Fire Emblem Awakening / Tropes A to E

Tropes A-E | Tropes F-L | Tropes M-R | Tropes S-Z

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This game has examples of:

#-A

• 100% Completion: Getting every possible support log is a monumental task requiring multiple playthroughs. You can technically cut down on that number via Save Scumming ^note By viewing the S rank support, saving into another file. Completing the paralogue for that child, getting A support between the child and their father (since he's the only variable) and Morgan (if they are your Avatar's child, but if they aren't AND they are the opposite gender, then they will also have to marry them, unlock Morgan, then get the A support with them anyway), then going back to the save from before they married. Yes, this will take a while, probably best saved for toward the endgame, but at the very least you will need one for every possible spouse Chrom has, since he won't be able to marry anyone else for that game.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: In the main story, Basilio and Flavia will join you automatically during Chapter 23, but they're weaker than the usual trope. Straighter examples are the SpotPass Paralogue Characters - not only do each of them excel in a particular stat or have unique skills (Walhart's Conquest skill, Aversa's Shadowgift skill, and Priam's mishmash of skills that he could not obtain normally), but you can only obtain them right before the final chapter.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: The Exalted Falchion, obtained two chapters before the final battle. True to form, it's super effective against Grima.
• Accidental Pervert: In their B Support, Chrom walks in on a female Avatar naked, and she returns the favor in their A Support.
  • In their Supports with Vaike, the Avatar (male or female) is also accused of being one by Sully's horse when it catches the Avatar trying to stop Vaike from peeping on girls. The Avatar, of either gender, will also accidentally walk in on a bathing Gaius, and a female Avatar will walk in on a changing Say'ri in their Supports.
• Action Girl: As usual in the series, all the female playable characters. Although this time they can be upgraded to Action Moms. This game also cranks it up with the mostly female-exclusive "Galeforce" skill, which lets the user take another full turn should they defeat an enemy.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: The official localized titles of the enemy phase themes all start with an "A" and the boss themes all start with an "M"(with the exception of StreetPass battle themes).
• Aerith and Bob: The named Plegian characters are: Gangrel, Aversa, Tharja, Validar... and Henry. As well as whatever you name the Avatar, which by default is Robin.
• Aesop Amnesia: Characters will often address their flaws and fix them (or at least begin to work at it) by their A Supports, but the very next conversation will have them bringing it up all over again. This is due to the limitations of the Support system, as they're completely optional and can be done in any order.
  • The worst perpetrator of this is Yarne, who literally has different versions of the same conversations with almost every single character. There is also his mother Panne, who can go from falling in love in one support back to her usual misanthropy in the next.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Gaius has one for everyone, like "Blue" for Chrom, "Sunshine" for Tharja, or "Bubbles" for the Avatar.
  • Frederick is known as "Frederick the Wary", a title he wears with pride. On the other hand, the Avatar calling him "Fredericson" (if male) or "Freddy-bear" (if female) during their supports are very much an Embarrassing Nickname to him.
  • Tiki called Marth "Mar-Mar" during his lifetime. She occasionally uses it towards people who remind her of him throughout the game.
• After the End: The world shown in the Future Past Xenologues, as well as the time from where Lucina came from.
• Algorithmic Story Branching: Most characters don't get married unless the player selects the unlocked S support conversation scene. However, at the end of the first half of the game, there is a cutscene in which Chrom proposes to the unmarried love interest he has the highest Support level with. Support points^note gained by fighting next to each other or casting spells on or Dancing for the other count regardless of whether the player has viewed the support conversations they unlock, as there's no chance to view Chrom's supports with Olivia before this point, but she's still a viable option. If he has no support points with any free option, he'll instead get married to a generic village maiden NPC.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Played Straight with Grima's backstory. If the Knights of Iris' suggested backstory is true, then he's the same species of dragon as the villain from the first game. Although if the backstory found in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is anything to go by, this may not be the case. Also happens to be the Big Bad.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with Chrom, who has two different portraits for when he faces left or right.
  • Some characters avert this by having symmetrical character designs.
  • Oddly enough, Chrom is the only asymmetrical character with two different portraits. Other asymmetrical characters, like Basilio (who has an eyepatch) and Vaike/Brady/Donnel (who have scars), play this trope straight with mirrored portraits. This results in their facial features flip-flopping sides during conversations.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Not present in the game itself, but compare the the Japanese Swapnote stationery with the American one.
  • Later subverted, as America and Europe ended up getting the original version too.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Raimi in Chapter 3 is skeptical Chrom is who he says he is.
  Raimi: Ha! Yes, indeed — and I'm the queen of Valm!
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Played With. The Robin you played as in the Prologue isn't the same as the Robin you play as afterward. This doesn't become entirely clear until that Robin shows up later alongside the one you're playing as.
• And Your Reward Is Parenthood: After you pair up your Avatar (or other characters) up with someone, they have a child... in the form of a Kid from the Future who comes back in time to aid you. Their stats are based on their parents.
• Anime Hair: Present, but nowhere near the level of what was previously feared by some since most of the hairstyles are at least plausible aside from the colors.
• The Antichrist: The Avatar was bred to be Grima's vessel. However, after a series of events they end up becoming the Anti Anti Christ.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • This game seems to be designed to be played in small increments. Usually after a Chapter, a Risen horde or a merchant shows up so you can train characters or buy stuff respectively. But they won't show up more than once in one sitting. So if you want to play for more than an hour, you better be prepared to go through multiple save files. Also, events in the Barracks only show up once every couple of hours, or a whole bunch at once if you leave it off for a day or two. On Hard difficulty, the Reeking Boxes which summon hordes of Risen are nine times more expensive, making grinding not an option. Nintendo seems REALLY concerned about eye strain.
  • After completing a chapter, Anna will sometimes remind you to take a break.
  • If you play the game very late at night and go to the barracks, all of the characters will comment on how late it is, with most them advising you to go to sleep.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In older Fire Emblem games, some recruitments required you to send one of your units to chat with the character in question to acquire them. This could be problematic, since there is a chance the character could be too weak to reach the character, if not already dead (and this is assuming that you would even know who to send). In Awakening, all recruits are done by Chrom, who is forced into every level, so is likely to be strong enough to hold his own to reach the recruitee. The flip side of this though, is that you now have to put the one person you can't afford to lose in harm's way.
  • Taken even further with the kids' paralogues: either Chrom or the mother (or father if your Avatar is male) the child is tied to can recruit them, and the opening cutscenes usually make it obvious who the mother is if you haven't read a guide (Lissa talks to Lucina in Owain's paralogue, Olivia talks to the Avatar in Inigo's, and so on). Some of the children can be told who their mother is at face value, especially Yarne and Nah, with the two exceptions probably being Kjelle and Severa. (Even then, the fact that the children inherit their fathers' hair color makes it fairly easy to work out who their mother is, if you wish to recruit with her.)
  • The only exception to the "recruitable with Chrom" rule is Yen'fay, who can only be recruited with Say'ri. The cutscene before the paralogue makes it very clear who needs to do the recruiting, though, so it's still much simpler than previous FEs.
  • Depending on who you ask, the inclusion of the Casual Mode can be considered this for those new to the series (or TRPGs in general). In this mode, the permadeath is removed and you're allowed a limited number of mid-battle saves.
  • Many key elements of the series are re-worked to be less frustrating or more clear. The best example is probably Supports, characters are no longer limited to 5 conversations (though they can only have one S support), all possible supports are listed (including potential S-ranks) for each character, relationships between units are improved by fighting together instead of just standing adjacent to each other, and finally, the numerical benefits of fighting together are made explicit.
  • As for item management, it is now possible to purchase items for specific units and shops are in every point of the map for easy selling. Also, the convoy has unlimited space (which is great, given the number of items you can randomly pick up) and there's a Restock option to replenish a weapon's uses by combining with another item in storage, eliminating the problem of having useless single-digit durability weapons lying around.
• Anti-Villain: Mustafa and Yen'fay, both being forced to fight the heroes because their hands are tied behind their back. Walhart, in that he chose his villainous path but does it to attempt to avert an even larger disaster.
• Anyone Can Die: A distinct possibility in gameplay if you play on Classic Mode. The only exceptions are Chrom and the Avatar, since you automatically lose if any of them die; in that case Lucina also gets this treatment.
  • Even with permadeath, all of the first-generation female characters will only retreat, as all the children (save Lucina and female Morgan) are tied to their mothers. The same can be said for some of the plot-important characters, such as Frederick, Say'ri, and Virion (and the latter only because he shows up in a single scene that has minor significance to the plot). Anna is the only first-generation female in the army who can die for real since she has neither a pre-destined child nor story significance (unlike Say'ri and Flavia), although Tharja can die in-story (from the 11 females with predestined children, she is the only one who starts as an enemy and whose recruitment isn't mandatory).
• Apocalypse Maiden: The Avatar, regardless of gender.
• Aristocrat Team: With careful planning, everyone can be related to royalty by marriage.
• The Artifact:
  • As is common in Fire Emblem, after their significant arc, certain characters, like Say'ri and Virion, eventually lose any reason to be with Chrom's party, but continue to do so despite the fact that they should have priorities elsewhere.
• Artificial Brilliance: Like with the recent games, the enemy knows that players will restart the game, and thus lose, if they lose even one unit. They can even arrange a trap to catch anyone using a certain Laguz-like unit in the Wake Up Call Chapter.
  • Later on, when enemies with Rally skills start showing up, the A.I. knows how to use them so they affect as many units as possible. And if the opponent has a Dancer (which usually only occurs in StreetPass teams, though it can also occur in Paralogue 22), they know how to use them.
    • Zig-zagged with the Rally skills, however, in that they pretty much always use them at the end of the turn, meaning none of the enemy units actually benefit from the rally effects on any turns but yours.
  • The enemy A.I. in Paralogue 17, a Hold the Line mission that has you protecting a defenseless Tiki, has enemies that employ a very simple, yet brilliant, strategy: They'll always ignore your units and head straight for the NPC you're guarding instead. (Unless they have no choice but to fight you to get to her, of course.) Given that most missions like this in earlier games were won by by positioning your troops in the enemy's path and waiting for them to suicidally charge into you, it's a wonder why the series has never tried this behavior before.
    • This tactic also occurs in any chapter with Non Player Characters.
  • A common tactic to level grinding is to remove the Crutch Character's weapons and use them as a glorified meat shield. While the enemy attacks the defenseless, but nearly invincible Crutch Character your weaker characters can gang up and kill them. Not so much in Awakening, where the enemy will bypass an unarmed-but-powerful character if someone weak and likely to die is within their range.
• Artificial Stupidity: Enemies will sometimes attack units who will most surely kill them on a counterattack. While normally, the series' A.I. will do this to weaken them so another unit can eventually kill them, they'll even do this when none of the enemies nearby that unit could even scratch them. They may also body-block their own units by throwing a ranged weapon at someone behind an easily killable target very early in their turn.
  • For that matter, it doesn't even matter if an enemy literally cannot do any damage to their target - if they're the only PC in range, they'll almost certainly waste health and effort trying anyway.
    • Though this veers into Fridge Brilliance territory, in that the ability to gauge the damage output of a particular round of combat is explicitly a special ability of the Avatar as a skilled tactician. Although it seems suicidal to send a low-level archer against an armored opponent, the enemy can't tell the difference.
  • The enemy A.I. will also always use the maximum amount of movement required to get in range of your units. Most of the time all you have to do is move a few of your toughest characters into the edge of their range with the rest on standby right behind them, and watch as the enemies all charge forward and leave themselves vulnerable to a counterattack.
    • This is especially obvious if you've put a lot of effort into hitting max level on just a few characters very early (particularly the Avatar and Lucina.) You can put a single over-leveled unit in the middle of the enemy forces and watch your foe rush to their death!
  • The villagers' A.I. in the third Paralogue. When you're being attacked by Risen that can easily kill you without repercussions, what do you do? If you answered "Run right ''towards'' them", then you surely know the frustrations players had trying to save them.
  • Anna's A.I. in the second Paralogue is a Double Subversion. She's supposed to be protecting a village from bandits out to destroy it. So naturally, her A.I. prioritizes the enemies that go for villages. That's good. What's NOT good is that she prioritizes killing bandits over any sense of self-preservation. Even if she'll die in one more hit, she still won't use her healing potion until there are no enemies around.
  • Severa in the Paralogue you can recruit her in. Even when you get Cordelia to talk to her, Severa will remain A.I. controlled until she reaches a mission-critical NPC. Unfortunately, this means she'll just charge blindly forward into the enemy fortress, ignoring the fact that any one of the enemies inside can kill her in a single attack and turning the whole thing into an Escort Mission (or a good time for staff-users to grind, if they brought a fresh Rescue staff).
  • The NPC A.I. in this game will prioritize sacrificing itself even to only weaken enemies. This is fine in the DLC chapters, where there's no penalty for allies dying, but when it comes to recruitable allies in the main story...
• Art Shift:
  • The series as a whole seems to have shifted its art style towards more of a Seinen look and feel. With the exception of Nowi and Nah, everyone normally has realistic eyes.
  • Close-up on Lucina's eyes in Chapter 13 is rendered much more realistically than the overall anime look of the game.
• Ascended Extra: Anna, the plucky mascot of Fire Emblem who has only made walk-on appearances in every game so far, is finally recruitable.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Frederick's body is ready!
  • Western fans probably won't know, but the game apparently ascends several of the Japanese fandom's memes, at least in the Japanese version. Most obvious is the option to identify yourself as an "Emblemer" in your StreetPass profile: that's actually a Fan Community Nickname for FE players in Japan. You can find a full list of others here, if you can read Japanese.
  • A good chunk of the fandom tends to call Anna the RNG Goddess or some form of mystical deity. With this game, not only does she have infinite identical sisters, they're all hinted to have divine powers. The alternate boss for the Apotheosis DLC map is a Level 30 Merchant class Anna with stats way beyond what her class allows, a forged Brave Lance and Spear, and the skills Aether, Counter, Dragonskin, Rightful God, and Vantage+.
  • The idea that all the games are in the same continuity didn't have any official support before, but this game seems to confirm it.
• The Atoner: Gangrel, in his supports with the male Avatar at least.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The third Ultimate Training DLC map features giant Risen.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Expect War Clerics to be this. Considering how low Lissa's strength growth is, it's unlikely that this class would be the most practical outside fighting mages. Libra, on the other hand falls under Boring, but Practical.
    • Although, gaining the skill Renewal (which restores 30% of an user's HP every turn) make it worthwhile to reclass Lissa, even if it is temporary.
  • The Einherjar characters, as they cannot support other units.
  • Certain skills that require killing an enemy to activate (including the Dark Knight's Lifetaker skill and the infamous Galeforce skill that Dark Fliers can learn) can either make or break a unit and leave them vulnerable.
  • Lethality, a skill learned by Assassins, can One-Hit Kill an enemy. The catch is that it has an absurdly low activation rate (the unit's skill divided by 4), so even if a unit has a high skill cap, Lethality still infrequently activates.
  • The Swordmaster's Astra skill allows five attacks in one hit (which goes up to ten if the unit is using a Brave Weapon), but each attack is cut in half from a normal attack. On harder difficulties, enemies gain defensive skills (i.e Pavise+) that will always activate, so Astra becomes useless on Lunatic mode and some maps.
  • Counter can become this. Having an enemy's attack bounce back at them is great, but it becomes pointless if the unit using it becomes a tank. Since it relies on the unit having low defense, it can become risky. The same can be said for Wrath (+20 critical), which activates if the unit's HP is less than half.
  • Forging, typically. While powerful, it's really too expensive to justify except for certain items (Hector's Axe, for example, can be forged into a weapon more powerful overall than the legendary Armads), and Brave weapons. Units with the Armsthrift skill and a high luck stat are typically the only way to make forging practical.
• Ax-Crazy: Evil Plegian King, Gangrel. Until he joins you.

B

• Back from the Brink: The entire point of The Future Past DLC pack: Outrealm!Naga sends the party to a version of the Bad Future where the end of the world is all but assured without their intervention.
• Background Music Override: Used in Chapter 10, both in the preparation screen and in the actual chapter, to amazing emotional effect. The final chapter also does this once you gain control of your characters.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: The Pair Up system works this way.
• Badass Adorable: Nowi. She looks and acts like a small child who loves to play games instead of work and train, and also can transform into a dragon to mow down any enemies in her path.
• Badass Family: Due to the existence of second-generation characters, you can get lots of these.
  • Special mention to Chrom's family, which can get HUGE if you marry the right characters. Especially crucial is to marry a male Avatar with Lucina. If you get all the second and third generation characters, you can fill the entire party just with Chrom's family tree and still be awesome!
    • You can also achieve the same effect by having a male Avatar marry Lissa while Chrom marries someone else, though that means the Avatar would only be related to Chrom's children by law rather than blood.
    • Chrom's extended family tree can, in fact, include up to twenty-two units if you marry the male Avatar to Emmeryn to keep Lucina free to marry another unit, and then count all the units related by law (including Lucina's, Owain's and Morgan's marriages, thus bringing their spouses' parents into the tree). Or, even better, twenty-three, if you choose to count Aversa as the Avatar's adoptive sister. And then there's also Validar if you just want to count family members even if they aren't recruitable.
• Bad Future: Lucina hails from one, where Avatar was killed and possessed by Grima, killed Chrom,◊ and Grima as well as the Risen killed everything. Knowing that, her Anti-Hero disposition and later woobification are justified.
  • The Future Past DLC is an even darker scenario, which is quintessentially saying that all the second generation characters got lucky to escape when they did.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Since Awakening mostly adheres to Fire Emblem unit archetypes (early level 1 Paladin, red/green cavalier duo, etc.), one would expect Phila to join the party to finish the Pegasus Knight trio who can Triangle Attack archetype since you already have two of them. Said character dies a plotline death unexpectedly and the archetype never gets fulfilled.
  • The Avatar and Olivia's B Support involves the two deciding to build a theater together. It appears that they have completed it at the start of their A Support, but it turns out to just be a small scale model.
• Barehanded Blade Block: You don't need a weapon to dual-guard, and if it activates while the partner unit is unarmed, and isn't using a class that has a shield or anything, they will stop the enemy's weapon with their bare hands.
• Bash Brothers: Chrom and a male Avatar are a textbook example of this trope.
• Battle Couple: Loads of them. In fact, it's a game mechanic. Playing matchmaker with certain couples results in their marriage, which allows them to kick more ass than usual when they fight together. Your whole army can end up being composed of these.
• Battle in the Rain: Chapter 10. It's also one of the most emotional battles in the game.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Exaggerated more than any other game in the series, particularly with Naga who appears only in her beautiful manakete form versus the hideous Dragon Grima, who has no manakete form. Also Exaggerated with Aversa's backstory as she's the only at all good looking female in an organization of very ugly males, and turns out to be magically brainwashed.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Emmeryn's suicidal fall face-first into solid rock did serious damage to her brain, but, somehow, not her face.
• Because Destiny Says So: This quote from Validar says it all:
  "Gya ha ha! Fools! Struggle all you want! You cannot unwrite what is already written!"
• Beef Gate: The Paralogues where you recruit the Kids from the Future are available as early as Chapter 13, provided the parents are married. Most of them, however, contain enemies far beyond what the average party at that point is capable of handling, forcing you to come back later. And given that the higher the parents' stats, the higher their kids' stats will be, this is highly recommended.
• Befriending the Enemy: There's a variant involving Tastes Like Friendship. Gaius, a Thief, is working for the Plegians in a mission to kill "the Exalt" the Ylissean leader, but he doesn't have the heart to be a part of killing her. If Chrom talks to Gaius, he'll offer him sweets and they instantly become friends and he joins your army.
• Big Damn Heroes: Basilio pulls this off halfway through Chapter 23, Invisible Ties.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Stahl's name is German for "steel."
  • The Deadlords' names are Latin words for the animals of the Chinese zodiac.
• Birthmark of Destiny:
  • The Brand of the Exalt, carried by members of the Ylissean Royal Family as proof of their Heroic Lineage. Emmeryn has one on her forehead, Chrom on his right shoulder, Lucina in her left eye, and Chrom's other child (or at least Chrom!Inigo) in their right eye. Lissa doesn't have the Brand, making her fear she's illegitimate, but her son Owain does have it (on his arm, covered up by his sleeve).
  • One dark example is Grima's mark on the back of the Avatar's right hand; the Brand of the Defile.
• Black-and-White Morality: More than any other game in the franchise; the Halidom of Ylisse worships Naga, a beautiful female dragon from an Always Lawful Good race, and is presented as pure and good while the desert theocracy Plegia is led by the Grimleal, who worships Grima, an ugly male dragon from an Always Chaotic Evil race and is portrayed as utterly evil. An attempt is made early on to add some grey by saying Emmeryn's predecessor had made war on the Grimleal, however this is dropped, all Grimleal in the game never mention this, and are simply portrayed as bad guys who like being bad with no real motive outside of wanting to die by Grima.
• Bleak Level: The Midmire, setting of Chapter 10, "Renewal", which takes place right after a Player Punch. You have to fight in the midst of a giant dragon's ribcage in the middle of a rainy wasteland, all while slow Sad Battle Music plays regardless of whether it's your turn or the enemy's. Furthermore, the Plegian soldiers you fight are deeply ashamed of their role in the events of the last chapter, with one unit stating outright to his sympathetic general that he would rather desert and face execution than fight against the Shepherds. So as if the previous plot context and battle setting weren't bad enough, the catharsis you might otherwise get from dispatching enemy troops is somewhat lost as well.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: When a partner unit pulls off a Block, they intercept the enemy's attack and take zero damage themselves. This gets a bit silly when characters with nothing suitable to block with end up stopping a giant axe swing or a huge fireball with just a magic tome. And even sillier if the character they were defending seems to have better armor than they do.
  • The silliest of them all, and just downright comical the first few times you see it, is when you pair a Wyvern or Pegasus unit to someone and then said flier blocks arrows for their partner.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Chrom's romance choices, Sumia (Brunette, sort of ^note it's more of a grayish-brown), Sully (Redhead), Maribelle (Blonde), plus a pink-haired Olivia and a variably-haired female Avatar.
• Book Ends: The opening scene takes place with Chrom and Lissa finding the Avatar passed out in a field. In one of the possible endings, the Avatar's fate is left somewhat ambiguous and ends with this same scene as the The Stinger, with only one extremely heartwarming change.
• Boring, but Practical: Expect some classes and skills to be this.
  • On Normal and Hard, the classic Bronze/Iron/Steel/Silver line of weapons. Not as flashy as the weapons you can find, but they're reliable enough that you can finish the game using mostly those. They're also practical in that they can be infinitely resupplied, making logistics easy by hitting Restock before each battle to have a fresh weapon at hand. Note that on Lunatic mode, you'll need the fancier weapons just to get by.
  • Unless you're playing the game on Lunatic+ or are tackling Apotheosis, where the enemies have Hawkeye which guarantees hits, all of the "-breaker" skills are this. Each skill grants a unit an additional 50 points of Avoid depending on the weapon, which in turn can make certain boss fights much easier. In addition, all five skills are available from five highly accessed gender-neutral classes.^note They are Wyvern Lord (Swordbreaker), Griffon Rider (Lancebreaker), Hero (Axebreaker), Bow Knight (Bowbreaker), and Sorcerer (Tomebreaker).
  • Aegis and Pavise reduce damage from a set of weapons (depending on the skill) by half, though like the -breaker skills, they don't always work. ^note Unless you're Morgan with Inigo or Brady as your father and Chrom as your grandfather (or Chrom being your father and you have "All Stats + 2" equipped), with the Avatar's asset being skill and her flaw not being strength or speed, your class is Assassin, your partner is a Hero, Sniper, Bow Knight or Villager and your partner has 30 or more skill, you have Limit Breaker and Rightful King equipped as skills, you're using Mystletainn, you've used a skill tonic, and "Rally Skill", "Rally Spectrum" and "Rally Heart" have been used on you that turn. Congratulations, you now have enough skill combined with Rightful King to activate any "skill%" proc (except Lethality, Aether, and Astra) 100% of the time!
  • The Valkyrie's Dual Support+ skill, which gives a unit the ability to pair up with another unit and grant them A-support level bonuses from the get-go, even if they cannot have a support conversation with them. It's also a female-exclusive skill that can be passed down to some of the male children.^note Owain, Brady, Male Morgan, Gerome, and Laurent.
  • The Veteran skill, which the Avatar has from the start, and if they have kids, they can inherit it. It grants the unit 50% more EXP if they fight while paired up. It's because of this skill that the Avatar is usually the one who promotes/class changes first.
  • The Mercenary's Armsthrift skill, which prevents weapon degradation based on the unit's luck. This can be all too vital when you start getting the Brave and Holy weapons, since both sets tend to have low durability.
• Bowdlerisation: One of Tharja's conversations (Nowi asking her about her "boingy bits") in the "Harvest Scramble" DLC was altered in the European version (but not the American version). Then in "Summer Scramble", Tharja's swimsuit Fanservice was censored◊ in the American version (though some think this actually made it look more risque than before) but was surprisingly left alone for the European version.
  • Any possible Kissing Cousins pairings are labeled as "companions" instead of husband and wife. The most common cases are if Owain marries either Lucina or either Cynthia or Kjelle if one of them has Chrom as their father. Oddly, this doesn't apply to incestuous pairings involving a third-generation Morgan (e.g. a Lucina-mothered female Morgan with a Chrom-fathered Brady or Inigo).
• Bragging Rights Reward: Either obtaining 99999 Renown or beating Apotheosis will give you the Ultimate Emblem... which has no use other than being able to be sold for 99999 gold. If you beat Apotheosis or grinded enough to get 99999 renown (For reference, you get 10 renown for beating a chapter or skirmish (read: The risen teams that appear on the map), and 50 renown for defeating or hiring a Spotpass or Streetpass team), that extra gold will not be worth whatever you did to get that far. At least until starting a new game.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Aversa's backstory reveals that she was a victim of this, in the overseas version due to her having a power that interested Validar — he murdered her family, friends, and her entire village, and wiped her memories so she'd believe he had saved her life so she'd serve him...
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • In the C Support conversation between Lissa and Avatar in which the Avatar is woken from their nap, they exclaim "Risen! Wolves! Risen riding wolves!", much to Lissa's amusement.
  • In the C Support between Olivia and Henry, Olivia refers to Henry as "that creepy kid who likes blood and magic and...blood magic!"
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In Miriel's A Support with Frederick, she says, "I've collected flowers, fished in the river, and been chased by bees."
• Break the Badass: The Future Past DLC depicts an alternate timeline so bleak that even the Determinator children are ready to give up and say their prayers.
• Breather Level: Word of God says the "Other-World Resort" episodes of the second batch of DLC were designed to be this, focusing more on character relationships and dialogue than on combat. Contrast the Ultimate Training missions.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • The "Golden Pack" DLC contains three levels blatantly designed for easy grinding. They also contain hilariously flimsy excuse plots, so even if you're not interested in farming lots of cash/EXP/gear you can still play them once to watch Chrom play the Only Sane Man.
    • Cordelia will even call you out on it during EXPonential Growth.
  • The Limit Breaker manual, which boosts all of a character's maximum stats by 10. Sounds totally broken, exclusive to the last DLC chapter. Then the second batch of DLC was revealed, and let's just say you're going to NEED it.
• Brick Joke: When Tiki wakes up and sees Lucina, she mistakes her for her "Mar-Mar." This is a reference to Tiki's earlier appearance in the series as a younger manakete, where she became close friends with the original Marth.
  • Cordelia mentions reading a book called Make Him Fall for You in a Fortnight, and feeling embarrassed over reading it. Severa—her daughter—finds the book and wonders who would read something like that.
  • Panne wonders that pretending to have buck teeth makes people feel more comfortable around her. Her son Yarne complains that she lied when he used the same trick himself and everyone looked at him funny.
  • Maribelle tells Olivia that the best way for her to overcome her shyness is to talk to men, only for the two of them to find out later that the book Maribelle derived the advice from was meant for men to hit on girls. Inigo later reveals that the reason why he's so forward with women is because Olivia told him the same advice.
• Broken Aesop: Sacrificing one person for the sake of many, regardless of who the person is, can be worth it. Except that the two people sacrificed, Emmeryn and the Avatar, don't actually die. Emmeryn survives her apparent death, and the Avatar returns from the dead because of their bonds with the other characters despite even the setting's god-analogue commenting on that being vanishingly unlikely.
  • Another related contradiction: if you have Chrom fight Aversa in Chapter 22, he will mention to her that the weight of one life is nothing compared to millions, yet when the Avatar accepts the possibility of sacrificing themself to slay Grima three chapters later, Chrom immediately protests. The Avatar even echoes Chrom's words to Aversa from earlier, but Chrom flatly rejects the argument.
  • In this case, it's a matter of one Aesop breaking another. Meanwhile, in the case of Emmeryn, given her mental state after surviving her sacrifice and the fact that she never really recovers, you could argue that the Emmeryn you met earlier in the game did die.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Averted for once in the series - Chrom cannot marry Lissa, and their relationship is entirely healthy and sibling-like. Also, should Lucina have a male sibling^note can be either Brady, Inigo, or a male Morgan, she cannot marry them, nor can the other male siblings marry a female Morgan if she is their sister. However, you can still get some incestuous pairings. One DLC character, Aversa, tries to invoke this on a male Avatar, but neither he, nor his father, Validar ever thought of her as family and this is after the retcon that all of Aversa's memories of Validar being a Parental Substitute were just Fake Memories implanted into her mind, this is more prominent in the Japanese version as it's only done once as a joke in the English version.
• Brutal Bonus Level: All chapters in the "Challenge Pack" DLC. And then Apotheosis takes it up a notch.
• Bucket Helmet: The badly-equipped Villager class wears these. Donnel, who starts off as a Villager, keeps his through all of his possible class changes - even when he's a Hero or Warrior swinging around weapons old enough to have songs written about them, he'll still have that old tin pot on his head.
• Busman's Holiday: The Festival Episode, Beach Episode, and Hot Springs Episode DLCs. Generally any trip to the Outrealms throws Chrom and co. into the middle of a battle.
• But Thou Must!: An interesting variation. In Chapter 9, you're given the choice of whether to give up the Fire Emblem to save Emmeryn, or to listen to her warnings and refuse the offer. Which option you choose makes no difference, not because you're forced into one option, but because Emmeryn Takes A Third Option and makes the choice for you.
  • There are several choices throughout the game, none of which actually matter due to the actions of another character. Only the very final choice makes a difference.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Appears throughout the intro.
• Bystander Syndrome: If Chrom strikes the final blow on Grima, he is merely put to sleep for another thousand years, meaning that it'll be up to future heroes to defeat him again.

C

• The Caligula: Gangrel. Until he joins you.
• Came Back Wrong: Of the Damaged Soul variety in the case of Emmeryn, who is revealed to have survived her Heroic Suicide in a late/postgame SpotPass-sidequest... tragically, with amnesia so bad she can't even talk right. Her condition is stated to never fully improve, but she ends up living a simple, happy life.
• The Cameo: A LOT of characters from past Fire Emblem games appear as extra content. Using SpotPass, many characters from previous games can be fought in Skirmishes and may be recruited upon defeat. Most of the main Lords from previous games can also be won as prizes for completing certain downloadable chapters.
  • Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": About half of the legacy characters make their first international appearances here. ^note Averted for Marth himself even if Super Smash Bros. is ignored, as Shadow Dragon received an English translation. Fellow Smash Bros. fighter Roy, on the other hand, made his first in-series European appearance here.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: When Robin is revealed to be Grima, Lucina realizes that killing them will prevent her bad future from happening, and Robin can choose whether to let her without a fight or resist before Chrom steps in to prevent it and suggest finding an alternative way to prevent Robin from becoming Grima. If Robin is married to either Chrom (if female) or Lucina (if male), Lucina is unable to go through with killing them at all.
• Canon Welding:
  • Even WITHOUT the dimension-warping aspect of this game, there's overwhelming evidence in this game that every other Fire Emblem game is indeed in the same universe. Taking the dimension-warping into account, it seems that some worlds are historically connected while others are Mutually Fictional, such that characters have heard the stories of the other games as folklore and songs rather than history.
  • The Avatar's child is a tactician named Morgan, who, because they dress like their parent, shares the same outfit as Mark the Tactician from Blazing Blade, and even shares their name in Japanese (though Morgan's name is spelled Marc). The best ranking in the Japanese version of Blazing Blade gives Mark the same "Grandmaster" title as a promoted Avatar, and Morgan, like their parent, also has access to the Grandmaster class.
  • Valm is the future form of Gaiden's Valentia, as Ylisse is to Archanea. Chapter 16 takes place at the "Mila Tree", and the setting of chapter 18, the Demon's Ingle, is where Duma was defeated (it's named "Doma's Remains" in the Japanese version).
  • The Holy Weapons from the Jugdral games, Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 make an appearance (and anyone with the appropriate weapon rank can use them now), as do the twelve Deadlords, some of whom are in possession of said Holy Weapons.
  • Donny and Olivia's Supports in the Japanese version reference Naesala and Leanne!
  • Ricken and Olivia's C Support reference Sigurd and Deirdre. Sigurd being a prince who fell in love with a forest maiden (Deirdre).
  • And Stahl and Sully's Supports reference Cain and Abel, and Sully even lampshades the fact that she and Stahl are part of the archetype.
  • The conversation with Lyn('s Einherjar) after her DLC chapter (Smash Brethren 3) makes her speculate that the Avatar is the same one of Blazing Blade due to their mostly similar appearances and shared habit of waking up in unfamiliar locales without any knowledge of how they got there.
    • This also doubles as Fridge Brilliance and Leaning on the Fourth Wall, since the Avatar is the player. She is essentially asking if YOU played Blazing Blade. You have the choice of confirming or denying her hunch: "Yes" if you were the Tactician or "No" if you weren't. It may also reference the protagonist's resemblance to their child Morgan. See the first example.
  • The last Bonus Unit, Priam, claims to be a descendant of Ike. Yes, THAT Ike.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Inigo plays this straight with all his romance options excluding Severa and Kjelle.
• Cap Raiser: The Limit Breaker skill obtained from the DLC level Rogues & Redeemers 3 increases the equipped unit's stat caps by 10.
• Cast of Snowflakes: As per Fire Emblem tradition, each playable character has a unique design and personality. Subverted, however, for enemies and some Paralogue bosses that reuse generic portraits.
• Cel Shading: Uses this in the CGI scenes to give a look much like that of hand-drawn anime.
• Cerebus Roller Coaster: The DLC episodes. They range from cheerfully silly EXP- and gold-farming opportunities with blatant Excuse Plots and Affectionate Parodies of Super Smash Bros., with many funny moments to go around, to dead-serious maps like an After the End Bad Future told over three maps and a small episode in which the Risen are recast as Tragic Monsters, full of Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerkers, right back to Breather Episodes that feature easy Risen hunts as the backdrop for a bunch of Campfire Character Exploration and more hilarity. And finally a Nintendo Hard map that's all about the game issuing you progressively harder fights to test your mettle on. Whew.
• Chainmail Bikini: Nowi, arguably. It's unclear whether the material is supposed to be protective, but it clearly isn't covering anything.
• Character Development: The entire point of the Support conversations. Many of them feature the characters learning new things or getting over their issues.
• Character-Driven Strategy: Robin uses a game board to plan out their strategies in advance and develop new ones. In their supports with Virion, he offers to let them test them out using the game as a mock battle of sorts. To Robin's surprise, Virion wins almost every single game, remarking that perhaps Virion should be the one calling the shots instead. Virion denies this, as his winning strategies follow the rules of the game and as such he's not afraid to sacrifice his own pieces to take more valuable pieces from the enemy. Meanwhile, Robin's strategies try to preserve as many pieces as they can because of how much they value their friends and allies. Virion praises them for this, as a We Have Reserves mentality would only invite mutiny from his men and that war is Not a Game where lives can be tossed away so easily.
• Chekhov's Gun: S supports feature the male character presenting the female with a ring as they propose to them. Later, when their children come from the future, they present the mother the rings they received from them in the future as proof that they are their children. In Gerome's case, Minerva, herself, is also used as proof of his identity, since the wyvern he rides is the future version of his mother's.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Two of Chrom's love interests (Sully and Maribelle) have known him since they were young; Sully was a playmate and fellow sparring partner, and Maribelle, being the daughter of an Ylissean duke, probably also spent time with him when they were young. This also applies to most of the children from the future, as all of them grew up together. In particular, if Cynthia is paired with Inigo, she reveals that she has always liked him; the same can be said if you pair her with Owain, except that he's the one who had feelings for her; finally, should you pair Gerome or Inigo with Lucina, they'll note that they always loved her.
  • There's also Cynthia and Gerome, where they played together as children and she helped him get over his fear of heights. He notes during their S-rank support that the reason he's not comfortable around her is because he's had a need to impress her for a very long time, but that she's seen him in his uncool phase as well.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: None of the other Manakete tribes of Akaneia make an appearance in Awakening for unexplained reasons. Also Xane and Gotoh, though the latter may have died of old age.
• Church Militant: The only possible explanation for War Clerics/Monks, who use both staves and axes.
• Class Change Level Reset: In addition to traditional promotion, the Second Seal allows switching to a new basic class at Level 1. However, the game keeps track of "internal levels", meaning that resetting your level gets less and less effective for gaining XP faster the more times you do it.
• Climax Boss: Gangrel is the early game climax boss, and he is also a Disc-One Final Boss. He stands out from his peers in that: A. He's of the Trickster class, rather than the General class. B. He uses a magic-casting sword which goes off his Magic stat, rather than his Strength stat. C. The battle is fought on a plain, rather than in or near a castle/fortress that tends to be the usual spot for a climactic early game battle. D. He moves towards you along with his troops, rather than sitting on a throne or gate and waiting for you to battle your way through to him.
  • Fun note about the Gangrel battle: it takes place in the same part of the map where Altea, Marth's original homeland, was located. This may or may not be intentional.
• Colossus Climb: The endgame chapter is like this, with all of your units fighting on Grima's back to take it down.
• Combat by Champion: Justified. Ferox does this to decide which khan rules (despite being a Proud Warrior Race nation) since having the khans fight each other would result in a lot of dead khans and bitter rivalries.
  • Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that they are still testing the khans, but by their leadership skills in backing, training, and arming the strongest and most capable fighters.
• Combat Medic: An ever-growing number of classes can use both staves and a weapon, from the classic Sage and Valkyrie (tomes and staves) to a few surprising ones like Falcon Knight (lances and staves), Trickster (swords and staves), and War Monk/Cleric (axes and staves).
  • There's also the DLC Bride class, which uses lances and bows in addition to staves.
• Comical Overreacting: Frederick screaming that he needs a healer after being tricked into eating some of the bear meat Robin saved from their first encounter is either this if you do the support early on... or probably a lot more justified if you wait until after the 2-year timeskip, at which point that bear meat is almost assuredly rancid and vile.
• Comic Trio: Probably the most realistic example of it. Inigo, Owain and Brady give off the impression of being three best friends, but their overall place in the Comic Trio varies from conversation to conversation. Brady is usually the Only Sane Man, but Inigo and even Owain have played it from time to time.
• Commonality Connection: Many supports between characters that don't know each other previously will employ this to get the two characters talking. Taken even further if the reason they end up marrying is because of this one shared interest!
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: From Serenes Forest's page on forging: "There is an overall limit of 8 intervals that can be raised per weapon. For example, you can raise Might by 5 intervals and Critical by 3 intervals, but no more than that. [...] Enemies on higher difficulties can have weapons that exceed the 8 interval limit." That should tell you enough. And then there's the enemy-exclusive Skills for Lunatic+ Mode, which include one that always makes them hit, regardless of stats and a Luna that ALWAYS activates.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Mustafa and his forces find themselves facing this in the mission they appear in: after watching Emmeryn sacrifice herself, many Plegian soldiers started to desert, and Mustafa's own subordinates found it hard to muster the will to fight. Mustafa has his own reservations, but carries on for the sake of his family. This eventually inspires loyalty among his men, not to their king or their kingdom, but to their commander.
• Continuity Nod: There are tons in the Einherjar's conversations in the DLC chapters. To name a few:
  • Caeda assuming Kellam is only helping brigands because his mother is sick.
  • The previous Avatar of Heroes of Light and Shadow is alluded to a few times.
  • Outside of the Einherjar, Stahl and Sully bring up Cain and Abel in one of their support conversations.
• Continuity Porn: The game is absolutely filled with Mythology Gags to earlier games in the series, some of them extremely subtle.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted in a DLC scenario, which has you rescuing a bunch of NPC merchants from a lava cave, while they're taking damage (presumably from the heat) every turn.
  • Played straight, however, in Chapter 18 of the main story. The showdown with Yen'fay takes place inside an active volcano with magma on all sides. If a unit falls into the liquid molten lava, they're hit with a whopping 10 damage.
• Crapsack World: If Lucina is to be believed, the Bad Future she hails from is not a nice place to live in. With her father and the Shepherds dead and Grima unopposed in his apocalyptic ravaging of the world, Lucina and the other children jumped at the chance to travel back in time with Naga to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. And that's only the timeline we directly avert. There's also the world of The Future Past, which is bad enough that it practically mandated the Shepherds of the game's timeline to intervene with Naga's help because there's literally no way that world will survive without outside help.
• Creative Closing Credits: Postscript epilogues are featured for all the recruited characters, documenting their lives after the end of the war. There are variations depending on which characters married or if they were not.
• Critical Hit: A staple of the Fire Emblem series, this time each one paired with a Pre-Mortem One-Liner and a Super Move Portrait Attack. The animations for the said attacks are a lot less fancy this time around, though, with the Hero's double flip slash probably being the most elaborate. At least Luna and Lethality have their own unique class-specific animations.
• Crutch Character: In classic Fire Emblem tradition, Frederick provides this role. He is an unstoppable, mook-slaughtering juggernaut for the first handful of chapters in the game, but his stat progression isn't quite as good as for other characters, and he typically gets sent to the bleachers by the time endgame comes around.
• Cult: The Grimleal controls the entire nation of Plegia by force. They are dedicated to the worship of the Fell Dragon Grima as a Satan-like entity and regularly kidnap maidens for a Human Sacrifice. Even the Plegians hate Grima's worshipers as revealed in Chapter 8.
• Curse Cut Short: Sully, after she first appears. Only the timely arrival of Virion keeps her from saying it.
  Sully: Alright, who wants to try my lance on for size first. I know where it belongs, shoved right up your...
  Virion: Hold, mi'lady
• Custom Uniform: A few, albeit most of them being fancier Palette Swaps, like Anna's red Trickster outfit or Brady's dark purple robe. The biggest examples are Frederick's tapered and less bulky Great Knight uniform, Henry's modest sweater for his Dark Mage outfit, and Aversa's stripperiffic getup (she's a Dark Flier).
• Cutting Off the Branches: Several non-Lucina children (specifically, Severa, Inigo, Owain, and maybe Morgan) are all but stated to be canonically born, considering Severa, Inigo, and Owain are all Nohr characters in Fire Emblem Fates, and it's suggested Morgan might be the Mark from Blazing Sword if Robin isn't. That said, the whole thing with the Outrealms and alternate timelines suggests that every playthrough is equally canon, with each representing a slightly different universe.

D

• Demonic Possession: What the Avatar succumbs to in the Bad Future.
• Despair Event Horizon: Chrom and Lissa nearly crosses into this when Emmeryn sacrificed herself.
• Destroyer Deity: The game introduces the fell dragon Grima, who is also referred to as the God of Destruction.
• Developers' Desired Date: Chrom is required to get married at the end of Chapter 11, and has four possible wives, five if the Avatar is a girl (or six if you count the nameless village girl if the others have all been paired off with someone else). Of them, the game pushes for Sumia and the Female Avatar the most.
  • Sumia: She has an obvious crush on Chrom, gets her own CGI cutscene with him titled "Lovebirds", is one of the few units to appear in a cutscene after their debut chapter (where her main role is also to interact with Chrom), and has the highest priority of his prospective wives if he's still not married by the end of Chapter 11.^note The game chooses Chrom's wife based on which of his possible options he has the highest Support rank for. If there's a tie, the game chooses based on a priority system, of which Sumia ranks the highest. If the game forces them to pair up at that point, she also gets a unique cutscene that none of the other wives get any variation of.
  • Female Avatar: As the two main characters their bond becomes a key part of the game's story regardless of if they marry or not.^note  This does not change for a Male Avatar creating quite a bit of Homoerotic Subtext However, she is also the only one of Chrom's potential wives to remain relevant after meeting Lucina. And if they do marry, there are a lot of plot conveniences that arise with their marriage since the Female Avatar is the vessel of Grima which itself creates more emotional conflict later on with Lucina. This is even lampshaded when Lucina and Male Morgan who's not Chrom's son mention it's a little odd that Chrom and the Female Avatar never got together. While Lucina mothered by anyone but the Female Avatar accuses her of trying to seduce Chrom, then swings in the opposite direction by demanding she fall for him.
• Developer's Foresight: Every possible pairing has a totally unique set of Supports justifying it. In short, cutscenes and support conversations always account the different possible relationships between characters.
  • The only aversions are conversations between children and fathers (which all seem to be the same), since the children are tied to their mothers, with the exception of Morgan and Lucina, who are specifically tied to the Avatar and Chrom respectively. Lucina and female Morgan's sibling and mother Supports are also the one exception to the above, as their Supports with their sibling and mother are the same across all possible siblings/mothers (with female Morgan's conversations with her mother being essentially the same as male Morgan's conversations with his father).
    • Even then, this is not completely averted, at least in the Western version: While the events are the same between children and fathers, the fathers' speeches alter depending on who the father is (so, for example, Vaike will still speak in third person occasionally no matter who his child is, Henry will mention curses). Similar modification occurs with Lucina and her mother supports, and with a female Morgan and her mother supports.
    • One certain plot point roughly halfway through the game will have different dialogue depending on who Chrom married a few chapters ago. ^explanation When it is revealed that Lucina is Chrom's daughter, Chrom's wife, who is late to the reveal, will suspect that Chrom is cheating on her with Lucina. Sumia picks flowers apart saying, "He loves me - he loves me not." Maribelle immediately confronts Chrom about it and considers punching him in the face for it. Sully is about ready to kick Chrom and Lucina across the room. Olivia is crying and saying "I Want My Beloved to Be Happy." Interestingly enough, the female Avatar is the only potential wife who doesn't make the assumption: she notes that the situation might look bad to others (the same as an Avatar with whom Chrom is just friends), but adds that she trusts him enough to not be worried about it.
  • Things get particularly crazy with Morgan, the Avatar's child, as each of the other children could potentially be their sibling, spouse, or parent, and naturally each possibility has to have different supports.
  • The devs even alter a certain character's appearance based on the story events, despite the visual effect being so minor: Chrom's Great Lord in-battle model normally wields the Fire Emblem as his shield. When the Fire Emblem is stolen, the model also loses the shield until the Emblem is retrieved. A similar effect occurs if you somehow manage to promote him before he obtains the Fire Emblem.
  • Due to plot reasons, Chrom must be married to a female character by the end of Chapter 11. However, if the player doesn't manage to get an S Support level between Chrom and a female character, the game will default to the female character with the highest Support level with him. If none of the female characters have any Support points with him, Chrom then marries the one at the top of the list, excluding the ones that are dead or married. If they are all dead or married (Olivia has to be dead, because she joins in the previous chapter and can't get married in time), then Chrom marries an ordinary village lady.
    • And if you manage to marry Chrom to Olivia (who he literally just met), the game will make fun of this relentlessly.
  • The cutscene where Lucina contemplates killing the Avatar to ensure the Bad Future doesn't come to pass shakes out differently depending on her relationship with them. If they aren't related or just friends, Chrom arrives and talks Lucina out of it before she does anything drastic. If they're married or mother and daughter, Lucina is unable to go through with it due to her love for the Avatar, and Chrom shows up afterwards.
  • Owain mentions in his Support conversations with his dad that he witnessed his father's death in the Bad Future, specifically noting that Owain saw the event. Because it would create a plot hole if his father is the Avatar, Owain's dialogue is instead changed to only say that "[he] never saw [his father] again". This is the only case in the game where the events of a Support are altered to fit the storyline.
  • The Hubba Tester actually has quite a variety of responses. The two characters being both single, married, parent and child, siblings or one married and the other not all produce different sets of potential messages.
  • The SpotPass and DLC versions of Marth can use the Falchion, despite it being restricted to Chrom and Lucina, since it was originally his weapon.^note The Falchion's weapon description is "Chrom and Marth only", so technically he isn't restricted. (The same doesn't apply to Alm, as his Falchion is not the same as the Archanean one.)
  • If a character does an attack that makes them continue past the enemy and has that enemy survive, a crit or activated ability instead shows the character's activation portrait facing the opposite direction due to trading positions with the enemy.
  • On a desert level, Lissa doesn't wear the tights she normally does due to the heat and sand.
  • Manakete are still vulnerable to anti-dragon weapons after changing to a normal class - because they're still shapeshifted dragons getting hit with magic anti-dragon weaponry, even if they are fighting like humans. The same applies to the Taguel, except that they're weak to anti-beast weapons instead.
  • Characters have multiple level up quotes depending on how many stats they end up increasing, with fittingly disappointed quotes for most of them if they only manage a increase a single stat or no stats at all, unless they've already capped most of their stats in their current class, in which case they'll give you a different message for increasing 0 or 1 stats referencing how close to perfect they already are (while still giving the normal 2-3 stat message if they still have enough uncapped stats to manage it.)
  • You first meet Anna as a unit in Paralogue 2, defending a village from a group of brigands, and later meet one of her identical sisters getting assaulted by a group of brigands led by the previous brigand band's boss's brother/twin/Identical Stranger, having mistaken her for the first Anna. This is the way most people will do things, but since Paralogues are optional, you are completely free to wait for Paralogue 4 to show up, get Anna, then go do Paralogue 2 and watch as there are two completely identical units on the field at the same time, with the dialogue changing to reflect your unorthodox approach. Sadly, there is no special scene or Talk event to be had with the other Anna even if you do this.
  • The game recognizes if the birth date of the Avatar overlaps with another character's, in which case it will say "Today is Avatar and (other character)'s birthday." instead.
  • In Chapter 2, you can leave Kellam as a green unit for as long as you want. Unless you talk to him, the enemy won't notice he's right there even if he's within their attack range (you can use him as a wall even). And if you don't talk to him for a few turns, he'll complain nobody has noticed him yet.
  • Validar in Chapter 23 is behind a barrier, preventing anyone in your army other than Chrom and the Avatar from reaching him. He has special boss quotes for both of them, so you normally won't get to see his "generic" boss quote, but he does have one: the only way to see it is to use the long-range tome Mire.
  Validar: Destiny is your master, one way or the other!
  • In Chapter 7, Cordelia normally arrives as a friendly reinforcement on turn 3. If the chapter is cleared in 1 or 2 turns, the ending cutscene will change to show Cordelia arriving after the battle's conclusion.
  • Cynthia's Paralogue, which has her getting mixed up with a bandit troupe due to mistaking their leader for a younger version of Chrom, has different dialogue depending on if Chrom is her dad. It's especially funny if that's the case, too, given that the bandit leader in question looks absolutely nothing like Chrom.
  • The Future Past maps are full of this. Set in an alternate timeline where the Bad Future pans out even worse without the Shepherds to intervene, alternate counterparts of all the future children (including both versions of Morgan, who are Mutually Exclusive Party Members normally) are shown struggling to stay alive and can be interacted with by the cast under two conditions:
    • The parents of each child can have a small conversation with them. Unlike the Supports in the base game, these are not one-size-fits-all and tailored to the personality of each respective parent. For example, Lucina can have conversations with her father Chrom and her mother, with different conversations for a Female Avatar, Sumia, Sully, Maribelle and Olivia depending on who Chrom married at the end of Chapter 11.
    • Each of the children can observe themselves, but avoid direct interaction to play straight Never the Selves Shall Meet, fearful of the consequences of actually talking to themselves.
• Diabolus ex Machina:
  • Chapter 9 consists of clearing a courtyard of enemies so that Emmeryn can be safely extracted by air. However, at the very last minute, Aversa summons a veritable army of Risen archers that promptly insta-kills the Pegasus Knights that were supposed to do the extraction, rendering your efforts up to that point utterly pointless. Up to that point there's no indication whatsoever that she might have such an ability, and indeed she never uses it ever again. Even better, Aversa herself Lampshades that what she just did was cheating, while Gangrel is also shocked by the development and wonders how it happened.
  • In the Bad Future this was the fate that befell Chrom and the Avatar. After seemingly defeating Validar and winning the day, the Avatar is suddenly possessed by Grima and kills Chrom. Especially vicious after Chrom makes a speech at the beginning about the Avatar being one of them despite what destiny says and the happiness in his voice when he thought they had finally achieved peace.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: No matter what, you'll defeat Grima. If you let Chrom kill Grima, then he's put back to sleep just like Marth did to Medeus. If the Avatar delivers the final blow, then it's a step above, because this means that Grima is permanently dead and can never come back, with the added bonus of finding out that the collective strength of the Avatar's bonds with the many friends they made along the way turning out to be stronger than the Avatar's connection with Grima, and will survive Grima's death.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: This is the case when you, the Avatar romance anyone. Yes, you are Grima.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: One of Olivia's voice clips is humming the level-up jingle.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Averted with the DLC characters, such as Alm and Eirika. There are a vast number of DLC characters and weapons you can acquire, but you have to be strong enough to complete the DLC mission that unlocks the characters, and most of the weapons are of a very high rank and can't be used until you have a unit skilled enough to equip it. You won't be blitzing through the early-game with any of these.
  • Played straight with some of the other DLC maps, however, with the most notorious example being "EXPonential Growth." You can actually purchase any of the maps as soon as the Outrealm Gate opens (which is nefariously early in the game), and they'll always stay when you start a new file, so if you want to get that Galeforce or Zeal skill passed down to one of the children right away, more so if you want to get certain skills for Lucina, as she's forcibly recruited after Chapter 13, or if you simply want to grind for the much-harder DLC maps, then with enough effort, spamming EXPonential Growth among others is possible.
  • Renown points are carried over to new game files as well, so while you may not get to use them for a while, you can have a buttload of incredibly powerful weapons and items at your disposal from the get-go, including a free Second Seal and a copy of the Book of Naga. Having the maximum possible renown of 99,999 points carried over to a new file gives you access to the Supreme Emblem, which you can sell for 99,999 Gold. Combined with the Large Bullion at 1000 points gives you enough gold to recruit a Limit Breakered, max stats Avatar with a plethora of skills in your logbook as soon as you get access to the wireless features at Chapter 4.
  • You can also summon the SpotPass teams once you get access to wireless features. And since all the SpotPass teams are unlocked at once, there's nothing stopping you from summoning high level teams to buy their endgame-strength weapons. Granted, most of your units probably won't be at A or even B rank experience, but the ever-handy Killer weapons are available and only require rank C, and you can also buy lower ranked ranged weapons. And there's always the fact that you can grind weapon experience against the easier teams, especially since they can be summoned as often as you want for no cost.
• Disney Death: No major character who has a plotline death actually stays dead (except Yen'fay, whose SpotPass chapter explains that he's a different Yen'fay who came from the bad future where Lucina and all the other children came from), with characters such as Emmeryn, Gangrel, and Walhart all being revealed to have survived their apparent deaths, though not entirely free of consequences. ^note Gangrel suffers from enormous guilt over his actions and is never forgiven, plus his pride keeps them from begging for forgiveness. Similarly, the alternate Yen'fay blames himself for not being able to save his version of Say'ri. Walhart claims to actually be dead in the English version only (he tells Chrom his heart stopped beating), but either possibly revived as a very powerful Risen with free will or simply is a Determinator of the highest order. In Japanese though, it is clear Walhart is alive. Emmeryn has it the worst, suffering heavy, incurable brain damage that essentially does mean the Emmeryn we know is dead, it's just that her body and a few of her basic personality traits are still left. Validar technically gets revived twice. Fully averted for most your entire army if played on Classic Mode as some of them for story purposes "retreat" never to be seen outside of cutscenes.
• Distant Sequel: Fire Emblem Awakening is set in the same world and continents as Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem and Fire Emblem Gaiden, but about 2,000 years after their events. Mystery of the Emblem's protagonist, Marth, is now a legendary figure known as the Hero-King, and Chrom and Lucina are his very distant descendants. As many liberties are taken with the plots of those games, such as the Taguel being claimed to have existed all along and the Fire Emblem having an entirely different purpose, it also qualifies as Broad Strokes.
• Ditto Fighter: The Mirages in Wellspring of Truth will copy the appearances and stats of the army that was deployed, but not their weapons. Instead, Mirages will wield B-rank weapons.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Female Morgan's behavior around Yarne is essentially that of an immature child playing rough with a small pet (like, say, a rabbit) without any concept of how much she is hurting or traumatizing him. A female Avatar will also treat Yarne somewhat like a pet, but being older she is far more mature about it, and is mostly just patronizing to him at first.
  • The DLC map "Rogues And Redeemers 2" has a number of major villains from previous games as allied NPCs, and like all of the DLC maps, you can engage them in conversations using certain characters. Tiki's conversation with Gharnef plays up the inherent subtext of Mind Rape for all it's worth.
• Double Entendre:
  • One of Sully's Battle quotes:
    Sully: Quick and dirty... Huh! I like it!
  • Predictably, half of Aversa's quotes are littered with them.
• Double In-Law Marriage: Possible to pull off, as long as Chrom marries either Maribelle or Olivia, and a male Avatar marries Lissa, Miriel, Cherche, Panne, Maribelle, or Olivia (whoever doesn't marry Chrom.) Then Chrom's daughter can marry the Avatar's son and Chrom's son can marry the Avatar's daughter.
• Double-Meaning Title: Chapter 13: Of Sacred Blood. Validar provides the Title Drop, referring to the Avatar as his child and thus "destined" to become the new vessel of Grima. But said chapter also features The Reveal of Chrom's Kid from the Future Lucina who, having the Brand of the Exalt, is also "of sacred blood." The exact opposite variety, in fact. It's also the chapter that introduces us to Henry. What's his favorite thing again?
• Downer Beginning: The game begins with the player character being possessed by Grima, and murdering Chrom after seemingly defeating Validar. It turns out to be a premonition of things to come (in Chapter 23).
  • Before even that, in the game's title animation, if you look very carefully you can see the Hierophant amongst the Risen spilling out of the rift in time. Anyone who notices this will put together just who the Hierophant is pretty quickly once they're introduced.
• Downloadable Content: The very first Nintendo game to feature it, in fact. There are loads of new playable maps that range from rewarding you with classic characters to letting you grind for money and EXP.
• Dragon Ancestry: Some time after her blood bond with Baldur of Jugdral's Twelve Crusaders, the dragon god Naga formed a second blood bond with the founder of Ylisse. As a result, members of the Ylisse royal family can also manifest the Brand of Naga. Jugdral's holy weapons are still around, but due to either extreme age or magical tampering, most of them no longer require draconic blood to use.
• Dream Intro: The game begins with a playable dream that foretells an event of a later chapter.
• Dub Name Change/Spell My Name With An S: Pretty much everyone had their name changed or altered in some way. Some characters had their names changed in the Non-English European versions as well, for some reason. See the character pages for details.
• Dysfunction Junction: Most of the first generation characters are merely quirky, but practically all of the second generation characters are either a little insane or have some other sort of personal complex as a result of losing their parents and struggling to survive in a Bad Future. See the Fridge subpage for details.

E

• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • The Avatar literally had to die to earn the True Ending, though they are later brought back to life.
  • The entirety of Future Past DLC. To get the Golden Ending, you need to keep all the children alive. But boy is it worth seeing Grima going into a full force Villainous Breakdown, a combination of intervention from another timeline, him unknowingly screwing himself, and the last of the Avatar's vestige getting the last laugh.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: The mere sight of an apparently huge bug flitting around sends Lucina and her sibling — two seasoned warriors who have survived a zombie apocalypse — into a panic. For example, in the case of Cynthia:
  Lucina: Breathe, Cynthia. Calm down and tell me what happened. You have nothing to fear now that I'm here.
  Cynthia: B-b-bug! A bug!
  Lucina: ...A bug? ...As in...an insect?
  Cynthia: As in a huge, freakish nightmare, with gross, hairy legs... It's HORRIBLE!
  Lucina: You're telling me all of your screaming and flailing was over an INSECT? *sigh* I thought the Risen had come. You could have sent the camp into a panic.
  Cynthia: AAAAAH! It's back! And it can fly?! S-stay away! Don't come near meee!
  Lucina: Come now, I don't see what all the fuss I— EEEEEEK!
  Cynthia: See? SEE?! It's the stuff of nightmares! Now hurry up and kill it! Kill it with fire magic or something!
  Lucina: Oh, no—I'm not going near that thing! It's HUGE!
• El Cid Ploy: In one sidequest, a leader of a band of thugs passes himself off as the legendary hero "Chrom". For some strange reason, the townsfolk he's terrorizing seem to mistake the real Chrom for him even though they look nothing alike and he doesn't even try to act like him. (Case in point: bandit.) Cynthia also makes this mistake, and the player has to talk her out of fighting for him, which is especially strange given that Chrom may or may not be her father!
• Elite Four: Walhart's Co-Dragons: Excellus, Pheros, Yen'fay, and Cervantes.
• Elite Tweak: With the return of the Inheritance system and the new Modifiers system (where each character possess unique additions to their Caps across all classes) and the changes to the Reclass system, as well as how the Skills play out, the ways to maximize a character's potential now goes far beyond just leveling up — it's mind-boggling to the eleventh degree.
• Encounter Bait: The Reeking Box item causes a company of Risen to show up on the map.
• Enforced Method Acting: In-Universe example. The Avatar and Basilio fool everyone into thinking the latter was killed at the hands of Walhart, and the green gem on the Fire Emblem is replaced with a fake, meaning that Grima cannot actually possess the avatar. In order to put up a show for Validar, the avatar still "kills" Chrom, so that everyone's reactions will be legit.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Gangrel may be a murdering psychopath, but at least he doesn't worship Grima like the majority of his people.
  • Pheros, Cervantes, and even Walhart himself don't like Excellus's manipulative tactics which involve turning the enemies against each other. Moreover, Walhart wants to conquer the land. Not destroy it with Grima's revival.
• Even the Guys Want Him:
  • Invoked in-universe, with the Skills system if a male character gets the "Demoiselle" skill from his mother.
  • Libra, who was courted by women and men alike in his solo ending.
• Everyone Is Bi: Played for Laughs with the Hubba Tester, which might as well be called "Wheel of Shipping."
• Everything's Better with Samurai: The Swordmaster class has a strong samurai-esque feel this time around.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Neither Validar nor Grima can understand the value of human bonds and relationships. Needless to say, this lack of understanding led to both of their undoing.
• Evil Sorcerer: Validar, the leader of the Fell Dragon-worshiping Grimleal.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Seems to be the justification for the heroes and villains teaming up in the DLC map "Rogues And Redeemers 3", as you are apparently perceived to be a world-threatening menace. The enemy dialogue describe your forces as eldritch.
• Excalibur in the Rust: One of the top-tier legacy weapons is an aged and worn-out looking Ragnell. Its owner is Ike's descendant, explaining why it has aged. Granted, the blade was still pretty worn even when Ike wielded it, as shown here.
• Excuse Plot: Several of the DLC maps run on these. The Golden Gaffe and EXPonential Growth are the most blatant, but the -Scramble maps are in the same ballpark. The game lampshades the hell out of this, with Chrom and other serious characters bemoaning how uninspired the cause de jour of The Golden Gaffe is.
• Eyes Always Shut: Kellam, Henry, and Yen'fay.

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