Fire Emblem Three Houses / Tropes E to M

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to M | Tropes N to R | Tropes S to Z | YMMV | Trivia

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses provides examples of:

E

• Ear Worm: In Annette and Felix's A support, Felix seeks Annette to hear her sing, saying that her voice is in his mind while he's asleep and in battle, like he's her captive. Once she understands what he means, she's flustered.
• Easter Egg:
  • Even though the paralogue "The Face Beneath" is available in every route sans Crimson Flower, only its completion in Azure Moon has a direct effect on the story. Besides adding extra dialogue to some scenes, a small cutscene plays after the Death Knight's final defeat in which Mercedes is seen cradling her brother's dying body.
  • The Crimson Flower route contains three instances of these for a few story scenes, some of which might not be listed on the event recap:
    • The scene following the capture of Derdriu changes notably if Claude survived the aftermath of the battle. To be able to do this, the player has to defeat the chapter's boss with either Byleth or Edelgard, and then chose the option to spare him. Otherwise, Claude dies when defeated with any other unit.
    • Similarly, Seteth and Flayn's escaping during Chapter 15's invasion of Garreg Mach changes the following scene in which Rhea receives the news of the battle from Catherine. This is only possible if Byleth fights one of them once and before the other one has been defeated and thus killed with any other unit.
    • Lastly, in the battle of the Tailtean Plains, defeating Dedue before he turns into a Demonic Beast results in an alternate death scene for one the chapter's main bosses, in which Dedue and Dimitri share their final moments together. This in particular is very difficult to achieve, as this enemy is very bulky even as a human, and will transform immediately if you get too close.
• Eldritch Location: Shambhala, the base of "those who slither in the dark," is treated as such. The characters find the Tron Lines-laden architecture, mechanical enemies, and atmosphere creepy, as they are totally unlike anything they've seen.
• Elephant in the Living Room: Crimson Flower shows the Imperial Army more or less subjects those who slither in the dark into this. In spite of both sides technically working together, very few members of the Black Eagle Strike Force ever directly awknowledge the group's involvement during the war unless the circumstances force it as such. Late into the route, Thales/Lord Arundel tries to defy the trope by blowing up a recently captured Arianrhod in revenge of Edelgard's army killing one of his undercover agents during their previous attacks in the Kingdom, intending it to serve as a detterrent against future backstabs, but the Adrestian Emperor quickly covers up the event by framing one of the Kingdom's allies for it, ensuring the trope is played straight up until the very end.
• Elemental Powers: Downplayed. The magic system, unique within franchise, means that all characters can learn a certain amount of magic, with a character-specific spell list. Most characters' Reason spell lists consist of only one element — Byleth and Edelgard have Fire spells, Dimitri has Lightning, Claude has Wind spells, and so on.
• End of an Age: By the end of all the routes, Fódlan will be united at the cost of two major nations and even possibly the dominant religious organization. Even members of your own side will express remorse at wiping away centuries of history after annexing one of the enemy countries (Leicester in particular since the Alliance really has no stake in the conflict and is merely trying to survive being swallowed up by either Faerghus or Adrestia in their fight against each other). In every route, however, Byleth and their chosen lord create a more peaceful and egalitarian society.
• Establishing Character Moment: A cutscene shortly after arriving at the Officer's Academy shows off the students of each house and, in many cases, establishes their overall personality and quirks, such as: Raphael enjoying some meat, Marianne looking depressed, Lindhardt dozing off, Caspar struggling with his studies, Bernadetta hiding under a book, and Sylvain hitting on Ingrid.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After the timeskip, usually fighting a student with someone from their house that you recruited will lead to them cursing that character for their betrayal, though sometimes they will accept that war is war and try not to hold it against them. They tend to be more bitter when said students join the Adrestian Empire than the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus or the Leicester Alliance. Similarly, Leonie will call Byleth a traitor if they side with the Adrestian Empire, since Edelgard was partially responsible for Jeralt's death (unless, of course, she too has sided with them).
• Evil Knockoff: In the last battle of the Verdant Wind route, the undead Ten Elites in Nemesis' army all carry "Dark" versions of their associated Relic weapons, along with Nemesis having a similar Sword of the Creator, which is shattered by Byleth's true version in their final fight. In addition to this, the description of Edelgard's Relic Axe Aymr says that it was constructed specifically for her during the timeskip and thus isn't a "true" Heroes' Relic (though according to some official art, it might have once been associated with the Crest of Maurice before it was modified to be compatible with Edelgard's Crests, due to that Crest being visible on its Crest Stone). Because of this, Aymr also relies on a different material — Agarthium — to be repaired rather than the Umbral Steel other Relic weapons require, and suggests that Aymr was built/modified for her by those who slither in the dark. Of course, it's not like the real Heroes' Relics are exactly as noble as Church dogma claims they are, either…
• Evil Mask: Demonic Beasts starting from Chapter 12 are fitted with menacing human-like masks on a non-humanoid body, giving them a sphinx-like appearance. It's implied that the masks function to make the beasts more controllable for the forces that use them in battle.
• Evolving Title Screen: Beat the game once, and the empty throne now has Sothis sleeping on it. It doesn't do anything, but it's cute. Beating the game on Maddening Mode without using New Game+ will change the color of the light filtering down on the throne.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: In the final fight of the Verdant Wind route, Claude fires an arrow upward, seemingly aiming at nothing, before rushing Nemesis and predictably getting knocked away. As Byleth and Nemesis clash blades, Claude gives a smirk right before the arrow comes down and pierces Nemesis's arm, throwing him off his guard and allowing Byleth to strike him down.
• Excalibur in the Rust: The Archanea regalia once again make an appearance, and can be obtained as a random drop from rare monsters, but only as rusted weapons. That said, with a handful of Mythril and some forging, it's possible to restore them to their original glory.
• Extra Turn: The Dancer class can use their turn to give any other unit on the field another chance to move again.
• Experience Booster: Each main protagonist has a skill that grants them additional experience gained after a round of combat. The Experience Gem is equippable by any unit to increase the amount of experience gained after battle, while the Knowledge Gem increases the Non-Combat EXP gained when training a unit's skills. Mastermind, Lysithea's personal skill and one of Jeritza's skills, has the same effect as the Knowledge Gem, and the effects stack if they're equipped with the Gem.
• Experienced Protagonist: Downplayed. After Byleth's house easily wins the first inter-house mock battle, Hanneman muses that a mercenary with real battlefield experience would naturally crush an equal Mêlée à Trois against two sides with theoretical experience alone.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Cindered Shadows starts late at night, and the climax takes place just before dawn two days after the start.

F

• Face–Monster Turn: Happens to Lady Rhea at the end of the Silver Snow route, as a product of dragon degeneration taking over her body at the worst possible moment, as well to some of the Church members who happened to have too much Seiros's blood within them.
• Facepalm Of Doom: After unmasking the Flame Emperor, Dimitri freaks out and charges in unarmed. The lack of a weapon doesn't really hold him back, and he counters the final mook by catching their face in his bare hand... and then offscreen squeezes it with a sickening crunch.
• Faction-Specific Endings: The game features a route for each of the game's major factions. While most of the events of Part I play out similarly for all routes, they diverge drastically from the Holy Tomb onward, leading to different stories and outcomes. The player's chosen faction is the winner.
• Fake Assassination: Zigzagged. The Flame Emperor is responsible for siccing the bandits on the house leaders near Remire Village, a plan which was foiled when the intended targets eventually bumped into Jeralt. However, even though the perpetrator claims the bandits were meant to kill all three, not only the reveal of their identity later in the story suggests the Flame Emperor's actual plan could have been having the other two leaders killed while deflecting any potential blame from themselves as they went into hiding, considering the Flame Emperor also ommited to the bandits that the Church would go for their heads after the attack, that said attack also scared away a candidate for a teacher Garreg Mach was planning to hire, and that Byleth being hired as a teacher instead was not part of the Flame Emperor's plan (notably, it's mentioned the Flame Emperor's double agent was the go-to-candidate in such case), it's heavily hinted that the whole assassination scheme was never really meant to succeed in its entirely, if at all. Three Hopes in particular points out that the latter possibility was the intended outcome, as it confirms Ferdinand's suspicion that the Flame Emperor's true identity not only knew there were mercenaries in Remire Village, but that everyone was being led there on purpose once the bandits started pursuing all three House Leaders.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: After the Adrestian Empire's assault on the monastery in Chapter 12 of the game, events of the battle cause Byleth to be sent tumbling into an abyss, seemingly killed. The monastery falls, and all seems lost… but then Byleth wakes up in a nearby village after a five-year Time Skip, having survived after all.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: The game tries really hard to sell the Death Knight as this terrifying One-Man Army that the player should avoid at all costs, but the game letting the player micro-manage their units like never before and the abundance of tools at their disposal means it's very possible to effortlessly dispose of him every time he's encountered, with the most popular method being to nuke him with Lysithea's Dark Spikes. The ease of defeating him combined with his numerous appearances throughout the game (with four in Part 1 alone) result in his ominous mystique shattering pretty quickly, reducing him to a punching bag for the player who survives solely thanks to The Battle Didn't Count being in full effect. The game itself acknowledges this in the Cindered Shadows DLC, having him show up out of nowhere (much to the confusion of everyone present, with some noting how nonsensical his presence in Abyss is) only to get his ass handed to him before leaving and never reappearing again. This thankfully gets averted on the Crimson Flower route, where he fights in the player's army under his real identity and gets to show his skills.
• Fantastic Nuke: those who slither in the dark possess weapons that look and function like orbital bombardment, except they trail purple rings when deployed. Long ago, one such weapon struck Ailell, turning it into the Valley of Torment, which remains a fiery, inhospitable wasteland to this day. Depending on the route chosen, Arianrhod and Fort Merceus can also be targeted with "javelins of light," destroying them instantly.
• Fantastic Racism: The simple fact that Rhea and her family are not human, but are rather secretly dragons in human form, is one of the many reasons that Edelgard and her supporters give for their revolution against the Church of Seiros, as they believe that the dragons are "lacking humanity" and the fact that they control Fódlan from behind the scenes through the influence of the Church. Some of the students will even admit that simply seeing Rhea's true form as a dragon was enough for them to agree with Edelgard (though that comes with the caveat of Rhea's transformation being done in a flurry of blind rage to try and kill Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert). Interestingly, however, while you do make an enemy of Rhea's entire family in Crimson Flower, only Rhea herself has to be killed; Seteth and Flayn can both be spared if the right conditions are met.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • The Adrestian Empire is heavily based on the Eastern Roman Empire, being a smaller reminant of a once much larger ancient Empire that dominanted much of the continent and laid the groundwork for much of its later culture.
  • Brigid is portrayed as a combination of Ireland and various Native American and Polynesian cultures.
  • Almyra seems to be based on a combination of various Central Asian and Middle Eastern empires, particularly those of the Mongols, Turks, and Iranians. The Almyrans themselves are a raucous, aggressive people whose military seems to consist largely of mounted fighters and archers, and they are held back from their western neighbors by a huge fortified wall akin to the Great Wall of China. In the Verdant Wind route, it's implied that the Almyran throne will go to whichever of the king's children proves the most worthy, an inheritance system present in both the Mongol and early Ottoman empires. Cyril, in monastery dialogue, emphasizes Almyra's immense size; various Central Asian empires (most famously, but not exclusively, the Mongol Empire) were noted by contemporaries for their sheer scope. The Middle Eastern elements are most apparent in their names, clothing, and customs; known Almyran names include Nader and Khalid, the name Almyra itself is derived from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, Claude's clothing mixes elements of both Persian and Turkish dress, and his support with Annette mentions a festival where people dance around a fire and yell like animals, reminiscent of Chahar Shanbeh Soori. Claude also notes in his support with Petra that large trees are relatively rare in Almyra compared to Fódlan or Brigid, reflecting the relative sparseness of forests in the Middle East and Central Asia compared to Europe.
• Fantasy Metals: Sometimes sold, sometimes appear at the end of stages, and drops from breaking the armor from multi-square size monsters:
  • Smithing Stone upgrades iron, steel, and silver weapons.
  • Black Sand Steel repairs and upgrades "Killer" Equipment, which, like in previous Fire Emblem games, have a Japanese bent. Katanas, Naginatas, etc. It's likely based on tamahagane, the type of iron used in traditional Japanese weapon smithing.
  • Wootz Steel repairs and upgrades Brave Weapons, a Fire Emblem staple of high-end equipment that usually lets one attack twice.
  • Umbral Steel is from Demonic Beasts and is used to repair Heroes' Relics.
  • Mythril comes from Giant Birds and Church Golems. It repairs Sacred Weapons; usually found from rare monster stages.
  • Agarthium comes from Giant Crawlers and Titanuses and upgrades and repairs evil weapons such as those with "demon" in the name or scythes, as well as Edelgard's post-timeskip Relic axe Aymr.
• Fate Worse than Death: To get rid of Byleth, Solon casts a spell that sends them to a dark world, Zahras, to be trapped there forever. When Byleth's students demand to know what happened to their professor, Solon gloats, "There are worse things than death". Even Sothis admits to being terrified of the darkness when talking to Byleth. Byleth is freed from the trap by merging with Sothis and cutting their way out.
• Feuding Families:
  • House Riegan and House Gloucester have a quite volatile rivalry over the hegemony of the Alliance. It's even speculated in-universe that House Gloucester had assassinated Claude's uncle Godfrey, who was Riegan's heir at that time, to plunge House Riegan into a succession crisis and during the war, Gloucester ends up supporting the Empire against the Riegan-led Alliance. Claude and Lorenz, however, end up having a healthier rivalry for the sake of the Alliance.
  • House Galatea split from House Daphnel because Galatea's forefather disliked his minor-Crested younger brother inheriting the title and winning the hand of a Riegan daughter. He ran off with half of Daphnel's lands and betrayed the Alliance for the Kingdom.
  • House Hevring and House Bergliez don't have great relations because their ministries' spheres of influence clash. Their sons are best friends.
• Fighting Your Friend:
  • Save for Anna and the Ashen Wolves (who are paid DLC content), almost anyone you don't recruit prior to the timeskip will likely become your enemy at one point or another based on the route, thanks to the continent-spanning war between the powers of Fódlan. If you really want to twist the knife, you can recruit members from other classes and then have them face off against their old friends.
  • The most tragic example of this is Dimitri and Edelgard, who were friends as children but separated not long after, and the latter doesn't seem to remember the former all that much. Events conspire in their respective routes that ensure that they will eventually face off against each other, and there is no route where both of them survive.
• Final Boss Preview:
  • On the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes, Thales, the leader of those who slither in the dark, effortlessly blocks one of Byleth's attacks aimed at a disguised Kronya trying to kill Jeralt, and blasts Byleth off a cliff while they are trying to save Rhea from Demonic Beasts during Adrestia's invasion of Garreg Mach, which kickstarts the timeskip.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, Rhea's One-Winged Angel form, The Immaculate One, counts as this. During the first instances she assumes that form, either everyone ends up forced to escape or she damages Byleth badly enough to the point they end up going missing and knocked unconscious for 5 whole years.
• Fire-Forged Friends: On the Verdant Wind route, Claude deliberately calls in the Almyran army to Fort Merceus to fight alongside Alliance forces, who need reinforcements, in an effort to diminish the mutual ill will that the two nations hold.
• Fishing Minigame: Exploring Garreg Mach gives you the opportunity to fish. Bait can be found around the monastery and purchased from vendors. When a fish bites and you choose to reel it in, both you and the fish get a stamina bar, and a circle with rings closing in appears on-screen. Timing the hits well tires the fish more quickly, and getting all Excellents usually nets a more valuable fish.
• Five-Second Rule: In Chapter 3, Hanneman vents about Manuela's "slovenly behavior" to Byleth if spoken to in the monastery. He mentions that he saw her pick up a sandwich she dropped and continue eating it, citing the three-second rule.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: There are several characters who express their disbelief towards the goddess. This can look really strange to Byleth, who has the goddess herself inside of them. The most notable example is Claude, who, while not an outright atheist, says that he personally doesn't believe in the gods, yet it's in his route where you find out that not only was there a whole civilization who helped kill the goddess and her children which still stands by the time the plot starts, but you get to face the man who killed Sothis, who's alive after a thousand years. Admittedly, Claude becomes more open to believing Sothis exists/existed thanks to the things he sees. His lack of belief seems rooted less in the idea that gods can't exist and more in his desire that gods not unduly influence humans.
• Flynning: In full force during the duel between Byleth and Edelgard during their reunion on the Silver Snow route, where they trade blows but never actually hit one another. It's actually justified as neither of them wishes to kill the other at this point.
• Fog of War: Some missions feature maps covered in fog. Fog reduces movement and can hide traps and enemies. It can be dispelled within a larger radius of a character if they use a torch, but each use only lasts three turns and a torch has only three uses.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the opening cutscene, when Nemesis unleashes his Relic weapon, it glows with a red light. In the distance, you can see similar glows from what are implied to be his allies. It turns out the 10 Elites were indeed Nemesis' allies; after killing Nemesis, Seiros let the descendants of the 10 Elites live and settle down around Fódlan. She then had history rewritten to portray the 10 Elites as heroes in order to quell the flames of war and chaos as much as possible.
    • Despite being refered to in the legend as a heroic king leading 10 Elite Knights, Nemesis himself doesn't look very royal — being a half dressed brute — and in the War of Heroes' flashback, his forces seem to consist entirely of Thieves and Brigands with all Knights in that battle being part of the forces opposing him. As it turns out, Nemesis was just the leader of a huge group of thieves and bandits that pillaged the Red Canyon under the manipulations of Those Who Slither In The Dark. Neither him nor his Elites were of royal descent and for all intenrs and purposes they were self-made rulers in the most literal sense.
  • After dealing with Nemesis, Seiros picks up his sword and murmurs, "He's gone now, Mother..." while cradling it. As it turns out, the Sword of the Creator, Nemesis' sword, is made out of the remains of Seiros' mother, who was Sothis herself.
  • During the tutorial battle, if you talk to the three Lords, Dimitri and Claude are clearly worried about the bandits trying to kill them. Edelgard, on the other hand, doesn't seem too concerned about them, being more interested with who you are. Because it turned out that she was the one who hired them to assassinate Dimitri and Claude to make her eventual campaign to conquer Fódlan that much easier with the other two factions' eventual leaders out of the way.
  • On the Black Eagles route, right after the battle against the bandits in the Red Canyon, there is a subtle yet ambiguous hint regarding Edelgard having more knowledge than some about the dragons and/or Agarthans, as well as a hint regarding her views on them. She notes how the ruins they saw there have an architecture different from any era or culture in Fódlan, and then asks Byleth who they think lived there. Depending on how Byleth responds to her question, she may answer by saying "it's possible they weren't even human", and then suggest that their remnants could be influencing the world in the present.
  • On the Golden Deer Route, before the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, Claude will jokingly consider a strategy of drawing their opponents in to the center hill and setting it on fire. Byleth can respond that the plan is unacceptable. Edelgard uses this very tactic after the timeskip against Dimitri and Claude.
  • If you have Edelgard fight Dimitri during the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, she will muse about how things might go if their countries went to war. She's already planning for that to happen.
  • Taking tea with Seteth and examining his hair will have him comment that this combination of hair and eye colors (bright green) is very unusual. Indeed, everyone with hair and eyes of that shade are quite special: Seteth and Flayn are two of the Four Saints, Rhea is one of the Children of the Goddess, and they are all children of Sothis, the Progenitor God.
  • During the defense of the Tomb, the Death Knight will have a unique line when Edelgard initiates combat. He is aware of her identity, and seems to find it quaint that she's fighting him. He also reacts in shock to seeing Mercedes attack him, since she's his sister.
  • Solon and Kronya both voice confusion if they end up fighting Edelgard. As members of those who slither in the dark, they know that she's the Flame Emperor, and are shocked that the person they've allied themselves with has seemingly turned on them.
  • When the coffin of Saint Seiros is opened, there's no body there, but instead the Sword of the Creator. Not only is Seiros technically still around as Rhea, but the tomb is still serving its purpose: the Sword of the Creator is actually made from her mother Sothis' body.
  • Rhea states that Flayn is like family to her after the latter is kidnapped. Flayn is, in fact, her niece.
  • Merely looking at any of the Relics gives clues to their true origins. Whereas most Fire Emblem legendary weapons have elegant and refined designs, the Relics are blatantly dragon bones roughly carved into weapons. Special mention goes to Aymr, Edelgard's signature weapon after the timeskip. Unlike the other Heroes' Relics, its description mentions that it was "designed to Edelgard's specifications", which heavily implies that they're not the "gifts bestowed by the goddess" the Church of Seiros claims them to be if Edelgard was capable of commissioning one for herself.
    • Another hint of the Heroes' Relics' origins lies in how they're repaired. Despite being described as "holy weapons" from the Goddess, they require Umbral Steel to be fixed, a metal described as being "steeped in the power of darkness". Not exactly what you'd expect a holy weapon to be built with. As an Agarthan creation, on the other hand...
  • In Dorothea and Byleth's B-support, Dorothea attempts to get a reaction out of Byleth by tickling them. When that doesn't work, Dorothea remarks that it's like their heart isn't even beating, and one of the possible responses is to say that it indeed isn't. It may seem like a sarcastic response, but come Jeralt's death and Byleth discovering his journal, it turns out that Byleth's heart really isn't beating.
  • In Ingrid and Ignatz' C-Support, Ingrid tries to get Ignatz to turn his drawing of Seiros into an edgier knightly woman. What Ignatz ends up getting is a Seiros that Ingrid describes as a maniacal demigod. Unbeknownst to them, Ingrid's words are an accurate description of Seiros a.k.a. Rhea (who is indeed a demigod) on the Crimson Flower route.
  • Many of Flayn's supports call attention to her odd traits. During their supports, Byleth repeatedly asks Flayn how old she is, and she repeatedly evades the question. And when Linhardt notices that there are a lot of similarities between the legendary Saint Cethleann and Flayn, Flayn is clearly nervous and tries to redirect the conversation. It turns out she is Saint Cethleann and is very long-lived due to her heritage. The first fish the player catches as part of a quest from Flayn which introduces the player to fishing is the Carassius, which the game describes as being connected to Saint Cethleann. Her birthday is 7/12, the same day Cethleann is celebrated. After Seteth names the other three saints, Flayn chimes in and eagerly adds Cethleann as the fourth. Flayn also gets no updated photo despite looking like a teenager post-timeskip.
  • On the subject of birthdays, Rhea's birthday (1/11) is the same day as Saint Seiros Day and Seteth's (12/27) is the same day as Saint Cichols Day. ...They're not subtle.
  • When Rhea tries to calm down Seteth after Flayn goes missing, she hesitates before calling Flayn Seteth's sister. Rhea knows that Flayn is Seteth's daughter.
  • Shortly after you get Flayn back from her kidnapping, talking to Sothis in Byleth's room has her muse that something bothers her about the old man Tomas. She's very much correct, as Solon has replaced the real Tomas.
  • Rhea's Faculty Training teaches several skills you would expect from her, such as Faith and Authority... along with Brawling, which seems a little out-of-place not only for someone like her, but for a Bishop-like class in general. Considering Seiros' No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Nemesis in the opening movie, this serves as a hint that she and Rhea are one and the same.
  • During monastery exploration in Chapter 8, Caspar mentions having seen Edelgard talking to his father, the Minister of Military Affairs, and that he's surprised, since he'd thought they didn't get along. As it turns out, not only is Edelgard planning for Adrestia to start a war, but Count Bergliez will be one of the Imperial nobles backing her, with him being neither stripped of his power nor executed.
  • When the Flame Emperor is talking to a stranger at the end of Chapter 4 (their identities are Edelgard and her uncle, Arundel), the Flame Emperor mentions that the Sword of the Creator is in the hands of Byleth. The stranger refers to the sword once wielded by that "thief," the King of Liberation. The Flame Emperor, meanwhile, seems puzzled by him referring to Nemesis as a thief. Considering that the next scene is Rhea and Seteth telling Byleth about who Nemesis was, there are two completely different stories that hints that history was already fabricated about who Nemesis was. In addition, Arundel seems to know more about Nemesis than most people know, which hints at Arundel's true identity as one of those who slither in the dark that manipulated Nemesis in the past by coercing him to murder Sothis and the Children of the Goddess.
  • In the period leading up to the encounter in the Holy Tomb, an NPC will remark on how an unusual number of merchants and other visitors have been showing up in town lately. These turn out to have been Empire soldiers in disguise, explaining how Edelgard was able to so quickly mobilize a decent-sized force to invade the Holy Tomb under everyone's noses.
  • One of Edelgard's disliked gifts is the Goddess Statuette. This is just one clue that she doesn't think much of the Church of Seiros.
  • The color schemes of the three nations. Adrestia is red, the color associated with the enemy army; it is the unquestioned aggressor in the war that occurs throughout Part II, and is the main antagonistic nation on three of the four routes. Faerghus is blue, the color associated with the player army; the Kingdom's story route is the most traditional of the four routes, and they serve as the primary opponent of Adrestia in the Crimson Flower route. Leicester is yellow, the color assigned to the third army; it is a secondary opponent of Adrestia and only comes into conflict with Faerghus due to someone picking up the Idiot Ball, and Claude has absolutely no personal stake in the war beyond basic self-preservation.
  • Umbral Steel, the material used for repairing Relics, is obtained from the draconic Demonic Beasts as well as actual dragons.
• Forever War: It eventually becomes clear in most routes that Fódlan is locked into one between the Children of the Goddess led by Seiros, who want to revive Sothis and preserve the status quo, and the descendants of Agartha, who want to exterminate all dragons to return their imperialistic, human-only civilization to dominance, currently in the shape of the Church of Seiros and "those who slither in the dark." The cycle is broken in all routes, but exactly how it is broken differs vastly from one route to another.
• Forged by the Gods: It is said that in the distant past, the Sword of the Creator and the Heroes' Relics were bestowed by the goddess to Nemesis and later the Ten Elites in order to have them vanquish Fódlan's evils. Or at least that's what the Church claims. In reality, they were created by the survivors of the Agarthan civilization from the remains of slaughtered dragons, which then were used by Nemesis and his allies to kill even more of their kin to forge more weapons and gather enough power to conquer all of Fódlan.
• Forgotten First Meeting:
  • There was a period of time where Dimitri and Edelgard were friends as children (and even developed romantic feelings for each other). However, the experiments inflicted on Edelgard messed with her memory, so in the present day, she has no recollection of her old friendship with Dimitri. She still carries the dagger he gave her as a parting gift, though she doesn't remember who gave it to her. And Dimitri chooses not to attempt to rekindle their friendship, feeling they have both changed too much. And then he learns that she is the Flame Emperor...
  • As revealed in Dorothea and Ferdinand's A-support conversation, she's initially distrustful of Ferdinand because she believes that he's just like every other noble who is only coming onto her now that she's been prettied up and is a former opera singer instead of a Street Urchin. She attributed as proof how Ferdinand stared at her while she was bathing in the fountain on a visit to Enbarr. In reality, instead of looking down on her, Ferdinand was stunned speechless. In the present day, he does not realize that that was her, so he's unaware that this event was the real reason why Dorothea disliked him even after he attempted to humble himself and is forced to correct the misunderstanding when Dorothea explains it to him.
• Founder of the Kingdom: The Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes end with Byleth becoming the first ruler of the United Kingdom of Fódlan.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The opening cutscene of the game concludes with a series of quick images that showcase the ancient history of Fódlan:
  • A gorilla looking down upon barren ground that is possibly a crater or Zanado canyon, likely (referencing Sothis arriving from "somewhere far away" and gaining the name Fell Star).
  • A huge complex of Greek/Roman-styled buildings under construction (likely what became the ruins seen in Zanado).
  • Sothis in the adult humanoid form she had while living in Fódlan, looking out upon what appears to be vast crowds of people gathered in the complex of buildings below. This likely represents her becoming the goddess of Fódlan (the same scene is shown when Rhea later describes the era in which Sothis walked among the people, though in that scene the image of Sothis herself is absent).
  • The progress of humanity, shown in the form of large ships, and then the shining advanced civilization of Agartha.
  • The final image showing the Agarthan buildings again, this time surrounded by a red glow, likely referencing the war between Sothis and the Agarthans that almost destroyed them all and left the earth "scorched."
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Discussed. In his supports with Byleth, Sylvain mentions that his brother, Miklan, trapped him in a well and abandoned him in the mountains as a child, all because Sylvain was born with a Crest and as a result, Miklan was disinherited from the family. Byleth is clearly disgusted by this information.
• Friendly Rivalry: The three houses have one. The house leaders aren't exactly friends, but they're on civil terms for the most part, and engage in somewhat friendly banter from time to time, while being determined to outdo each other in inter-house competitions. Naturally, this goes out the window just before the Time Skip; Dimitri is hell-bent on killing Edelgard, Edelgard is willing to kill the other two if necessary to achieve her ambitions, and Claude is the only lord capable of brokering a peace with either of them (Dimitri in Azure Moon, Edelgard in Crimson Flower).
• Frustrated Overhead Scribble: When certifying for a new class, a scribble will appear above the character's head to represent them failing the exam if they're unable to class change.
• Funny Foreigner: There's Petra from the Black Eagles class, as detailed in the character pages, and then there's the Eastern merchant, who in the Japanese version speaks with an exaggerated foreigner accent. He speaks normally in the English-language script, though.

G

• Gambit Pileup: Taking the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer routes into account, it's revealed Part 1 is shock full of separate schemes going on at the same time. To recap: Rhea recruits Byleth as a professor and test them during various missions to see if they're the vessel she needs for her mother to return in the mortal realm and reclaim her place as Fodlan's ruler; Edelgard prepares behind scenes to stage a coup against Duke Aegir, become Emperor, and attack Garreg Mach shortly after, all while as the Flame Emperor she gathers intel and assets from the Church; Dimitri investigates his uncle Lord Arundel to confirm whether or not he was involved in the Tragedy of Duscur, all so he may later claim revenge against him and those who started the slaughter; Claude is looking to make connections and find powerful allies that might help him make his dream of a world without barriers a reality; finally, "those who slither in the dark" perform experiments with Flayn's blood late late into Part 1 to perfect the Demonic Beasts intended to be used by the Empire to topple down Rhea and Garreg Mach during Edelgard's future invasion.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Before version 1.1.0, saving the game on the Azure Moon route-exclusive paralogue "The Silver Maiden" while you're in the battle preparations menu would hard-lock the game, forcing you to start over.
• Game-Favored Gender: Played With, as there are small pros and cons to each gender:
  • Female player characters have a larger pool of potential romance options^note The devs have seemingly taken notice of this and had begun to add more romance options for the male player, making their balance almost even., can recruit Sylvain into their house for free even if they didn't choose the Blue Lions, and have access to three gender-exclusive classes, including the Gremory master class, making it easier to level her Reason skill compared to males, as well as Pegasus Knight and its upgrade Falcon Knight, giving her earlier access to flight and an easier way to level her Flying skill. While male characters do have three other gender-exclusive classes, obtaining the Seals to become two of the male-only classes, Dark Mage/Dark Bishop, is notoriously difficult, and the male-only Hero is considered inferior to Swordmaster, which is unisex.
  • Male player characters, meanwhile, have exclusive access to Brawler, Grappler, and War Master, meaning they have a significantly better time leveling their Brawling skill. In addition, the War Master's mastery skill, Quick Riposte, is considered one of the best in the game.
  • The Cindered Shadows DLC decisively tips the balance in favor of females by granting them two extremely useful new classes: the Valkyrie, which is effectively a mounted Gremory, and the Dark Flier, the only flying class that can use magic. As for the DLC's other two classes, both of which are unisex, the Trickster is simply a variation of the Assassin that trades in bows for white magic; the War Monk/Cleric, on the other hand, is basically a Grappler with white magic. This means that not only do the women gain two additional gender-locked classes, they also gained a decent way to level up their Brawling skill.^note They will also need to boost their Faith skill to get into the class, but it's still an option.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist: Byleth is controlled by the player to move around the officer's academy, teach the army battle skills, and potentially recruit more members. As the game is played out on three out of four routes, it's clear the war that sets in halfway is focusing on the leaders of the houses Byleth is teaching. Depending on the route, the story will focus on Edelgard's conquest to end corruption of the church and its supporters, Dimitri coping with his past trauma and helping defend said church, or Claude's desire to find the truth. Averted in the Silver Snow route which focuses on Byleth (though Seteth will act as the former's mouthpiece).
• Gang Up on the Human:
  • In Chapter 1, the mock battle is theoretically every house for themselves, but in actual gameplay, the two houses you didn't pick are part of one enemy faction allied against you.
  • Zig-zagged in the other Mêlée à Trois maps. They will actually attack other enemies - but will generally prioritise your side.
• Gay Option: Male Byleth can achieve a romantic S-support with Linhardt, Jeritza, and Yuri, while Female Byleth can achieve a romantic S-support with Edelgard, Dorothea, Mercedes, Rhea, and Sothis. Subverted in that a male Byleth can S-rank Gilbert or Alois, but this will be a platonic relationship due to them already being married.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The Black Eagle and Golden Deer Houses consist of four girls and four boys apiece (each including their respective House leaders), while the Ashen Wolves House reduces this to two boys and two girls. Regarding the four leading characters (Byleth, who is the Avatar, and the three Lord characters), you can either play this straight by making Byleth female, or avert this and invoke The Smurfette Principle by making Byleth male and subsequently making Edelgard the only major female lead. The Blue Lions House also averts this, being made of five boys and three girls.
• Gender-Inclusive Writing:
  • With a few notable exceptions, dialogue and writing about Byleth is carefully constructed to avoid stating their name (which is customizable) and their gender. Other characters always refer to them by title or a nickname if they have to be specific (they'll occasionally note Byleth is a man or a woman when the context benefits a lot from it, and some interactions can be subtly different, such as Dorothea just outright saying her underwear is missing to female Byleth whereas she is indirect with telling male Byleth).
  • Byleth's guest during teatime is referred to as "they" in text boxes.
• Geo Effects: Different types of terrain have different effects on your units: stairs hinder movement of those on horseback, sand hinders movement of all units except those who can fly, and so on.
• The Ghost: Many of the students' family members make no appearance in the game itself but have a huge impact on the students' characters and the plot of the story, such as the deceased Glenn, Felix's brother and Ingrid's betrothed, and Patricia, Edelgard's mother and Dimitri's stepmother.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Two of the Final Boss fights come from seemingly nowhere.
  • Silver Snow: Like in the Verdant Wind route you've beaten those who slither in the dark, but Lady Rhea was injured in the battle at Shambhala. Upon returning to Garreg Mach, she loses control and transforms into the Immaculate One, rampaging across Fódlan. No foreshadowing is given to this fight unlike the fight against her in Crimson Flower.
  • Verdant Wind: You've beaten Thales and those who slither in the dark, Edelgard was defeated just prior, and Dimitri fell at the Battle at Gronder, leaving the Leicester Alliance in sole control of Fódlan. Suddenly, a cutscene plays, showing a figure breaking out of some kind of casing in the depths of Shambhala, and you receive word that a massive army is headed for Garreg Mach. The only time you had seen this person beforehand is in the opening cinematic, as the elderly king Seiros was fighting, Nemesis.
• Gift-Giving Gaffe:
  • All gifts come with a description of who will like them, and most are not universally liked. Hence, you can gift someone an item they dislike, at the cost of not gaining support with them and the item itself.
  • When he was younger, Dimitri gave a girl he liked (later revealed to be his stepsister Edelgard) a dagger as a gift. She was confused and somewhat uncomfortable, but kept the weapon. Sylvain still teases Dimitri for it, while Dimitri doesn't really see the "gaffe," as he considers a weapon an uncommon but perfectly sensible gift.
  • For the past several years, Alois has been giving his daughter ancient coins for her birthday, which he notes she hasn't ever been excited about, and he doesn't understand why because they have historical value. Manuela gently tells him that such a gift is appropriate only for someone who's interested in old coins, and clearly, Alois's daughter isn't one of those people. Manuela offers to help Alois pick something his daughter will like.
• Gladiator Subquest: There is a monthly tournament where Byleth can enter one of their students. Each round won awards a cash prize, with the final round awarding some semi-rare item (usually a high tier weapon or a seal for whatever chapter the game is in). Each tournament is based around a specific weapon or black magic. Ironically, because the rounds are automated rounds of combat and the participating character always is equipped with the lowest tier of weapon (typically a training one), a character's skill with the weapon in question barely matters. This makes characters of the Armored Knight / Fortress Knight class able to win any competition not using magic, as their enemies are often literally unable to harm them due to their high defense, even if the knight can barely use the weapon in question.
• Glasses Curiosity: In Ignatz and Petra's B support, Petra is curious about trying on Ignatz's glasses (as nobody in her homeland of Brigid has bad eyesight, or at least nobody who survives does). Petra proceeds to get nauseous, falls over with Ignatz, and with complete sincerity decides they are like Heroes' Relics that only certain people can use.
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing: It is possible for the very moody, sarcastic, rude, and cynical Felix to end up marrying the relentlessly cheerful, kind, polite, and optimistic Annette.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • In Azure Moon, Dimitri manages to corner the Empire via reclaiming the Kingdom from Cornelia's clutches and has the Alliance join his ranks after saving Claude from Lord Arundel's troops. Upon seeing the writing on the wall and, despite Hubert's warnings and the idea going against what she stands for, Edelgard begins making preparations to become a Hegemon Husk, and uses her newfound form only after Hubert's forces in Enbarr have fallen as one last resort to make the Empire the war's victor.
  • In Crimson Flower, once the Empire has already conquered the Alliance, defeated Seteth's troops during the Church's attempt to retake Garreg Mach and the Imperial Army has begun marching towards the Kingdom Capital, Dedue, in an effort to give Faerghus the odds to achieve victory, seizes the Crest Stones from Fhirdiad Castle's vaults and gives them to the Kingdom army, intending to transform his troops and himself into Demonic Beasts while they ambush the Black Eagle Strike Force in Tailtean Plains, all while going against his liege's back.
• Going Through the Motions: Every character has a pool of actions they make during dialogue-heavy interactions: placing left hand lightly on forehead, putting both arms behind head, placing right hand on hip, leaning to the right with a head tilt, pumping both arms at once... This can become quite jarring when certain characters perform certain animations, such as Rhea of all people pumping both arms in excitement.
• Golden Ending: Soundly averted. While each route leads to a positive future for Fódlan, there is no route that allows you to save all the sympathetic main characters, and each route has unique advantages over the others (Silver Snow reveals the most about Byleth's origins, and allows Rhea to potentially pull a fuller redemption, Azure Moon results in the largest amount of characters who can survive, including Dimitri who dies in every other route, Verdant Wind reveals the fullest backstory of the game's setting, has the most fun/light-hearted main cast, and is the only route where Nemesis and the 10 Elites are definitively destroyed for good, and Crimson Flower results in a shorter (admittedly only by a couple months) and thus possibly less bloody war, allows Edelgard to become more heroic than she would be otherwise, and is also the only route where she survives). The most the player can do in any route is reduce the sympathetic deaths to a minimum. For certain characters that can survive in multiple routes, their personal "best" ending may be limited to one route and said route may cost the survival or happiness of other characters. The creators of the game have confirmed in interviews that a Golden Ending was intentionally avoided, as they knew it would "definitely end up being perceived as the correct route."
• Golem: In this world, golems are giant automatons employed by the Church of Seiros with Lances of Light. Like Demonic Beasts, they have multiple lifebars and can be stunned. The Titanuses deployed by those who slither in the dark have a much more robotic appearance, and might as well be Humongous Mecha despite being explicitly animated by magic.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: On Azure Moon, Claude sends a messenger to Fhirdiad requesting aid to defend Derdriu from the Empire's invasion, predicting that Dimitri will help him even though the Kingdom and the Alliance fought against each other at Gronder Field. His prediction ends up being correct, and the two armies work together to repel the Empire from Derdriu.
• The Good Kingdom: No matter which of the sides ends up uniting Fodlan it is stated that Fodlan becomes a much better place than it was before the war.
• Good Morning, Crono: The game opens with Jeralt waking Byleth up from a dream about Seiros, Nemesis, and Sothis.
• The Grappler: The grappler class. A class that specializes in brawling and hand-to-hand combat, they have very good speed and HP, but lack any good ranged capabilities and have a poor resistance to magic. If not recruited, then Raphael will have this class.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The Sacred Weapon "Axe of Ukonvasara" sounds weird to those who know Finnish as "Ukonvasara" literally means "Hammer of Ukko". For reference, it would be like calling a weapon "Axe of Mjölnir".
• Gratuitous Greek: All dark magic spells have letters of the Greek alphabet accompanying them.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: With the exception of the Golden Deer, every faction engages in morally dubious behavior and/or have to dirty their hands to achieve their ends after the timeskip. There are villainous individuals, but they never reflect the faction as a whole. The sole exception to this is those who slither in the dark, who have the pleasure of being the Hate Sink faction even the more morally-grey characters hate and barely tolerate.
  • The faction you choose to ally with will overall end up mitigating their role in this trope, while the opposing factions may become less gray and more antagonistic as a consequence. For instance, if you ally with Edelgard, she will not be as brutal or cold as she would be otherwise (and outright draws attention to how your support has kept her from falling into such behavior), while Rhea will become more unhinged and cruel due to the traumas of war and Byleth's change in allegiance. Allying with Dimitri will enable him to turn into a savior king, and not turning on Rhea will lead her to a Heel Realization in every route. Basically, whoever Byleth sides with will become the best version of themselves, though there will still be traces of gray remaining.
  • Despite blame being placed on the Crests themselves, ultimately the problems of Fódlan are the result of humans abusing them. The Book of Seiros explicitly states that Crests are a responsibility not to be abused, and even condemns the descendants who craved and abused said power. That said, the Church and the Archbishop seemingly do little to fix the problems that began when humanity craved the power beyond saying they were wrong and trying to instill fair and responsible values in the students of the Officer's Academy, and so many problems arose from the Crest System humanity made that followed. In Faerghus, the problem even becomes inverted. Instead of the Crest-bearing nobility abusing their Crests, they instead take their responsibilities in handling said power for the benefit of many too far, and this leads to Sylvain and Ingrid's problems.
  • In regards to the Church itself, while it is a charitable organization with many good people and deeds to its name, it still contributes to problems in Fódlan, such as inequality, isolationism, and the Crest caste system. In particular, the Church props up the Crests by painting them as divine gifts from the Goddess, which contributes to their coveted status and the ethically dubious means people will go for them, and profits quite a lot from Crests, such as Catherine and her Thunderbrand being used as good PR and using the religious significance of Crest and relics to amass a certain amount of support among the nobility. Rhea herself has amassed quite a lot of power within Fódlan through ethically dubious means, thanks to being a thousand-year-old dragon. The Book of Seiros even preaches that murder and theft are acceptable as long as it is done in the name of the goddess; considering that Sothis is currently indisposed, that means that Rhea knowingly wrote a false holy scripture saying you can kill whoever you want as long as the Goddess wills it, spread it to an entire continent, and then made herself the main interpreter of the Goddess' will on said continent. Lastly, Rhea's ultimate plan to revive Sothis so she may rule over Fódlan and lead it to prosperity is clearly well-intentioned, but it's the methods, namely creating artificial life for the sole purpose of being hosts and using Byleth as a vessel to revive Sothis (which could cost them their individuality; the game is ambiguous on if this was a risk, or if Rhea was aware of it if it was a risk, and never speaks of Byleth losing their individuality) that make her plan gray.
• Gray Rain of Depression:
  • Byleth crying as Jeralt dies is accompanied by gray skies and a heavy downpour.
  • On the Azure Moon route, when Dimitri heads out on what is implied to be a suicide mission, it's raining. Byleth stops him and questions his motives, after which he says he has nothing else to live for.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, when Edelgard cuts down Dimitri in the middle of the pouring rain, she finds herself Trying Not to Cry afterward.
• Great Offscreen War: While the "War of Heroes" manages to avert this via the flashback shown at the start of the game, the "War of the Eagle and Lion" (in which the Kingdom rebelled against the Empire to gain its independence), the "Crescent Moon War" (in which the Alliance rebelled against the Kingdom to gain its independence), and the "Dagda and Brigid War" (where the Empire repelled the invading forces of Dagda and Brigid) play the trope straight. And there's the unnamed war between Sothis and the Agarthans.
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • You can temporarily recruit students from other houses to assist you in the coming mission. They won’t gain any experience while they are with you and will appear as an allied unit; unusually for this trope, they will still take commands from you and build supports with other units, which makes them easier to recruit permanently.
  • At the beginning of the game, all three lords are are playable as they work together to take down a group of bandits. Once a house is chosen in the following chapter, both leaders of the other two houses will never be playable again. The only other way to control them again are through the Cindered Shadows side story, which is stated to be a completely different story mode from the main game.
  • Certain paralogues will feature characters from different houses or characters who may not be recruited into Byleth's class assisting in the battle under the player's control. For example, one paralogue called "Rumored Nuptials," starring Ingrid from the Blue Lions, also features Dorothea from the Black Eagles as an allied character under the player's control (and Ingrid becomes this if you chose the Black Eagles and haven't recruited her).
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Some students or academy faculty cannot be recruited on certain routes. Or in some cases, it is simply more difficult or tricky; Hilda can't join the Black Eagles or receive gifts and lost items until and unless you choose to abandon Edelgard and go down the Silver Snow route instead of choosing the Crimson Flower route and fully defecting to her side. Likewise, Catherine and Cyril won't join you up until after Chapter 11, and only if you remain loyal to the church, unlike with the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes, where they can be recruited pretty early. The only way you'd find out someone can't be recruited is by talking to them at every opportunity and seeing what options you have, and as in Hilda's case, even that can be unreliable.
  • Recruiting students from other houses generally requires having a high enough rank in a proficiency, and/or a high stat. The game doesn't explain what rank your proficiency need to be, nor how much of the given stat they require to recruit them. You can circumvent this by getting their support with Byleth to B rank, but this can still result in some students not being able to be recruited yet, either because your requirements are not enough, or because they simply do not want to. Typically you have to wait till they request to join your house at that point.
  • The support system uses the C-A system from the older games, but Byleth uses the S support system from Awakening and Fates. This can greatly confuse newer fans who think they need to S support two characters, when in reality they just need to get to A-rank to have two characters get together romantically. Also, some supports only occur past certain points in the story, but the game doesn't clarify that and instead says the "bond needs more time to develop", which may lead players to think they just need more support points.
  • Some C-supports can only be seen pre-timeskip, but you wouldn't know it until it's Part II and you get a message saying "it's too late to deepen this bond." Granted, given how most of the C-supports involve the students or teachers during their academy days, it makes some sense, but it can also be frustrating to know too late that an entire chain of supports is locked out because of this and you have to play a new game to be able to get the proper supports.
  • A zigzagged example on the Black Eagles route: If you obtained Edelgard's C+ Support prior to the Pegasus Moon, during the first two weeks of that month, she will mention having to go to Enbarr. Along with the C+ Support, you must go with her to Enbarr in order to actually obtain the option to side with her; not getting the support beforehand, or opting to ignore her/refuse to go to Enbarr if you did get the Support, will lock you out of the Crimson Flower route. The Enbarr choice's importance is telegraphed to the player due to the darkening screen, Heartbeat Soundtrack, and big bold "This decision will drastically change the story" message when it happens; however, the two Support requirements are not. If you didn't get the Supports beforehand, Edelgard will not offer you to accompany her and will leave the monastery alone with no further explanation of what she is up to, which only becomes clear when battle in the Holy Tomb occurs at the end of the month. And even if you get the Supports, the actual consequences of the decision whether or not to accompany Edelgard are almost impossible for the player to guess. At this point in the story you don't know that the reason for the trip to Enbarr Edelgard's coronation, nor that she plans to go to war against the Church of Seiros, so it's not at all clear why this seemingly minor decision is so important, forcing you to either read a guide or make the decision blindly.
  • On the Azure Moon route, post-timeskip, Dedue is lost forever to you if you missed a single, specific paralogue back in Part I. Dedue was going to be executed in Dimitri’s place, but if you played that paralogue, he is instead broken out of jail before that by the people of Duscur you saved in the paralogue. It takes a good thirty hours of playtime between the paralogue and the result, too, so even if you have a save file from before that moment, restarting is painful, to say the least. It does not help at all that this paralogue can be first accessed during Chapter 6, during which you are forced to Explore on the first week and it is entirely possible to skip the rest of the month if you follow the associated events all the way to their conclusion and start the monthly mission early as a result.
  • A similar set of issues occurs with Rhea and her Supports. Unlike the rest of the cast, all three of her Supports are pre-timeskip locked, and you're screwed out of A-rank if you didn't get C and B before Chapter 10. On the Silver Snow, said A-rank is also required in order for her to survive her degeneration after the final map; she'll die otherwise. She can also only be S-Supported on the Silver Snow route. Finally, her Paralogue (where you get the Seiros Shield as a reward) requires her C-Support at the bare minimum to be unlocked; there's no hints for this, and what's more, it's post-timeskip only and not available on the Crimson Flower route.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, Leonie and Linhardt's post-timeskip paralogue, "Legend of the Lake," can suddenly become inaccessible after Chapter 15, even if the expiration date hasn't passed and both are still alive and in your army. What the game doesn't tell you is that the paralogue only remains accessible after Chapter 15 if you spare Flayn and Seteth.
  • Post-timeskip, depending on the route, certain characters can be spared, such as Claude, and sometimes even recruited, such as Lysithea on the Crimson Flower route. You have to defeat them using either Byleth or the main Lord of the route. Nothing in the game tells you this and there is often no indication of who can be spared or recruited, either.
  • Mercedes and Caspar's paralogue is much-sought out by players since it flat-out confirms the Death Knight's identity, as well as why he mentions Mercedes if she fights him in Chapter 4, completing it at the right time and on the right route will unlock an additional scene later on, and can even give you access to the Death Knight's signature weapon. Except for one little problem: it's tied to Caspar. A character who does not have any ties with Mercedes, nor can he support with her, and he is not in her house, meaning you must recruit him and him specifically. While the Death Knight's connection to Mercedes is foreshadowed within the first five chapters, Caspar's is not foreshadowed at all. The closest things you get to hints that maybe Caspar is required are the fact that he reports directly to the Death Knight in Part 2 of the Alliance and Kingdom routes, he'll be on Fort Merceus with him if not recruited, and that Caspar recognizes the Scythe of Sariel in Chapter 6 if you're a Black Eagle. The only way to know this for certain is to have Caspar recruited... in Part I. Meaning by the time you might be able to figure out that Mercedes doesn't seem to have a Paralogue, you already missed out. And this is without mentioning how the only way to obtain the Death Knight's scythe during the paralogue is by having Caspar defeat the titular Death Knight.^note The dialogue which hints so is only displayed in Normal difficulty.
  • In general, post-timeskip paralogues that combine students from different houses tend to fall under this, as you absolutely have to get both of the characters into your roster back in Part I, and no in-game hints are ever provided for the specific pairs needed given they usually can't even support each other. What's more, on the Crimson Flower route in particular, two such paralogues are completely unavailable for plot reasons even if you have the other student recruited. Meanwhile Annette, despite being recruitable out of the Blue Lions house, has her paralogue (and therefore her Relic weapon) locked into that route due to sharing it with Gilbert (who by comparison is exclusive to Part II of Blue Lions), with nothing in the game indicating that this is the case.
  • Managing lost items is a never-ending mess. Each item only gives you a hint as to who it belongs to, and while some do manage to be specific enough (like "native to Brigid" or "interested in art"), and a few are generous enough to outright mention the name (like one of Edelgard's gloves), most are hilariously vague. Special mention to "someone who trains a lot"; variants of it show up on multiple items, and they all go to different characters. The game fortunately lets you Try Everything as much as you want, but it still makes the whole thing extremely time-consuming without checking a guide. This is made slightly easier if you happen to remember who was standing where a lost item is on the turn before. Completing the "Roster Retrieval" DLC sidequest further expedites this by having the item's description display what House its owner belongs to.
  • The Quick Riposte skill guarantees follow-up attacks when the user is below a certain health threshold. What its description doesn't tell you is that is also prevents the foe from performing follow-up attacks, even if they are faster.
  • The Prayer Ring has the Miracle skill built in, which is something the game never outright mentions in its description. It's worth noting however that in the Japanese script, said skill is called Prayer instead, being the only clue the ring in question contains this property.
  • Caspar and Ferdinand are the only recruitable students whose B supports with Byleth can only be viewed after the timeskip. There is nothing indicating this, as the B supports of the others students can be seen during Part I. This can make Ferdinand especially difficult to recruit without a New Game Plus.
  • In non-Crimson Flower routes, during the chapter where your chosen faction invades Enbarr, it's possible to obtain an extra Macuil Evil Repelling Co. battalion as well Opera Co. Volunteers once the main objective is reached. To do so, the player must place Seteth/Flayn and Dorothea/Manuela near the buildings identified by the map as a church and opera hall respectively. Not only does the game never hint at this mechanic, nothing suggests Opera Co. Volunteers even exist besides the fact an enemy Dorothea will always have it equipped during Part II. In a similar and even more ludicrous vein, bringing both characters compatible with their respective tiles near it will also gift the player with a rare stat booster (a Spirit Dust and a Speedwing respectively).
  • Many elements of the Monastery time require deep knowledge of the characters' likes, dislikes, and personalities if you want to get them to like you better. Tea time requires knowing what topics from the random ones given they would like, the Advice Box requires knowing their history or interests based on what advice they ask for, and helping students who fail a lesson requires knowing their personality to know if they need to be critiqued or consoled instead. The game doesn't make any of this easy though, and you have to really look into each character to get it right, with there being times that the game seems to lie about it to the player.

H

• Hairstyle Inertia: Zig-zagged in regards to Dimitri and averted in regards to Edelgard. For Dimitri, he had a crisp, chin-length, feminine-looking bob as a ten-year old, wears a more conventionally short, masculine (albeit stringy at the bangs) style as a seventeen-year old during Part I, and grows his hair back to chin length during Part II, although it's justified in that in three out of four routes, he's an escaped prisoner living in exile. It's also shaggier compared to his childhood style. As for Edelgard, while she's always had long hair, she wears it in three distinct styles between childhood, her teenage years, and adulthood. The lack of inertia comes in that her hair used to be a light brown color, only turning white after being experimented on by those who slither in the dark. The year that Dimitri knew Edelgard would be the final year or so that she'd have brown hair, and he even brings it up to her in the Cindered Shadows DLC.
• Harder Than Hard: Called Maddening in the English translation of the game, which was added with the Wave 2 DLC. In addition to adding more enemies and giving them more skills, higher levels and stats, there are a few new surprises like the Death Knight not being stationary and enemy reinforcements acting on the same turn they spawn.
• Hard Truth Aesop: You cannot satisfy or save everyone. Regardless of which house Byleth chooses or who they side with, they are guaranteed to make enemies with at least some of the playable cast by the time the war begins^note Edelgard and Hubert arguably have it the worst. Even on the Black Eagles route, Byleth still has a chance to turn on them in the end., and while Byleth can convince some party members to defect to their side, none of the routes conclude with the entire playable cast surviving to the end.
• Head Crushing: In chapter 11 of the Azure Moon route, Dimitri finds out the identity of the Flame Emperor, a revelation that he doesn't take well at all. After that, he goes on a murderous spree and slaughters the Flame Emperor's Mooks. One of them finds his end as Dimitri crushes his head with one hand.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In the Verdant Wind route the assault on Fort Merceus is ultimately this. Partway into the battle, the Death Knight begins to retreat, and you have until he reaches the exit to defeat him. Whether you catch and defeat him in time or not, he escapes anyway. Slightly justified in that he also warns you about something that's coming, "something" being an orbital bombardment that completely destroys the fort.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: During the Black Eagles route, speaking with Edelgard during Chapter 11's exploration phase after attaining her C+ Support will have you make a decision on whether to accompany her to Enbarr with no music save for a steady heartbeat. This is accompanied by huge text warning you that "This decision will drastically change the story", which the player then has to confirm no less. Later on, it will happen again after the chapter's battle where the player must decide whether to oppose or side with Edelgard, assuming they went to Enbarr with her.
• He Knows Too Much: During the monster attack at the chapel, Jeralt starts figuring out what's going on and the connection it has to Remire Village, as a displeased Kronya watches from a distance. After the students are saved, Kronya, disguised as Monica, kills him when his back is turned.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The main player character’s name is customizable, though their Canon Name is Byleth.
• Hereditary Homosexuality:
  • Mercedes and her brother Jeritza are both bisexual and can be romanced by a Byleth of either gender.
  • Rhea is bisexual just like her mother Sothis and her (from a certain point of view) grandchild Byleth.
• Heroic Lineage: A large part of the setting involves Crests, special powers inherited by some of the descendants of the legendary 10 Elites and Four Saints of the distant past, who are hailed as heroes for defeating Nemesis, the King of Liberation. Fódlan’s social culture ends up being built around Crests. People’s social status is effectively decided by whether they or their children have a Crest, leading to cases such as commoners trying to marry nobles solely because they have a Crest and not their personal merits, people trying to have multiple children in the hopes that one of them is born with a Crest, nobles looking down on heirs that don't have Crests, or performing potentially lethal experiments on children to give them two Crests. One of Edelgard's motives for becoming Emperor is to eliminate Crest culture and turn Fódlan into a meritocracy.
• Hide Your Lesbians:
  • Edelgard's S-Support and paired ending with Byleth is less explicit about her and Byleth getting married in the English localization compared to the original Japanese text which explicitly refers to them as spouses.
    Edelgard (in the English localization): To think that I may truly call you my partner and equal now...
    Edelgard (the same phrase in the original Japanese text): Let us go (to the new Fodlan). We are now, officially truly together as spouses (and partners).
  • Dorothea's paired ending with Petra states that Dorothea eventually became the person whom Petra loved the most. Additionally, Dorothea's title in that ending is "Devoted Heart", a title that she gets in nearly all endings where she is married. However, despite that their paired ending doesn't mention anything about marriage.
  • However, the trope is zig-zagged in the English localization as female Byleth's paired endings with Dorothea and Mercedes as well as male Byleth's paired endings with Linhardt and Yuri explicitly mention Byleth getting married to their partner.
  • The tropes is also zig-zagged when it comes to same-sex endings and child adoption. In the English version of the game Byleth's paired ending with Mercedes on the Crimson Flower still mentions them opening up an orphanage and raising many kids together but any mention of Byleth and Dorothea adopting children is absent from the English language version of their paired ending even though it is present in the Japanese version.
• Hired by the Oppressor: Subverted. The Flame Emperor forms an alliance with Thales to destroy the Church of Seiros. Said Flame Emperor is actually Edelgard von Hresvelg, who was experimented on and tortured by Thales and those who slither in the dark. Naturally, due to this and their other atrocities, she makes sure the partnership doesn't last, using them as a means to an end and eventually destroying them outright in the Crimson Flower route.
• Historical Hero Upgrade:
  • Despite being hailed as heroes in the present day, The Ten Elites were actually allies of Nemesis in his fight against Seiros. After she won the war, she canonized them as heroes in order to encourage the people to use the power of the Crests. Nemesis himself was also given this treatment, with him simply being depicted as a Fallen Hero and not the bandit he and the Ten Elites originally were, and many of their atrocities, namely killing Sothis, pilfering her remains, and committing genocide against the Children of the Goddess, being obscured by Seiros.
  • The founder of the Kingdom, Loog the King of Lions, was lauded as the paragon of virtue and chivalry, with countless stories about his friendship with his best friend Kyphon Fraldarius and his tactician Pan. A report in the Abyss reveals that Pan was one of those who slither in the dark, and Loog gained his victory through their soldiers and weapons. It's implied that if the Church didn't interfere at the end of the War of the Eagle and Lion, Loog would be an Unwitting Pawn for Agartha's complete restoration then and there.
• History Repeats:
  • The Second Battle at Gronder Field between Alliance, Empire, and Kingdom forces in some routes. Back when the house lords were students, they all fought on the same field, a fact that is not lost on any character as they comment on how this time, they're fighting for real. The movies at the beginning of the two chapters play out very similarly, too, from the opening shot of a hawk followed by a sweeping pan of a cliff and the field to each faction leader signaling their army to attack in the same order. Byleth is shown last, drawing the Sword of the Creator in preparation to fight.
  • What King Dimitri hopes to do by engaging the Imperial Army in the Tailtean Plains, which was the site of the original battle that led to the splintering of Faerghus from Adrestia on the Crimson Flower route. The symbolism of the move does not escape the notice of the Flame Emperor. He fails to replicate his ancestor King Loog's success and dies instead.
  • House Rowe’s role in non-Crimson Flower routes. Back when it was part of the empire, it was given control of the fort Arianrhod with the intention of protecting the empire’s borders. Instead, when Faerghus began to fight for their independence, House Rowe followed suit and allied themselves with them. Naturally, after the timeskip, by the time Edelgard’s war makes it into Faerghus, they’re one of the first kingdom territories to declare fealty to them.
• Holding Hands: A recurring theme on the Azure Moon route between Dimitri and Byleth. After the Time Skip, Byleth offers their hand to a slumped Dimitri, which he refuses. During his Redemption in the Rain, as Dimitri wonders what he has to live for, Byleth offers their hand again, and he accepts it, commenting how warm their hand is. After the final confrontation where he's forced to kill Edelgard, he nearly turns back before Byleth stops him by holding his hand. In the S-support with a female Byleth, he holds her hand as he professes his love to her.
• Home Base:
  • Garreg Mach Monastery, both pre- and post-timeskip is where the player will spend all their time when not in battle. Before the timeskip, it's the military academy where Byleth teaches as a professor. Post-timeskip, it's the center of the anti-Imperial resistance in the Silver Snow, Azure Moon route, and Verdant Wind routes, or the military headquarters of the Imperial army itself on the Crimson Flower route. In addition to being able to train their students' skills during class time it also has various activities that allow for support-building, as well as a market for outfitting students for battle. And you can fish in the pond.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, you temporarily take up residence at an Imperial military camp in Chapter 12 since you're about to invade Garreg Mach. You can give gifts, return lost items, and visit the marketplace, but most of the usual facilities are unavailable.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • The first three fights with the Death Knight aren't expected to be beaten. Doing so anyway gives the Dark Seal which opens up the Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes.
  • Cindered Shadows Chapter 4 has the Guardian Golem, which is way too strong to bring down with your little squad. Instead, your objective is to run.
• Hope Spot:
  • When Jeralt is killed by Kronya, Byleth uses Divine Pulse to turn back time to right before it happened and then tries to stop it. Sadly, Thales warps in the second time and blocks them, making Jeralt's death inevitable as he is stabbed yet again.
  • During Chapter 12, if you didn't side with the Flame Emperor, Rhea attempts to turn back the invading army by turning into a dragon. It's initially effective and sends the enemy running, until Rhea's eventually overwhelmed by demonic beasts.
  • The Azure Moon route twice teases the idea that Dimitri and Edelgard could come to an agreement and put the war behind themselves, but this also fails twice and ends with an extremely tragic scene and the latter's death.
• Hordes from the East: Just across Fódlan's eastern border lies Almyra, a riding-oriented land who constantly attack the Alliance for glory and are held back by an extensive fortification built into a mountain. Claude manages to ally with them through his ties as a prince of Alymra.
• A House Divided: After the war begins, the Alliance is split into two factions: those backing House Gloucester, which supports the Empire, and those backing House Riegan, which opposes it. Claude uses the internal struggle to maintain the appearance of neutrality.
• HP to One: Major bosses cannot be killed by allied units, preventing them from taking experience meant for your units. A killing blow by an ally drops the enemy's HP to 1, and any further blows deal no damage.
  • Area of effect attacks such as Battalion attacks and the Meteor spell can only kill their immediate target, dropping everyone else's health to 1 if the unit would otherwise be killed. Notably, the Staggering Blows used by monsters do not have such limits.
• Hub Under Attack: Halfway through the game, the monastery of Garrech Mach, which serves as your base of operations, is attacked by the armies of the Flame Emperor, prompting a desperate defense or assault, if you choose to side with the attackers — either way, you keep your control over the hub.
• Hufflepuff House: The Golden Deer easily have the smallest stake in the plot out of the three main houses, as comparatively few of its students are of noble birth and the Leicester Alliance from which they hail has the least amount of overall clout, both historically and in the story of Three Houses itself. The Alliance's underdog status is turned completely on its head in the Verdant Wind route, where they not only discover the truth about and defeat those who slither in the dark onscreen (right after toppling the Adrestian Empire at that), but are also the last surviving nation of Fódlan by the war's end.
• Humans Are Bastards: The game provides a perfect example with the ancient human civilization of Agartha and their descendants, those who slither in the dark. Back in ancient times, the goddess came and enlightened them, granting them advanced technology and bringing them to prosperity, only for their hubris to get the better of them to the point they constantly waged wars and eventually tried to kill the goddess. Their attempt failed horribly, but even after losing most of their population, their sense of superiority and blind hatred towards the goddess and their loyal "beasts" persisted, leading to further machinations in the shadows which resulted in the goddess being slain in her sleep and in the genocide of the dragons that traumatized their few survivors, leading to the current state of the world. And in spite of all that, they still keep instigating more continent-wide wars just so they can have their "revenge" against the remaining Children of the Goddess (who they've wronged in the first place) and conquer a world they believe should've been theirs from the start.
• Humongous Mecha: On some routes, enemy units include Titanus, giant automatons with a medieval vibe that nonetheless feel out of place in the medieval setting. They behave like Beast enemies, having Multiple Life Bars and armor and taking up multiple tiles on the field. They belong to "those who slither in the dark," the remnants of the Agarthan Empire, and they're encountered in Shambhala, their base, and in Faerghus, deployed by Cornelia.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: The Hero's Relic Crusher is a warhammer that, like the Hammer, is considered an axe for game mechanics purposes. Its gigantic head is implied to be made out of Nabatean body parts.

I

• Idiot Ball:
  • In one of the first cutscenes, Byleth's first instinct to stop a charging axe fighter is to push Edelgard out of the way and tank the blow. Sothis even calls them out on this before saving them with Divine Pulse. In two other instances, Byleth has ample warning that something potentially lethal is about to happen to them — (Solon's dark magic attack on them after fighting Kronya, and when Byleth falls off a cliff at the climax of Part I on certain routes) — and in both cases, they seem to completely forget about their ability to control time itself (assuming they still had Divine Pulse charges left in those scenes that is).
  • Claude during the Battle of Gronder Field on the Azure Moon route. He knows that there are two other armies in the area; the imperial army that wants to take over the Alliance, and the kingdom army that has no quarrel with the Alliance and a common enemy with the imperial army. However, due to fog in the area, he doesn't know which army is in which position. Instead of holding back and waiting to act until he knows what's going on, he decides to charge in and attack anyone who isn't with the Alliance. The resulting debacle leaves the Alliance army severely weakened.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: After the Adrestian Empire declares war, some noble houses in the Kingdom and Alliance capitulate solely because if they didn't, they would be crushed by the Empire's forces. Among them are House Dominic of the Kingdom and House Gloucester of the Alliance. Baron Dominic is reluctant to fight his family members, Annette and Gilbert, but he feels he must do so because he would be viewed with suspicion if he didn't try. After his defeat, he states he wants to see the Kingdom restored and gladly bestows Annette the Hero's Relic of House Dominic. House Gloucester sides with the Empire because of their territory's proximity to the Empire, and several other houses join them, resulting in turmoil in the Alliance. Once the Empire threat is eliminated via retaking the Great Bridge of Myrddin, House Gloucester changes sides and lends troops in support of the battle against the Empire, uniting the Alliance.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Some characters can have romantic paired endings (implied or otherwise) with other members of the same sex, but can only S rank with Byleth if they're the opposite gender, implying this situation.
• Imperfect Ritual: In the "Cindered Shadows" expansion, Aelfric's attempt to resurrect Byleth's mother Sitri is interrupted before he can get enough blood from the Ashen Wolves, so he uses his own blood to finish the ritual. Unfortunately for him, this results in the Chalice of Beginnings consuming both him and Sitri's corpse and turning them into an Umbral Beast, which Byleth has to kill.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: The missing student Monica von Ochs, the Monastery's librarian Tomas, Edelgard's uncle Volkhard von Arundel, and Faerghus' court magician Cornelia Arnim^note  Cornelia's case is left ambiguous as unlike the others she never reveals an Agarthan form or name are all revealed to be impostors from those who slither in the dark . The characters themselves are never seen and implied to have been killed before the game's events.
• In a Single Bound: Catherine, Rhea, Claude, Byleth, and Edelgard are all shown in various CG cutscenes to be able to leap several times their own height with apparent ease.
• Inexperienced Killer: Your units are fairly new students at a military academy who have (with a number of exceptions like Dimitri and Felix) never been in a real life and death battle before. They all have a special line of dialogue that pops up the first time they kill an opponent during the game. Some take it pretty well, others...don't.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Not in the sense of chests appearing somewhere they shouldn't belong, at least, not entirely, but moreso in the sense of their placement is completely and utterly pointless; In the final battle of Verdant Wind, there are various chests scattered across the battlefield. Their contents are rendered moot as this is the last battle, thus making whatever items within barring potions impossible to use.
• Informed Attribute:
  • The Sword of the Creator is described as being even more powerful than the other Heroes' Relics (with a story that may or may not be true being told that Nemesis once used it to cut the top off a mountain, and Edelgard claiming that with it Byleth has the power to take on an entire army). Its stats are barely better — or in some cases, actually worse — than a Steel Sword you can buy from the armory, and its only unique property is being able to attack at range and having a unique combat art. Its upgraded/true form, the Sublime Creator Sword, has much better stats that do make it one of the better swords in the game, but it's still not noticeably better than the other Relics.
  • The Church of Seiros is supposed to have massive influence and most of the people of Fódlan are supposed to be adherents, but there's little indication of any of this aside from several characters saying as much. Only two students (Mercedes and Marianne) are actually shown to be practicing members, with the house leaders themselves ranging from ambivalent (Dimitri) to hostile (Edelgard). Lorenz makes a show of piety, but admits that he only does so for appearances, and implies that many nobles do the same. The Church has almost no operation in the Adrestian Empire, which occupies half of Fódlan, after the Southern Church was disbanded more than a hundred years before the game started due to an insurrection which most Imperial citizens are still sour over. The Eastern Church in the Leicester Alliance is noted to be struggling for relevance and is more likely to kowtow to the nobility than assert themselves. During the war in all routes, half of the Alliance tries to ally with the Empire against the Church. The Kingdom of Faerghus has the most characters who are actually faithful and seems to be the only place where the Church has any sort of sway.
  • If you speak to Manuela in the monastery early on in the game, she'll lament that the three countries of Fódlan are all war-hungry, never mind that the last major war that involved the entire continent took place over two centuries ago when Almyrans first invaded Leicester. While there have been incidents since then that have crossed borders between the three countries (namely Hrym's attempt to join the Alliance, which failed), the majority of conflicts that have come about are either localized (The Tragedy of Duscur, the Dagda and Brigid War) or with forces outside of Fódlan (the distressingly "routine" battles that eastern Leicester and Almyra have at Fódlan's Locket, and many like Cyril have noted that the Almyrans themselves haven't really intended to earnestly invade the continent in about a century). In the case of the Dagda and Brigid War, while the fallout was quite serious (the loss of Baron Ochs, most of House Nuvelle, Petra's father, and Petra herself being made a hostage), the Dagda-Brigid forces barely made windfall in western Adrestia before having their attack nipped in the bud.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Dedue's Paralogue, War for the Weak. On the surface, it seems to only exist to tie into Dimitri and Dedue's backstory, since you earn a new battalion but no unique equipment. However, properly completing it has major consequences later on, as it determines whether or not Dedue survives the Time Skip. The game still initially convinces you that he is dead, only to have him rejoin your party on a later map, explaining afterwards that he was saved by the Duscur soldiers you helped spare in the paralogue.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Some situations seen in some routes during Part 1 are implied to happen in all paths given their context but with some changes (usually Byleth's imput in it). Some of these scenes are: Edelgard's coronation in Enbarr; Dimitri finding and spying on Thales, the Flame Emperor & Kronya's conversation; Claude secretly watching Byleth's audiences with Rhea and Seteth; and Rhea revealing to Seteth Byleth's true nature and purpose after being pressured enough.
  • Upon witnessing Kronya fatally stab Jeralt in the back, Byleth attempts to use Divine Pulse so they can go back and stop her, but is blocked by Thales. Sothis even calls it "the will of fate" that Jeralt dies.
  • If you choose the Black Eagles at the beginning of the game, no matter who you side with in the Holy Tomb, the final boss is the Immaculate One, Rhea. The only difference it makes is whether you're fighting in Fhirdiad and she genuinely wants you dead (Crimson Flower) or you're fighting outside the monastery and she's been driven insane by her power (Silver Snow).
  • After the Battle of the Eagle and Lion from Part I/White Clouds, Claude always comes up with the idea of having all Three Houses partake on a feast together after the battle, regardless of the House chosen and the battle's victor. To a lesser extent, non-Crimson Flower routes are also consistent in having Claude play a key role in having the Great Bridge of Myrddin freed from enemy forces, even if it plays out with slight differences between routes (while your chosen faction is always the one that takes part of the main fight, in Verdant Wind, "Nardel" - Claude's retainer - and his troops act as a decoy luring House Gloucester's troops away rather than Claude's own forces.
  • No matter which of the titular three houses you pick, you undergo the same missions in Part I (with the exception of defecting to Edelgard's side if you're a Black Eagle, which leads to you playing the final battle of Part I as one of the attackers instead of one of the defenders). On the same tack, if you're not on the Crimson Flower route after Part I, the other routes all follow the same basic plot structure. First you clean up bandits at Garreg Mach, then you defend it from Randolph, then you receive reinforcements at Ailell, then you take Myrddin, then you fight the Battle at Gronder, then you take Fort Merceus, then you invade Enbarr and kill Edelgard, then you invade Shambhala, then you fight the final boss. The only major differences between the non-Crimson Flower routes are Azure Moon detours to Fhirdiad and Derdriu after Gronder and finishes the story at Enbarr with Edelgard as the final boss, Silver Snow gets a bye month at Gronder, and the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes have different final bosses (berserk Rhea for Silver Snow, Nemesis for Verdant Wind). Though Azure Moon has some smaller differences that help distinguish it from the other two routes; one example is that Gronder has a major moment for Dimitri's character arc when Rodrigue dies saving him, which snaps Dimitri out of his bloodlust; the Verdant Wind route doesn't have something like this come the Battle of Gronder Field. Another example is that Dimitri takes Fort Merceus through a straightforward siege instead of the trickery employed in the other two routes, the "javelins of light" aren't sent to destroy the place when the Kingdom army occupies it, and the Death Knight dies here instead of escaping before being finished off in Enbarr.
  • Even Crimson Flower shares two maps with the other routes: Byleth and their army have to take the Great Bridge of Myrddin, where Acheron shows up as an enemy, and later, they have to defend Garreg Mach from invaders. The obvious difference is that since Byleth is on the Empire's side on Crimson Flower, they aren't the main enemies on these versions of the maps. The Great Bridge has to be taken from the Alliance, with Acheron swearing his fealty to them instead of the Empire (and he can very well flee, depending on how the battle goes), while Seteth and Flayn are the main attackers in the Garreg Mach battle (alongside Alois and Shamir if those two weren't recruited).
  • Azure Moon and Crimson Flower both share three locations with each other despite being polar opposite routes. Regardless of which of the two routes you take, you will still visit Deirdru where Claude awaits, capture Arianrhod from enemy forces, and conquer Fhirdiad in Chapter 18. You will also face Cornelia in one of the two shared chapters on both routes. Downplayed, however, as the exact situations in the three chapters differ on the two routes. In Deirdru, Azure Moon has you protecting Claude from Lord Arundel, while Crimson Flower has you on the offensive against him. Arianrhod in Azure Moon puts you against Hubert and, if not recruited, Hanneman and Manuela, and is an optional chapter, being Dimitri's paralogue. In Crimson Flower, you instead face Rodrigue, Gwendal, Cornelia, and Felix and Ingrid if the latter two were not recruited, and the chapter is mandatory, being Chapter 16 of the route. Fhirdiad in Azure Moon is the midway point of the war arc, and pits Dimitri against Cornelia, while Fhirdiad in Crimson Flower is the conclusion to the route, and has Edelgard face Rhea the Immaculate One and her most loyal supporters in a burning castle. This, combined with Crimson Flower also sharing the Great Bridge of Myrddin and Defending Garreg Mach with the other routes, means that the only chapter truly unique to Crimson Flower is the showdown at the Tailtean Plains.
  • Played with in the case of the paralogue "Foreign Land and Sky". While the mission can happen in all paths as long as Petra and Bernadetta are on your team during Part II, the enemy faction and the reinforcements found there will change depending on the route. On the Silver Snow/Azure Moon/Verdant Wind routes, the Adrestian military is the invader, meaning Hubert is the boss, most magic units are Dark Bishops, and a private militia are the reinforcements. Meanwhile, on the Crimson Flower route, the Church of Seiros are the invaders, meaning Catherine is the boss, most spellcasters are Holy Knights, and the Adrestian military reinforces you.
  • Whether you're in Edelgard's provisional camp (Crimson Flower) or at Garreg Mach (all other routes) after the Holy Tomb incident, Dorothea, Linhardt, and Ferdinand will have similar dialogue in both before the attack on the latter place. Dorothea will remark how she didn't think Edelgard would have it in her to raise an army and start a war (though her dialogue after this line is different depending on if you're with or against the Empire), Linhardt will lament how his and Caspar's fathers provide vital support for Edelgard and how they must've been occurring for quite some time without anyone realizing it, and Ferdinand will express uncertainty over his father's house arrest (though on non-Crimson Flower routes, he will also discuss how his family and house have been stripped of all their titles and land).
  • The position of Claude and the Leicester Alliance on the Crimson Flower route is pretty much the same as it is on the other routes. The Alliance is split between the pro-Empire nobles and the anti-Empire nobles, Claude is the leader of the Alliance and anti-Empire, and he's trying to maintain a façade of unity admist much inner turmoil. For the sake of context, the Church of Seiros and the Kingdom of Faerghus have very different status quos on Crimson Flower than on the other routes (on Crimson Flower, Rhea is able to escape after the attack on Garreg Mach and retreats to find sanctuary in the Kingdom; she and the entire Church of Seiros, sans Alois and Shamir if they were recruited into the Black Eagle house, will use Fhirdiad as their new base of operations. On all other routes, Rhea is captured and held prisoner in Enbarr while the Church of Seiros travels across Fódlan in search of her. On Crimson Flower, Dimitri has been crowned King of Faerghus from the start, and his downfall comes from his blindness to Rhea's nonexistent sanity. On all other routes, he was framed for his uncle's death by Cornelia, who incites a coup and essentially topples the Kingdom, turning it into the Faerghus Dukedom; meanwhile, Dimitri's downfall comes from the fact that he's the one who's gone completely insane and bloodthirsty.)
  • No matter what route is taken, Fódlan will be united under one rule by the end. The only question is whether it will be the Adrestian Empire (Crimson Flower), the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus (Azure Moon), or under an entirely new government known as the ‘United Kingdom of Fódlan’ (Verdant Wind and Silver Snow). Notably, this means that the Leicester Alliance will never be around by the game’s end, regardless of the route chosen.
• Insult to Rocks: Sothis compares Byleth charging right into Solon's trap to a boulder rolling down a hill and then says no, even a boulder has more sense.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Door keys and chest keys work on any locked door or chest, and they can only be used once. You can pick up some keys from enemies in a village, travel halfway across Fódlan months later, and use those keys on doors and chests in a completely different location.
• Interface Screw: Used to hide a Third-Option Love Interest. When Byleth is contemplating the decision that locks in their S-support, Sothis appears as "???". Despite the panel being visibly greyed-out, it's still selectable.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • The game makes half-hearted attempts at avoiding this with Jeralt and Jeritza. Certain dialogue options and training with them will raise their support points, but neither character actually has an entry in the support log. Other than training, interaction options available with other characters (such as giving gifts or inviting to the dining hall) are conspicuously missing. The obvious implication is that they won't be around for long — Jeritza permanently vanishes in Chapter 6 in non-Crimson Flower routes, while Jeralt dies several chapters later. Jeritza's suspicious uniqueness is even more obvious in earlier builds of the game — the 1.1.0 patch introduced his training option and support conversations in Crimson Flower after the timeskip.
  • Similarly, on the Azure Moon route, Rodrigue becomes a semi-major ally, yet never joins your ranks, only provides dialogue, and doesn't bond with Byleth at all (Jeralt, despite not being recruitable, can still gain support points via conversations, much like Sothis). Sure enough, he suffers a Plotline Death at the end of Chapter 17.
  • Played with in regards to Dedue on the Azure Moon route. He is Killed Offscreen during the timeskip and is completely removed from the character roster, but the fact that he has a set of support ranks going up to A (which can't be obtained pre-timeskip) and can S-rank female Byleth hints at the possibility of it being a Disney Death. If you completed his paralogue, he turns up alive several chapters later. If you haven't, he is Killed Off for Real.
  • Played with in regards to Edelgard and Hubert if you picked the Black Eagles. During the Holy Tomb encounter, despite getting removed from your character roster, they still have sets of support ranks going up to A (with some C and B ranks not even getting unlocked before the event) and can also S-rank Byleth depending on the gender, which hints they could potentially re-join the party later in the game. This only happens if you have fulfilled the requisites to access the Crimson Flower route branch of the story and choose to keep supporting Edelgard. Otherwise, they will be Permanently Missable for the rest of the game and you will be taken into the Silver Snow path instead.
  • Flayn's status screen lists her age as "??", rather than whatever age she pretends to have in public, spoiling very early that she's no normal girl and is much older than she pretends to be.
  • A character with a Crest has it displayed on their status page, meaning that it's possible to outright figure out some minor support twists simply by looking at them and either comparing them to other characters or looking at the name. One of the biggest interface spoilers that is nevertheless well-hidden is that Jeralt has the Major Crest of Seiros, which you can only catch in the three missions where he's an NPC. That being said, some Crests do remain hidden up to a certain point (Edelgard's Crest of Flames and Lysithea's Major Crest of Gloucester being two examples).
  • Paralogues show how long you have to do the paralogue. While most of them in Part I aren't indicative of what will happen after they become unavailable, Sothis' paralogue becomes unavailable a month before the other paralogues come to pass, giving a hint that something will happen to her. Meanwhile, some Part II paralogues' due dates spoil that a few chapters that were built up to be the final battle, aren't really the final chapter. Mercedes' paralogue, however, becomes unavailable at the end of the Garland Moon (Azure Moon) or Great Tree Moon (Verdant Wind), and her paralogue involves the Death Knight...
  • From version 1.1.0 onward, you can look up Jeritza in the support log. This shows that he is affiliated with the Adrestian Empire, which ought to raise some major red flags once he's revealed to be the Death Knight.
  • Played with in the case of Gilbert. His support log entry, available regardless of your chosen house, shows he is affiliated with the Church of Seiros and has multiple sets of supports with many characters, implying he'll be able to be recruited at some point during the game. However, due to his loyalty to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, he'll only join you post-timeskip if you're leading the Blue Lions, while in most routes he'll abandon the Church so he can guide Dimitri.
  • Subverted with Rhea. Her support log entry, available regardless of the chosen house, shows she can be S-ranked by either Byleth, implying that she'll stick around until the end of the game — but it also reveals the fact that she is not going to join your party at any time due to her lacking stats and not having supports with anyone but Byleth. The latter part is true. The S-support, however, is misleading. Rhea always dies on the Crimson Flower route (and, implicitly, in the aftermath of the Verdant Wind route), and while she survives on Azure Moon, she can't be romanced there. Her S-support can only be unlocked on Silver Snow, which the game never tells you about, and she can still die on that route if you haven't reached her A rank by the end of Part I.
• Ironic Echo:
  • A story example early in the game. When attacking Edelgard in the prologue, Kostas says "You'll die." Later on, before the first real mission of the game, the Flame Emperor, who is actually Edelgard, says "You die." to him before leaving him to die at the hands of Byleth and their class.
  • Many playable characters do this to themselves in Part II, darkly echoing their previous Part I quotes as a sign of the war taking its toll on them.
    Dorothea: [Part I] All roses have thorns!
    Dorothea: [Part II] Only thorns left on this rose...
    Caspar: [Part I] Right Makes Might... right?
    Caspar: [Part II] Might Makes Right!
    Claude: [Part I] Don't hold this against me, okay?
    Claude: [Part II] Hold a grudge if you must!
• Irony:
  • During Sylvain's childhood, Miklan treated his brother Sylvain like dirt because Miklan was envious that Sylvain had a Crest and Miklan didn't. So Miklan steals the Lance of Ruin in hopes of being as special as Sylvain is. In a meta sense, Miklan does get to be special, as attempting to use the lance (which can't be safely used without the Crest of Gautier that Sylvain has) results in him becoming the very first Demonic Beast the player fights. So in that sense, he does get to be special — a special introduction to Demonic Beasts.
  • Sylvain's life revolves around his Crest, his marriage prospects most of all to pass on his Crest during the game. He never has a child with a Crest in his endings. Doubly ironic if he married Ingrid, who is also pressured into marriage over her Crest.
  • One paralogue in Part II, Eternal Guardian, is available in all routes except Crimson Flower. It rewards you with the Seiros Shield, a shield that grants HP regeneration to bearers of the Crest of Seiros. The only playable character who naturally has the Crest of Seiros, Edelgard, is exclusive to Crimson Flower and can never get the Seiros Shield.
  • At the beginning of the game, Byleth saves Edelgard's life from the bandit leader. In three of the four routes, Byleth is responsible for the events that lead to Edelgard's death and is the one who personally kills her (albeit at her own request) in two of them.
  • The Flame Emperor never actually fights you under the Flame Emperor Army affiliation. By the time you finally cross blades, they've been revealed to be connected to the Adrestian Empire, and fight you under that banner.
  • Speaking to an NPC if you explore the monastery during Chapter 2 reveals that one of the reasons the Officer's Academy was founded was to help train solders to fight off Almyran invaders, as it was roughly during that period that they invaded the Leicester Alliance for the very first time. The Verdant Wind route is one of two routes that not only unearths most of Fódlan's history, but is able to snuff out its most ancient opposition — those who slither in the dark, and the Fell King Nemesis — and also reveals multiple truths that allow for Rhea to move on from the tragedy inflicted on her people and the Church to reform. Who is the crux for all of this to happen? Claude von Riegan, a prince of Almyra.
  • During Part I the Flame Emperor has soldiers infiltrate the monastery by posing as merchants and uses them to launch a surprise attack on the Holy Tomb. During Part II of the Silver Snow route, Byleth will replicate this tactic and have the Resistance Army split into several small groups, pose as travelers and reconvene right at the gates of Enbarr for a surprise attack.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, the Nay-Theist faction is the one that receives divine support in the form of Byleth, the goddess' vessel.
  • During "An Ocean View", one of the apostate bishops uses her loyalty to Saint Cichol to justify opposing the heroes. Unbeknownst to the apostates (and the heroes), Cichol himself is fighting against them in his Seteth identity.
• I Shall Taunt You: In every route but Crimson Flower, during the defense of Garreg Mach from Imperial forces, Claude (Verdant Wind), Gilbert (Azure Moon), and Seteth (Silver Snow) set up a fire trap for the enemy. When it's time to utilize it, they taunt Randolph: Claude and Gilbert by mocking his skill as a general and Seteth by demanding he repent for his sins. Randolph is so incensed that he sends his troops forward, and they march into an area of the battlefield that gets set on fire.
• It Seemed Trivial: On the Azure Moon route, Arundel's dying words are to curse Dimitri and Edelgard to kill each other, as they are family. Once everyone regroups, Dimitri's classmates demand to know whether he and Edelgard really are related, and he realizes that he never told them. In fact, in an earlier monastery conversation, he'd asked Byleth not to tell the others about this.
• It Was a Gift: During their childhood, Dimitri and Edelgard spent a year together, becoming best friends before Edelgard had to return to the Empire. As a parting present, Dimitri gave Edelgard a dagger to protect herself (something Sylvain gives him grief about, even years later). Edelgard eventually forgot about Dimitri, but kept the dagger with her even years later (you can see her draw it to protect herself in the cutscene after the tutorial mission). The fact that Dimitri finds it on the ground in a place the Flame Emperor had just left clues him in to who they really are. And after he returns it to her nearly six years later, she attempts to kill him with it as a final act of defiance after her army is totally destroyed.

J

• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Unlike other examples of this trope, playing the other routes isn't required to understanding a single greater plot — it helps shed light on certain character actions and the motivations of other factions (namely those who slither in the dark and the Church of Seiros). Every route tells their own story, but knowing what happens on one route will allow the player to notice a lot more Foreshadowing.
• Job System: The changes to the class system in Three Houses makes it more akin to this than prior games' Character Class System. In previous games, units were limited to predetermined weapon proficiencies, skills, and classes to promote to. In Three Houses, any unit, barring gender or special, character-related restrictions, can promote to any class and master any skill provided they reach the experience level and pass the certification exam. Weapons are not limited by class, so a unit can be an Archer while also using lances. The exceptions are magic, which can only be used by a spellcasting classes; and gauntlets, which cannot be used by spellcasters, cavalry, or fliers. Using weapons or skills that correlate to the class gives the unit more experience in those areas, and certain classes may have abilities that benefit from the use of the preferred weapon (such as the Swordsmaster class having an ability that increases attack damage when using a sword).

K

• Karma Houdini:
  • Edelgard is one on the Crimson Flower route. While Byleth exists to be her Morality Pet to keep her at least somewhat grounded to her humanity as opposed to other routes, she still commits some morally questionable acts in the name of her cause, such as starting a war in the first place, and never goes through a conventional Redemption Quest after ushering Fódlan into a new time of peace, since quite a few of her endings have her vanish from the public eye after handing her title to her successor either alone or with whomever she marries. Interestingly, as far Edelgard herself is concerned, Crimson Flower is the only route where she successfully gets to make peace with herself due to making every sacrifice of hers mean something in the end, while failing to achieve so in the other routes plays a huge part in her demise.
  • Potentially subverted in the case of Jeritza/Death Knight in the Crimson Flower route if you get his paired ending with Mercedes. After the war is over and those who slither in the dark have been taken care of, Jeritza willingly turns himself in to the authorities to atone for his crimes, and he spends a few years in a prison in Enbarr before he is seemingly rehabilitated and allowed to join his mother and sister under his true identity as Emile. Otherwise, he avoids punishment or rehabilitation for his roles in Flayn's abduction and the Remire massacre.
  • Subverted in the case of Thales on the Azure Moon route. While he's never explicitly fought onscreen nor does Dimitri uncover the influence of his group in the Tragedy of Duscur, it's heavily hinted he died under the guise of Lord Arundel during the Empire's attack on Derdriu, meaning he did receive his comeuppance in the end.
• Kamehame Hadouken: The “critical hit” animation for Mortal Savants using magic invokes this trope, shooting the blast from their cupped hands. Unfortunately, only a handful of spells have animations that match up with it. Plus, the only spell that actually resembles a Kamehameha (Thoron), does not use the cupped hands animation.
• Kids Hate Vegetables: Downplayed compared to Felix, but Lysithea complains about eating vegetables and wishes she could eat nothing but sweets. Much to her horror, the much pickier Felix doesn't like sweets at all, but also and dislikes three out of the four vegetable-based dishes (with the fourth having a heavy cheese and fish component). It seems meat is the only food he actually likes.
• Kill and Replace: There are several characters in the game whose backstories state that they were kind and heroic people until they suddenly changed in personality for no apparent reason. It is heavily implied, and outright theorized by Seteth, that they were secretly replaced by agents of those who slither in the dark who can use an unknown means to take on the appearance of at least one other person. The first notable example is Tomas, the church's kindly librarian of 40 years who retired 8 years ago but returned to work a year before the story begins. Eventually, he is revealed to have been Solon in disguise. The Black Eagles student Monica is revealed to have been Kronya infiltrating the school, and Edelgard's uncle Arundel presumably was replaced by Thales at the time records show Arundel ceased to support the church via donations. Lastly, there is Cornelia. We never see if she has a true form, but she is noted to have changed in personality at some point after saving the kingdom from a plague. She also didn't physically age much at all in the many years that passed after that (though this doesn't get attention beyond a remark from Sylvain who says he hasn't met her but expects her to be pretty old by now).
• Killed Offscreen: On Classic Mode, characters who lose in battle before the second half of the game are revealed in the ending slides to have died to illness, died in an unrelated battle, or otherwise went missing during the gap.
• Kingmaker Scenario: Depending on the player's choices, Byleth ends up in determining one way or another who wins the war and control of Fódlan. For starters, choosing either the Blue Lions or Golden Deer at the start of the game automatically determines the victor on the spot. Meanwhile, if Byleth attendeds Edelgard's coronation on the Black Eagles route, they are made to choose whether to side with Rhea and crown the Resistance Army the winners or to side with Edelgard and crown the Empire the winners.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: Completing the Ashen Wolves campaign grants the player access to the Chalice of Beginnings, an item that negates type effectiveness as well as allows the wielder to retaliate from any range.
• Kung-Fu Wizard:
  • Inverted; aside from a few exceptions, spellcasters cannot use brawling weapons whatsoever.
  • Played straight with the War Monk/War Cleric class, who specializes in brawling and Faith magic.

L

• Lap Pillow: After Byleth fuses with Sothis to escape a trap and falls asleep from exhaustion, they're carried back to Garreg Mach. The following scene is of Byleth lying in Rhea's lap, as she sings for Sothis.
• La Résistance: On the Silver Snow route, the Church of Seiros becomes this after the timeskip, officially embracing the Crest of Flames’ emblem as its faction's icon and calls itself the Resistance Army.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • If you get Bernadetta and Ferdinand's paired ending, Bernadetta does choose to marry a powerful noble, and Ferdinand is even the same noble that her father originally wanted to arrange a marriage to — except first, Bernadetta cuts ties with House Varley, so her father doesn't actually get anything out of it (no status boost, and no increased house wealth). So Bernadetta technically chooses the path her father wanted, but her father gets none of the benefits he hoped for out of it, making it a fitting ironic punishment for his abuse. What's more, Count Varley, who'd traumatized his daughter and caused her to become a shut-in, is forced into house arrest.
  • If Bernadetta gets a paired ending with Felix outside of the Azure Moon route, she convinces Felix to marry into House Varley rather than become a wandering mercenary like he planned. Felix, as the heir to House Fraldarius, would normally be considered a good catch — but given the dissolution of the kingdom, House Fraldarius is no more and therefore brings no real benefit to House Varley.
• Last Day of Normalcy: Downplayed example; strange things have already been going on around the Academy and an entire village went berserk at the hands of Tomas/Solon, but the feeling of normalcy isn't entirely shattered until Edelgard declares war on the Church of Seiros and launches a full-scale assault after her invasion of the Holy Tomb.
• Last-Minute Hookup:
  • Support conversations in this game works as a blend between the older pre-Awakening system (C, B, A), and the system introduced with Awakening (C, B, A, S). Only Byleth can actually S-Support, but it happens at the very end of the game, after the final boss in every route. Other characters can only achieve an A-Support, with any actual romance only being mentioned in their paired endings, if they even get past Maybe Ever After.
  • Exaggerated with Sothis. After being almost completely silent the entire game after fusing with Byleth in Part I, before the final battle when you ask yourself if there is anyone you love, there is a seemingly greyed out option that is just "???" though clearly with Sothis's portrait. If you select this option, she suddenly reappears during the ending and professes her love for you.
• Last-Second Ending Choice:
  • Inverted. The most important story decision, picking the house Byleth will teach, happens in the beginning of the story and locks you into a specific route for the rest of the game.
  • Subverted with the Black Eagles route as the choice to side with Edelgard or Rhea occurs roughly halfway into the story.
• Last Villain Stand: Mixed with a small dose of Last Stand due to the game's Grey-and-Gray Morality:
  • In the finale of the Azure Moon route, once Dimitri has cornered Edelgard by taking control of the Kingdom and Alliance territories, taken over Fort Merceus, seized Enbarr, and killed both the Death Knight and Hubert, the Adrestian Empire and the remaining troops who slither in the dark lock themselves into the Imperial Palace and prepare for one last fight against the Faerghus military. As a last resort, Edelgard also ends up discarding her humanity by transforming into Hegemon Edelgard.
  • In the finale of the Crimson Flower route, Rhea boards herself up in Fhirdiad along with the remains of the Knights of Seiros and the Faerghus military to fight the Black Eagles Strike Force and the Adrestian Empire to the bitter end before transforming herself into the Immaculate One. Rhea's sanity by this point has also left the building entirely and she orders for the Knights to set Fhirdiad on fire out of spite, not only forcing a Battle Amongst the Flames but also condemning countless civilians to burn.
• Late Character Syndrome: Three Houses is very much a game that rewards investing in your units, and this means that late joiners tend to start off at a significant handicap due to missing out on opportunities to master intermediate classes like Brigand/Mage and Archer and gain useful mastery skills. The only real exceptions are Sylvain (who joins for free if Byleth is female and has a much smaller gap to close) and Jeritza (who has significantly higher skill ranks than one might expect for someone joining in the midgame and Mastermind to help him further).
• Later-Installment Weirdness:
  • Despite being protagonists of noble birth, there's nothing requiring your chosen lord to actually be a Lord. While the "Lord" class is unique to the three heads of house, the mission-critical protagonists, including the avatar can follow a generic class-line without ever being a Lord. All the house leaders and the avatar have unique advanced classes that sub in for promoted Lord forms as well, but these too are not mandatory at any point.
  • This is the first installment where none of the main lords are primary sword users, although all three of them have a strength in swords. The avatar of the game is the main sword user, in this case. It is also the first installment to have a lord who specializes in bows.
  • This is the only Fire Emblem game where Class Change is determined by weapon certification requirements (for example, Mercenaries needing a Sword level at C or higher). Also, units do not automatically change class if they pass the exam. For that matter, anyone can access any class that isn't gender or character restricted; the only deciding factor is the unit's level (for example, a unit needs to be at level 5 to access the Beginner Classes and level 30 to access the Master Classes).
  • All of your initial units (and Cyril) start out in one of two base classes, either Noble or Commoner, that doesn't specialize in anything but can use everything. Other then the former's slight boost in Charm growth, they're identical classes.
  • When changing class, barring certain restrictions^note Gauntlets cannot be used when riding/flying or by mages, and only certain classes can use magic, usable weapon types do not change; rather, weapon experience will only increase very slowly unless a weapon the class is proficient with is equipped (like, say, an Archer equipping a bow).
  • There are no true class paths like Knight to General, meaning characters can jump to any class the player wants (aside from certain gender and character-locked classes) as long as they have the skill levels needed to qualify for that class. The only exceptions are Dark Bishop, which requires the unit to be certified as a Dark Mage, and the DLC Trickster class, which requires a Thief certification, in order to unlock them. Because of this, you can make every single unit into whatever class you want them to be. If you want an army that's nothing but Pegasus Knights or Bishops, you can do just that if you don't care for a balanced team.
  • Hero is a male-only class in Three Houses, despite being unisex since Genealogy of the Holy War.
  • Three Houses lacks "true" character archetypes that are found throughout other installments - such as the Cain and Abel, two Cavaliers that join early on, or the Jagen, a Paladin who joins early on as a powerful Crutch Character but is not very useful later due to poor growths - due to the majority of units joining in the same time-window, under the same context, with the same beginner classes, and being fully customizable. However based on personality, skills, weapon proficiency, and class if they're NPCs, some are clearly "inspired" by the archetypes.
  • Although magic does have set uses, it does not use weapon durability, meaning there are no need for Tomes. Instead, magic uses are restored for each battle. On that note, whilst characters have personalized lists of magic they learn like in Gaiden and its remake Shadows of Valentia, spells learned are tied to the Reason and Faith skill levels, and increasing those levels will also increase the number of times a spell can be cast. Certain classes will boost the amount of times spells can be cast even further depending on what the class is geared towards; more magic-centric classes such as Bishop or Gremory will naturally allow for more casts compared to a hybrid class such as Dark Knight.
  • Leveling up requires progressively higher amounts of experience, instead of the traditional "100 EXP per level with experience scaling" that's been around since the first game. Your characters also lack the traditional class system of each class having a set level cap; instead, each character has a set max level that can be reached regardless of class.
  • While the weapon ranking system is still fairly similar to the E-A leveling system that has been used since Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, there are now twice as many rankings compared to previous games (ranking from E goes to E+ instead of straight to D, for example). The S-Rank is also back, peaking even higher still at S+, and unlike previous games, where you can only have one S-Rank per weapon type, you can have multiple S and S+ ranks on a single unit, although this is generally difficult to do outside of a New Game Plus. New magic spells are obtained by leveling the assoicated magic skills, and the majority of Combat Arts and Skills are obtained by weapon ranks compared to Class Mastery. This is also the first time the series uses Weapon Ranks outside of weapons themselves — you can now obtain ranks and skills from leveling armor usage, horseback riding, and flying.
  • The "Skill" stat is renamed "Dexterity," although its function is otherwise identical to past installments. This game also introduces a new stat, Charm, which influences the might and accuracy of offensive Gambits.
  • This is the first (and so far only) Fire Emblem game where support points can be gained based on choices you make during dialogue outside of battle. Similarly, you can lose support points with certain characters by making certain dialogue decisions, the first time in the series you can actually lose support points.
  • This game very noticeably bucks the franchise-wide trend of 90% of characters having Only One Name, likely due to the academic setting. The characters who don't have family names tend to be from very remote places, such as Cyril (from an out-of-the-way settlement in western Almyra) and Hapi (from an isolated village in the southern portion of the Empire), or they're not human, such as Seteth, Rhea, and Flayn. Catherine appears to be a mononym, but she's actually a Faerghus-born noblewoman who discarded her name after being falsely accused of participating in the Tragedy of Duscur; her birth name is Cassandra Reubens Charon. Byleth also has a surname (Eisner), but it's almost never applied to them due to both Jeralt's penchant for secrecy and for the fact that the player can rename them.
  • Finally, this is the first core Fire Emblem title to not be primarily developed by Intelligent Systems, who opted to take on a supervisory role while Koei Tecmo took on actual development duties. The studio change likely explains why so many long-standing mechanical traditions were broken for this installment.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • If you have Bernadetta in your party between the last two chapters and speak to her in the Monastery, she'll express worry that "Everyone's acting like this is leading up to the final chapter in a book or something."
  • Seteth's retreat quote, especially if heard on the Silver Snow path (where he has Plot Armor) sounds like he's acknowledging his own story significance.
    Seteth: I cannot allow myself to fall here... My role is too important.
    
• Leave No Witnesses: Played for laughs during Bernadetta and Sylvain's C support: Sylvain reads a manuscript that she had written and accidentally left in the library, and she's so horrified that she goes catatonic while Sylvain is praising her writing. After he leaves, Bernadetta briefly considers burning the manuscript, and Sylvain too.
• Left Hanging: By admission of Word of God, both Azure Moon and Crimson Flower's stories end with some plot threads unresolved, both of which would later be adressed in some form in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:
  • In Azure Moon, the Tragedy of Duscur is the motivational crux for Dimitri and a major episode which impacted every other member of the Blue Lion House, both directly and indirectly, and while its mystery slowly unravels as Part II; goes on, the story wraps up without the truth behind its culprits being uncovered or with any of the affected reaching closure on it.
  • Conversely, in Crimson Flower, the Empire's battle against those who slither in the dark falls into this due to the plot point not being a major focus of the story. Various endings and even one S-Support (Byleth & Jeritza's) allude the struggle takes place and is solved later on, but unlike Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, the conflict is never adressed in gameplay proper.
• Lethal Lava Land: Aileil, the Valley of Torment, is a craggy location perpetually bathed in lava where ruins of a village can be seen around it. In-universe, is it said to have been born when the goddess sent a pillar of light to punish the sinners residing in it. On the Verdant Wind route, it is revealed the place was created after a “javelin of light” from those who slither in the dark failed to hit Garreg Mach due to a source of power residing in the Holy Tomb, redirecting the missile from its original target into the village.
• Level Grinding: Some optional battles have a time cost of zero on Normal difficulty, meaning they can be repeated ad infinitum for all the experience the player cares to grind out. Averted on Hard, where every battle has a time cost of at least one, placing a hard cap on the amount of experience available.
• Levitating Lotus Position: Mortal Savants that dodge a close-range attack while equipping magic will briefly assume this pose while counterattacking.
• Life Drain:
  • The Nosferatu spell is learned by a unit when their Faith skill is leveled, and heals the user for a portion of the damage dealt to the enemy.
  • Byleth’s Crest of Flames has a chance of healing them for a portion of the damage dealt with an attack when it activates.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Each of the reunion scenes has light and shadow emphasized to show Byleth and another’s position in the story, the path they will walk, as well as later scenes that show a Light-Dark dynamic in the endings and deaths of characters.
  • The Silver Snow path has Byleth reunite with Edelgard, but now as sworn enemies. After briefly explaining their whereabouts to Edelgard, the two then clash blades under the dark of night as moonlight basks both. As they solidify their opposition, the fight suddenly comes to an end once their blades reach each other's throats, with Edelgard quietly leaving into the dark while avoiding the moonlight. After the final battle, the Immaculate One flies as the light shined upon her casts her body in shadow, heading for the darkened hall of the monastery where she normally resides. Her dragon form then vanishes in light as white feather-like scales fall when Byleth catches the Rhea framed in darkness. Her face, now half cloaked in both light and dark, now smiles before passing away/falling asleep. The outside of Garreg Mach is then depicted in the sun's golden rays.
  • On Azure Moon, Byleth encounters Dimitri. Initially in the dark just like him, they enter the light as it covers their frame while Dimitri despairs on the other side, completely surrounded by the dark until light softly touches his face. Byleth then reaches out their hand for Dimitri, who declines their offer. After the final battle with Hegemon Edelgard, the throne room is depicted shrouded in shadow, with her monstrous visage disappearing as she looks up to see Dimitri holding out his hand, light pouring in as he attempts to welcome her. After failing to kill him with the dagger a moment later, the room becomes dark again, and Edelgard and the bloody weapon are left behind in the dark as Dimitri and Byleth exit the throne room, embracing the light outside.
  • Verdant Wind has Byleth surrounded by the dark, only to be welcomed by Claude, who is gazing into the light of dawn surrounding him. He then welcomes them as the light of the sun grows greater and shines on both. The final battle has the two face down Nemesis under the bright light of the sun, all three framed in light and dark. Both work together to take Nemesis down, and the wounds that kill him release red and white light. The two take the other's hand in friendship under the triumphant sun's rays after vanquishing the revived King of Liberation.
  • On the both Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, Edelgard's death cutscene shows her still in the darkened throne room, with light sprinkling in from behind Byleth as she begs Byleth to kill her. With their resolve strengthened, the light basks them from the windows as their front is covered in shadow, right before Byleth silently strikes Edelgard down and the screen turns completely black for a moment.
  • On Crimson Flower, Byleth reunites with Edelgard. The scene cuts to a shot where Edelgard and Byleth embrace each other under the light from a window. Their bodies positioned to show the shadows cast by the light, giving a blend of light and dark. After the battle at the Tailtean Plains, a shot displaying Dimitri's final moments have him under the dark rainclouds, with a part of him in the light of the still cloudy sky above Edelgard. Meanwhile, Edelgard is basked in light around her head and Aymr, while her lower half is more and more consumed by shadow. Both are shrouded in each as Dimitri curses her one last time before she ends his life. Meanwhile, the final battle showcases Edelgard and Byleth fighting and putting the Immaculate One down for good during the darkness of night, with the only source of light being the scorching flames around them.
• A Lighter Shade of Gray: The faction you choose will generally be the more sympathetic one after the Time Skip. Claude in general is also less morally ambiguous than the other two Lords.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: The game has two such duos:
  • House leader and future empress Edelgard is assertive and ambitious, but outgoing and idealistic, and is associated with bright red. Her right-hand man Hubert deliberately cultivates a villainous chancellor-type image, complete with all-black clothing, and is creepily interested in poison.
  • Dimitri is a model Prince Charming, friendly and humble to all he encounters. His loyal knight Dedue is reserved and intimidating, member of an ethnic group highly distrusted within Faerghus, and would not hesitate to dispose of anyone who might stand in Dimitri's way.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • Strength-oriented characters are by and large more dependable than magic-users in the early game, owing to their superior HP, Defense, and especially weapon durability. Mages, on the other hand, eventually learn Skills that double their magic uses, white magic that can support their allies to game-breaking effect, and spells that can do things like snipe an enemy from 10 spaces away, leave them with a debuff to make things easier for allies, and be a "Screw you, I win!" button against the Death Knight. By endgame, physical fighters like Felix or Hilda are no less viable, but spellcasters will end up leaving them in the dust in terms of raw utility. Well female spellcasters that is, since offensive male spellcasters suffer heavily from low-mobility classes, making it much harder for them to contribute as much as their female counterparts.
  • This is completely turned on its head on Maddening Mode: the enemy's inflated stats, combined with the mages' low durability, low strength and heavy spells that prevent them from doubling anything that isn't armored makes them impractical in the long run. Even Lysithea will need a few Spirit Dusts dumped on her to let her keep up. Most offensive mages have to switch to physical classes and make use of faire-boosted magical combat arts and weapons to stay relevant, while physical fighters are less bothered by this, can get stacked enough to take down even armored enemies with little trouble and have a much easier time using Wrath/Vantage builds due to their higher durability.
• Living with the Villain:
  • Garreg Mach denizens Monica and Tomas are actually members of "those who slither in the dark."
  • Edelgard and Jeritza are actually the Flame Emperor and the Death Knight, respectively. Likewise, Hubert, being Edelgard's retainer, is a willing accomplice of the former.
• Lodged Blade Removal: At the end of the Azure Moon route, Edelgard, seemingly in a last ditch effort to kill Dimitri, throws the dagger he gave her at him, piercing him in the chest. This fails to kill him, however, and Dimitri quickly pulls the dagger out of his chest with seemingly little injury. Given that he was wearing armor at the time, it's possible that the dagger didn't go far in enough to do any major damage.
• Lonely Piano Piece:
  • Instead of of a bombastic battle theme, the Thunder version of the Silver Snow Route's Final Boss theme "A Funeral of Flowers" is this, for a very good reason.
  • "A Forlorn Figure", which plays in Part 1 when visiting Jeralt’s quarters immediately following his death, when visiting the Holy Tomb as part of New Game Plus privileges with only Sothis or the alternate-gender version of Byleth once they fuse with her for company, and on the Azure Moon route, when Mercedes cradles the Death Knight/her brother Emile as he dies in her arms.
• Long-Lived: Humans who are initially endowed with Crests gain lives that can span centuries with little or no external aging past the point where they first received the Crest. It's unclear if subsequent generations who inherit the Crest gain any notable lifespan boost, but it's clearly not comparable at least to the first generation.
• Long Song, Short Scene: All of the "Thunder" variants of the map themes are full re-arrangements of their respective "Rain" versions, but are only heard during battles, which rarely last more than half a minute. The Thunder version of Silver Snow's final map theme is a particularly notable case of this, as instead of Orchestral Bombing or heightened percussion, it's a soft Lonely Piano Piece variant of its Rain version that could easily stand as a song in its own right.
• Lord British Postulate:
  • The Death Knight is the most notable example of this — whenever he appears on the map, you're advised to avoid him by the characters onscreen. They're not wrong. Because of this, you don't actually need to defeat him — even in Chapter 6 (where his defeat is stated as a win condition), you can simply kill everyone but him. However, it is possible to defeat him.
  • In the penultimate chapter of the Crimson Flower route, Dedue appears on the stage and will turn himself into a Demonic Beast to defeat you. If you manage to make it over to him and defeat him before it happens (or drop a couple of Meteors on his head from out of his range), he won't turn into a Demonic Beast and will have different defeat quotes. Dimitri will even say different things, too.
  • Nemesis, the Final Boss of Verdant Wind route, is expected to be fought once his 10 commanders have already been defeated, as their presence alone rise his stats (bar HP) to sky-high levels. Despite this, with some careful planning, raw power, and even sheer luck, it's very much possible to bypass his boosts and defeat him anyway, and thus bring a quick end to the map.
• Lost in Translation:
  • In an interesting inversion, Three Houses was actually the game's original name in both Japanese and English. However, the name didn't have the same cultural connotations in Japanese, and attempts to translate it always got it as either literal houses, or clans, as Japan simply didn't have the practice of separating students into houses nor any similar system.
  • During the scene where Hanneman explains the circumstances behind Monica's kidnapping, the international script omitted the detail Monica had initially gone missing on the way to visit her home right before her graduation at Garreg Mach.
  • In Catherine and Shamir's A-support, the latter says in Japanese that same-sex marriage is more common in Dagda than in Fódlan, while in English she says that the two of them should marry each other if Catherine's worried about them losing each other.
  • In Sylvain & Mercedes's A-Support, Mercedes mentions at one point she feels Sylvain doesn't care about women who throw themselves at him just because he has a Crest. Meanwhile, in the original Japanese text, what Mercedes actually says is she believes Sylvain's hatred towards women actually originates from a place of fear.
  • Related: Edelgard's execution scene in the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes, the pacing of the lines provide ground for alternate interpretation. In the Japanese version, there is a noticeable pause in Edelgard's speech before Byleth swings the blade, implying she is done talking and resigned to fate, whereas in the English version, Byleth bringing the sword down coincides with Edelgard's final word, creating a borderline Killed Mid-Sentence effect. This would imply that, in the English-version, Byleth is less forgiving and more furious with her, whereas in Japanese, Byleth could be seen as either more forgiving, more sympathetic, more courteous, or simply better in control of themselves.
  • A few examples from the Black Eagles route:
    • Hubert and Hanneman's C-Support contains a small but critical omission: while Hanneman explains how Ionius IX aimed to consolidate power to himself, the Japanese script mentions he also desired to remove the consort kin system (the one which allowed the Emperor to have multiple consorts). Given how Edelgard mentions her mother was exiled a few years after she brought her daughter to the world due to a "political strife", how she was one of the few siblings who ended up bearing a Minor Crest of Seiros, and how there are rumors in-universe she was the consort Ionius loved the most, this suggests Anselma/Patricia was likely exiled by Ionius's other wives because of the special treatment she received, which explains why Ionius was determined to reform a system which in theory should have benefited him.
    • There is a moment in the route's version of Chapter 8 in which Edelgard reacts to the destruction of Remire village and calls it 'revolting'. If you choose to agree with her phrasing, she is suddenly insulted by the choice of words and you lose support points. The original Japanese text makes it clearer that Byleth parroting her opinion takes on a mocking tone, hence her negative reaction.
  • Some examples from Blue Lions:
    • In the infamous parley scene on Azure Moon, Edelgard's point is actually about Dimitri having Byleth's support, friends, etc. and Edelgard not having them, rather than talk about the poor vs. the rich.
    • Dimitri's clear offer of mercy to Edelgard in the cinematic seems to contradict with his English line earlier in the battle map where he states she deserves no compassion (as well as his English lines before the fight). The Japanese line is clearer in that regard, wherein Dimitri is instead stating something like that he won't disrespect Edelgard's path by showing her pity, given he sees it as a result of the path she had chosen to take.
  • On the Golden Deer route, the Flame Emperor in the English script talks about the Crest Stones being poison rather than medicine, but the meaning of the Japanese saying/idiom this is translated from is actually about how if something isn't used at all, then it can be neither medicine nor poison, with its meaning being about how it should be put to use, which Edelgard does on all routes except Crimson Flower.
  • A few from the Crimson Flower route:
    • A minor NPC during monastery exploration in Chapter 13 mentions that after the timeskip, Edelgard's wellbeing had increased just as the people in the Empire had gotten used to the idea of fighting the Church. In the Japanese version however, what's said instead is that the Adrestians eventually getting used to their predicament was likely possible due to Edelgard's information efforts (as in, the manifesto she and Hubert briefly mentioned one chapter prior).
    • In The Great Bridge Coup's introductory narration, Dimitri is stated to "swear fealty" to Rhea. While that isn't an entirely incorrect translation, the concept can lead to believe Dimitri becomes Rhea's vassal, when in Japanese it's more clear both are cooperating and see themselves as equal allies.
    • Cornelia's dying speech isn't her gloating about how things have gone according to plan despite Edelgard and the Black Eagles killing her. It's her being impressed that Edelgard Out-Gambitted her. The translators mixed up the Japanese words for your and our, hence the mistake.
    • Edelgard's exchange with Dimitri at the Tailtean Plans was originally her asking if killing more will make Dimitri happy, rather than blaming him for defending his homeland against invasion.
• Lost Technology: An attempted invocation of the trope: the Agarthans were nearly wiped out after they advanced in technology and attempted to kill the Goddess and her Children. The technology was meant to be destroyed along with them, but the remnants of Agartha took what was left and fled underground, becoming "those who slither in the dark."
• Love Confession: Nearly every romantic S support involves Byleth and their love interest meeting at the Goddess Tower and confessing their love for each other and proposing marriage. Depending on the character Byleth meets, the confessions range from hammy to tearful.
• Loyalty Mission: Paralogues work this way this time around. They put one or two units in the spotlight for one map and reward you with a powerful weapon and/or battalion related to them. In addition, completing Dedue's saves his life when the timeskip comes around.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: While shields on classes such as Armored Knight and Hero have been cosmetic in previous games in the series, in Three Houses shields are equippable items that give stat bonuses to a unit's defense, while special shields give other bonuses. Felix in particular gains use of the Aegis Shield and Dark Aegis Shield, which when used by him has a chance to halve damage he takes.

M

• MacGuffin Title: The Crest of Flames is apparently another variation of the "Fire Emblem" which has taken different forms in previous titles.
• Magic Staff: Staves have appeared in other Fire Emblem titles as healing sources and status ailment inflicters, but in Three Houses, they're equippable by mages to either increase magic damage dealt with magic attacks, increase the range of magical attacks, or increase the amount of healing done with healing spells.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Some students (including all three House Leaders and Byleth) have Budding Talents, which are skills they are either neutral or outright bad at. However, if the player takes the time to invest in those skills, then they'll turn into a proficiency and even give the character a new ability or combat art. They even open up the character to new classes they might not have tried before.
  • Magic in general. At the start of the game, it's fairly weak and comes with very limited uses per map. However, as you level up and begin specializing in the magical classes, it starts to shine as they gain abilities that boost the damage it deals, and also double the number of uses they have, making a well-raised caster unit an absolute damage monster.
  • Bows. Early on, while useful for chip damage, they lack the ability to counterattack at melee range, which can leave archers dead weight on enemy phase. However, upon reaching C rank, every character learns Close Counter, fixing this issue and rendering weapons such as Hand Axes and Javelins obsolete. This is especially noteworthy on Maddening, where most enemies possess a _breaker skill, but Bowbreaker is noticeably absent.
• Magitek: Technology that appears to run on a combination of magical and mechanical means is present in the setting, most notably the technology belonging to those who slither in the dark. What we see them use includes ballistic missiles that appear to use magic to pinpoint targets (the purple rings that mark each missile's path) and large automatons that slightly resemble fully armored knights that can fire beams as a ranged attack.
• Make an Example of Them: When Rhea sends Byleth's class to help Catherine and the other Knights of Seiros quash Lord Lonato's rebellion against the Central Church, she explicitly reveals this trope to be a reason why she sent them.
  Rhea: This mission should prove useful in demonstrating to the students how foolish it would be to ever turn their blades on the Church...
• Malevolent Masked Men: Both the Flame Emperor and the Death Knight qualify, as they perform villainous acts during the story while concealing their identities with their masks.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage:
  • Zig-zagged. Claude hides the fact that he has an Almyran father due to the damage it can do to his reputation if it becomes public knowledge which indicates that a significant part of the people of Fodlan look down on relationships with Almyrans. However, characters like Dedue (who is from Duscur), Petra (who is from Brigid), and Shamir (who is from Dagda) can end up getting publicly married to a Fodlanese character with seemingly little issue.
  • Downplayed if Petra marries Byleth as their ending card states that the people of Fodlan were initially skeptical of their union but eventually came to accept her. Similarly, if she gets a paired ending with Dorothea their ending card states that the people of Brigid were initially skeptical of the latter but warmed up to her over time.
• Major Injury Underreaction: On the Azure Moon route, after defeating Edelgard, Dimitri attempts to reconcile with her, only to get a dagger in the shoulder in a last act of defiance. He simply yanks the weapon out, drops it on the ground, and walks away.
• Market-Based Title: Three Houses was the subtitle chosen first. Because it doesn't translate well into Japanese, the Japanese version's subtitle is Fūkasetsugetsu: a four-kanji idiom meaning "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon", which refers both to the in-universe season naming and to the game's four story routes.
• Maybe Ever After: How a lot of the A supports work. The two characters will express romantic affection to one degree or another and a desire to spend their lives together, but often with the caveat that they should wait until after the war to really decide things. It's only if you get their paired ending that the romance will occur, and even then, it will in some cases remain ambiguous, possibly because historians may not be aware of whether the two characters were a couple.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is implied that the voices and souls of the dead that spurs Dimitri's desire for vengeance are but an auditory hallucination stemming from his PTSD from witnessing the Tragedy of Duscur firsthand. However, there could be more to this. In the Silver Snow route, after the Battle of Gronder Field where it is said that Dimitri died in battle, he appears before Byleth as if he was alive. After a brief conversation, Seteth wakes Byleth from a daze and Dimitri is nowhere to be seen; when asked, Seteth claims that he didn't see anyone but Byleth. Dimitri's appearance could also be a dream or hallucination, but he takes his time skip appearance which Byleth never sees in Silver Snow as they do not participate in the Battle of Gronder Field, and there is evidence of ghosts, namely Sothis, who could not be seen by other people, which may mean that Dimitri is not hallucinating at all.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Implied for anyone Byleth S-ranks outside of Flayn, Seteth, Rhea, and Yuri on non-Crimson Flower routes due to being a mixed-blood Ambiguously Human dragon that has fused with Sothis' soul. Likewise, implied for anyone but Byleth who has a paired ending with Seteth or Flayn. Notably averted if Byleth S-ranks with Seteth, Flayn, Rhea, or Yuri, all of which have endings indicating that they remain together and stay youthful for a very, very long time - to the point that Byleth and their spouse typically retire after several decades and disappear to preserve the secret of their longevity and avoid allowing humanity to seek their power and repeat the tragedy that made Rhea into who she is.
• Meaningful Name: Fódlan's Throat is a mountain range with a passage that connects the continent of Fódlan with the even larger continent of Almyra. Has even more meaning when one considers a mountain range to the west is called Fódlan's Fangs, as taken together they reference how the continent of Fódlan somewhat resembles the head of a dragon or other monstrous creature.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The Dancer is the only class with the Dance ability and thus the only class that can give another unit another turn. More significantly, it is the only class available for non-Lords that cannot be attained through leveling up; it is only available for the unit who enters the dancing competition, and thus only one unit can be a Dancer. Also, none of the teachers (including Byleth) can attain this class.
  • The Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes require a Dark Seal instead of an Intermediate and Advanced Seal like all the other classes in their respective tier. Dark Seals can only be obtained by defeating the Death Knight or stealing the item from him, which makes them incredibly rare. The Dark Bishop is also the only class in the base game that explicitly requires that the unit has access to the prior class in the line before they can clear the certification exam.
  • The special DLC classes (Trickster, War Monk, Dark Flier, and Valkyrie) can only be accessed via Abyssian Exam Passes, which can be obtained in the main game once Chapter 1 of the Cindered Shadows side story has been cleared and the Ashen Wolves come with one each when recruited. Also, just like the Dark Bishop class, the Trickster requires the unit to have access to the Thief class so they can clear the certification exam.
  • The Brawler, Grappler, War Master, Hero, and the aforementioned Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes are exclusive to male units, while the Pegasus Knight, Falcon Knight, and Gremory classes, as well the DLC classes Dark Flyer and Valkyrie, are exclusive to female units.
  • Byleth, the house leaders, and Jeritza can access exclusive and/or plot-based classes that act as if they were Advanced and Master classes, though they are not required to use them.
• Medieval Stasis: Zigzagged. The land of Fódlan largely resembles an Early Modern fantasy world typical of Fire Emblem, though the clothing is very 19th century looking. Additionally, at least one country, Agartha (with the help of the Nabatea), was able to develop highly-advanced technology, including ballistic missiles, thousands of years in the past and their scientific prowess would one day lead to the creation of the Heroes' Relics. However, they came to believe themselves gods and challenged Sothis. They and their technology were destroyed, lost to history save for what the Agarthan's underground remnants those who slither in the dark were able to maintain or recover to continue to use in their Forever War against Fódlan. And in the past thousand years, technology in Fódlan seems to have changed very little (unless one counts things like the devices Hanneman has to analyze Crests). The DLC expands on this, telling us that the Church actively suppressed certain technology, albeit temporarily. As explained in this interview, the Abyss writings are accurate to the extent that Rhea did indeed inhibit some forms of technology/civilization progress, but that it was not to invoke a stasis so much as to keep it from developing "too fast." This was done not for the sake of conquering humans but in order to maintain peace, as well as for reasons that include ones that are secret for now. That the interview states she "tried to" could also mean that the Abyss books are indeed outdated and that her efforts ended up not working (or that she willingly allowed them later, as the intention was to "slow down" rather than outright stop such inventions).
• Mêlée à Trois:
  • The mock battle at Gronder Field in Part I is a three-way battle between the three houses. There is also one major fight between the three nations that occurs on the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes post-skip. Some random battles or paralogues also involve multiple enemy factions that will attack each other as well as the player's units.
  • "Cindered Shadows" has a couple. Chapter 2 has you fighting off bandits invading Abyss to steal the Chalice when the Death Knight shows up and starts attacking everyone indiscriminately, Chapter 4 has you running from the phantom soldiers guarding the Chalice and having to fight through more bandits, who fight each other, and Chapter 5 has a few giant beasts attacking everyone.
  • A handful of optional side battles contain bandits and demonic beasts; if allowed, the bandits will prioritize attacking the beasts over the player. This can be a problem, as those maps' demonic beasts carry particularly valuable drops.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Averted with the game's mooks. Generic enemies of any class that isn't gender-restricted can be either male or female.
• Mercy Rewarded: On the Crimson Flower route, sparing Seteth and Flayn keeps access to Linhardt and Leonie's paralogues open if you haven't done them yet, even though the game shows a deadline of a couple of months past that point.
• Metaphorgotten: Claude's battle dialogue when he fights Hubert in the Verdant Wind route.
  Hubert: For every step you take along that path, our thorns will cut into your heels.
  Claude: Ooh, that sounds painful. I'll have to wear thicker soles for the march.
  Hubert: If your boots are too heavy, you won't be able to lift your feet. But enough prattle.
• Meta Twist: In past Fire Emblem games, the events of The Great Off Screen War were Written by the Winners, and shocking late-game reveals would show the "bad guys" in them were either more complex than expected (Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade) or outright good (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn). The Church's version of history paints Nemesis as a Fallen Hero, but gradual reveals of the Church's shadier aspects and his title of "King of Liberation" makes it easy to assume Nemesis was really a heroic rebel against them. So it comes as a surprise when the Verdant Wind/Golden Deer route reveals that, while the Church did distort history, it was to give Nemesis a Historical Hero Upgrade. He was actually even more evil than the legends claimed, simply being a power-hungry bandit who murdered Sothis in her sleep and made the Sword of the Creator from her corpse, and him and his supporters are one of the few purely villainous factions in an otherwise Grey And Grey morality story.
• Military Academy: The Officers' Academy, housed in the monastery of the Church of Seiros. It's where the main protagonist works as a professor. The youth of all three factions are trained in fighting skill and tactics, and charged with putting down bandits and other threats to the peace. When it is reopened a few years after the endings, it transitions into a school that teaches subjects in all forms, opening its doors to all folks regardless of class, wealth, or station.
• Million Mook March: On non-Crimson Flower routes, after defeating the Flame Emperor outside the walls of Garreg Mach, the main body of the enemy forces suddenly arrive...
• Mistaken for Spies: Post-timeskip on the Azure Moon route, Dimitri initially assumes Byleth is dead and their ghost is here to haunt him. Once he's convinced that Byleth is alive and not a ghost, he immediately concludes that they must be an Imperial spy here to kill him.
• Mistaken for Undead: Post-timeskip on the Azure Moon route, Byleth enters Garreg Mach and finds Dimitri slumped over there, and they slowly approach him and hold out a hand. Dimitri, having endured Sanity Slippage over the last five years, assumes Byleth is a ghost, here to haunt him because he let them die, and begs them to leave him alone.
• The Mole: In non-Crimson Flower routes, it's briefly implied in Chapter 15 one of your faction's generic soldiers is a spy for the Flame Emperor explaining how House Rowe's army easily intercepts your own forces forces when they go seek reinforcements in Ailell.
• Mole Men: Implied for both those who slither in the dark and the inhabitants of the Abyss. In the former's case, their main base of operations lies beneath the surface and all their members share the same pale-white skin complexion, a common symptom for people who have spent most of their lives underground. For the latter, though it's downplayed as they don't seem to look or behave that different from the people of the surface, it's been mentioned that they reside underneath Garreg Mach. For another difference, those of the Abyss are made up of people who felt rejected by the surface world and decided to abandon it, whereas those who slither in the dark fled underground to survive the destruction wrought by an ancient war.
• Monty Haul: "The Secret Merchant" is a Paralogue Chapter for Anna, who can be recruited as of the Wave 3 DLC. As one might expect from a merchant's quest, it is highly rewarding to complete offering four Large Bullions and eight standard Bullion (in addition to weapons), keeping your coffers full throughout much of the game.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Many Support conversations are light-hearted and comedic, and since they become available as soon as the required support level between the two characters in question is met, they can potentially pop up after major story revelations or plot deaths which can make them seem very out of place. It is possible, for example, to kill the father or brother of a character in your house during a mission and then, during the next week, watch a support conversation where that character jokes around with another. This is especially notable with any of Byleth's supports immediately after Jeralt is killed.
  • One big non-Support example is the introduction to Ferdinand and Lysithea's paralogue. It opens with Ferdinand's father, the former Duke Aegir, fleeing for his life and getting murdered by thugs... then cuts to Ferdinand enjoying tea while Lysithea suggests to have some sweets to accompany it.
• Mook Chivalry:
  • Battalion soldiers stay out of the way as the lead units fight each other. The only time they assault a unit head is if called upon for a Gambit.
  • Save for certain missions in which your force is explicitly defending against an invasion, enemies generally do not send all of their units at you at one time. They'll remain in their starting positions until your units enter combat range, with usually no more than 3-5 enemy units in a given area at one time.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: Save for "those who slither in the dark", whom the game doesn't even attempt to frame as sympathetic, none of the main factions in Fódlan are shown to be fully good nor evil, to the point they all feel like deconstructions of the standard factions frecuently seen in Fire Emblem.
• Moral Myopia: Edelgard's line in the Crimson Flower route "must you continue to reconquer continue to kill in retaliation" to Dimitri practically has Edelgard blaming Dimitri for prolonging the war and causing more blood shed, a war that she started and Dimitri is simply defending his territory.
• Multiple Endings: The game has four endings, determined by which house Byleth picks and how they react to the Wham Episode in Chapter 11.
  • Silver Snow, reached by choosing the Black Eagles in Chapter 1 and not siding with Edelgard after Chapter 11. Dimitri is killed at Gronder Field, Claude goes missing during the same battle, Edelgard is killed by Byleth at Enbarr, and thus all three of their nations lose their leadership as well as much of their military. After revealing Byleth's origins, depending on her support level with Byleth, Rhea either dies when she goes berserk due to draconic degeneration, survives and retires to Zanado, or survives and retakes control of the Church so she can reform it and fix or atone for her mistakes and assist in reforms. Those who slither in the dark are defeated. Fódlan is reunited under the banner of the United Kingdom of Fódlan, with Byleth as its ruler.
  • Azure Moon, reached by choosing the Blue Lions in Chapter 1. Claude disbands the Alliance, cedes its territories back to the Kingdom, and departs Fódlan. Edelgard is killed by Dimitri at Enbarr, and the Empire dies with her. Rhea peacefully retires to Zanado, and Byleth succeeds her as the archbishop of the Church. Those who slither in the dark remain at large but lose much of their leadership. Fódlan is reunited under the banner of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, with Dimitri as its ruler.
  • Verdant Wind, reached by choosing the Golden Deer in Chapter 1. Dimitri is killed at Gronder Field, Edelgard is killed by Byleth at Enbarr, and both of their nations end with them. Rhea is grievously injured in Shambhala and is heavily implied to die offsreen after the game's events. Those who slither in the dark are defeated. The full truth about the origins of the Crests and Heroes' Relics is revealed to Claude and Byleth. Claude disbands the Alliance and helps found the United Kingdom of Fódlan as its successor state before departing the continent for Almyra. Fódlan is reunited under the banner of the United Kingdom of Fódlan, with Byleth as its ruler.
  • Crimson Flower, reached by choosing the Black Eagles in Chapter 1 and siding with the Adrestian Empire in Chapter 11. Claude is slain or exiled in Derdriu, Dimitri is slain at the Tailtean Plains, and both the Alliance and the Kingdom are conquered by the Empire. Rhea is slain in Fhirdiad, and the Church of Seiros is permanently crippled as a political power. Those who slither in the dark remain at large at the conclusion of the story, but Edelgard begins a silent conflict with them once the war is over. Fódlan is reunited under the banner of the Adrestian Empire, with Edelgard as its ruler.
• Multiple Life Bars: "Beast"-type enemies have several health bars that must be depleted to kill/destroy them, with the number of bars indicated by the number of rhombuses. Each bar depleted grants experience comparable to a boss unit of the same level.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
  • After a House is picked, students from the other houses can still be recruited, with the exception of the House leaders and any loyal vassals they might have: Hubert, Edelgard's adviser, cannot be recruited out of the Black Eagles, and Dedue, who swore to remain by Dimitri's side, cannot be recruited out of the Blue Lions. The Golden Deer is the only House who lacks any loyal students, as every student can be recruited. The sole exception being Hilda if you chose the Black Eagles and sided with Edelgard. Should you choose to side with the Church at the halfway mark, however, she will become available for recruitment, though you'll have a very limited timeframe to do all her recruitment requirements before the time skip rolls over and makes her unrecruitable.
  • There is no way to have Edelgard, Hubert, and Jeritza, with Flayn, Seteth, Catherine, and Cyril after the time skip in the Black Eagles route, as it is the natural result of having to choose between siding with the Empire or the Church after the Holy Tomb incident.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: It's impossible to obtain every weapon, equipment and battalions in one go due to them being spead-out across all Three Houses' routes, and while with New Game + it's possible to collect every battalion available in the game through playthroughts with all 3 Houses, the same can't be said for everything else.
  • Besides the battalions connected to the Church, each House has its unique share of purchasable battalions which are directly connected to the faction the House represents; Black Eagles gets Imperial ones, Blue Lions gains the Kingdom's, and Golden Deer can access the Alliance's.
  • In an unique case and due to story reasons, the Black Eagle House is the only one of the three Houses where the player will never be able to access all of the weapons, equipment, and paralogue rewards tied to their cast when playing one of their story branches. In Silver Snow, the remaining cast will never be able to access Edelgard & Hubert's personal battalions, the Aymr, the Arrow of Indra, Holst's Battalion, and -with paid DLC- Jeritza's battalion. Conversely, in Crimson Flower, it's impossible to obtain Caspar and Ferdinand's personal battalions (and by proxy, Mercedes & Lysithea's as well), the Rafail Gem, the Lance of Zoltan, and the Ochlain Shield.
• My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad: Linhardt and Caspar argue about this in their C-support after discussing how their fathers got into a fight over forcing Linhardt into a training session. Linhardt’s poking fun at Caspar’s height during the argument and Caspar’s attempt to overcome it serves as the focal point of the following supports between the two.
• My Fist Forgives You: In Cindered Shadows, after Yuri is revealed to only have pretended to double-cross the Ashen Wolves in order to play with Aefric, Balthus forgives his friend for what he did only after he gives a punch to Yuri's pretty face.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: All factions save for the Golden Deer house have followers who are utterly loyal and would do anything for their leader:
  • Hubert of the Black Eagles will not abandon Edelgard under any circumstances, and while he does things behind her back sometimes, he believes they're for her good and/or the good of the Empire. On the Azure Moon route, when Edelgard intends to become "Hegemon Edelgard" using a Crest Stone in her final attempt to defeat Byleth and Dimitri, Hubert flatly states that he's against that decision but won't stop her. That said, he then immediately takes off to intercept Byleth and Dimitri himself, clearly intending to try and defeat them before she can cross that line.
  • Dedue of the Blue Lions states that he'll do anything Dimitri asks of him, even kill children if he must, since Dimitri saved him from being executed in the Tragedy of Duscur and treats him as a person while everyone else in the Kingdom looks down on the Duscur people for allegedly committing regicide. On the Crimson Flower route, during the Battle on the Tailtean Plains, Dedue even goes so far as to give others and himself Crest Stones to turn themselves into Demonic Beasts without Dimitri's knowledge, viewing it as a necessary sacrifice to ensure Dimitri's victory.
  • Catherine and Cyril of the Church of Seiros are loyal to Rhea, Catherine because Rhea saved her when she was injured as a student and saved her again after she was forced to flee House Charon, and Cyril because Rhea took him in when he was orphaned by war and mistreated for being an Almyran. On the Crimson Flower route, an enraged Rhea, demanding that she be called Seiros now, commands Catherine to set Fhirdiad on fire merely to slow their enemies down, and she reluctantly obliges. If Byleth fights Catherine and Cyril in the ensuing battle, both still consider Byleth the evil one for going against Rhea.
  • Downplayed with Hilda, who's the closest as one can get to Claude's "second-in-command" in the Golden Deer house. She can be recruited into the Blue Lions, but will only join the Black Eagles after the point where joining up with the Flame Emperor becomes impossible.
  • Students from other houses and teachers recruited before the time skip will be completely loyal to Byleth and will fight against their original houses (and the Church of Seiros in case of the teachers) out of pure devotion for their professor. They will fight and kill even their former friends and relatives if ordered to (if reluctantly in many cases, and it's not like said friends and relatives pull any punches themselves for the betrayal, perceived or otherwise).
• My Sister Is Off-Limits:
  • A non-specifically romantic example. Seteth is very defensive about Flayn and practically refuses anyone to interact with her unless he is there, or has permission to do so. In fact, an early conversation has him outright ask you if you saw anyone talking to her in a unusual manner. Flayn calls him out on this in their support by pointing out that he's basically smothering her. Justified as Seteth is actually her father, and both are among the last surviving members of the dragons, so his worry is understandable.
  • A rather extreme case, but justifiably so: Mercedes' half-brother Emile heard that his father has tracked down his mother and Mercedes, who fled from their terrible treatment, and that he intended to drag them back and this time make the younger and more fertile Mercedes marry him to get more Crest-bearing heirs. One Berserk Button-fueled rampage later, the entire noble house is wiped out and Emile has become the Death Knight.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Catherine's Request and Shamir's Request involve carrying out a Chain of Deals, each item on which is a reference to a previous Fire Emblem game.
    • Hanneman wants the Book of Crestological Mysteries, a reference to Mystery of the Emblem; this is a bit clearer in the Japanese version, which uses the same word for emblem and crest. In exchange, he gives you the Tome of Comely Saints, a reference to Genealogy of the Holy War, in which saints play a major role.
    • Manuela will trade the Tome of Comely Saints for the Fire Amulet, a clear reference to Fire Emblem.
    • Cyril will trade the Fire Amulet for a glowing stone, referencing The Sacred Stones.
    • Mercedes will trade the glowing stone for The Path of Dawn, a reference to both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
    • Marianne will trade The Path of Dawn for medicinal eyedrops, referencing Awakening
    • Finally, Linhardt will trade the medicinal eyedrops for the two-tone whetstone, referencing Fates' dual paths.
  • The prize for winning the White Heron Cup is granting the winner the ability to reclass into a Dancer. White herons are a species of laguz in the Tellius series that utilizes their Magic Music to make units move again, just like what dancers and their other variants do in Fire Emblem games.
  • A white owl can be seen flying around the monastery, and the feathers it drops are "favored" gifts by everyone.
  • Female infantry units' victory pose with lances is based on Cordelia's pose in her character art.
  • The Aurora Shield, which removes flying units' vulnerability to bows, has a very similar design to Iote's Shield, the series' original weakness-nullifying item.
  • This is not the first game in the series to feature a soldier named Glen(n) whose untimely death in the line of duty profoundly affects his younger brother.
  • A rather sneaky one with Anna. Of course Anna is a reference to every other Anna in the series, but look closely at the proficiencies she can train you in. They include Sword and Faith, Axe, and Bow. This is a reference to the the Trickster Anna in Awakening who uses a sword and staves, the Annas in Fates and Warriors who use a bow, and finally the Anna in Heroes who uses an axe. Anna herself is skilled in all these skills, meaning she can easily meld into any of her previous classes, most notably Trickster.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The enemy units have some advantages that are entirely unavailable to the player.
  • Early game, Intermediate class enemies will be encountered at levels lower than the usual level requirement to promote to those classes.
  • In Maddening mode, enemy Pegasus Knights have 7 movement, versus 6 movement for player-controlled Pegasus Knights.
  • Some enemy units, especially bosses during the War Arc, will have access to skill combinations that would usually be impossible due to gender restrictions. For example, a male enemy having access to female-restricted Darting Blow.