule starts out as a muffled, simple instrumental that clears up as you progress the zone, and eventually has a vocal track added to it as the zone nears its end.
Evolving Title Screen: The game's title screen changes with each expansion pack. All of the old screens (except the one used in version 1.0) can be viewed by selecting "Movies & Title" on the main menu.
- In version 1.0, a simple white background was used.
- In A Realm Reborn, the aethereal sea is shown behind the title.
- In Heavensward, there is heavy snowfall in the background.
- In Stormblood, the title appears in a blaze of fire, with fire in the background as well.
- In Shadowbringers, a glowing golden sky is separated to reveal a starry night sky behind it.
- In Endwalker, the planet Hydaelyn's moon is shown eclipsing the sun from space, forming part of the title.
Evolving Weapon: Collectively referred as "Relic Weapons" by the players, these special weapons can be made stronger with different items and quest lines as you progress. Each expansion features one such series of quests, tied to a side story that establishes their creation and growth.
- From A Realm Reborn, the Relic Weapon starts here and grows to Zenith, to Atma, Animus, Novus, Nexus. Then, the relic is transformed into it's Zodiac version, which then upgrades to the final stage, Zodiac Zeta.
- Heavensward continues this process, with players who possess a Zodiac Zeta weapon having a jump start on the Anima weapon series by skipping the initial crystal-gathering step entirely. They start as Animated, then are Awoken, and become an Anima Weapon. Then those become Hyperconductive, to another new form. Then that form becomes Sharpened, before becoming a completed Anima weapon. Then finally after that, there is one more step to make it an Anima Lux weapon, perfecting the weapon.
- Stormblood features the Eureka weapons, its development taking place on the titular island of Eureka. With the weapon given to you with your Level 70 Artifact Armor, you refine that weapon from Antiquated, to Anemos, Pagos, then taking on a new form upon reaching the Pyros stage. Then the weapon takes on another new form before becoming a completed Eureka weapon. Unlike the previous expansions, this has an optional Physeos step to give it an Elemental bonus for Eureka-based content.
- Shadowbringers offers the Resistance weapons, with a different pace of progression than the previous three expansions. Some of the quests are one-time steps to progress on your weapon, with subsequent weapons being quicker to upgrade as a result. A Resistance weapon becomes Augmented, to Recollection, to taking on the Law's Order form, then Augmented Law's Order, before finally becoming a Blade's weapon.
- Endwalker introduces the Manderville Weapons. As of Patch 6.45, there are three levels: the base level, the Amazing level, and the Majestic level.
Exact Words: After Garlemald makes a temporary truce with Doma, Asahi tries to reignite hostilities on grounds to the effect of "a Doman summoned an eikon". Never mind that the Doman in question is his sister, a high-ranking member of the Garlean government, and doing this on Asahi's orders. The letter of the agreement has been broken, and Asahi wants war, damn it!
Exactly What I Aimed At: In the Reaper level 80 quest, during the fight against Orcus, you throw Drusella's scythe past Orcus towards her, while he comments on your terrible aim.
Excalibur: This wonderful weapon reappears in this game, too! Excalibur is a Gladiator/Paladin weapon and is part of the Zodiac Braves weapon line. It gains an upgrade, the Excalibur Zeta, which makes it the strongest of the A Realm Reborn-originating GLD/PLD weapons, trumping the Augmented Garland Ironworks Sword. When Heavensward released, a mission allows you to transform the Excalibur Zeta into the Animated Hauteclaire.
- The final boss of Eureka Orthos in Endwalker features a boss possessed by a weapon also named Excalibur, made by the primal Eureka from The Forbidden Land, Eureka storyline.
Excuse Plot: While the game itself has an amazing, very well written, and enjoyable story, the PVP battlegrounds have an excuse plot. It is a major plot point in the game's story that the 3 grand companies (factions) are allies. The PVP battlegrounds basically go "Yes, we're allies. But these ruins were found that each of the companies wants to get to first, so we're fighting over them. Want to come help?" Even the NPC acknowledges that it is a Hand Wave so that the game could have PVP.
Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Certain boss characters use weapons that look pretty cool, but they could never be obtained by the players. When the Gold Saucer was released in patch 2.5, many of the enemy exclusive weapons became available to be used by the players and are only obtainable as a prize in the Gold Saucer. The stats on said weapons are very average and many weapons clearly outperform them, so their main purpose is for glamour.
Expecting Someone Taller:
- Vivenne of Dragonhead has this reaction upon receiving a Tradecraft Levemete delivery.
- Mikoto voices a similar opinion on first meeting the Warrior of Light on the Prima Vista, listing off several of their accomplishments before finishing with this line. Amusingly, the camera placement will emphasize the player's height if they're playing a particularly tall or short character compared to her, as she is a rather short Au'ra woman.
Experience Booster:
- Completing all of the quests for one of the Damager, Healer, Tank roles at the Hall of the Novice will give you a Brand-new Ring. When equipped, the ring increases all XP gained by thirty percent for your current class as long as you're below level 30. It also increases every stat by three points, making it quite useful early on.
- Beginning with Stormblood, there have been Pre-Order Bonus bonuses for every expansion since that give you a thirty percent buff up to a given level (50 for the Ala Mhigan earring, 70 for the Aetheryte earring, and 80 for Menphina's earring). They also give stat bonuses to combat jobs.invoked
- Most food items you eat will give a three percent increase to all XP earned while it's active, as long as it also increases stats for Disciples of War or Magic.
- When a Mentor forms a pre-made party with new adventurers, both the Mentor and the newbies receive a buff that increases XP earned, up to level 80. Both mentors and newbies must be in the same area to receive the experience point bonus.
- Players who start in or transfer from congested servers to a new or preferred (low population) server are given a very powerful one hundred percent XP buff that is applied up to ten levels below the current expansion's level cap. It does not wear off until ninety days for starting in a preferred server or transferring to a new or preferred one, or until a new server is categorized normally.
Exposed to the Elements:
- Averted and lampshaded by Alphinaud in Coerthas. Part of the reason he wants the problems there sorted out quickly is because he expected everything to go much more smoothly and is not dressed for the weather.
- Averted in Heavensward, upon leaving Camp Dragonhead, and crossing the Steps of Faith to enter Ishgard for the first time, Alphinaud and Tataru are shown wearing heavy winter coats. Quite useful, as they cross the bridge in the middle of a heavy snow storm. A few story quest latter, and Tataru, having taken up weaving, has made Alphinaud a brand new outfit that provides much better protection from the elements than his old one.
- Averted as well by Minfilia - unlike Alphinaud, she's smart enough to wear a heavy winter coat to Coerthas on her first visit there.
- Played straight to the point of exaggeration with Player Characters. You can run all about the frozen lands of Coerthas, wearing as little as your underwear, or swim wear, and not a single shiver will be seen. In fact, when you yourself are playing through the 2.0 storyline quests that first take you through Coerthas, the armor available as quest rewards typically consists of either heavy suits of armor for Tank classes (which themselves, being made of a lot of metal, would be even worse in such a climate without a lot of insulation to keep the wearer warm) and ridiculously-skimpy harnesses for everybody else.
- Averted by many Coerthan and Ishgard NPCs. A few shop keepers can be seen shivering despite wearing heavy coats.
- Played for laughs during the Heavensward Hildibrand questlines: when the player first encounters Godbert Manderville near Falcon's Nest, he's dressed snug and warm, as is his wife, and exhorts the player character to do the same. As the quest continues, though, he gradually strips down until he's in only his trademark skivvies, even before the quests lead to the warmer Dravanian hinterlands and Idyllshire.
Expendable Alternate Universe: Shadowbringers reveals that this is essentially how the Ascians operate. The world that the expansion takes place in, the First, is one of thirteen reflections of the Source, alternate versions of it created after a battle between Zodiark and Hydaelyn shattered Zodiark's power - and the world itself, since Zodiark was essentially created to be the will of the planet - into several fragments. The Ascians hail from the world as it was before the split, and their plan turns out to have been reuniting the various reflections - by fucking them up so badly they undergo complete collapse and rejoin their aether with the Source, which in turn triggers a Calamity on the Source. By the Seventh Calamity that ended Legacy, only five reflections are left - one became so inundated with dark aether it became the Void, seven have been successfully rejoined, and the First isn't too far off from joining them as of the beginning of Shadowbringers. Emet-Selch even declares as much partway through the Shadowbringers story, that, compared to an Ascian like himself and what they were capable of in the original world, he doesn't consider any of the inhabitants of the broken Source or its reflections to be truly alive.
Expy:
- The playable races are, for the most part, visually very similar to those of FFXI, though the non-human races seem to have been made more human-like. Roegadyn are visually similar to Galkas, but without tails, more evenly proportioned bodies (i.e. their legs and feet aren't as small as Galkans), and have females (Galkans in FFXI were male only, that reincarnated upon death). Miqo'te facial features are more human-like in compared to Mithras in most cases, though a few (and even players) can appear more or less cat-like. Lalafells stand slightly taller than Tarutaru, and again, have more evenly proportioned bodies. The Elezen are perhaps the least changed from the Elvaan, but often slightly less muscular in appearance, instead having a somewhat more agile look to them.
- The same goes for a few monsters and beastmen, though granted, with graphical updates. Goblins are basically HD, updated models of FFXI's. Some ghost type monsters are visually similar to the ones from FFXI, as are leeches. And that's just a partial list.
- Some of the architecture looks similar as well: Gridania looks similar to Windurst in some ways, and Ul'dah is basically Aht Urhgan in the desert (or, expanding horizons a touch, Rabanastre with the serial numbers filed off). Ishgard is San d'Oria transported to more mountainous, snowy climates, and replacing its ongoing conflict against orcs with dragons instead, and is primarily home to Elezen, focus on knightly forces (even one of their orders is called the Temple Knights, and have similar missions), and is just as devoutly religious. And they are also home to the Dragoon job. The only difference is the head of the nation is not a king, but rather, seemingly the head of the faith to Halone.
- A lot of the monsters and monster types are flat-out recycled from Final Fantasy XII, even with the same names: mantises, aevises, mirrorknights, feral crocs, even the unique enemies from the Stilshrine of Miriam are reused in the Sunken Temple of Qarn.
- Thanks to cross over promotional events, several monsters and items from their respective games show up for a limited time in special FATE battles and as rewards. Additionally, The Binding Coil of Bahamut features the Gran Pulse machina Dreadnoughts from Final Fantasy XIII. It's also a FATE fight during the FFXIII crossover event, and has nearly every single ability and attack it had from its original game, including Steam Clean (Removes all debuffs on it) and incredibly high damage Resistance rates.
- The Ascians are a very weird case. They are named for the Scions of Light from Final Fantasy XII, but their actions, and motivations resemble more those of their evil counterparts, The Scions of Darkness/Espers/Lucavi. Their goal is even pretty much the same as the Lucavi, summoning their God/leader. The God they worship is also named after an FFXII Scion/Esper, Zodiark. They are also extremely similar to the Forsaken from The Wheel of Time: their penchant for labyrinthine self-serving plots even as they all serve the same dark god, their ability to resurrect in a different body if killed, the fact that they can only be permanently killed using a very specific and extremely powerful method, etc.
- The Au Ra ladies, in particular, have some definite similarities to the Gria of Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
  - In a similar vein Doma is very much like Fanelia, both are countries that fell into ruin from a traitor within, both are the home of their world's samurai and eschew lineage in favor of talent and both are seen as a kind of threat to their opposing empire.
Eyes Are Unbreakable: Despite the following trope, once removed from a dragon's eye socket, their eyes seem remarkably resilient, with the Azure Dragoon and later the player character able to carry them around and use them without any particular care. And despite the handling, they seem perfectly re-insertable and re-usable by the original owners.
Eyebrows Burned Off: At one point in the Endwalker main story, you meet an engineer mumbling about the project he's working on, and he mentions one experiment that nearly cost him his eyebrows.
Eye of Newt:
- Alchemy recipes require a variety of herbs but may also include things like lizards, spiders, snakes, bat wings, wolf fangs, dhalmel saliva and other animal body parts and secretions. The blood of vilekin (bugs) and even Spoken (read: people) are featured in a number of recipes.
- In the first step to reproducing the legendary Manderville Weapons, Godbert needs to provide a single drop of a mighty Manderville's perspiration for the forging reagent, Exalamanderville, to achieve maximum aetheric conductivity.
Eye Scream:
- A Great Wyrm's power rests in their eyes. You can naturally draw the conclusion of what happens to several of them. In Heavensward, at the end of The Aery we are treated to a scene of Estinien skewering Nidhogg's remaining eye.
- The touched sylphs threaten to do this to you in a beast tribe quest.

Face of a Thug: A concerned Ishgardian citizen asks the Warrior of Light to investigate some shady-looking men who have been skulking around Rolanberry Field, a newly established orphanage, in the Firmament. All of these men are rude and curt with the Warrior before rushing off to be somewhere else. Despite appearances, all three men are former Temple Knights who all suffered a Career-Ending Injury, forcing them to hang up their shields. They are beloved by the children for playing with them, cooking for them, and tending to them.
Facepalm:
- When Khloe accidentally reveals who the owner of the Hard Place is to an Au Ra stranger, the Warrior of Light (who was trying to keep that information secret from said Au Ra), can only facepalm as the little girl blabbers on.
- When the Namazu essentially tell the Warrior of Light that they will be helping the Namazu with their seven-year festival (when all the WoL did at this point was bring one of them back to their house from the Steppe), the Warrior of Light just gives a resigned look before facepalming as the camera pans away.
The Fair Folk: The sylph manage to fulfill both ends of the spectrum. Friendly Sylph are relatively harmless and enjoy the company of mortals who can comprehend their rather odd traditions, and also enjoy playing harmless pranks like leaving gifts of fruit in weird places to people they like. Tempered Sylph are much worse, very territorial, they usually don't leave Larkscall, but when they do it's usually to play very cruel, spiteful pranks that could harm or even kill mortals. They also constantly encroach the untempered Sylphs of Little Solace to try to bring them under Ramuh's thrall.
- The pixies found on The First are a straighter example. They charm mortals that enter their domain, force them to play games that range between annoying and potentially lethal, and eventually turn them into plants so that they cannot try to leave.
Fairytale Wedding Dress: Players can wear one of these during their Ceremony of Eternal Bonding (AKA wedding) event. They can also wear them after the event has long passed, even into battle!
Fairy Trickster: Pixies are mischievous sprites that like to play games and pranks with any mortals that cross their path. While they aren't outright malicious, their idea of fun can send people tumbling into ravines or stumbling into monster nests, driving a wedge into attempts at peaceful coexistence.
Failed a Spot Check: Can be invoked if a player is playing as an Au Ra. Yugiri was originally the first Au Ra that players met (prior to the race being made playable in Hevensward) and will comment about how her appearance may be odd - even when the Warrior of Light is an Au Ra themselves and walks past dozens of Au Ra in Vesper Bay.
Fake Ultimate Hero: The "Company of Heroes" was a famous mercenary troupe that helped slay Titan twelve years before the events of A Realm Reborn. They split up and went their separate ways in the wake of the Calamity, but many people looking for quick fame and fortune will claim to have been a former member of the Company, which inevitably gets them into hot water when they're pitted against dangerous monsters.
False Flag Operation:
- Happens in 3.5 when "The Griffin" lures the Eorzean Alliance to the Black Shroud's Eastern border with Ala Mhigo, where the Imperials' Castrum Oriens, AKA "Baelsar's Wall" is located. The Alliance is there to defend Gridania from any Imperial aggression as part of their counter attack against the Griffin's otherwise ill-conceived plan to assault and take over the wall. In reality, this is all part of his plan to drag Eorzea into a war with the Garlean Empire, as he uses the build up of forces to launch an attack with Ala Mhigan Resistance members and remnants of the traitorous Crystal Braves, dressed in the Grand Company colors.
- And that itself turns out to be a ruse by the Griffin, revealing his true identify as Ilberd, to generate enough death, despair, grief, hatred, and sorrow among the Resistance members that joined him being utterly wiped out by Garlean reserve units ordered to attack by his fellow co-conspirators Laurentius and Yuyuhase in Imperial uniforms. All to fuel the creation of a new primal, capable of potentially causing a new Calamity.
False Reassurance: In Kugane's ijin-gai, Hancock explains that breaches of the peace are strictly forbidden, and violators have been on occasion permanently exiled for a single incident. But that's quite rare... more often, they're executed on the spot.
Familiar:
- Powerful mages are known to either create or enchant living creatures to turn them into familiars for various tasks. These range from lumbering golems to sapient cats like Cait Sith, the magical familiar of the High Voidmage Cessair.
- The ancient race that lived in the unsundered past regularly created familiars out of their own aether to assist them in various tasks. These familiars widely varied in size and shape, but required regular amounts of aether to avoid disappating into nothingness. Due to possessing far less aether than the ancients and possessing a fraction of their past life Azem's soul, the Warrior masquerades as one while investigating the ancient research facility of Elpis.
Fantastic Drug: With industries such as the Alchemist's Guild making medicine, there's also some shadier substances that allude to real-world illegal drugs.
- Somnus, made from "dream flowers", is known to cause deep slumber to those that inhale its fumes.
- Milkroot, beloved by the Sylphs, secretes a milky-white sap that has hallucinogenic properties.
- The 4.X Hildibrand quests concludes with the realization that an affluent Hingan businessmen was using a Hannish drug to exploit the Shinsengumi: "dewprism", a white powdery substance that, even in small quantities, robs its victims of free will and makes them susceptible to the whims of others. One side effect of its use is Red Eyes, Take Warning.
Fantastic Firearms:
- Firesand (gunpowder) reliant firearms are relatively new to Eorzea, with only Limsa Lominsa and Ishgard making extensive usage of them. However, the machinists at Skysteel Manufactory invent an "aetherotransformer", a power pack that draws on the user's internal aether and converts it into electrical energy. This energy powers the machinist's gadgetry, including an enormous Swiss-Army Weapon that fires drills, chained anchors, and rotary saw blades. This energy is also used to enable Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics and fire a magnetism-propelled Gauss Shot.
- High-ranking Garleans make extensive use of weapons that are at least partly a gun, with the most popular being the gunblade. In addition to being used as traditional firearms, Garlean gunblades use ceruleum canisters instead of firesand and with proper know-how can be used for a variety of techniques, such as Gaius van Baelsar's signature Terminus Est attack. Other gunblade-like weapons include Nael van Darnus' gunhalberd and Rhitatyn sas Arvina's gunshields.
- The gunbreakers of Bozja also made use of their own gunblades with designs reaching as far back as the Third Astral Era. These gunblades don't shoot bullets, instead using aether-charged canisters loaded into a revolver-like chamber to superheat and propel the blade with a trail of fiery explosions. This enables furious and rapid displays of swordsmanship enhanced by magical techniques. Gunblades can also fire canisters to shield and heal allies as well as fire a Sword Beam akin to the newer Garlean gunblades.
Fantastic Measurement System: Eorzea's weights and measures are based on lightly-renamed units from American Customary Measurements. In terms of length, twelve ilms (inches) make a fulm (foot), three fulms a yalm (yard), and 1,760 yalms a malm (mile). For weights, sixteen onzes (ounces) make a ponze (pound), and 2,000 ponzes a tonze ([short] ton). In terms of gameplay, yalms are typically used to measure the range and area-of-effect radii of actions. Conveniently, one yalm is roughly the same as one meter.
Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product:
- Owing to the magical nature of the setting, many alchemical concoctions require animal products. For instance, wolf fangs can be used to make spine drops to treat cases of temporary paralysis. Imp wings can be turned into ethers to restore one's reserves of aether to help sling extra spells. The humours of a jellyfish can be distilled into a potion that induces Forced Sleep when consumed or inhaled.
- Due to the harsh climate and terrain of Gyr Abania, many Ala Mhigans turn to natural remedies made of bodily products of the beasts that inhabit the area to treat illness.
  - An Ala Mhigan remedy for a poisoned wound consists of taking the horn from an antelope and grinding it with water to make a paste that is rubbed onto the wound. The Warrior gains the trust of Meffrid, a captain in the Ala Mhigan Resistance, by securing this remedy for one of his men after the elementals barred the conjurers of Gridania from providing aid.
  - The horns of muud suuds, a species of hulking Horned Humanoid voidsent found throughout Gyr Abania, can be ground into a powder and boiled in water to produce a flavorful, nutritious, and energizing broth with properties akin to coffee thanks to a recipe from the Near East. Meanwhile, the tallow of a muud suud has an intensely unpleasant and hard-to-wash out scent akin to chocobo dung, which Ala Mhigan scouts use to keep man-eating Qiqirn and other beasts away via Sensory Overload.
    Resistance Fighter: You would never guess something so wonderful could come from a creature so horrid, but such dishes made from the horns and bones of animals are quite common in Gyr Abania. Aside from their distinctive flavors, they all have varying effects that are quite beneficial to one's health.
- Subverted by some other folk remedies mentioned in the series. Legends of mermaid flesh granting immortality are nothing more than myths, but it doesn't stop those who are Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense to try to cheat death by trying to buy "mermaid flesh". This nearly gets Alpa killed when Kageyama has Nhaza'a Jaab kidnap her to sell her to the highest bidder.
Fantastic Naming Convention: Each spoken race in Hydaelyn has their own unique naming conventions. Sometimes, naming conventions can differ even amongst different clans of the same race.
- Hyurs and Elezen have naming conventions that are analogous to modern Latin-based languages. There are no hardline rules concerning names for them, but as a general rule of thumb, hyur surnames are derived from a person's hometown or profession, while elezen names often employ French grammar (Louisoix being pronounced "Loui-SWAH", for instance).
- Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te have a single-letter prefix in their names denoting the tribe they were born into (Y'shtola = Shtola of the Y tribe). Being a patriarchal society, women take the name of their fathers as their surname, while men use one of two titles as their surname: "Nuhn" for dominant breeding males, and "Tia" for subordinate non-breeding males. A Tia may challenge a Nuhn for their position and, if successful, will assume the title of Nuhn for themselves while the former Nuhn, should he survive, becomes a Tia.
- Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te are a matriarchal society, and as such, they take their mother's surname. In addition, men also take their mother's forename with a suffix that denotes the order in which they were born: "'a" for the firstborn son, "'to" for the secondborn, "'lo" for the thirdborn, etc. So, for example, the first son of Leih Aliapoh would be named Leih'a Aliapoh, and it can be presumed that Zhai'a Nalhah's mother is named Zhai Nalhah.
- Hellsguard Roegadyn forego traditional naming conventions in lieu of names consisting of a descriptor and an otherwise improper noun, said to be translated from the roegadyn's native tongue. Male names tend to use geological features and animals (Hoary Boulder, Still Moose) while female names tend to use flowers and other vegetation (Blue Lily, Weeping Orchid, etc.).
- Sea Wolf Roegadyn take the name of their father as their surname, accompanied by a suffix denoting the child's gender: "-syn" for men and "-wyn" for women (Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn = Merlwyb, daughter of Bloefhis).
- Lalafell use alliteration and repetition in their names. The exact rules for names differ between Dunesfolk and Plainsfolk, but between both clans, the naming conventions for men and women remain similar: men reuse the last two syllables of their forename in their surname (Teledji Adeledji), while women's repeat syllables from their forenames (Mimomo Mimo, Chuchumo Chumo).
- Raen Au Ra names are derived from the languages of the Far East, taking inspiration from Japanese. In the native language of the Raen, names are structured surname-first forename-second, with the particle "-no-" separating them (Yatsurugi-no-Yumi). When translated into Eorzea's language, the names can be translated in traditional forename-first surname-second order (Yumi Yatsurugi).
- Xaela Au Ra names are inspired by the Mongolian language. Being a tribalistic race, surnames are derived from the tribe one is born into (Sadu Dotharl, of the Dotharl tribe).
- Viera take the name of their home village or forest as their surname. Those viera that leave their village or otherwise deal with outsiders are known to adopt "city names" to better communicate with others, such as "Fran".
- Hrothgar take the name of their queen as their surname. Helion hrothgar use the prefeix "A-" to denote a queen to whom they swear their allegiance (Arodica denoting one who is loyal to Queen Rodica), while the Lost hrothgar use the suffix "-sch" to denote a queen that they have lost (Ditasch denoting one who once served Queen Dita).
- Garlean names are inspired by the Latin language. The most prominent feature of Garlean names is the use of three-letter middle names that denote a person's status in Garlean society in alphabetical order from lowest status to highest (from aan, used for enslaved peoples from occupied territories; to zos, for the Emperor).
Fantastic Racism:
- Not as rife as in other fantasy settings that deploy this trope - Eorzea seems to be a very tolerant place indeed, being the racial and cultural melting pot that it is. This is somewhat less so for other places in Hydaelyn, however. The Garlean Empire, for instance, sees all races who have anything to do with the Primals as being in need of purging. This generally just means the Beast Tribes. However, as those gifted with the Echo are in some way connected with the Primals, the Empire seemingly lumps all Walkers of the Path (and thus, the player characters) in with the Beast Tribes on the purge schedule. Also, now that we're getting a good look at Garlean military bases in 2.0, it seems like their military is made up of all the "enlightened" races... except for Lalafell, who are virtually absent in any capacity.^note
- Further enhancing the questions about Garlean racism is the subplot around Rhitahtyn Sas Arvina, Gaius' Roegadyn praefectus. At one point, Rhitahtyn is assigned to command an entire "castrum", or military base, by his lonesome, and even he finds this potentially questionable since he is afraid the soldiers may not respect his authority for... "reasons". Gaius, to his credit, makes it eminently clear to both Rhitahtyn and everyone else in earshot that he has earned this and that Gaius has absolute faith in his abilities. When Rhitahtyn is killed later on in the opening volleys of Eorzea's Operation Archon, Gaius is livid with anger and his first assumption is that Rhitahtyn was abandoned by his men because he was a Roegadyn.
- As of ARR, Ul'dah has expelled all of the "beast races" from the city and refuses to do business with them. A number of FATEs in the surrounding zones have you dealing with Qiqirn and Goblins that have taken to robbery or other crimes as a result.
- The Duskwights of the Elezen seem to have a tough time of it in Eorzea—there are hardly any Duskwight NPCs, and the few that are there seem to exist to remind the player that... the Duskwights have a hard time of it, especially due to crappy treatment from the Gridanians. So far, they seem to be rather like Roma in caves!
- Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te don't have it well in Gridania either, as in the backstory they're a very isolationist and xenophobic tribe, and only recently started to attempt to coexist with other people. Specifically, due to their hunter-gatherer lifestyle clashing with the will of the elementals, continued hunting without their express permission is poaching by law. Friendly Keepers basically have to abandon their way of life to be accepted into the rest of society, which is why there's such a schism in the behavior of Seekers of the Sun (of which we've seen none in the Black Shroud), integrated Keepers, and Keepers who stick to their culture and are labelled poachers for it.
- This is actually Yugiri's purpose in concealing her face; she is very worried about how Eorzeans will react to her if they actually see her face. Specifically, it seems likely she's afraid of being mistaken for a Beastman, given the reptilian features of the Au Ra, and she may be particularly afraid of encountering an Ishgardian, being mistaken as a Dravanian, and being murdered on the spot. Something that Sidurgu of the Dark Knight job quests will point out did actually happen when the Au Ra were first encountered by the Ishgardians. This is also mentioned by Alaqa in the Heavensward White Mage quests where her revenge plot is for everyone who had ridiculed her and her people, along with doing terrible things to them.
- The Garleans are very fond of calling Eorzeans "savages" simply because said Eorzeans aren't submitting to the will of The Empire, which uses advanced technology to solve all their problems while Eorzea does not. This is played tragically in Endwalker when Alphinaud, Alisaie, and the Warrior try to aid a handful of survivors of the fall of Garlemald, only for their efforts to be rebuked due to Garlean distrust in these "savages" and their magicks. A girl named Licinia would rather brave the beast-infested wilderness with her sickly little sister than get care from the Eorzeans who hated them so much, resulting in their deaths when a monster ambushes them.
- Racism towards the beast tribes depends on where you look. In Eorzea, almost nobody wants them anywhere due to their primal summonings as well as capturing people to have the primals temper them. Gridania has friendly ties with the sylphs while Limsa Lominsa have a barely neutral status with the kobolds due to the Lominsan people having overstepped their boundaries against the kobolds in the past. The Lominsans don't have any issue with the goblins, mamool jas, or the qiqirns and allow them to trade in the city. The "Friends Forever" quest shows just how bad the racism towards beastmen are by having an alchemist kidnap and kill beastmen for his experiments since he knew no one would care if a bunch of beastmen went missing. In Heavensward the Gnath and Vanu Vanu are mostly just territorial and stick to their own areas, while the friendly factions are more willing to interact with the spoken. In Stormblood, the Ananta, Kojin, Lupin, and Namazu are very open and friendly with the spoken races and trade with them very frequently.
- The First, likely owing to being on the verge of an apocalypse, is actually relatively devoid of racism as it would be pointless to continue to be a racist when everyone is struggling together to survive and stall the end of the world. The only real "ism" encountered in the first is the classism of Eulmore, and that gets fixed once Vauthry's true nature is revealed to the public and he rushes off to be the last Lightwarden. The classification of Dwarves as "Beastmen" is more a denotation of their radically different culture than anything used to dismiss them as people as it is on the Source.
- Before the Flood of Light, the elves of Norvrand hated the other spoken races and saw them as invaders who took their nation from them, even the humes who they were allied with. The Shadowkeeper, who was also an elf, spurred the elves of Lakeland into declaring war on the other nations as a crusade to take back what was once theirs. Though most of the racism is gone in the present day, a band of elves called the Nightshade still hold to their bigoted beliefs and prey on the other races as bandits.
- There's also issues with interspecies pairings and the children that may result from them. Hilda, being the child of a Hyur and Elezen, is treated like trash in Ishgard for being mixed race. Likewise, as mentioned under Everyone Is Bi, there is a pair of gay men involved in the Wanderer's Place (Hard) quests that were expelled from their village not because of their sexuality, but because they were different species. This isn't fully explored however, as there are a few mixed race couples where it goes unmentioned and the player is free to marry another player of any race. The First entirely averts this due to the above reasons as there are many mixed race couples and the player even helps an Elf man calm down while his Hume wife is in labor.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
- A number of elements of Garlean culture and policy are lifted straight from Ancient Rome. They have names and ranks which are either Latin or Latinesque. They possess an implacable, well-organized army of legions and legionnaires, commanded by an Emperor who is the subject of a cult of personality, and which has a great deal of success defeating other militaristic cultures. And their policy of conscripting recruits from recently-conquered territories, then posting them to the other side of the imperial warfront in order to forestall rebellion, is directly out of Rome's playbook.
- The Far East, where much of Stormblood takes place, is based on fuedal Japan and other parts of East Asia. Hingashi, like Japan, has a strict closed-border policy except for one trading port (Kugane). In one part of the Samurai questline, you have to bring justice to a samurai who refused to commit seppuku when ordered. Lyse also spends a great deal of time trying to learn proper Eastern etiquette and fretting that she's committed unforgivable offenses with her bluntness.
- Xaela Au Ra culture is an almost direct parallel to Mongolia. They are native to windswept steppes, people live in tribes which are usually (though not always) nomadic and sometimes at war. Tribal groups are led by khans and khagans, and each tribe has a particular unique culture of its own. The official forum's guide to Xaela names is 15th-century Mongolian names.
- Though the Garleans draw on Latin for names and have a military and poltiical structure and history (republic to dictatorship/empire) similar to Ancient Rome, their lands are reminiscent of Russia, and indeed many non-mechanical mobs in the area have Russian-esque names, and borsch is a food from the region.
- Thavnair is heavily inspired by India, and the voice actors for the Thavnairian characters we meet are largely Indian.
- Sharlayan uses Greek in many of its location names, and the city is largely white marble architecture highly reminiscent of Greece.
Fantasy Counterpart Map: While not the entirety of the world map is currently revealed, much of what is known resembles the real world:
- The Three Great Continents (which are categorized as one landmass) and neighbouring places geographically resemble Africa (Aldenard), Europe (Ilsabard), and East Asia (Othard). Othard in particular is even more blatant, with a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Japan set on an island east of the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of China, which in itself is south of the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Mongolia, while the unexplored nation of Nagxia is highly implied to be based on historical Vietnam, complete with the (explicitly-named) Ao Dai and conical straw hats being part of its traditional dress.
- Meracydia is located roughly to the South-East of the Three Great Continents, and is more or less congruent with Australia.
- The New World is another landmass to the west of the Three Great Continents. Fittingly, it's a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the pre-colonization Americas.
Farm Life Sim: The Island Sanctuary mode, introduced post-Endwalker, is basically a glorified farming game. You explore the island to gather resources, plant crops, raise animals, and find more effecient ways to do all three as you continue to build up your island.
Faster-Than-Light Travel: Three things have accomplished this so far. The Meteia, being capable of reaching countless distant worlds and sending word back to Hermes about the answer to the meaning of life, the Ragnarok, which makes it to the literal edge of the universe where the Meteia have set up a nest and back again without any major changes to the world in the mean time, and Zenos as Shinryu who follows after the Ragnarok and then serves as the platform to fight the retreating Endsinger form of the Meteia.
Faustian Rebellion: Archbishop Thordan VII plots and successfully executes one against the Ascians who taught him the secrets of Primals and facilitate his plan to rule the world as the legendary King Thordan.
Fear-Induced Idiocy: The Endwalker main story includes a section where the heroes are trying to bring much-needed aid and supplies to Garlemald after it has been devastated by a civil war. But years of propaganda have made the people of Garlemald terrified of the Eorzeans, seeing them as liars and conquerors who would press them into slavery. A teenaged girl named Licinia and her sickly sister would rather take their chances venturing into the frozen wilderness than accept aid from the Eorzeans. This ends in the girls' deaths when they're ambushed by wild beasts before the heroes can catch up to them.
The Fellowship Has Ended: At then end of the 6.0 MSQ, having saved the universe from the Final Days, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn officially disbands, with its members going their separate ways in search of new adventures, but promising to come together again should the need arise.
Fictional Constellations: Heavensward introduced Astrologian, a healing Job that taps into The Power of the Sun, Lunacy and most importantly Star Power, for their magic. They gain their power by attuning their aether to that of 6 constellations: The Balance, The Bole, The Spire, The Ewer, The Arrow and The Spear, using Cards of Power (which references Tarot cards and their own use of zodiacal iconography).
Fictional Disability:
- Most people in the setting are able to manipulate the aether in their own bodies to perform feats of magic, provided they have sufficient training. However, there are some who born with such low reserves of aether that it's impossible for them to cast even the simplest spells. There are others who have, either from birth or from a magical accident, lost the ability to manipulate aether altogether, rendering them incapable of utilizing any technology requiring the application of aether, such as aetherytes.
- It's precisely this disability - due to the events of A Realm Reborn - that Thancred contracts and still suffers from as of the present day. It's the reason why Thancred would have had no other choice but to take the experimental aetheryte to Thavnair even if other options were open to the group (he simply can't get there in an expedient fashion any other way) and why, in Shadowbringers when he has switched to being the Scions' resident Gunbreaker, he has to have someone else make his ammunition for him; unable to manipulate the requisite aether to charge the bullets himself.
- Much like how people can get motion sick in real life, some people suffer from acute aether sickness, meaning that trying to transport themselves with an aetheryte will lead to nausea, vomiting, and dizzyness. Professor T'laqua Tia in Sharlayan suffers from this, requiring the aid of an adept angler to help him complete his thesis on time because he can't attune to an aetheryte without collapsing. This can also be briefly induced unto others through the use of experimental aetherytes. After taking one such aetheryte to Thavnair, the Warrior, Thancred, and Urianger all fight to keep their lunch down.
Fictional Flag: Every city-state in the setting bears a flag that signifies the values of its nation and its history. For instance, Ul'dah's flag weighs the Jewel of Prosperity and Flame of Magic on the Scales of Judgment, emphasizing Ul'dah's hyper-capitalistic leanings, emphasis on the study of thaumaturgy, and devotion to the gods of wealth and the afterlife, Nald and Thal.
Fictional Zodiac: The Twelve in addition to being a pantheon also serves as this. They are each assigned a corresponding month and created characters can pick one of them for flavor purposes.
Fighting a Shadow: Primals (and probably the gods of the player races) "exist" in the aether and can't be Killed Off for Real, only re-banished, so to speak, by killing their summoned physical form (or sealed as was the case with Bahamut and the Warring Triad).
Fight Woosh: Being an MMO, this is usually averted, but pre-battle cutscenes for instanced duties almost always end with a "bwoosh" noise and a screen blur before dropping you into the actual fight. Humorously, one Stormblood cutscene ends with the woosh happening just offscreen as a battle begins that you're not planning to participate in.
Filler: As an MMO there are inevitably parts of the story that exist only to pad out its length, but most infamous for this is the 2.1-2.5 patch series. Of the 100 quests from the first credits roll to the start of Heavensward, maybe 20-30 of them have pertinent cutscenes, several of them forcing players to redo lower level content (The Sunken Temple of Qarn, which is level 35, and the levequest "More than a Feeler" which requires doing all of the levequests up to that point) and excessive amounts of travel, fetch quests, and "do this one thing five times". Considering this reached the point of driving people off before making it to the much better Heavensward storyline, they changed it so the dungeon/guildhest in 2.1 was replaced with killing a golem outside of Qarn and a Morbal out in the world in Mor Dhona. Further, they eventually added a story skip to the start of any of the expansions (albeit for real money), and groundwork is underway to majorly abridge the more irritating parts of the 7th Astral Era story quests.
Final Boss, New Dimension: The final area of Endwalker, Ultima Thule, is located at the farthest edges of the known universe, and the Dynamis that permeates the region makes it unlike any place on Hydaelyn.
Final-Exam Boss: The final bosses of the Main Scenarios are like this (the Ultima Weapon, the Knights of the Round, and Shinryu, for 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, respectively), heavily featuring mechanics used by previous bosses.
- The Ultimate-tier raids, the hardest fights in the game. The Unending Coil of Bahamut and the Weapon's Refrain both draw from older boss fights, taking old mechanics and cranking the difficulty, complexity, and sheer speed of them to obscene levels of difficulty.
- In Orbonne Monestary, the first phase of the final boss uses mechanics that were seen throughout the rest of the Ivalice raids. Then it gets turned up a notch as they're used in succession before the phase transition.
- The main gimmick of Eden's Promise: Eternity (E12) is the boss uses mechanics you've seen before from the other floors in the raid tier. Naturally, it also uses combinations of them.
Fire-Forged Friends:
- Being an MMORPG, the trope is bound to pop up in the game for players at some point. You have no one but strangers (excluding friends) helping you in battles and missions and you'll need every ounce of teamwork to succeed.
- The Warrior of Light's party in Heavensward becomes this. Specifically, the Warrior, Alphinaud, Estinien, and Ysayle all become much closer despite their differences, as they all seek to end the Dragonsong War. This is what prompts Ysayle to make a Heroic Sacrifice at the climax of the 3.0 story, and allows Estinien to drive off Nidhog's influence in patch 3.3.
Fire Means Chaos: The Arc Villain of Shadowbringers explains his Freudian Excuse to the heroes by forcing them to relive the destruction of Amaurot and seeing if they can survive. The city is infested with monsters, the citizens are fleeing, the buildings are collapsing, and yes, it's all on fire.
Firewood Resources: In A Realm Reborn, you can harvest logs from trees, which generally have to be processed into lumber before they can be made use of. (This presents a different kind of weirdness, however, as it takes multiple individual logs to craft a single piece of lumber.)
Fishing Minigame: Well, Spearfishing Minigame. Once a Fisher acquires their Spearfishing Gig, they're able to dive underwater to gather fish and other marine goods by timing their spear thrusts to catch them. There's a time limit on how much they can fish until the fish disperse, and can use certain skills to extend the timer or shoo away catches they don't want.
Fission Mailed:
- At the end of A Realm Reborn, in the revamped Post-Final Boss battle against Lahabrea, he uses an ultimate attack that looks like a fairly standard "kill the adds before the boss's meter fills" mechanic. However, it's impossible to actually succeed at this, and he will kill you with a massive dark energy attack. And so he issues a Bond One-Liner and warps away... but then, after several seconds of staring at your own dead body, Hydaelyn speaks to you and revives you, powering you up to face Lahabrea once more and defeat him for good.
- In Treasure Map dungeons, the door slams shut and sounds an alarm if you chose the wrong door before kicking your party back outside. Sometimes the game will fake you out by having the alarm sound and then having a choir-like sound play along with some rainbow disco lights before opening the door anyway. In a patch, the developers went out of their way to mess with the players by throwing in a fake loading screen transition where the screen fades to black after the alarm, shows the loading spinning wheel on screen, and quickly cut back to the game with the rainbow lights shining.
- In the Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate), Bahamut Prime casts Teraflare at the end of the third phase of the fight, wiping the party. However, if both Nael and Twintania are defeated before the Aethertrail Attunement gauge reaches 100, the fight continues after the party is defeated and shows Phoenix landing a critical blow on Bahamut before proceeding to restore all players to full health, beginning the final phase of the encounter.
- In Endwalker's final trial, you're required to use a tank Limit Break to survive the enemy's ultimate attack... however, after you do, it just rewinds time to repeat the attack like it's already done so many lesser ones. Since this happens in the span of about 30 seconds, you obviously haven't built up another limit break, and the screen goes black as the attack hits... and then, after several seconds, fades back in, to show the party safely protected by a magic bubble generated by the Scions, leading into the boss's final phase.
Five-Man Band: The 6.x patch MSQ focuses largely on four characters who, along with the Warrior of Light serving as The Hero, form one of these: the voidsent hybrid Zero as The Lancer, Y'shtola as The Smart Guy, Estinien as The Big Guy, and the dragon satrap Vrtra as The Heart.
Five-Second Foreshadowing: At the end of the Stormblood Hildibrand quest, you face off against Yojimbo. On a big bridge. About half a minute into the fight he reveals himself as Gilgamesh. Cue Battle on the Big Bridge.
Five-Token Band: The final boss fight in Halatali (Hard) has you face off against a Hyur Gladiator, Elezen Lancer, Miqo'te Archer, and a Roegadyn Conjurer. Then you face off against a Lalafell Thaumaturge.
Flavor Text: Used everywhere, even on items that are one time use (key items) or are a part of a collection (minions). A lot of the flavor text can fall into Deadpan Snarker territory with a pinch of Lampshade Hanging.
Fling a Light into the Future: Louisoix's final gambit to attempt to save Eorzea from complete annihilation: fling Eorzea's warriors years into the future to escape the devastation accompanying Bahamut's release from Dalamud.
Floating Continent:
- Heavensward features The Sea of Clouds in Abalathia's Spine and The Churning Mists within Dravania, gigantic flying landmasses that have to be reached by airship. Also within Abalathia's Spine is Azys Lla, which is home to some ancient Allagan technology.
- Shadowbringers has Mount Gulg, which got turned into one by the final Lightwarden to serve as its lair.
- Crystalline Conflict has the Cloud Nine arena, which is a floating sky island with strong wind currents and is prone to heavy turbulence. If you don't prepare for it, the heavy winds are going to send you skyward, which can potentially make you eat dirt and die on the spot.
Flowery Elizabethan English: This is a speech pattern shared by Primals, dragons, and even Hydaelyn herself. Generally anything significantly old and powerful speaks in older prose.
Flunky Boss: Any boss that summons adds is one, but King Thordan is especially notable, as after a short fight against him, he leaves the battlefield and leaves you to fight his Knights of the Round for the rest of the fight. When he finally returns after his ultimate attack fails, he can do little more than swing blindly at random players until he goes down. In the Extreme version, he puts up more of a fight once he returns to the field, though he still is aided by his knights.
Flying Seafood Special: There are numerous varieties of wavekin that are inexplicably able to fly on land. These include pugils, jellyfish, and sharks. In Endwalker, this is revealed to be the ancients' fault, as the Word of Mitron had inadvertently started a trend of giving aquatic creatures created through their magicks the ability to fly. This results in a humorous scene where Hermes has to get an axolotl out of a tree after it flew from the pond it was swimming in.
Forced Euthanasia: The Final Boss of Endwalker is the Endsinger, a Hive Mind of Meteia who all succumbed to the overwhelming despair of countless fallen civilizations they discovered in their travels. They believe that true happiness cannot be found in life, having heard cries for oblivion from across the universe. As a result, they aspire to wipe out all life in creation and end the cycle of reincarnation so none will have to suffer the pain of existence again. By the events of the game, it's implied that much of the life in the universe has been snuffed out as a result, with Midgardsormr, who fled the Dragonstar with his seven eggs, referring to Hydaelyn as the sole source of hope in all of creation. The people of Hydaelyn are understandably not keen on having their lives snuffed out and band together to stop the Big Bad from completing their plot.
"This is a kindness."
Forced Level-Grinding: Some story quests have minimum level requirements that you must meet. If you do all of the optional sidequests (as well as a decent number of FATEs) then you should be okay for most of the game, but there's a noticeable gap right at the end of the game (Lv.47-49) where there are no new quests and you are forced to grind FATEs or dungeons. Patch 2.1 eased the pain slightly by having beast tribe quests that can be repeated everyday, giving a good source of experience points, and further patches have added many additional quests from 45-49. On the other hand, Heavensward has the same problem towards the new level cap of 60.
Forced Transformation:
- The Toad status during the fight against Gilgamesh, which makes you unable to do anything but run away from the chickens wanting to peck you to death. There's also the Fire Toad effect when fighting Amon and it has the same effect as the normal Toad effect, but you're a bit bigger, colored red, and can breathe fire to melt the ice cages that imprisons a party member.
- The 2014 All Saints Wake event has you being transformed into a monster (bat, imp, demon, floating bat eye, and spirit), Minfilia, or one of the 3 city state leaders. The transformation is just an illusion that can be removed at will, though while transformed, you can't interact with NPCs not related to the event and you can't use any of your abilities. You can still do emotes while transformed as another person and yes, you can make the illusion of the city state leaders and Minfilia do the Manderville dance.
  - A similar thing happens in the 2015 All Saints Wake event, which has a couple of illusionists offering children to turn them into monsters. The catch is they don't tell them how to dispel it, requiring the player to dispel their monster forms. At the end of the questline it's revealed that the two illusionists were a couple of imps masquerading as Eorzeans.
- The fight against Ultros turns players into imps. This works against him (as do most things Ultros does) as it's part of the mechanic that lets you avoid a One-Hit Kill.
- Fighting the last boss at the hard version of the Sunken Temple of Qarn has the mummy status that damages you over time and getting a stack of 4 transforms you into a mummy where you're forced to run across the room and any party member touching you will get a stack.
- In Palace of the Dead is the toading trap, turning you into a rather cute, but very helpless, toad. You can then turn this around on enemies with a Pomander of Witching, which turns all monsters in range into a toad, chicken or imp.
- In Omega - Deltascape V3.0, the Stormblood raid dungeon, Halicarnassus, much like her Final Fantasy V counterpart, has a cone AOE called "Ribbit" which turns any caught in it into a frog. And just like in Final Fantasy V, this is the first move she uses. During the fight, she will create four panels on the ground corresponding to your class role (cross for healer, shield for tank, sword for DPS) that launch you into the sky and deal major damage if you're on the wrong one after about 10 seconds, and she always uses Ribbit at the 5 second mark - being frogged will fail this mechanic, since a frog is neither a tank, healer, nor DPS. But in the final phase, she changes this up: now, all the panels show frogs! Guess what you're supposed to do?
- This was Mad King Theodoric's preferred way to deal with (people he thought to be) traitors and enemies; having his court thaumaturge twist them into horrible creatures.
- One sidequest chain in Il Mheg involves this. A specific house near the lake is forbidden by pixies to enter. A rebellious pixie goes anyway, and disappears. Each subsequent pixie which goes to rescue it also disappears. As they do, the number of beavers standing in front of the house increases. At the end of the quest you gain access to a merchant who will trade a drop from the Dancing Plague for a minion version of the beaver. Probably best not think about where it comes from.
Foregone Conclusion: Promotional material for the Stormblood expansion showcased Omega as the expansion's 8-man raid. This is a clear indication that the Alliance's plan to use XIV's Omega to take down Shinryu at the end of Heavensward is not going to go according to plan...
Foreign Cuss Word:
- The city-state of Gridania, at least, is apparently in love with British expletives, firing liberal amounts of words such as shite, arse, bollocks. A number of characters also use the word "swive" apparently as a stand-in for the F-bomb.
- To say nothing of the rogue's guild, whose version of the Thieves' Cant is difficult to comprehend cockney slang, including some creative cuss words that may or may not even be real.
- By Thal's (bloody) Balls!
- Wedge mutters, "<mumble> <mumble>-ing cart chocobo", under his breath when annoyed, implying that it's the Eorzean equivalent of "motherfucking jackass".
Foreshadowing: Quite a lot of it, yes.
Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The Fringes, the starting area of Stormblood, has notably autumnal trees in its forests compared to the lush Black Shroud just south of it. This gives it a less lively feeling as it's part of a state that is being subjugated by Garlemald.
Forgets to Eat: Scholars of Sharlayan are apparently in the habit of neglecting food and their personal health to focus on their studies. Forever Twenty Summers is an in-game book attempting to talk them out of this, explaining that by taking proper care of their bodies, they'll extend their lifespan and have more time for studies overall than they would gain by skipping meals and staying up late.
Forgotten Fallen Friend: Averted. Well into Endwalker, it's clear that the Warrior still remembers and misses characters who have died throughout the journey. Minfilia, Papalymo, Moenbryda, Ysayle, and especially Haruchefant all get little moments and call-backs throughout the adventure as being on the Warrior's mind.
Forgotten Friend, New Foe: In Shadowbringers neither side is aware that the player character is the reincarnation of the villain Emet-Selch's dearest friend. Emet-Selch knows from the first time he sees them, even laments at one point that they don't remember the past, yet he's still caught off guard at the very end of patch 5.0 when he sees an image of his friend superimposed over the player. The Warrior of Light themselves, meanwhile, only realizes it at the end of patch 5.3.
Foul Medicine: Most alchemical concoctions, especially the ones used as medicine, are said to taste awful. In one quest, the Warrior is asked to deliver some energizing medicine to some guards, who all recoil at the horrendously bitter taste. The doctors then have the Warrior drink some themselves, keeping the Warrior in the room to make sure they down it all because of how much they've been overworking themselves.
The Four Gods: The Four Lords of the Ruby Sea are almost complete Expys of the Four Gods from Chinese and Japanese mythology.
Frame-Up:
- During the Coerthas arc of the 2.0 main story quest, you must help prove the innocence of an Ishgardian noble who is being framed as a heretic before he is executed by a holy inquisitor. Said inquisitor - or rather, the person imitating the real inquisitor - is revealed to be the culprit, and is a heretic agent working to undermine the Ishgardian faith.
- The events of 2.55 lead to the Warrior of Light themselves being implicated in the death of the Sultana. While news of this is heavily suppressed and those in the know refuse to believe it's true, that combined with the takeover of Ul'dah by the Syndicate, and Crystal Braves scouring every capital in Eorzea for you forces the player into hiding, and leads directly into the events of the first expansion.
- Asahi sets one up in 4.3 to make it look like the Domans were complicit in summoning a Primal. While a Doman technically did perform the summoning, it was set up by Asahi specifically to make Doma look guilty and justify continued Garlean aggression against them.
Frustrated Overhead Scribble: The 2021 Make It Rain event introduces the "Vexed" emote, which has the Player Character cross their arms with a frustrated and pensive look on their face while a squiggly ball appears over their head. This is meant to show displeasure when they can't figure something out, especially while solving the case of a stolen prize as an Amateur Sleuth on behalf of the Saucer.
Fun with Acronyms: Full Active Time Events, or FATEs, open world events where players fulfill a certain objective within an allotted time. The Gold Saucer has a simlar one known as GATEs, or Gold (Saucer) Active Time Events.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Edda Pureheart was a sweet-natured conjurer. Then she lost her fiancée during a mission, and the group blamed her for it. She kept her fiancée's head, and after being overcome with grief, resurrects him as a ahriman wearing his decayed face, and sent invitations to the members of her former group for her "wedding", effectively capturing them in the now twisted area of Tam-Tara Deepcroft. During the final fight, Edda has gone completely insane, going between crying and laughing at the drop of a hat, and summoning crawling corpses until she is finally defeated. Liavinne dies, and Paiyo Reiyo barely escapes the whole ordeal alive, only to be seemingly haunted by Edda's ghost. Edda ultimately returns as the Floor 50 boss of Palace of the Dead.
Furry Confusion:
- Things get a little iffy when you have Miqo'te and Hrothgar roaming around alongside coeurls, gaelicats, tigers, among other feline fauna in the world. The Monster Hunter: World collaboration makes fun of this, having a Felyne mock a Miqo'te or Hrothgar character for not looking in a mirror lately if they dare question Felyine's ability to speak.
- Then there's the Matanga and Marids in Stormblood. Though they dwell in different regions, there's also the consideration of riding marid mounts in the Azim Steppe. Similarly, there's the Arkasodra Matanga and Gajas in Thavnair, introduced in Endwalker.
Future Imperfect: It turns out that the other worlds are this. Everyone of the 13 other worlds branched off from our world, the Source, thousands of years ago. Each of these worlds started off the same way, but each grew in their own way. For example, they may have the same races, but different names for those races. And they may have more extreme changes. In the First, for instance, Lalafellian culture grew in a completely different way, to the point that Lalafels are considered a beast tribe in the First, they are called dwarves and live a very different existence than they do in the Source.
Future Spandex: The Late Allagan glamour introduced in 5.1, especially the Maiming and Striking sets, look like magitek spandex bodysuits.

Final Fantasy XIV / Tropes D to F

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