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Franchise / Disgaea

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Disgaea is a series of Tactical RPG games created by Nippon Ichi (Atlus published the first game in America, since Nippon Ichi didn't have an American division at the time).

The storylines of the games are set in various Netherworlds, populated by demons and the souls of the dead (who serve as Prinnies until they can pay off their sins). Each game stars a primarily new cast, and is set in a different Netherworld, but guest appearances from the previous games are inevitable (and they can usually be recruited). The series' tone is FAR towards the silly side of the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness; expect loads of Lampshade Hanging, Genre Savviness, Shout Outs (enough to warrant their own page), and Parodies, all set in a World of Ham with No Fourth Wall.

All the games are highly regarded by Tactical RPG enthusiasts for their twisted humor and myriad ways to customize and level up characters and equipment. The series practically revels in excessively tweaking your character to make them into as gamebreakingly strong as possible. Facilitating this is a notably open-ended and lengthy postgame, often where the majority of the grinding takes place. Oh, and the Prinnies are so cute too, dood!

The series appears to be the beginning of a new set of PC ports of Nippon Ichi's strategy titles, currently including Disgaea 1 and 2, and Phantom Brave.

There are currently seven main games in the series, most of which have later received portable remakes:

  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (PS2)
    • Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP) — Includes Axel Mode, telling what happened before the game started, and starring the Dark Hero Axel.
    • Disgaea 2 PC (Steam)
  • Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3)
    • Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (Vita) — Includes all the DLC from the PS3 version, including Raspberyl Mode, two new characters, and four new scenarios focusing on the rest of the main cast.

And a few Spinoff titles:

Along with several adaptations into other media:

This series is the Trope Namer for:

This series as a whole provides examples of:

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    General Tropes 
  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Max level is 9999, although only a tiny fraction of this is needed to get through the stories of the games. note  And in later games, even this is just the tip of the iceberg, as you can reincarnate characters for stat bonuses and get them back up to 9999, again and again. The sixth game has it at 99999999 insteadnote  though the next game reverts to the usual 9999 limit.
  • A-Cup Angst: Etna and Flonne get emotional if their underdeveloped breasts are brought up.
  • Aerith and Bob: In a series with a large cast, this couldn't be avoided. Some names are perfectly mundane (e.g. Gordon, Jennifer, Kurtis, Taro, Hanako...). Others are less common, but thoroughly believable (Adell, Rozalin, Sapphire, Zed). And then there's head-on descent into the fantastic (Laharl, Vulcanus, Valvatorez, Killia). The randomly generated names likewise run a wide course.
  • Aesop Amnesia: Despite the canonical good ending of the first game's implications that he's matured into a straight hero, Laharl's Disgaea Infinite appearance places his character back at his Tsundere Noble Demon stage, where he strives to be evil despite himself. However, Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness retains his development from the original game, for the most part.
  • Affably Evil: Nippon Ichi seems to be fond of pushing the affable part of this trope, to the point that some characters barely qualify as evil, but they align themselves so by their own volition.
  • Affectionate Parody: These games are quite fond of parodying subjects from anime and RPG cliches to Space Operas and Super Sentai.
  • After-Combat Recovery: In games with Cheat Shops, there's a toggle you can enable that heals the entire army after returning to base, so that you don't have to visit the hospital.
  • Aggressive Play Incentive: The Disgaea games generally exaggerate the trope, encouraging Level Grinding to beat back otherwise impossible odds and spending numerous hours in its Item World to perfect your equipment, gear and Innocents. In most of the games, defense becomes useless after the main story; pumping stats to such points that One-Hit KO becomes the strategy employed by players and their foes. Disgaea 5 however averts this with its tweaking of the Evility system and its Carnage Dimension. Carnage Dimension maps/foes are tailor-made to discourage Min-Maxing and will annihilate players too reliant on the old ways.
  • Air Guitar: Asagi has this as her idle animation in Disgaea 3.
  • All Your Colors Combined:
    • The Prism Rangers, a parody of Sentai shows like Power Rangers, would have 'transformed' were it not for Etna shooting two of the three. In a side-quest in the second game, all seven of them show up, and they use this as their ultimate attack. All slots of the Prism Rangers, apart from the relatively straight-laced red and blue, are filled by various random people, such as someone who can't speak English and a salaryman who answered the wrong job posting.
    • And Prism Black, aka Adell. After winning that title, Rozalin expresses a desire to be Prism Pink.
    • Purposely spoofed by the main cast of the third game when they do their own role call as the Evil Rangers after defeating Prism Red to make their victory all the more sweet.
    • There's also an actual group known as the Evil Rangers in Dark Hero Days, who are a group of appropriately colored monsters that act in a kid's show.
  • Alternate Continuity: Though most of the sequels and cameos occur after the Best Ending of Disgaea 1, it's possible that Prinny takes place in a different continuity then the main series, judging by the presence of Prinny Laharl as a boss fight.
  • Always Accurate Attack: Gunners have two ways to ensure that attacks always hit, although accuracy can still be reduced in some ways such as Netherworld effects and skill-specific accuracy limitations (for example, the Sage's Land Decimator will never rise above 50% accuracy on any given target):
    • Their Assist Unique Evility allows all subsequent attackers to have 100% accuracy simply by registering an attack.
    • Their Hawk Eye Evility raises the user's accuracy to 100% if the target is at least three panels away.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Several games allow you to pass a bill that grants the "Change More Colors" option, which further expands the available character color options by allowing you to customize character palettes freely, including their skin tones.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: All games have differing Japanese and American box arts, but Disgaea 2 and Disgaea 3 stand out the most. Whereas the Japanese box art for both game uses the standard chibi group shot, Disgaea 2's box art has Adell featured prominently while all the other characters are shadowed out with the exception of their glowing red eyes, while Disgaea 3's boxart is a single image of Mao glaring menacingly.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Flonne occasionally exclaims "Oops! Pardon me!" when attacking.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have up to a set number of units out on the stage at any one time; usually the number is 10 and some games let you raise the limit. Bringing a unit back into the base will let you take them back out, or dispatch another unit in their place. If a unit dies, that will count against your dispatch limit. If a monster unit's Magichange expires, the unit disappears but a dispatch slot will be freed back up.
  • Art Evolution: Primarily in Harada's use of color and shading. Compare◊ Laharl◊ in Hour of Darkness to his appearances in later◊ games◊
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: You can force Dark/Strategy Assembly bills to pass by beating the Senators who voted Nay to death. A sufficiently-leveled army can pretty much run the Assembly without any fear of losing their control.
  • Badass Boast: You ever had your ass kicked by a book?!
  • Bad Boss: Netherworld Prinnies are treated (with good reason) pretty badly, but Etna is sadistic enough to them to shock other demons in the Prinny games. Adell, Yukimaru, and Rozalin comment about this in the second game.
    Rozalin: I am a princess... yet I feel like I should be on the Prinnies' side.
  • Basilisk and Cockatrice: The Cockatrice and Basilisk both appears as monsters in the second, third, and fourth games. They appear as fat, giant chickens with a snake for a tail, and are in the same class of monsters. Their most distinctive ability is disabling skills for any enemies standing right next to themnote .
  • Beady-Eyed Loser: Laharl is drawn with his normal eyes in the beginning of the Disgaea 2 manga, but after volume two, his eyes have turned into this.
  • Beehive Barrier: In the protecting spells for physical and magical attacks.
  • Benevolent Boss: Both Mao and Laharl's dads were good to work under. Also Valvatorez.
    • Presumably, Emizel's father, Hugo, as well, before Judge Nemo took control, anyway.
  • Black Comedy: Lots, usually at the expense of the Prinnies.
  • Blessed with Suck: The Counter stat. Having a high number of Counters can be great for defeating enemies out of turn, but can also get the user killed if they don't have the defenses or Evilities to tank the back-and-forth counterattacks.
  • Blood on the Debate Floor: If the Dark Assembly rejects one of your proposals, you can attempt to physically persuade naysayers.
  • Bonus Dungeon: There are quite a few of them in all of the games, including a system to create an infinite number of random dungeons.
  • Book Ends: The English narration in the beginning of each game is the voice for each respective game's Final Boss.
  • Breakout Character: Etna, who's gotten more and more focus over the years, being made into a main character in Disgaea 2, featured predominantly in spinoff titles such as Cross Edge, Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? and its sequel, and Trinity Universe, and Etna Mode (which is essentially a "What if Laharl had never reawakened" scenario) in the updated re-release of the first Disgaea. Etna even lampshades it in one of the Netherbattle Tournament cut scenes in Disgaea 4, telling all the other Disgaea heroines that she appeared in more games than they have.
    • However, with Disgaea 3's Raspberyl Mode and Disgaea 4, it appears that Etna has been ditched in favor of Flonne, especially considering that's she's an Archangel now.
    • Annulled as of Disgaea D2; Laharl's back in the spotlight for this one, with the two girls accompanying him as usual. All three are demoted to DLC for Alliance of Vengeance.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: In-Universe, you can give members of the Dark Assembly items before they conduct their vote, which will swing them to becoming more likely to vote for your bill. They also remember previous bribes, and can be bribed further in the future — thus making it possible to have nearly the entire Dark Assembly in your pocket. The "nearly" part comes from the fact that some demon types outright refuse to accept bribes.
  • Butt-Monkey: The Prinnies are an entire race of butt monkeys. Mid-Boss is also an example, though much moreso in the anime and especially the manga than in the games.
  • Call-Back:
    • All the games will present a "barrier" during Chapter 3. Said barrier halts you from getting to the next battle until the main character has a Lv. 10 item equipped, an excuse to introduce the Item World. Disgaea 2 has a variation of this barrier, though; you need to have someone who has accumulated a Felony in order to progress, and until you learn about this barrier, you can't get the items that hold the innocent necessary to getting a felony.
    • The first game suggests you try a Common Sword for your first Item World run, being the cheapest weapon in the game. In the fourth game, you are given a Common Sword to try your first time there, except that now the Common Sword is a special sword that can't be bought, can't be stolen since no enemy will be using one, and can't be gotten as a bonus.
  • Cap: In this series, as well as many other N1 games where it's absurdly high.
    • For example, in Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days, Pringer X has maxed stats. The main six stats are all at 40,000,000.
  • Came Back Strong: You level up, then you reincarnate into a new body that starts with better stats.
  • Cape Wings: Laharl's scarf. Also, most Nosferatu/vampires.
  • Cat Girl: You have the Felynn race, the Disgaea 2 Bandits, Anise, the Beast Tamers, and the Slumber Cats. This does not include Cardamon because she's actually a fox girl.
  • Changing Gameplay Priorities: In early-game Disgaea, every stat is about as important as it sounds. In the late-game, the only stat that matters is the one you use to deal damage. In addition, magic and special abilities are almost useless in the early game with a few exceptions, due to the cost of using magic and restoring your spell points. In the late game, your magic use is much less limited.
    • Averted in 5 thanks to some very well-received balance changes that make defense useful. Carnage Dimension outright punishes players for trying to min-max.
  • Character Exaggeration: Arguable. But it's a general rule that any character that makes a cameo appearance outside of their debut game will be greatly exaggerated. For example, when Laharl shows up in Disgaea 2, he seems to have forgotten all of his Character Cevelopment at the end of the first game. Flonne's later appearances, particularly Disgaea 4, dial-up her otaku-ness and make her much more of an airhead than she originally was. Mao's appearances in Disgaea Infinite and Disgaea 4 also has him seemingly forget his character development and also portrays him as much more of a pervert. Among other examples.
  • Chef of Iron: Mr. Champloo of Disgaea 3. A Demonic Cooking Teacher Martial Artist, boom!
  • The Chew Toy: The Prinnies are the Nippon Ichi world's choice for menial labor and Stuff Blowing Up. They deserve it, though; they're working off their karmic debt for bad deeds done in a previous life.
  • Class and Level System: Subverted. The core of ability progression is more about leveling up individual abilities. While leveling up one class does unlock a new one, typically that class has slightly better stats but the exact same skills. (The exceptions are classes that require combinations of characters to unlock.) Additionally, you can't class change, so if you want the new class, you're in for some Forced Level-Grinding with your newborn Lv.1.
    • Disgaea 5 introduces "Sub-classing", which allows a character to not only obtain another class's evilities without needing reincarnation, when they do reincarnate, they'll get enhanced base stats depending on the classes mastered.
  • Class Change Level Reset: A staple of the series. The Reincarnation ability allows you to change any unit to any other type of unit, keeping some of their abilities, but they always start over at level 1.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
    • All non-main characters you can recruit have differing colors among their strength classes.
    • An unlockable character painter can Palette Swap characters at will, or for a fee depending on which game, allowing even generic characters of the same class to look distinct.
  • Color-Coded Item Tiers: There are three tiers of item rarity, and it shows through the name; the common tier have white text, Rare items have green (with blue if you equip multiple Rare items), and Legendary have Gold text. Almost all items have 3 versions of them: Common (White), Rare (Silver in first game, Green in later games), and Legendary (Gold). The better the rarity, the more powerful the item is, the more floors its Item World will have, and the more Specialist/Innocents it can hold. However, while Rare items are stronger than normal items and Legendary items are stronger than Rare items, you can get most of the items in Common, Rare, or Legendary (Exceptions include Rank 40 items like the Infinity +1 Sword, Joke Weapons, and some unique weapons that Optional Party Members have, all of which only come in Legendary) and if you go to the Item world, you can strengthen an item, making it stronger than an unleveled Legendary version of the same item.
    • Disgaea 5 introduces the Epic Tier of items, giving it glowing Azure text. However, you have to upgrade your item to reach this tier.
  • Combination Attack:
  • Comically Missing the Point: When Fuka tries to rob the Netherworld mint with Desco and an unwilling Artina in the Fuka & Desco Show, the three of them are stopped by Flonne, who insists they're about to commit a terrible crime: how can they even think of robbing the Netherworld mint without first coming up with an awesome Phantom Thief team name!?
  • Continuity Nod: One of the endings in Disgaea Infinite explains how Laharl ended up in a bottle and his status as a Bonus Boss in Phantom Brave.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Prinnydom. Basically, human souls are forced to dress as penguins and literally pay for their sins through nonstop, menial labor.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: Sure, throwing a Prinny to kill enemies may be funny, but you'll get almost no rewards for it, and if it's an allied Prinny, they count against your deployment limit just like other ways to die, meaning that most of the time you're better off just using items or your characters' abilities.
  • Cool Gate: Dimensional gates warps the main characters to selected locations.
  • Crapsaccharine World: The situations in each game can be quite serious despite the quirky characters and humor.
  • Creator Provincialism: Netherworlds inspired by Eastern culture and civilization are the exception rather than the norm, yet characters are often shown eating Japanese dishes like ramen and curry ricenote .
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Adell ran out of demons to hunt after the end of Disgaea 2 and left Veldime because he doesn't know how to do anything but fight. He didn't get a job at Evil Academy because Hot-Blooded isn't a teaching skill! (Or rather, it is, but Mr. Champloo has that position filled already.)
  • Critical Hit: Played straight, but also inverted with "Nick!" hits, which do less damage than usual and are more likely to happen if the attacker's hit chance is low, the idea being that the attacker was only accurate enough to barely touch the target instead of hitting them full-on.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Most demons have a tiny fang visible in a corner of their mouth.
  • Cute Monster Girl:
    • The Succubus and Nekomata races in the first game, the plant-girls in the second. Notable because the Succubus and Nekomata characters (as well as Jennifer) were drawn by a different artist — Yoshiharu "Ryoji" Nomura — the artist who did the characters and art for the Marl Kingdom / La Pucelle games — did the "sexy type" characters with the new artist Yuichi "Haradaya" Harada for the rest — which is why they stand out so much. (Both links go to their respective homepages, which are NSFW.)
    • Also subverted when Dratti — one of Laharl's vassals who happens to be a big, scaly (and snarky) dragon — points out that it's a she.
    • Also lampshaded with one of the Flora Beasts you meet early in the second game, who happens to be named Bridget...
  • Cutting the Knot: You can dispose of any enemy Prinny, no matter how powerful, by simply tossing them, causing them to explode. Downplayed, as you will not get any rewards (such as EXP or Bonus Meter gain) out of it.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: A major plot point of almost all the games is the nature of demons/angels as being supposedly "absolute evil/good", nature vs nurture, etc. For example, Flonne staying with Laharl during Disgaea to prove that he can love (and thus, isn't truly evil), Rozalin becoming more upset the more of the outside world she sees, etc. 4 goes so far as to state that part of the reason demons SHOULD try to look terrifying and nightmarish is simply to scare humans into being good and creating a net gain in the universe as a service.
  • A Day in the Limelight:
    • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness has Etna Mode, where she accidentally kills Laharl (or so she thinks) and tries to cover it up.
    • Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days has Axel Mode, where he desperately tries to reclaim his stardom and get work to support his family. Takes place before the main game.
    • Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice has the downloadable Raspberyl Mode, where she makes an attempt to become a teacher at Evil Academy.
      • The Vita port, Absence of Detention, adds four more, each covering two characters; one for Kyoko and Asuka, one for Sapphire and Almaz, one for Salvatore and Master Big Star, and one for the new character. (This leaves Champloo as the only main cast member not to receive a story, though he is able to join in each scenario.)
    • Disgaea 4 has a downloadable Tyrant Valvatorez Mode which takes place during Val's time as a Tyrant and a Fuuka and Desco Mode in which Fuuka starts getting interested in Prinny reincarnation.
    • Its Vita port, A Promise Revisited, adds in the Time Warp scenario, where Fuka and Desco get summoned back in time by newcomer Nagi Clockwork. They get to see how events played out leading up to Tyrant Val's promise with Artina.
    • Disgaea 5 has eight DLC scenarios for the cast in all prior games, including Makai Kingdom and La Pucelle. They must be bought on the PS4 version, but come free of charge on the Switch.
  • Death Is Cheap:
    • Disgaea has a weird relationship with this trope. Characters come Back from the Dead on a regular basis, both in the story and game mechanics, but some stay dead for unexplained reasons. Makai Kingdom, a game set in the universe of Disgaea, introduces the Sacred Tome, a book that grants any wish provided you have enough mana power, and it is indeed used to bring a person back from the dead. In Disgaea 3, a character dies, but comes right back to life when he receives a different title than the one he had when he died. In Prinny 2, a particular prinny is given their old body back after doing a very good deed. The game mechanics opens even more loopholes. The thing is; these methods of resurrection are never used to bring certain other characters back from the dead; for example, parents of the main characters are often dead from the beginning or will be by the end, and their deaths are threatened as final.
    • One character is directly killed in the worst ending of Disgaea 2. After defeating True Zenon, Zenon dies and Adell begins to lament since Zenon was Rozalin and he promised to protect her, he feels extreme guilt. This is potentially averted when Zenon then turns and possesses Adell, but in that example, he kills his siblings and it is implied he got Yukimaru and Etna as well, as they were in the room.
    • In Disgaea 4 there's Artina, who died 400 years ago, then comes back as an angel.
    • In Disgaea 5 Void Dark launched his entire campaign and drained entire Netherworlds of their power..... all to revive his older sister, whom he killed by accident. And then Void, Majorita, and Goldion show up alive in the Epilogue.
    • In Disgaea 6, this is the main character, Zed's, schtick. He's a zombie given the power of Super Reincarnation by Cerberus, resurrecting in a new world each time it happens, and growing a little stronger each time. He's done this supposedly tens of thousands of times before, and gets killed several times more in the story.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts:
    • Averted — large level differences will render one immune to enemy attacks. Because combos increase damage, however, it can also be played straight by piling on gargantuan combos for a big stack of damage.
    • Also played straight with Prinnies.
  • Demihuman: Humanoid demons and angels.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: Each Underworld has a Demon Overlord as the Dimension Lord, with heavy combat and politicking to determine who. (There may be attempts to pass this down to children, but it's complicated.) Demon Lords are the next level down, but still have great authority. There exist such titles as "Tyrant" or "Supreme" Overlord, but this approaches Eldritch Abomination territory. While this title may be a Bragging Rights Reward in the post-game, it has little effect on the plot for main characters.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Prism Red —> Prism-ish
    • After Disgaea 2, Adell has only been accessible as unrelated DLC events along with Rozalin, while his rival Axel is unlockable in every post game afterwards. The creator even made a joke that the Disgaea games that would get a sequel would be 1 (a trilogy) and 3, completely skipping over 2.
  • Denial of Diagonal Attack: Guns have the longest innate range of any weapon type, but unlike other ranged weapons like spears and bows, they can only shoot in the four cardinal directions.
  • Diminishing Returns for Balance: Upgrading a skill's power obviously increases its effect, but it also causes the SP cost to increase geometrically, which means that if you have a character with a big surplus of Mana but low SP reserves, it's possible to upgrade a skill to the point where they can't even use it. Fortunately, you can reverse upgrades, but you won't get the Mana refunded.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Some dungeon crawling in the Item World and prodigious Level Grinding can turn any character you wish into this; during the New Game Plus, everybody is this in just about all but perhaps the last few chapters after the first replay cycle (unless you pass the bill to make the enemy stronger), and even more so in subsequent cycles.
  • Divine Date: Cross-realm romances are very common. To wit:
    • Laharl's mother was a human, his father an Overlord.
    • Laharl himself is not dating a Fallen Angel (and a minor demon).
    • Adell hooks up with Rozalin, a.k.a. Overlord Zenon. Subverted since Adell is a demon.
    • Most recently, Valvatorez, a vampire, hooks up with Artina, an angel who was formerly a human.
  • Doppelgänger Attack: One of the Bow's special moves, among other things.
    • Mid-Boss has one. It even uses the combo attack animation, showing four close-up pictures of Mid-Boss before he starts his attack.
    • One of the late-game Zombie abilities from the first game might qualify as this, except he summons more zombies out of the ground to pounce on you instead of making copies of himself (though all zombies are the same rank).
  • DLC: Disgaea 3 has several characters from previous NIS games. Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days has a handful of them available, though they are glitchy in the American version. Disgaea 4 is looking to one-up the previous game by having characters from previous games, entirely new classes, and even making otherwise unplayable bosses available through DLC. Disgaea 3 and Disgaea 4 also have alternative stories starred by secondary characters available for purchase, which rewards players with new items and even more characters. Disgaea 5 for the PlayStation 4 has eight such scenarios for the prior games, Makai Kingdom and La Pucelle.
  • Downer Ending: Each game has at least one "bad ending," which normally requires more dedication than the good ending to get, as they are either gained by passing a certain bill or killing your own allies. In the first game, for example, you have to pass at least 100 bills in the Dark Assembly by force before the final battle. This gives you an ending where Laharl wanders the Netherworld for eternity holding the flower that Flonne got turned into.
    • Think that's bad? In Disgaea 2, the worst ending has Adell kill a Zenon-possessed Rozalin before becoming possessed by Zenon himself and EATING his siblings.
    • Disgaea 3 goes on and possibly tops that, with its worst ending having Mao killing everyone but Almaz (who was already dead) and Raspberyl, who gets killed off by Aurum, causing Mao to destroy the entire universe, with him being the only thing left in the empty void.
    • Disgaea 4 mostly averts this, as the bad endings you can get for losing certain battles are still played humorously. Except for the ending you get by royally pissing off God Himself and beating the snot out of the messengers he sends to chastise you... and that's still a Bolivian Army Ending instead of a flat-out Downer Ending.
    • Disgaea 5 has only one humorous "bad" ending, but you get it from losing (or, more likely, throwing) an early-game fight. The latter three require you to lose fights after racking up a number of ally kills, but then there's "Usalia's Death", which is the easiest bad ending to get and also the most depressing in the game.
  • Dracolich: Dragon Zombies.
  • Dub Name Change: Axel's name was Akutare in the original Japanese.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Asagi is a test character that the Nippon Ichi team used to test the engine for another one of their games, Makai Kingdom. (It is rumored she was going to be the main character for Makai Wars, which was canceled and possibly rerolled into Makai Kingdom, but this is not confirmed.) They liked her so much that they left her in as a bonus character, a "cameo from a game that they haven't made yet" (or since). They've added her to every game since then — including Disgaea 2 and 3 — and she's become a sort of mascot for the company. She's even in the opening movie for Disgaea 3 and 5.
    • And in Prinny 2, there is "Asagi mode", which makes her a main character of the half of the game.
  • Eagle Land: Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth is so obviously American it hurts.
  • Earn Your Bad Ending: The worst endings in the games are often much more difficult to obtain than the normal or "good" endings. Sometimes they're for things like wiping out the final boss with the main character solo at an absurdly high level or things like that. Other times, the bad ending requires deliberately doing horrible things like killing your own allies fifty or a hundred times.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Starting with the fourth game, the netherworld and neighboring celestial bodies began to be subjected to this type of abuse by some of the special attacks. D2 decided to take it a step further and blows up the entire galaxy with some of them. One can only assume that it's just a matter of time before not even the entire universe is safe...
  • Elective Mute: Pleinair, but only when she's not a Dark Assembly guide. In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Disgaea 3, and in one of the chapters of the Disgaea manga, she is able to speak normally, albeit without recorded audio, but as one of the anchors in Disgaea 2 and as a downloadable character in Disgaea 3 and the Updated Re-release of Disgaea 2, she doesn't speak at all except for a few select instances. She was given a voice when she became a downloadable character, but her voice is inaudible, and only says variations on the words 'same' and 'usa'.
    • In Disgaea 4, Pleinair no longer speaks when met on the field, with her rabbit companion instead being credited with her normal silent dialogue.
    • This is subverted in Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness, since, when you have the game using the Japanese audio track, Pleinair's line is spoken clearly, while she has no English voice actress. Pleinair's voice actress, however, is not credited.
    • Pleinair speaks clearly in Disgaea 5, where she's a DLC character, though her voice is quiet and emotionless.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Starting in Disgaea, and carrying over to spinoff franchises like Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom, all characters have three resistance levels to fire, ice, and wind magic; it's usually balanced by anyone having a strong resistance in one category having a weakness in another, though it doesn't follow a pattern.
    • Averted with the "Star" element, which no one is particularly resistant to, but no one is particularly vulnerable, either.
    • Disgaea 5 changes up the Star element —- depending on the character, they can either resist or be weak to Star-element attacks. However, there still are NO specialists that affect the Star element. You'll have to rely on Evilities to increase damage dealt or decrease damage received.
  • Emotional Maturity Is Physical Maturity: Do 1313-year-old demons act and look like they are 13? Yes, yes they do.
  • Equipment Upgrade: All items (even consumables) can be upgraded by going inside their "item world" and clearing levels of it (as well as rescuing "innocents" — NPCs which raise the items' stats).
  • Equippable Ally: The Magichange mechanic allows a monster-type unit to become a humanoid ally's weapon for a few turns, giving them stat boosts and a unique skill to go with the transformation.
  • Escape Rope: Mr. Gency's Exit.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: A recurring theme between the games, along with What Is This Thing You Call "Love"? and Noble Demon. The demons of Disgaea believe in Might Makes Right, ignore hygiene, and love to troll everyone, but when a particularly evil individual comes in and performs particularly despicable acts, like mass genocide, they are utterly appalled.
  • Evil Is Petty: The majority of the demons aren't so much evil as they are simply jackasses, and their most nefarious deeds amount to stuff such as not washing their hands before dinner. Most of them end up appalled at the genuinely evil characters.
  • Evil Laugh: There are Evil Overlords, thus it is required.
  • Evil Overlord: Plenty of them, for a given amount of evil.
  • Expanded Universe: The Disgaea Light Novels. Following the end of the Disgaea: Hour of Darkness novelization, the next four novels introduce Laharl's relatives and Flonne's family as well as Gordon and Jennifer's daughter. Also, the novelization of Disgaea 2, the fifth novel, takes place 120 years after the first novel (in the games, they're only three years apart).
  • Experience Penalty: The "Depraved" status effect prevents a character from gaining XP, and may also prevent one from giving XP when killed.
  • Eyes Always Shut: Healers. Word of God says that their beliefs require them to keep them closed. Of course, this being Disgaea, this is often lampshaded when you talk to them.
  • Fallen Angel:
    • The female healers are apparently such.
    • The best ending of the first game also makes Flonne one, but she is still the Love Freak she was as an angel.
    • Some material heavily imply the Succubi are in this class as well.
  • Fantastic Racism: A major theme of the first game despite its light-hearted nature. More specifically, the point about judging a group before you know them, a point elaborated on in detail by Lamington. Almaz comments on this in the third game as well.
  • Fastball Special:
    • Prinnies explode when thrown. If their blast hits other Prinnies, they explode as well, setting off a chain reaction.
    • Taken to ludicrous heights in one sequence where they literally challenge the protagonists to a game of baseball.
    • And later bowling, complete with a black prinny with a custom class, the "10-Pounder."
    • Lifting and throwing your own party members also allows you to get them all over the map, essential for reaching problematic geo symbols and opponents.
  • Fireball Eyeballs: When Flonne gets ticked off (or finds something especially awesome), her eyes turn into fireballs.
  • Fire, Water, Wind: The elemental affinities are Fire, Ice/Water, and Wind, with Star also existing as a Non-Elemental attribute. This lasted until 5, which made Star into a proper elemental affinity with its own weaknesses and resistances.
  • Flaming Meteor: Laharl's recurring attack Meteor Impact is always depicted this way
  • Flanderization: Applies to just about any cameo appearance, possibly due to Rule of Funny.
  • For the Evulz: This is encouraged by petty demons, such as Mao, who goes out of his way to do this.
  • Forced Level-Grinding:
    • During the post-story, the game flows like: win battle, unlock new stage, spend some hours grinding your characters and items, beat new stage, repeat. Disgaea 3 is the worst offender, taking 8 full chapters to make enemies reach Lv. 90 while the first optional chapter, Mansion of Ordeals, starts with enemies at Lv. 100 and each battle after that raises their levels by another 100 levels. And that's just the beginning.
    • Due to the games' Absurdly High Level Cap, and encouragement of elite tweaks, there are usually ways to make this go very quickly. Statisticians can be collected and stacked for massive XP boosts, team and tower attacks will split xp among multiple characters, Geo Effects provide further boosts, and bills passed in the senate can raise or lower enemy levels to make them more valuable. In the post-game, it's seriously not uncommon to take a character from level 1 to level 1000 after a single ten-second-long battle.
  • Fusion Dance: In all of the games, you can create stronger enemies by tossing them into each other (except for Prinnies, who explode when thrown). Disgaea 3 introduced the Magichange mechanic, allowing monster-class units to become weapons for humanoid users (examples being Wood Golems becoming fists and Dragons becoming spears), also transferring evilites and gaining new specials (for the record, don't throw anyone with a magichanged Prinny gun). Disgaea 4 amps this mechanic up two new levels by allowing two monsters to merge into a giant version, then allowing said giant monster to become a whole new weapon for a humanoid when Magichange is used again (Giant Wood Golems become axes, for example.)
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Even if your generic units and optional canon characters do all the fighting, the main cast will take all the credit in cutscenes.
    • Since there are ways to jack your units up to unholy levels before beating the main story, it's possible for level 300 heroes to quake in fear of a level 90 Final Boss that they can punch out in one hit once the stage begins.
  • Genre Relaunch: This series, along with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, is co-credited with saving the entire SRPG genre.
  • Genre Savvy:
    • Nearly everyone. Even Flonne — or more accurately, especially Flonne, as she turns out to be a huge Toku and anime geek.
    • As is Mao, who attempts to use take advantage of his knowledge of tropes. For example, if only a Hero can defeat a Big Bad Overlord, he'll become a Hero. This ends up being Wrong Genre Savvy.
  • Geo Effects: The Trope Namer. Certain panels in a level may glow a certain color. If there's a certain type of Breakable Object on panels of a certain color, all panels will apply that effect. What effect is present will vary, generally something along the lines of 50% exp boost.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Etna, the Archer Class (adding pigtails to boot), etc.
  • Give Me Your Inventory Item: The Dark Assembly.
  • Glass Cannon: Every single character in the post-game content. The long and short of it (see One Stat to Rule Them All below) is that after a certain point, you are simply never, ever going to be able to survive more than a hit or two from the bosses, and gameplay descends to trying to get your numbers high enough to instantly kill the enemies before they instantly kill you. (Disgaea 5 took steps to avert this, though.)
  • Good Powers, Bad People: Despite being Celestial in origin, demons have begrudgingly yet decisively accepted healing magics as a strategy that can win battles. Also evident in the equipment variations, demons are not above using holy weaponry to get an edge against enemy demons.
  • God Guise: Vulcanus does this to Flonne in Etna mode.
  • God Is Good: Strangely God has yet to make a physical appearance, even to the angels. It is overall still shown He is this, with God lending a hand in the most desperate of times and even nobler demons showing respect to Him.
  • Going Through the Motions: The cutscene artwork. In Disgaea Infinite and Disgaea 4, they are animated.
    • Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention has animated cutscene artwork, whereas the original PS3 release still used still pictures.
    • Disgaea 6 manages to replicate the same motions in the new 3D environment.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body:
    • Some Combination Attacks have the supporting participant using the main participant as a blunt-force weapon. Fortunately, the person being used to whack doesn't take any damage from it.
    • If you throw a Prinny, they will explode, and damage anyone caught in the blast radius.
    • Subverted if you throw one enemy at another; instead of damaging who you're throwing at, the two enemies combine and level up.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • Nothing in the game tells you how to get which ending. This can be especially frustrating when you finally do go on GameFAQs and learn that team-killing, accidental or otherwise disqualifies you from the Good Ending. Some of the better equipment is also nigh-impossible to stumble into by accident. 5 remedies this by allowing you to avoid bad endings with a dialogue choice if you fulfill the requirements for said endings.
    • Also, the conditions for unlocking most Dark World maps in the second game are pretty much impossible to guess, and for some maps it could take hours of experimentation if a FAQ is not used.
    • The requirements to unlock some secret bills and character classes are also unclear, and are shown only when the player actually fills the requirement.
  • Halloweentown: The Netherworld.
  • Hard Mode Perks: The Cheat Shop in D2 and 5 has an option to raise enemy difficulty. It doesn't just raise their stats; it raises their levels as well, which is extremely useful for grinding.
  • Healing Hands: Angels are known for their healing powers in the Disgaea universe; all characters with healing abilities are somehow related to the angel race, according to The World of Disgaea.
  • Heroic Spirit: In pretty much all installments, willpower and resolve drives the central characters to beat the odds simply by believing their way would ensure a more stable netherworld to live in. Disgaea 4 especially relies on this trope; Despite being a vampire abstaining from blood and being starved of fear energy, Valvatorez can reach the epic power of any other protagonist, which he claims is from his willpower and diet of sardines.
  • Horned Humanoid: Many, many demons are horned humanoids.
  • Hot as Hell: Succubi, naturally. Nekomata (and Flora Beasts), also being cute female (er, mostly) demons, are occasionally lumped in with them (usually when they show up together). Almost all the Succubi and Incubi are drawn by the La Pucelle artist, making them stand out.
  • Humans Are Flawed: Demons and to a lesser extent angels tend to be very critical of humans, viewing them as weak or stupid at best or complete bastards at worst, though the main character does eventually meet decent humans.
  • Hyperactive Sprite: Succubus and Nekomata characters bounce around during their idle animation.
  • Idiot Ball: Several characters on several occasions, mostly played for comedy. Mao in the 3rd game is particularly fond of the ball, too — he might have even swallowed it.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Angels and demons can become several thousand years old, but since time flows differently in their dimensions, they age 100 times slower than normal and act exactly as old as they look.
  • Immunity Disability: Ninjas are the only class able to dodge special techniques. Unfortunately, that includes healing spells.
  • Infinite Stock For Sale: The shops carry a limited selection, but replenish in the three seconds it takes to leave the shop and re-enter.
  • Infinity +1 Element: Star magic is somewhere between this and Non-Elemental.
  • Infinity +1 Sword:
    • With enough Level Grinding, any weapon can become an Infinity +1 Sword. At which point you find a zero-level Infinity Plus Two sword in the hundredth level of the Infinity Plus One sword, level that up until you find an Infinity Plus Three sword in its final level, and so on, until you finally have a 100th-level Infinity Plus Infinity sword of the most powerful base type in the game. To actually get a weapon up to Infinity Plus Most status, you need to ensure it is a legendary item of the most powerful base type, fully leveled, stuffed with the maximal amount of specialists throughout the leveling process, and in the hands of a character with maxed out proficiency (which modifies weapon strength geometrically, not linearly). And weapon proficiency is just one of many, many ways in which one can level up an Infinity Plus One Character.
    • The Infinity +1 Sword is the Yoshitsuna sword, as its base stats are significantly superior to all others of any type... not that you need it to break the game.
      • To illustrate just how much of a game breaker this sword is, among other benefits, it has a range of 5 panels. No need to actually get close to your opponents anymore, just stab 'em from across a gap, or have your Mighty Glacier character stand between you and them! This only applies in the first game, though. In later games, it has the same range as any other sword.
      • This is actually broken from the third game on. Yoshitsuna is only the second-best sword, with the Baal Sword being the absolute strongest. And in one of the spinoffs, Yoshitsuna wasn't a sword at all — it was the Space Battleship Yoshitsuna. The Japanese producer has said it doesn't matter what Yoshitsuna is, as long as it's the most badass item in the game.
      • A producer who is, of course, named Kobayashi Yoshitsuna.
      • Note that while the Baal sword, when it appears, far outclasses the Yoshitsuna, this is more due to the fact that rank 40 weapons in the 3rd and 4th games all have an insane amount of power of their closest rank weapon of the same type. The Baal sword is in fact not the undisputed death machine the Yoshitsuna was in the first games, sharing both games with other rank 40 weapons that also boost range, movement, and jump like it does, some doing so in areas more than it does, and the rank 40 ax in both said games also does more damage, though the Baal sword does give the highest overall stat boost.
  • Informed Equipment: You can see your characters' weapons, but not their armor. Played further with monsters, which also don't show the equipped weapons, which leads to having everything from sardine bones to, er, naughty tentacles.
  • Instant Runes: Any time any kind of spell (or spell-like effect) is used, they show up.
  • Inter-Class Romance: This game loves this trope. Almaz is an extremely Unlucky Every Dude Chew Toy guardsman. Sapphire is an Ax-Crazy princess. There's also Rozalin (fake overlord's daughter and actual super-overlord) and Adell (peasant hero). Laharl's dad (overlord) and his mom (unknown social status mage).
  • Invincible Hero: Spoofed. Characters are thoroughly aware of Main Character privileges, and will often try to steal your spotlight.
  • Invisible Bowstring: Bows in these games don't have strings. This allows for cooler, more impractical designs, though. Especially with the Magichange system.
  • Item Amplifier: Every item in the series has a randomly generated dungeon inside of it — the more floors you clear, the stronger the item becomes.
  • Kaiju: Flonnezilla. Contender for the most hilarious special attack Nippon Ichi has ever come up with.
  • Killer Rabbit: The smaller and more adorable it is, the more likely it can utterly destroy you. Sometimes you can only watch in horror as your entire crew is eviscerated by tiny robot penguins of death.
  • Knife-Throwing Act: The Marionettes, creepy puppets that throw knives around.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The games are mostly lighthearted, but they still throw one of these in at a certain point, typically at least halfway through:
    • The original had General Carter, with his Bad Boss and Jerkass tendencies which, unlike the villains before him, weren't played humorously. And even with his departure, the angels Vulcanus sends to aid him means he still sets up for the finale of the game, where Flonne starts questioning Lamington's orders.
    • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has Fake Zenon. One of the rare demons in the series that qualifies as evil. The real Zenon is even worse, with her appearance marking the possibility of the game's infamous bad ending.
    • Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice has Super Hero Aurum; shortly after he appears, it's revealed that Mao's father was a lingering ghost after Aurum's fight with him, and then he nearly causes Almaz's death.
    • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten has Nemo, who brings the game's plot from a lighthearted fight against other demons to trying to prevent the extinction of humanity.
    • Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance has Majorita, who basically spends her onscreen time trolling and/or torturing the cast, especially Usalia. She devolves into the Iron Butt Monkey in the postgame, however, in a fit of Laser-Guided Karma.
  • Lady of Black Magic: The mage-class Player Mooks, inasmuch as their personality can be determined.
  • Laser Blade: A weapon across several games.
  • Laughably Evil: Regardless of how evil most of the characters may be, they rarely fail to be funny.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The Prism Rangers for Super Sentai/Power Rangers.
  • Lazy Backup: It's never explained why if your units get killed, you can't just take more units out of the base. Even if the 10 units you have out get killed and you still have another 100 in reserve, it's a Game Over.
  • Leaning Tower of Mooks: The tower moves in the games eventually became this trope as well.
  • Leitmotif: Several characters have their very own theme songs.
  • Lethal Joke Item: Many of the "Fun" weapons have about as much attack power as you'd expect from, say, a megaphone, a pie, or a clothes hanger...but these weapons often have Unique Innocents/Specialists that require going deep into the Item World to obtain for normal weapons. In Disgaea 5, which introduces the subweapon slot, you can equip one of these Fun weapons in the subweapon slot to get its Unique's full effect and rock your Infinity +1 Sword in the main weapon slot.
  • Level Grinding: The game caps out at Level 9999, and you can store up to 270,000 levels for stat bonuses through the game's Reincarnation system.
    Prinny: "You gotta play for hours, grind the levels dood!"
  • Level in Reverse: The Dark World and X-Dimension variants of standard campaign maps sometimes move around where the boss and start points are.
  • Level Limiter: A core mechanic of the Disgaea games is "Reincarnation" which resets a character to Level 1, but allows them to keep a percentage of their stats when they do, thus allowing the character to become stronger when they level back up. In addition, generic characters can switch classes while keeping their non-Unique skills, thus allowing them to learn skills they otherwise couldn't.
  • Love Chart: Both of 'The World Of Disgaea' artbooks contain such a chart with arrows, though the only relationship that is described with the word Love over the arrow is that between Laharl and Flonne, and even then a question mark is thrown at the end.
  • Love Freak: Flonne, the Trope Namer, is completely obsessed with love.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: A lot of examples. By the third game, they start spoofing it in an alternate ending when Laharl waltzes in and claims to be Mao's father. Surprisingly, everyone believes him, even after Flonne and Etna start arguing that they're his mother, though it takes some time before Mao starts believing them as well.
    • Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when you consider the fact that in the prototype stages of the game Mao had a design where he was actually Laharl and Flonne's child.
  • Made of Explodium: Prinnies. Picking them up and throwing them causes damage equal to half that Prinny's remaining Life Points. Also, causes any other Prinnies caught in the blast to explode, with similar results.
  • Mana Potion: Drinks restore magic points.
  • Master of One Magic: The starting lineup of Mages and Skulls (male mages) are only able to learn one of three types of attack magic depending on their color: wind, ice, or fire (with "Star" Mages being able to learn a fourth). Later down the line, you are able to create Prism Mages and Galaxy Mages, which learn multiple colors of magic at once, but they are never able to learn the final elemental spell, so single-element specialists are never totally obsolete.
  • Mini Dress Of Power: Archers, as well as Mages in the first game.
  • Minor Injury Overreaction: Characters who are attacked always do their damage animations and lines, no matter how much or how little damage they take. Your character can flinch wildly and whine about how that attack on them just hurt, even if they took Scratch Damage, 0 damage, or dodged the attack entirely.
  • Mon: After defeating a monster for the first time, the ability to recruit it in the Dark Assembly opens up. Afterwards, the only thing stopping you from capturing more monsters of that type via tossing it into your Base Panel is if you're strong enough to beat it into submission. (Weakening them first can help, though later games make it so that your main character's level determines success.)
  • Money Fetish: Hoggmeiser; a Pig Man (possibly an orc?) with obsessive greed. He shows up as a character in the first Disgaea, but references to him keep cropping up later. By Disgaea 4, he gives out money loans by phone to the player.
    • This is the hat of the Nether Noble class, which Hoggmeiser counts as. The unique evility he has in Dimension 2 gives him extra stats based on how much money is held by the player. In Disgaea 5, you can get this evility for yourself.
  • Monster Lord: The "elite" ranks of various monsters count. The top type of Prinny is called a Prinny God, for example.
  • Mood Whiplash: Each game has a narrative opening that sounds dark, dramatic, and tense, as opposed to the general wackiness and humor of the plot. There's generally at least one point in each game where it whiplashes back, though.
  • More Dakka: You can do trillions of HP worth of damage in one turn by one character if you want; if you're not that patient, you can still kill a lot of things fast by using combo attacks, team attacks, and tower attacks (a new feature of the second game).
  • Multiple Endings: Usually dictated by how many times you kill your own allies. Others lead to a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • The Multiverse: Each game is considered to be in its own universe or series of universes, but dimensional portals abound. This makes for easy cameos from other games in the series.
  • Mundane Made Awesome:
    • A lot of the characters' ultimate special attacks, such as the Prism Cannon example above, seem to operate entirely on Coolness and Nonsensoleum. They're still hella devastating, though.
    • Taken to its logical extreme in Disgaea Infinite. Just to give an idea of how ridiculous some of the scenes are, one has Flonne and Jennifer perform a flying trapeze act to hand off a blu-ray, followed by Gordon smacking said blu-ray with a nail-filled baseball bat into Thursday in order to have it play. Another has Laharl using lasers to straighten out posters.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless:
    • Just take a look at the picture above — Do any of them really look like they could blow up the world?
    • Averted in-game. Muscle items give often large HP boosts.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The Rosenqueen Company, which runs the shops in all three games AND La Pucelle. It is named for Etoile Rosenqueen, the Rich Bitch Rival in one of Nippon Ichi's early RPGs, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. The strongest gun in both Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea 2 is also named after Etoile, who was very fond of using guns herself.
    • In a sort of Meta Example, Rosenqueen was also the name of their online store. Key word being was, as it's since (sadly) dropped the name.
  • New Game Plus: The game's bonus content tends to become unlocked after 2 or more play-throughs, which is good, because for the most part, the level requirements for even beginning to prepare for a NIS game's bonus content is several exponential orders of magnitude higher than the original bosses.
  • No Cure for Evil: Word of God states that Celestia has something of a monopoly on healing magic, and that demon healers are either fallen angels or descended from them.
  • No Fourth Wall: Most characters are well aware that they're in a video game series.
    Emizel: Veldime? That doesn't ring a bell. Is it in a different Netherworld?
    Adell: A different Netherworld? Well... play Disgaea 2 for more details.
    Fuka: Did he seriously just plug his own game?
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Almaz in the Almaz ending of the third game. Deconstructed in the fourth game with Artina, who was killed as a result of nursing someone back to health. The recipient of her kindness, Nemo, did not take it well, as Artina was the only person who showed him any kindness in his life.
  • Non-Indicative Name: The Cheat Shops actually have more options for making the games harder (such as disabling command take-backs or disabling specific types of rewards) than for making them easier.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: Triggered by a loss to Mid-Boss in the first game, Axel in the second, or Red Magnus in the fifth (these also count as Multiple Endings). There are also multiple instances in the games of winning "unwinnable fights" thanks to the New Game Plus mode. Some of these cause Nonstandard endings. In other instances, these are caused by the hero having too many Ally kills, which allows unusual plot choices that end the game (refusing to show mercy where in the "real" plot you do, for example).
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: Starting from the second game, there is always one party member whose ultimate skill is obtained through the story instead of leveling up.
    • In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, we have Yukimaru's Midare Fubuki.
    • In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, we have Mao's Vasa Aergun.
    • Finally, Fuuka's Prinny Kaiser XX in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten.
    • Disgaea 5 does this with Overloads, the unique abilities that Overlord characters have. Seraphina, Red Magnus, and Christo all start with theirs, but gain an upgrade to them during the story. Killia, Usalia, and Zeroken start with none, but eventually earn them. In each case, earning or upgrading your Overload is caused by Character Development. A major plot point in the endgame is that Majorita has her Overload stolen, and in the postgame, she has to go to the Strategy Assembly to get it back. Generic characters can learn Overloads by passing Strategy Assembly bills once the postgame is reached.
  • Number Two: Overlords and their vassals.
    • Flonne is the new Archangel for Seraph Lamington.
  • On the Next: With the exception of the second game, all the games feature these segments at the end of every episode. However, with maybe one or two exceptions, these segments have almost nothing to do with the following episode and run completely on Rule of Funny.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity:
    • Mid-Boss is the grandmaster of this, as Seraph Lamington's secret partner in the masterful Batman Gambit to turn Laharl into a decent ruler and make peace between their two realms. About the only part of his personality that isn't an act is his impressive vanity, exemplified when he pauses to point out to himself how awesome he is after menacing a lesser villain.
    • Adell also counts, seeing as he is usually a firm believer in Honor Before Reason, but at one point solves a ridiculously complex Geo Puzzle with one glance. He doesn't play the fool to be sneaky, however. He just considers it more fun to solve his problems by punching them.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Deathblow geo effect will turn anyone into this: if they're hit by attack strong enough to do even one point of damage, they die instantly.
  • One-Man Army: Arguably the easiest way to beat the main games. Having one character soak up all the Exp. and Mana will often make him/her naturally overleveled, and expending all the money on one character allows you to buy much better weapons and armor than sharing the money with multiple characters. In the end, the enemies will barely be able to scratch your character while every attack of yours will knock out one or more enemies.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: NIS games tend to become offense-only affairs in the post-game. This got better in the second game, where tank builds (Taro and Wood Golems) are actually playable. This runs out of control in the third game thanks to the way the damage formula works. note  This trope shows up much earlier as a result, around the point where you fight Marona.
    • Averted in 5. Thanks to welcome changes such as the addition of Armor Mastery and changing skill levels to make skills cheaper (damage is upgraded via mana, which now only modifies the base power of an attack), the use of tanks and thus clerics become a very viable tactic. Carnage Dimension via the Carnage Tyrant evility punishes players for trying to use this trope.
  • Only One Name: Most of the main characters get no last name.
    • This is at least consistent. Most human characters have last names, but demons and angels don't. Almaz's last name is Von Almandine Adamant, Sapphire's is Rhodinite, Fuka's is Kazamatsuri, etc. Gordon's is apparently THE 37TH DEFENDER OF EARTH. It's possible demons and angels just don't bother with last names.
  • Optional Party Member: You'll usually have to fight them first.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Demons are more of an umbrella term for those that are born the Netherworlds and can look like anything from pointy eared humanoids, to Dragons and Cat Girls and Bears.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Valvatorez is a vampire who has a werewolf as his right hand man, eats sardines instead of human blood and works as a Prinny Instructor in Hades. Maderas is a mite closer to the classical depictions.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: Fenrich and Zeroken are werewolves, but of the two, only the former transforms and in only one skill. The werewolves are Half-Human Hybrids descended from wolves and humans, and because of that their blood can be used as a substitute for human blood.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The first game featured a zombie made with patchwork parts, a horse wiener included. The fifth game introduced "Corpses" which are defeated enemy units reanimated by Majorita's Overload, Broken Faith Magia, and still looks like and use the skills of the class they were before being killed. One of the Overlords in the fifth game was a Chimera who fell victim to Broken Faith Magia and became a zombie as a reult.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: A recurring thing in every Disgaea is one or two stages with the explicit purpose of making level grinding easier. Expect them to come in the form of enemies in tightly grouped formations on Geo Panels that give an experience bonus. The best spot is usually somewhere in the Cave of Ordeals, which will have this set-up for high-powered enemies to ensure maximum gains.
    • An Ascended Glitch means that, especially in Disgaea D2 and games released after it, which have the ability to modify the Enemy Strength on the fly, if an enemy has a level of exactly 99, the experience earned is ridiculously high, being equivalent to the experience you'd normally be earning in the Level 300's, making any map with level 99 enemies be a perfect example of this trope for the mid-game.
  • Petite Pride: Girl Archers infamously have no chests at all and their character description says that this was deliberate via magic, so their boobs wouldn't get in the way of their archery. (Rather like the legends of Amazon warriors.)
  • Planet Baron: Overlords, whom each have control of their own Netherworld. A common occurrence is other Overlords vying for dominance over other Netherworlds.
    • Overlord Zetta from Makai Kingdom started off with control over eight Netherworlds, but lost them after torching the Sacred Tome in a fit of anger. Much of the game centers around creating new Netherworlds for Zetta to re-gain control over.
  • Plot Armor: Lampshaded with cameo characters, but most prominently with Laharl, who wants to be the main character again, stating that the main character has a lot of screentime in addition to always winning.
  • Poke the Poodle:
    • The demons tend to be more naughty and mischievous than anything else, despite what they might say. Except in the bad endings. Demon deciding to kill AND EAT his little brother and sister, anyone?
    • Laharl's theme claims he is a great evil because he doesn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom and he plays with fire.
    • Mao's idea of being naughty in the third game involves sharing sandwiches with a girl.
  • Power Copying:
    • Every time you spawn a new "player mook" in the first two games, it has to be the "Pupil" of an existing character (say, Etna). If Etna stands next to her Pupil, she can now use any skills that Pupil knows — and, with enough uses, can even learn them permanently.
    • This system is abandoned from Disgaea 3 onward in favor of the more convenient Class World system, where any character can share their spells and abilities with another.
      • Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness changes this up again. Now the Pupil learns from the Master, and the Master-Pupil relationship can be interchanged with any two characters.
    • Disgaea 5 changes this up again. Now there are scrolls that can be obtained either from breaking Bottlemails open or by choosing the option in the Chara World to have a skill or evility copied down. They can be used by anyone, though certain skill scrolls have to be purchased in a random Chara World event (these are the extra weapon skills for humanoids). There is also a squad that lets the members utilize the skills of the leader, though much like the above examples, they'll have to level the skill up to learn it permanently. There's also a squad where the members can learn the leader's skills in combat.
  • Power Fist: The magichange fist weapons.
  • Power of the God Hand: The second-strongest Fist-type weapon is called "God's Hand".
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate: Axes have the highest ATK of any weapon type, and will also debuff the target's defense for good measure but suffer HIT penalties (alongside SPD) that increase with item level, making them liable to merely nick the target or miss outright. To compare, swords are also ATK-specialist weapons, have the second highest ATK, but don't have any negative stats.
  • Pretty in Mink: The fur-trimmed robes worn by the lady healers.
  • Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Generally speaking, the Superbosses have stats so high that there are two outcomes to attacking them — either they die in one hit, or you do 0 damage. If you attack and do 0... Uh oh.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The main cast of every game in the series.
  • Rain of Arrows: The ultimate attack for bow users.
  • Ramen Slurp: The preview of episode 3 features Etna slurping a bowl of ramen.
  • Randomly Generated Loot: All items come with a random set of innocents, often leading to different stats between two items that are otherwise exactly the same.
  • Really 700 Years Old:
    • Laharl, Etna, and Flonne from Disgaea. Mao and Raspberyl from Disgaea 3. For that matter, most of the Disgaea demons have ages tallied in millennia despite appearing as young humans.
    • Generally, most fans accept the 100 years = 1 year Demon/Human age exchange rate, which basically means that an angel or demon's real age will be their biological age (the age which they appear to be) times 100. This works for the younger-looking demons and angels, like Laharl, Etna, Flonne, Mao, and Raspberyl, but not every demon or angel ages the same way. Lamington, for example, is 9147 years old, and while he does look about middle-aged, he certainly does not look like he's 91.
    • One can also reason that Lamington's power as High Seraph also helped slow his aging process. Either that or he has a hell of a plastic surgeon.
    • Lamington, Druids (quirk of how they get their power), and demons born in Veldime (mature at human speed but have demon life span) seem to be the only exceptions to this rule. The rule seems to apply fine to adult/middle aged angels/demons just fine as seen with Axel, Vulcanus, Champloo, Bigstar, and Salvatore.
      • There seems to be a legimate reason for the Veldime demons' age rate. It's stated in Disgaea Infinite that time flows differently in the netherworld, thus causing the crazy ages. Veldime was originally a human world, so it's possible its time flow wasn't affected.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning:
    • All demons in the Disgaea series, barring non-fire mages (and possibly Yukimaru), have red eyes. They're usually no more or less fearsome than the humans in the game. Adell's sprite also has red eyes, though it may be a result of his hair being in his way, because all art depicts him as blue-eyed.
    • Among the Mook gallery, though, there are subversions to this (counting their default colors used in official artwork; Palette Swap only registering a higher tier). The Archers and Magic Knights have blue eyes (fitting, given that supplementary material cites them as being some of the nicer individuals), and the Felynn skirt between blue and purple. Both male and female Samurai have black-colored irises, and the Succubi and Cheerleaders have light-pink colored eyes.
  • Red Is Heroic: Most of the protagonists have red in their costumes. Laharl has a red scarf, Adell has a giant red necktie (and red hair), Mao has a red overcoat, and the inside of Valvatorez's cape is red.
  • The Red Mage: Prism and Galaxy mages can use attack spells of all four elements; however, they do not learn the ultimate "Tera" damage spells that single-element mages learn.
  • Reference Overdosed: The series has its own Shout-Out page.
  • Reluctant Warrior: Flonne hates fighting, but does so to help Laharl. Later cameos show she's all too willing to fight for anime DVD collections, too.
  • Ridiculously Small Wings: Etna has a small pair of bat-like wings on her back which she often uses to hover above the ground when she feels like posing while teasing others. Ancillary material like novels, artbooks, and manga reveals that Laharl has an even smaller pair of wings on his back, but if he actually wants to fly (something he never has reason to do in the games) they grow to a much more appropriate huge size.
  • Running Gag: During the tutorials, when one of the characters chooses to end turn (either accidentally or on purpose to prove their point), the main character is helplessly surrounded and attacked by the remaining enemies, much to the annoyance of the main character.
  • Royal Brat: Prince Laharl, much to his vassals' annoyance.
  • Say It with Hearts:
    • The best possible reaction (generally only possible with lots of judicious bribing) in the Dark Assembly is "Loves" with a heart after it. Etna and Sapphire use hearts to cheerfully punctuate death threats.
    • Most of the female monsters use them, as well; succubi, in particular.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!:
    • If a prinny gets enough cash, it can skip the workload needed to pay off its sins.
    • Also an in-game mechanic — to get the Dark Assembly to pass bills in your favor, you can bribe them with items (which items they want are dependent on their rarity... so it's quite possible a given assembly member will heavily desire a copy of the starting weapon and hate your Infinity +1 Sword). There are Elite Tweaks dependent on getting as many assembly members in your pocket as you can.
      • Taken to a literal form in Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness. If you have the money, you can easily force a bill to pass if it initially got voted down, and you don't feel like fighting the assembly.
  • Sentai:
  • Serial Escalation: It nearly matches Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in sheer over-the-topness.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Simple Score of Sadness: It's an entire game full of peppy, upbeat songs... and then there's "Sorrowful Angel".
  • SI Prefix Name: The franchise uses SI prefix names to denote spell tiers. For example, "Fire -> Mega Fire -> Giga Fire -> Omega Fire -> Tera Fire".
  • Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Even the most outrageously destructive attacks leave the terrain unscathed, and can cause surprisingly little damage in the wrong conditions. The fight animations play to completion regardless of how effective the attack is, so it is not uncommon to see an elaborate cutscene of a character getting hit so hard that they literally become a black hole and explode...followed by "Miss" or a 0.
  • Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: A rare Type 5 example. Men and women of various classes have the same base stats and aptitudes in the key stats, but vary in weapon proficiency, other stats, and evil acts. The main cast is usually relatively equal in terms of gender ratio and there are just as many badass women as there are badass men.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Averted: The main character gender ratio is roughly one-to-one in the first two games, and in the third, when you count the hidden story characters, there are more females than males.
  • Sociopathic Hero: Many, many twisted examples, as this is a series with tons of Noble Demons and Dark Is Not Evil characters. Sapphire embodies it.
  • Socketed Equipment: Instead of gems, equipment in Disgaea has Innocents, and they don't become active until you go in the item's Item World and subdue them.
  • Spell Levels: Elemental spells and the heal spell have the more advanced levels given prefixes: "mega", "giga", "omega", "tera", and "peta".
  • Spiteful A.I.: Enemies will off their allies to rob you of experience. Quite aggravating with high-levelled enemies.
    • In Disgaea 2, the AI will target neutral (Yellow-bar) characters, which includes Specialists, Treasure Chests, and in the Updated Re-release, Level Spheres. Better hope there's an Invincibility effect nearby.
  • Splash Damage Abuse: The area of effect for magic can be abused to extend the range of your spells by a couple tiles.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: Disgaea mixes 3D polygon background with 4-directional 2D sprites, allowing the players to adjust the camera angle by either panning it or shift to top-down view for better visibility.
  • Star Power: "Star magic" is the most powerful offensive spell element.
  • Start My Own:
    Laharl: I don't even wanna be a part of this stupid world. I wouldn't stay if you begged me! I'll go find a better world, with heaps of food! And cookies!
  • Stat Grinding: Both the item worlds and using weapons and spells ups character proficiency with them.
  • Stone Wall:
    • The Galactic Demons. Notably, unlike most monster units, they have a greater-than-100% aptitude in two stats (Defense and Resistance, naturally).
    • The Heavy Knights fulfill this role in every game following the first.
  • Stop Poking Me!: Some of the Mystery Rooms in the Item Worlds have NPCs you can talk to. There will often be one NPC who has a different line every subsequent time you talk to them (as opposed to repeating the same line); talking to that NPC repeatedly will often lead to reactions along the lines of "would you stop that?!" and a fight if you persist.
  • Stripperiffic: though, unlike most examples, quite a few of the men are subject to this trope too — shirts seem to be foreign concept in most Netherworlds.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Again, Prinnies; tons of the animations for the attacks also look like they've been directed by Michael Bay, and the explosions seem to become both bigger and more numerous with each new installment in the series.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders:
    • Characters of either gender can be charged and convicted of the crime of "Liking Girls" or "Liking Guys".
    • The crime "Corrupting the Youth" is given for having a pupil over Lv. 100.
  • Super Boss: Disgaea (and many Nippon Ichi titles) love this trope in general. The most famous of such is Overlord Tyrant Baal aka "Super Overlord Baal", who makes frequent appearances throughout each of the Disgaea titles as a monstrous super side boss, always around the area of 4000+ in levels at minimum. Baal is not the only example, as past Disgaea characters make appearances as powerful bosses, other characters from other Nippon Ichi titles (such as Priere) are also bonus bosses, and the list could continue. Most bonus bosses cannot just be fought, either; it usually requires fulfilling certain requirements (i.e. for Disgaea 2, Zetta requires 10 dark sun maps, and the port to the PSP requires Champloo and Raspberyl defeated and all 16 treasure maps found to fight Mao).
    • One of the most incredibly evil ones they made was Pringer X, a level 9999 unit that has his stats placed at the total stat caps in 40,000,000. Additionally, you have to fight 8 of him, and all 8 become immune to any special attack that one of them is hit by. Nippon Ichi loves Bonus Bosses, if it isn't obvious.
  • "Super Sentai" Stance: The Prism Rangers are the obvious example, but they're certainly not the only ones. Flonne does, at one point, try to get Laharl and Etna to do one, with very limited success.
  • Sweet Tooth: Laharl and Etna both have enormous sweet teeth, and the former's confiscation of the latter's expensive snacks is a frequent point of contention between the two, particularly in Disgaea Infinite.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Most battle scenes in all the games begin with lots of dialogue between the characters, and can be skipped. Etna hangs a lampshade on it on the tutorial level of the first game. Flonne actually scolds Laharl for even suggesting they attack before a later opponent finishes explaining his motivations.
  • Thieves' Guild: The profile for the rogue class states the existence of one.
  • Three-Strike Combo: The aptly-named Triple Strike, a three-hit combo fist skill present in every Disgaea game. The actual animation of the strikes differ with each game, but each version involves two strong strikes followed by a powerful third strike that pushes the opponent back a space.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • The idea of the Prinny sytem is sorta built on this. Sure, they were rat bastards in their former life (well, most), but the universe has given them another chance. For those that realize this, and get past the laziness that seems to be inherent in Prinnies, they work their asses off to either work off the bad karma gained, redeem themselves, or gain enough coin to earn that chance, and the potential to be better beings in the next life. The idea that the universe is so willing to give everyone the chance to be better is... well... uplifting.
    • Exemplified in Disgaea 4. Valvatorez tells the Big Bad, who felt that there was no way he could repent without sacrificing his soul, to become a Prinny, saying that no matter how big his sin and no matter how long he has to work it off, he does not deserve to be denied a chance at redemption.
    • Unfortunately for the Prinnies who end up in the Netherworld, this can rapidly descend into Yank the Dog's Chain depending on who you have to work for, especially if your boss is named Etna. Seraphina is a distant second, but still nobody you'd work with if you can avoid it, as Christo points out in one skit.
      Christo: This is worse than a sweatshop. We have just witnessed the birth of a sweatconglomerate.
    • On the other hand, even if Valvatorez is done with you, count your lucky stars if you get sent to Toto Bunny. The Overlords there treat their Prinnies with care and respect, and the Prinnies pay it back in kind.
  • The Voiceless: Some of the bonus stages in the earlier games make the implication that certain characters from other dimensions that find their way into the Disgaea realm(s) have a curse placed on them which robs them of their voice as a side-effect of travel. This is probably done to justify not giving the characters battle voices.
    • This becomes in and of itself a plot point in Disgaea 3 when Mao and his crew actually have to give Reyva a voice so she can teach at Evil Academy.
  • True Companions: One such group forms by the end of each game, though the more stubborn characters refuse to admit it.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Cloned characters cannot have their items stolen. However, using a special item that steals items on death, "Dropouts" from Disgaea 3 can. Whether or not this is a bug is up to the reader — it certainly lowers the post game grinding as you can simply clone as many copies of Innocents / Items / etc. As you want. In addition, it's important to note that Nippon Ichi has patched the game several times at this point and the bug has not been removed yet.
    • The weapon you're talking about, the Puppy Paw Stick, was intentionally added into the game to cut down on the grinding. Considering that the final challenge of the game has well over 400 million HP and around 50 to 75 million in stats, they knew you needed every advantage, though recent patches cut down the PPS' chance to steal items.
  • Unusual Ears: All demons have 'em, but the humanoid non-demon characters don't. Word of God says that Adell doesn't have pointy ears, despite unknowingly being a demon. And then there's Usalia and her mom...
  • Verbal Tic: Lots, okay? Just super leave it at that, ...Zam.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can kill your Senators ad nauseam by intentionally picking a bill with a minimal chance of passing ("I Need War Funds!", for example), and then accepting the option to persuade the Senators by force. Granted, the game inflicts Video Game Cruelty Punishment by making the Senators even less likely to vote Aye on future bills, but if you're strong enough to defeat them without issue, just kill them again!
  • Video Game Stealing: You can steal items from just about any monster, and taking these items away actually has a discernible effect on their performance — for example, steal an archer's bow, and they're a sitting duck. Disgaea Thieves can even steal stats! It's pretty much the only way to level them up in the first game, since their growth and aptitude rates are far inferior to other created characters. Thieves in Disgaea 2 onward are more balanced and in some games can also use their thievery skills to inflict Status Effects.
  • Violence is the Only Option/Violence Really Is the Answer: The fundamental rule that all Netherworlds thrive on.
  • Weakened by the Light: The Prinny games confirm that demons get stronger the closer it is to midnight and that weaker demons are up at daytime and stronger demons are up at nighttime. This might indicate that weaker demons are up at daytime to avoid stronger demons.
  • Weapon Specialization: Largely averted, due to main characters choosing any weapon (save for monsters being stuck with the two monster weapon types), but weapon proficiency means some characters are better at some weapons than others.
  • We Have Reserves: Sort of. You're restricted to only 10 of your units on the field at any one time, including corpses, which you cannot revive until the end of the battle. However, the game does absolutely nothing to stop you from tossing your worn-out, beaten, nearly-dead husks of units back into your home base and bringing out new ones. A sometimes legitimate strategy is to attack with a set of fragile speedsters and glass cannons, then throw them back into the home base before they can be killed off, and bring them around for another pass next turn.
  • Weird World, Weird Food: A lot of of dual-recovery items are witch-like foods, including chicken blood, snake kidneys, caterpillar eggs, and even dried worms. Yes, worms dried out like beef jerky. (One could call it an earthworm Slim Jim?)
  • What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: An important plot point in the first three games — in D1, you have Laharl learning to be caring — sorta — because of Flonne, and ultimately forgiving Lamington after he "kills" Flonne, as well as Etna defrosting a little after recovering her memory of King Krichevskoy, the first person to ever show her any kindness; Disgaea 2 is essentially a love story between Adell and Rozalin, complete with Meet Cute and Slap Slap Kiss ... Gun To Face...; and in Disgaea 3, the entire plot turns out to be Mao feeling soul-crushing guilt over selling out his father to the Super Hero out of spite, which he repressed so far he forgot about it. See also Even Evil Has Standards above.
  • White Mage: The Healer classes.
  • World of Badass: Very much so. Nearly any character with a name has some ability to fight and pull off some insane fancy attack that defies the laws of physics. And since demons solve nearly everything through fighting, Netherworlds quickly turn into this because of how their inhabitants keep trying to assert their dominance.
  • World of Ham: It's a miracle people in the Disgaea universe aren't deaf from all the shouting the characters do.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: Many characters, demon or not, have natural technicolor hair ranging from blue to white to neon pink.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Mao is convinced that studying video games, manga, anime, and toku shows is the way to learn how to beat an overlord, and attempts to use his knowledge of Fantasy / Sci-Fi RPG tropes to further his goals. Unfortunately, Disgaea is, for the most part, a parody of those tropes...
  • "X" Makes Anything Cool: Several weapon skills have "X" at the ends of their names and have X-shaped Areas of Effect.
  • Yet Another Stupid Death:
    • A common way to lose a Prinny you have and by extension a deployment slot is to throw one with the intention of getting them across the map, forgetting that Prinnies explode when tossed until you're about partway through the toss animation. You can additionally get allies killed this way if the Prinny has high enough HP (as Prinny explosion damage is based on how much HP the Prinny has left when they explode), especially if they have buffs that expand the explosion's range. You obviously don't lose a unit or deployment slot for throwing an enemy Prinny, but the risk of getting allies killed remains. And if you're doing an all-Prinny run and all of your Prinnies are close to each other...oops!
    • Most attacks do not discriminate between friend or foe, and as such it's possible for one of your units to get caught up in the attack zone of another unit's wide-area attack and die subsequently if you're not careful.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It:
    • This is normally how Overlord succession works.
    • You can capture enemy monsters by throwing them onto your base panel, at which point your party members inside beat it into submission and kill it, adding them to your party.
  • You Require More Vespene Gas: "Mana" in this series is not spellcasting points, but a secondary resource next to experience that builds up in characters as they kill enemies (or, in later installments, heal allies). Mana is used for a variety of character upgrades (usually as currency in the Senate, but also learning skills and stuff in later installments).
  • Zombie Puke Attack: The first special technique that zombies gain is "Zombie Puke", which can also poison the target.

    Generic Class Tropes 
Though the generic classes are not the focus of the games, they still have a backstory and are still an integral part of game play. This folder is dedicated to the classes and everything involving them and Worldbuilding.
  • Adorably Precocious Child: Skulls from Disgaea 2 onwards.
  • All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Martial Artists.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Zombies and Maids (who are also zombies) come in a variety of unnatural skin colors, even before or without the option to freely change sprite palettes.
  • Animated Armor: Living Armor.
  • Area of Effect: While many classes have skills that target multiple panels, the Sage class in particular is designed around AoE attacks; their Unique Evility, Mass Blaster, increases their damage by 10% for each enemy that they target in one attack. Of course, preceding her were Disgaea 3's incarnation of the Warslugs and Disgaea 4's Onmyo Monks, both of whom had the Mass Blaster Evility as their defaults.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Nether Nobles, by Noble Demon standards at least.
  • Arm Cannon: Rifle Demons altered themselves with human technology to get stronger. In place of one of their arms they now have a massive cannon.
  • Asian Fox Spirit: Disgaea 5 introduces the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan, with Izuna being a prominent member.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: The Gunner's evil eye allows them to see the target's weaknesses.
  • Badass Adorable: Several classes, regardless of gender or species, are both adorable and capable if you level them up enough; like the Skulls, Mages, Slumber Cats, Nekomatas and Maids.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Bouncers.
  • Battle Aura: Majins from Disgaea 2 onwards.
  • Battle of the Sexes: Battle? Try war! The female Archers revolted against the male Rangers and had a war that spanned over multiple Netherworlds, eventually requiring Overlords to stop the feud.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Golems and Archers. The former will kill you if you piss it off and Archers are still powerful huntresses that can snipe you with an arrow.
  • The Beastmaster: Beastmasters have skills that allow monster units to gain experience faster and boost attack statistics of monster units. They also have an evility that boosts the stats of adjacent monsters, too.
  • Berserk Button: Male Healers really hate being mistaken for girls in Disgaea D2 (where their latest redesign pushes them into Dude Looks Like a Lady territory).
  • Black Cloak: Reapers, of the Ringwraith variety in Hour of Darkness.
  • Blob Monster: Sludges are walking puddles of slime that wear a monster skull to make themselves look more frightening.
  • Blood Knight: The more powerful monsters like Serpents and Rifle Demons love fighting. Majins also live for combat and despise the weak.
  • Blow You Away: Wind is one of the three primary attack elements and tends to be used by Mages or monsters like Alraunes.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Sorcerors have their own brand of morality which involves bringing people despair.
  • Braids of Action: Martial Artists, at least in the first game.
  • Brainy Specs: Skulls wear glasses that enhance their magic.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: Sages with the "Idle" personality are powerhouse spellcasters with high INT growth like other Sages, but regularly complain about being tired and think that sleeping 16 hours per day still isn't enough.
  • Burn the Undead: Zombies take extra damage from fire-elemental attacks. So do Maids, as they are also zombies.
  • Canon Immigrant: Berserkers and Professors first appeared in Makai Kingdom. Catsabers originate from Phantom Brave. Female Gunslingers are actually Merchants from both of those games.
  • Cat Girl: Thieves. Literal Classy Cat Burglars, perhaps? There are also the Nekomata.
  • Cats Are Mean: Slumber Cats. Yeah, they look adorable and huggable, but they also have sharp claws that they're not hesitant to use on anyone who upsets them. They also have a skill, Feign Innocence, that uses the user's cuteness to bait the target into letting their guard down before taking advantage of the opportunity to strike, likely dealing Amnesia status to go with the damage.
  • Cats Hate Water: Slumber Cats take extra damage from water/ice-elemental attacks.
  • Chained by Fashion: Both Healer classes, but only really explained for the male, who believe that healing those wounded in battle is a sin. Likewise, Sinners, a Disgaea 2 class, who are dangerous convicts unleashed by the senate as necessary.
  • Cleavage Window: Kunoichi sport this look. While it seems to go against their profession as ninjas, their class description mentions them charming their victims.
  • Combat Tentacles: Sea Angels. They use their buccal cones to leech their targets' HP.
  • Cool Old Guy: Geomancers by appearance and attitude, but they're actually significantly younger. The crystals they put inside themselves cause rapid aging until they all look old.
  • Counter-Attack: Martial Artists and Fight Mistresses have evilities focus on powering up their counter attacks, though most classes can perform counters.
    • The Nekomata could deal higher damage with their counters, and in Disgaea 3 could innately counter special attacks.
  • Cowboy: Gunners. They're even locked with a bill about 'A sunset kind of guy.'
  • Cute Bruiser: Nekomata are popular for being rather cute, but are also martial artists and very physically powerful.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Succubi, Nekomata, and Alraunes. Disgaea D2 brought Sea Angels into the mix, with Disgaea 5 adding the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan. Slumbercats look like children dressed as kittycats, but actually have pegs for feet just like Prinnies, suggesting that they're not fully human even underneath their costumes. And for a given value of "monster", Maids from Disgaea 5 look surprisingly adorable for being zombies.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Catsabers possess evilities that reflect this effect.
  • Cute Witch: The Mage class (also known as the Witch) tends to be a lot more carefree and whimsical than the more serious skulls.
  • Cyborg: The player Androids are a Valkyrie subjected to Unwilling Roboticisation
  • Cyber Cyclops: Androids have a radar in front of their eyes.
  • Denial of Diagonal Attack: Not only are Gunners unable to hit in diagonals with their preferred weapon, guns, their unique skills can't hit diagonals either. However, they can learn the Flying Bullets Evility, which allows their basic attack to strike in diagonal directions, but it still doesn't apply to skills.
  • Distaff Counterpart: Many classes are split along gender lines, with each gender having slightly different stats and aptitudes.
    • Valkyries are the female version of the male Warrior class. Valkyries focus more on movement while Warriors favor defense.
    • Skulls and Mages are both magic users, with Skulls favoring power and growth and Mages favoring conservation.
    • Martial Artists are the male counterpart to the female Fight Mistresses. The Martial Artists focus on taking and dealing strong counters, whilst the Fight Mistresses focus on counter-dodging.
    • Archers and Rangers are considered such with Rangers being the slightly darker archery class.
    • Gunners and Gunslingers.
    • Celestial Hosts and Angels.
    • Samurai and Lady Samurai
    • Ninjas and Kunoichi
    • Heavy Knights (later renamed Armor Knights) were introduced in Disgaea 2 and later the female Armor Knights joined them.
    • Male and Female Healers
  • Dracolich: Dragon Zombies are undead dragons. They're stronger than normal dragons, but less intelligent.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady
    • In Disgaea D2, Male Healers look and sound like girls.
    • Alraune seem to be a One-Gender Race, but there are males. They just happen to look exactly the same. Lampshaded in a Nether News report in 5, where one Alraune is asked for their gender and their response is simply, "Does love care?"
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The magic knight's evilities are built around exploiting the enemy's weakness.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: If a Nether Noble says something like this, be very afraid.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies:
    • Zombies.
    • As their artwork and profile confirm, Maids are actually zombies, and a Nether Noble got the idea of using them to do housework.
  • Expy:
    • The Male Healers's Disgaea 3 incarnation is essentially a less buff Sinner.
    • Put the Merchants of Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom in a Gunner suit and you get a Gunslinger.
  • Extra Turn: Maids can use the Afternoon Tea skill to grant an allied unit an extra action. This only works once per turn on each unit, however. Preceding them were the Cheerleaders in Disgaea 3's remake, and the Medics in Disgaea 4's remake, using the skill "Lets Go! Cha Cha Cha" which worked the same way.
  • Eyes Always Shut: Healers. Female Healers carry it as part of their teachings.
  • Fallen Angel: Female Healers are implied to be angels who were thrown out of Celestia for some reason and taught demons how to use healing magic.
    • Succubus-clan demons are implied to be descended from fallen angels as well, given their innate healing skills.
  • The Faceless: In Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness, skulls covered their faces with hoods, though after that they showed their faces.
  • Five-Finger Discount: In Disgaea D2, Thieves have a skill that mimics the stealing hands.
  • Flight: Certain classes like the Masked Hero, Mothman, or Celestial Host can fly, meaning they can pass through enemy tiles. Winged (replaced by Imps in Disgaea 1 Complete) in Disgaea 1 can't fly through enemies, despite always being shown flying in animations.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • Valkyrie evilities focus on movement in contrast to the bulkier warriors.
    • The Masked Hero has an evility that makes them a One-Hit-Point Wonder in exchange for moving five extra panels.
    • Ninjas and especially Kunoichi have poor defenses, but great speed stats that make them hard to hit in the first place. Their evilities also focus on evasion: Ninja evading melee attacks, and the Kunoichi evading area-of-effect attacks.
    • Slumber Cats have great attack and speed aptitudes, but their defense and HP aptitudes are very low. They make up for it with their evilities, which focus on raising their evasion, as well as good movement rates.
    • Winged Warriors have poor HP and defense stats and altitudes, but good speed and resistance ones. They can attack from two spaces away, and have amazing movement rates and can fly (going straight through enemies). In Disgaea 5, their base movement rate is seven, which was previously only seen on generic units with the Divine Majin from Disgaea 1. Their evilities and skills focus on infecting enemies with ailments.
  • Friendly Zombie: Maids are zombies, but certainly don't act the part, being just as sapient and perky as the human classes. Just as long as you don't give them the "Yandere" personality...
  • The Fundamentalist: The Celestial Host believe they are always right, meaning anyone who opposes them is their enemy. And if they believe in something, it will be impossible to change their mind.
  • Gender Flip:
    • Thieves started as male. They became female from Disgaea 2 onwards, except in Disgaea 7 where they can be of either gender.
    • In Disgaea 2, the Samurai class became male, though both genders appeared in Disgaea 3 (with the female being ported back into Dark Hero Days if certain conditions are met).
    • Armor Knights in Disgaea D2, though their bio acknowledges their male counterparts.
  • Geo Effects: Striders were the first class that manipulated geo panels but were replaced in Disgaea 2 by the Geomancer, who in turn was replaced by the Onmyo Monk in Disgaea 4, who were in turn usurped by the Nine-Tails in Disgaea 5, with the spells also going the Sage and the Pirate also introduced inDisgaea 5 for good measure.
  • Gentle Giant: Golems.
  • Geo Effects: Rabbits deal more damage if they attack enemies from higher positions.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Fight Mistresses and later on Maids and Archers.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • Skulls boost their offensive power rather than conserve their magic like Mages, and their evilities reflect this.
    • Martial Artists and Fight Mistresses tend to be fairly fragile for melee classes, especially given that they focus on counters.
    • There's the Nether Nobles as well.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Bouncers have an X-Shaped scar on the forehead.
  • The Gunslinger: Gunners and Gunslingers.
  • The Grim Reaper: Reapers. They're even shown escorting Prinny souls to reincarnation.
  • Guide Dang It!: Unlocking the Majin in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness requires having five classes at the highest rank and at level 200. In Afternoon of Darkness, this is simplified to merely having those five classes at level 200.
  • Healing Hands: Female Healers have evilities that ensure they can heal and bolster the party's defenses.
  • Hellfire: Great Wyrms (and their Disgaea 3 counterparts, Fire Demons) wield the flames of Hades itself, which can burn anyone to ash.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Kunoichi, with their rather revealing attire and ample bust, not to mention the variety of bright colors they dress in. Ninjas count too, especially the ones that use Gratuitous Japanese.
  • Honor Before Reason:
    • The Magic Knight is so honorable that they will die if they break their word.
    • The Samurai and Living Armors also believe in honor.
  • Hope Crusher: The Sorceror Modus Operandi. They also worship the god of despair, Dolvalky.
  • Impossible Thief: Nothing, not even the laws of physics can stop those Thieves from stealing things, from wealth and possessions to memories and emotions. A well-trained thief can put Carmen Sandiego to shame.
  • Improbable Hairstyle.
    • Ojou Ringlets: The Archer hairstyle in Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness (as well as Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom).
    • Girlish Pigtails: Their hairstyle in Disgaea 2.
  • Innocent Fanservice Girl: One of the Nekomata's Personalities in Disgaea 4 can have her wondering why people keep staring at her chest, which she calls "lumps of fat".
  • Intrepid Merchant: Gunslingers.
  • Jack of All Stats: Classes like the Medic or some versions of the Celestial Host have decent aptitudes in everything but one or two stats and can use a large variety of weapons.
  • Kick Chick: Nekomata favor kicking attacks.
  • Kill It with Fire: Many classes specialize in fire attacks, though some of them (such as Dragons) have been known to switch primary elements between games.
  • Kill It with Ice: Ice is the third primary skill and is a common weapon for classes like the Mages.
  • Knight in Shining Armor:
    • The Heavy and Armor Knights are, like the name suggests, trained to be knights.
    • The Living Armors are firm believers of chivalry.
  • Lethal Joke Character: In Disgaea 3 and 4, the Masked Hero has the Trick Move evility, which increases evasion by 10% per panel moved, and a very high movement stat to go along with it. While Disgaea D2 nerfed the evility, his high movement range and Flight is still useful for item grinding.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Berserkers. Majin fit this in the first game, but then their movement declined to abysmal levels.
  • Literal Genie: Golems seem to evoke genies a lot in their specials.
  • Mad Scientist
    • One of the Male Healer's personality choices during Character Creation.
    • The Professor from Disgaea 4, whom later returns for Disgaea 5.
  • Magic Knight: The Magic Knight combines magic with their sword attacks to cause bonus damage.
  • Magical Accessory: Mages wear ribbons that help control their magic and update their spells.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: "Idle" Sages will always say "Come on..." in a calm, lazy tone whenever they're the victim of an attack or debuff. Even if they lose 95% of their HP, they sound less like they're in pain and more like they're mildly annoyed that they can't get their unreasonable amounts of sleep.
  • Meaningful Name: Nirvam, the highest rank given only to the greatest of Fight Mistresses, means "initiation to secrets" and might be a corruption of the word Nirvana.
  • The Medic: The Healer and Medic classes from various games.
  • Mighty Glacier: After the first game, Majins had their movement reduced but kept their otherwise high stats. Most of the bulkier monster classes like Dragons are also very slow.
  • Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: The first thing an Android does when you create one is make a Val/Fen slash fic.
  • Multiple Head Case: Downplayed with the Twin-headed Dragons from Disgaea 5. They can coordinate their thoughts to launch extra attacks.
  • One-Gender Race:
    • All Archers, Nekomata and Succubi are female.
    • All Rangers are male.
  • Necromancer: The Necromancer class raises the dead to fight.
  • One-Man Army: The Android and Majin classes are the most powerful in the game and have their own evility of the same name, which doubles their stats when they are fighting alone.
  • Our Angels Are Different: Apart from the fallen angel classes (Female Healers and Succubi), there are also Celestial Hosts and Angels to go with them. They're strong classes, but can be relatively tricky to unlock.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons are a powerful race that can be summoned to help, though they won't work for people weaker than they are. However, there are also Undead Dragons as well as Serpents and Great Wyrms, which are sharklike and flaming dragons respectively. On the other hand, there are also the respectable and honorable Holy Dragons.
    • As mentioned above, Disgaea 5 introduces Twin-headed Dragons.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: Both Hour of Darkness and Alliance of Vengeance have a Fairy class but the two versions are quite different. The former's take are called "Faeries", look closer to The Fair Folk and need a cape to stop their magic from dispersing. The latter's version are called "Fairies" and look closer to the Disneyfied version (small Winged Humanoids) but carry around a lantern that houses their overprotective will o'wisp-esque fathers.
  • Our Gargoyles Rock: Gargoyles are demons that look like a legless gargoyle statue (and a chess piece). Despite this they are capable of movement.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts are implied to be human souls that failed to become prinnies and are an anomaly in the netherworld.
  • Our Zombies Are Different:
    • Zombies are dead humans and demons reanimated by the Netherworld's natural miasma. Some of them remember who they were before they died and their power ranges from Prinny to Majin levels of power.
    • Despite being zombies, Maids are clearly able to think for themselves and speak like normal humans.
  • The Paladin: The Celestial Host class prides itself on its virtue, though they're also stubborn and opinionated. The highest tier for them is even called "Paladin"
  • Petite Pride: Archers take pride in being flat.
  • Phantom Thief: Thieves.
  • Plant Person: Alraunes and Lanterns
  • Powered Armor: The Battle Suit class in Disgaea 4 uses special tech to match up to the power of demons.
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate: The Sage's Land Decimator skill, in a weird way. It has low base power, but thanks to her Mass Blaster Evility it increases in per-target damage the more targets there are on the map, meaning that it's incredibly powerful against large hordes of enemies. What steers it clearly into this trope is that each hit is capped at 50% accuracy, even if you give her accuracy buffs, meaning that there's a good chance that several enemies will still be standing or just straight up evade the attack.
  • The Prankster: Thieves in Disgaea D2.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: Most of the physical classes have female counterparts.
  • The Quiet One: Most Reapers rarely speak. The one escorting prinny souls to the red moon in the first game spoke very haltingly as though it wasn't used to doing so.
  • Rapid Aging: Geomancers age at an accelerated rate thanks to the crystals they put in their foreheads.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Sages are known to live extremely long lives that are millions of years old. Lampshaded by those with the "Long-Lived" personality, who brashly remind their allies that they're much older than them (mind you, said allies are often demons hundreds or thousands of years old, meaning that Sages crank this trope up to eleven) and contemplate taking advantage of senior discounts.
  • Reluctant Fanservice Girl: One of the Succubus' personalities can turn her into this. Otherwise they seem to be more the shameless type.
  • Samurai: Guess. They tend to be best with spears and swords.
  • Scarf of Asskicking: Ninjas, Samurai, and Kunoichi.
  • Seeker Archetype: Male Healers search for knowledge.
  • Sexy Discretion Shot: When the Succubus's cape dissolves to reveal her entire body during her Dazzling Stage special, the game cuts to a "technical difficulties" screen literally 1-2 frames before her vital parts are shown. When the picture comes back, the dance is already over and her outfit is intact once more.
  • Shadow Archetype: Rangers, in contrast the the kinder Archers, the rangers are cold mercenaries.
  • Shrinking Violet:
    • Despite being ambush predators, Alraunes are quite shy. Some of the tier colors take it more literally than usual.
    • Sea Angels are shy and only come out of the water to feed.
  • Sinister Scythe: Reapers
  • Social Darwinist: Majins think the weak have no right to exist.
  • Spell Blade: Magic Knights in 5, learning Elemental Versions of every Sword-Skill alongside their regular Version
  • Squishy Wizard: Skulls and Mages have great magic aptitude and range, but very poor defenses and HP. Their movement is also low, making it hard to escape danger. The Healer classes are also fairly squishy, though they tend to be resilient to magical attacks at least. A few of the monster classes are also casting based and tend to suffer defensively for it, though not as much as the mages.
  • Status Effects:
    • Sorcerors have all the status ailment spells in the series except maybe Charm.
    • Thieves, Ninja, and Kunoichi can also inflict status ailments in some games by "stealing health" or similar things.
  • Star Power: Geomancers, and Onmyo Monks focus on star magic, which is essentially Non-Elemental magic.
  • Status Buff: The specialty of the Cheerleader class, later passed onto the Sea Angels and Professors.
  • Status Infliction Attack: In multiple games:
    • Disgaea 2 has both the Thief and Kunoichi able to inflict ailments with their unique specials. The Kunoichi can do it at range and inflict multiple characters at once, though the Thief's single-target variations have a much higher success rate.
    • Disgaea 3 onward introduced the Sorceror, who specializes in using ailment spells. The remakes gave them the "Curse Storm" skill that can inflict all ailments to enemy targets.
  • The Stoic: In Disgaea, Celestial Hosts were nearly emotionless in their stoicism, though later games reduced this.
  • Stone Wall:
    • In contrast to Valkyries, Warrior evilities revolve around defense.
    • Heavy and Armor knights are very bulky and use defensive weapons like spears, but have mediocre stats otherwise and low movement.
    • Bouncers, a Disgaea 4 class, are even more defensively oriented than the two Knight classes that were already built like tanks.
    • Gargoyles as well. Granted since they were intended to be guardians since ancient times, that was a given.
    • Galactic Demons, a Disgaea: Hour of Darkness monster class, are the original Stone Walls as they have low movement, but god-like Defense and Resistance. Heck, they're almost immune to Status Effects even without status-resisting innocents on any equipment that one of them has on through all six ranks.
  • Stripperiffic:
    • Beastmasters show a lot of skin.
    • Succubi are also a given, as are the Cheerleaders.
    • Sages wear dresses that seem to rely on some sort of adhesive to stay on their chests.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute
    • Onmyo Monks for Geomancers.
    • The Professor, and later the Sea Angel fulfills the same role as the Cheerleader with support magic to boosts stats, throwing range, and movement.
    • Sinners to the Martial Artists. It is probably telling that the redesigned Martial Artist in Disgaea 3 bears slight resemblance to the Sinner.
  • Talking to Plants: The Sages of Disgaea 5 are stated to be able to do this.
  • Testosterone Poisoning: Warriors with the "Muscly" personality love to talk about their muscles, to the point of comedy.
    "With our muscles combined!"
    "Get a good luck at my muscles!"
    "Muscle formation!"
    "MUSCLES."
    "TRAINING."
  • Thieves' Guild: The biggest trade industry in the netherworld, and they're always looking for both new methods of stealing and things to steal.
  • Threatening Shark: Serpents are aggressive and predatory shark dragons.
  • Token Human: Battle Suits in Disgaea 4, until the Medic and Necromancer classes arrived. The original Disgaea also had the EDF Soldiers, which were surprisingly powerful units with a special fondness for guns.
  • Too Many Belts: Valkyries are shown wearing belts around their arms, waist and chest.
  • Training from Hell: Martial Artists inflict very intense training on themselves.
  • Troll: Geomancers are always thinking of ways to make other people's lives miserable. This amuses them.
  • 24-Hour Armor: The Heavy and Armor Knight classes.
  • Underground Monkey: Deathsabers are a slightly darker version of the normal cute Catsabers.
  • Undying Loyalty:
    • Generally, Beastmasters do not trust people, but when they do find somebody that they trust, they will follow them forever.
    • Ninjas used to be very shady individuals, but they reformed and became very devoted to their master. Of course, you won't know for sure who their true master actually is.
    • Both Samurai classes have a similar thing going on.
    • Rabbits are fiercely loyal to their masters, and have many lines stating their protective and benevolent intentions. Given that they're stated to come from Toto Bunny, which is ruled by Usalia, it makes a lot of sense.
  • The Unintelligible: In Disgaea Hour Of Darkness, Skulls made weird guttural noises that apparently indicate they're concentrating too hard to speak normally while fighting.
  • Unstoppable Rage: If Nether Nobles are betrayed, they become tyrannical and kill the traitors and anyone else involved.
  • Verbal Tic: Nekomata tend to end their sentences with "meow."
    "I'm going, meow!"
    "Follow meow!"
    "Yeah, meow!"
  • Violence Really Is the Answer: The name of the final Majin evility, which halves EXP gain but increases stats by 50%? Violence.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: Starting with Disgaea 2, Warriors lack shirts.
  • War God: Warriors follow the deity Grandell, who they must make a pact with to become warriors. Oddly enough, Grandell becomes the name of the highest tier warriors in Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness, who are likewise referred to as gods of war.
  • Weapon Specialization: Each class tends to have one or two weapons that they specialize in, though a few, like Majins, are good with almost anything.
    • Warriors, Berserkers, and Beastmasters use axes.
    • Valkyries, Lady Samurai, and Onmyo Monks use spears.
    • Striders, Gunners, and Gunslingers use guns. Thieves, too, but they're not really suited for fighting at all.
    • Valkyries, Berserkers, Samurai, and Magic Knights use Cool Swords. There's also the Living Armor, but they don't learn sword skills (being monsters).
    • Martial Artists and Fight Mistresses favor fist weapons. Sinners can't use anything else decently at all.
    • Archers and Rangers use bows, obviously.
  • Wizarding School: Mages are naturally gifted at magic, but Skulls have to study it at special schools, which makes them much more serious. Female Healers also attend their own school for healing.
  • A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Alraunes look cute as a ruse to ensnare its prey in vines.
  • The World Tree: The tree in the center of the village and where the young archers are born.
  • Wreathed in Flames: Great Wyrms and their Disgaea 3 counterparts, Fire Demons.
  • Yandere: The Maid's "Yandere" personality option gives them some very obsessive lines:
    "As long as you're with me!"
    "Only look at me!"
    "Will you die for me?"
    "I love you!"note 
  • Younger Than They Look: Geomancers age faster than other demons thanks to their abilities.
  • Zerg Rush: Ghosts. It's their only option for battle, since they are as weak as prinnies.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Happens if you create a Zombie in Disgaea 4.

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