Kingdom Hearts / Tropes A to D

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A

• Aborted Arc:
  • One of the main concepts of the first game was that Sora, Donald, and Goofy cannot interfere with the affairs of other worlds, since they're outsiders. This hasn't been brought up much since the first game.
    • It was recycled and used in Days, where Roxas and the other members of Organization XIII cannot interfere to avoid blowing their cover (at the time they were still covert and not ready to expose themselves).
    • Dark Road mentions it as well, but this time it becomes an actual plot point, as the rival group's master plan involves upsetting the world order of various Disney worlds by stealing artifacts critical to their existence, such as the Magic Lamp from Agrabah. The plan ultimately boils down to believing that doing this enough will tilt the stability of the universe in such a way that it will summon Kingdom Hearts, which The Man Behind the Man has tricked the antagonists into believing will help them.
  • Birth by Sleep adds on that Keyblade wielders are free to travel between worlds, but are not to tell their inhabitants about the existences of worlds besides their own. However by the time of Kingdom Hearts I, worlds are being destroyed left and right and their inhabitants are taking refuge in Traverse Town, so this isn't an issue for Sora. Even in Birth By Sleep's timeframe though, many other characters are already aware of other worlds and can travel between them in their own ways. III once again brings this up, combining it with the first point with the framing of "preserving the world order", but in practice it just serves as an excuse for Sora to not mention other worlds to characters. That aside, it's not even fully clear why they can't be told.
  • II likewise had Ship Tease for Roxas and Naminé that hinted they had a history together. 358/2 Days instead made Roxas' Implied Love Interest Xion. He and Naminé never even meet in Days.^note  Though Naminé worked with Xion in her final days to help her return to Sora (through Roxas) - and when Xion disappeared, all sense of knowing was likely transferred to Roxas.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: All of the main games in the series let you level up to Level 99, but you can play through the games and beat the final bosses just fine at around level 50. Superbosses need more level grinding, and are often still very difficult at level 99, but they're not part of the main story.
  • This trope is particularly bad in Chain of Memories, where there are no Bonus Bosses or any other post-game challenges, so other than getting trophies in the 1.5 port, there's no real reason to level grind unless you're having difficulty.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ took this to new heights with an initial level cap of 300. This is not as unusual as other examples, as leveling up is a different creature in this game. It doesn't improve any kind of stat, but at certain levels, it grants new avatar boards which hold upgrades to be unlocked individually with Avatar Coins. Update 2.5.1 for the two year anniversary pushes the level cap even further at 500, with level 301 to 302 requiring well over 500 million Lux. Around level 450, this requirement is about 40 billion Lux. All of this in a game that the absolute maximum amount of Lux one could conceivably get in a mission is in the tens of millions. The level cap for X was eventually increased to 800 in early 2020; at the time this happened, very few people had even hit Level 500.
• Achilles' Heel: Sora, Saïx, Marluxia, and Roxas may be extremely powerful, but depriving them of their weapons would render them almost powerless. Later on, Roxas, in his battle against Sora, is seen to have outgrown his problem by becoming a very powerful mage. If Sora is without his Keyblade, it would take many hits to take down even the weakest of enemies, although using magic is still as effective as if you still had the Keyblade. With that said, given the nature of Keyblades, disarming their wielders is incredibly difficult.
• Action Girl: Numerous ones throughout the series, thanks to an assortment of both Disney and Final Fantasy party members.
  • For the original generation, we have Aqua, who is primarily a magic user, which she can combine into a few good physical attacks. There's a reason she's the one with the Master rank, after all. Doubles as an Affirmative Action Girl; though Kairi had fought in cut-scene form before, and Xion and Larxene had been playable in Days's multiplayer mode, Aqua is the first proper female player character. She temporarily becomes a Dark Action Girl as she fell to darkness while trapped in the Realm of Darkness.
  • We also got Xion. Once she obtains her Keyblade, Xion proves adept at handling it, being able to fight with it using her right or left hand. Her boss battle depicts her using many powerful melee attacks she seemed to have inherited from Sora. She also uses light much more often during her boss fight, such as creating spiraling circles of Light that suck in the player, leaving them vulnerable to one of Xion's aforementioned physical attacks. She can also use a light spell similar to Ragnarok and can envelop her weapon in Light to make her other attacks even more powerful.
  • With Kairi, the games teased she had the potential to be one for a looong time before she earned it. She begins to gravitate from Damsel in Distress to this in Kingdom Hearts II, where she gets a Keyblade and fights a horde of Heartless alongside Riku, even if at this point she's still a beginner. But it's solidified at last in Re:Mind, which shows she is able to put former Final Boss Xemnas on the defensive prior to him having to drain her energy in order to kidnap her, and later takes on Armored Xehanort as either a party member or a playable character as a full-fledged Battle Couple with Sora.
  • Ariel, Rapunzel, and Mulan get to show their Action Girl chops as party members (even if Ariel is chickified in II), Mulan is especially interesting since she's a complete joke while she's in disguise as boy, but once she drops the disguise she Takes a Level in Badass.
  • Elizabeth Swan isn't a party member but you can see her kicking butt during cutscenes in III.
  • Naturally, Tifa and Yuffie's appearances can add them to the list as well, especially when they help Sora fight off a whole swarm of Heartless. Tifa gets bonus points for going toe-to-toe with Sephiroth alongside Cloud.
  • Queen Minnie gets her turn at one point during II, using some light magic to fight off Heartless when they attack her castle.
• Adaptational Badass: Many of the Disney heroes who join you to save their worlds show only moderate combat prowess in their own franchises if they even fight at all, but stand against hordes of Heartless with no trouble. Most notably Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy.
  • Mickey Mouse becomes a Badass Adorable who fights freakish Eldritch Abominations. He's also a king as well as a Keyblade Master.
  • Donald Duck goes from a short tempered household name to a Black Mage who can cast Zetta Flare.
  • Goofy is a Badass Normal captain of the guard who fights just as well as the characters WITH magic.
  • There's also Chip 'n Dale, who go from regular, Badass Normal Rescue Rangers to building inter-dimensional gunships.
  • Minnie Mouse may also count, but we only get so little out of that Escort Mission in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Other examples include Ariel (Who's a noncombatant in her film. She's just as tough as any other Guest-Star Party Member in the first game, and commonly thought of as one of the most helpful in fighting the Heartless), The Beast (Who in the movie is already incredibly strong, but having enough willpower to survive the destruction of his world and force his way to where Belle was taken to is quite bit beyond what was originally implied of the enchanted prince), Hercules (In the movie and most Greek-related media, Hercules's powers are limited to Super-Strength. Here, he's given a few light-based attacks that he didn't have in those mediums) and the list goes on.
• Adorable Evil Minions: The Heartless. Some of them are just so darn cute! And yet, they're manifestations of the darkness in peoples' hearts.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Ienzo, who follows around his mentor in an oversized labcoat, and Young Riku, who is abnormally serious and mature for his tender years. Both are definitely played for cute.
• Aerith and Bob: You've got Sora, Kairi and Riku (distinctly Japanese names), amongst mainly English or more standard names (and the trio of Birth By Sleep have Latin names). In some cases it's understandable, though, such as with some Disney villains or Organization XIII.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Possessed Riku can be very difficult. However, with the correct strategy, one can trap him in a loop where he never gets to use his desperation move, removing most of the difficulty.
  • In the Final Mix version, Superboss Unknown (a.k.a. Xemnas) is normally extremely difficult, but there's an easy way to get him stuck in a loop. Not only is Gravity the one spell type he's not immune to, it also stuns him for a ridiculously long time if it lands. Stun him with it, get in a combo while trying to blow him back to the centre of the arena, jump slightly back while casting Gravity, and jump over the electric balls to reach him and repeat the whole process. He can break out of it for his final phase spinning laser attack and his fourth-wall-breaking command menu attack, but the former is rare and can be Cure-spammed through and he's too polite to use the latter while a summon is visiting, which ever so coincidentally also stops Donald and Goofy from interfering with your combo. Summon Genie and Bambi, tell them to do absolutely nothing and loop the combo until you win.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Luxord will refuse to attack after triggering his ultimate attack's Reaction Command (the one where he surrounds Sora with a wall of cards) until Sora moves. If you have a good lead in Time after he uses it, you can just stand there and wait for his Time to run out without being threatened.
  • In the Final Mix version, it's possible to AI-loop Roxas with a certain strategy, though it requires very strict timing and only works up to when he uses Keyblade Release for the first time. Equip the Rumbling Rose Keyblade, Finishing Plus, two Combo Pluses and Guard Break. When the battle starts, Guard his initial attack, then combo into Guard Break. After he lands, do another combo into Guard Break. He'll counter with Aerial Spin Swing, so cast Reflega to block it, then immediately follow with another Guard Break. Let Roxas land again, combo into Guard Break, Reflega, and repeat. It's not a foolproof strategy, since Roxas has a few times during the battle where he's programmed to retaliate when his HP reaches a certain point, but if you can react to those counters, you can keep him in a loop until he either uses Keyblade Release or you win.
  • Also in Kingdom Hearts II, the AI will target the centre of your Gummi ship. However, your Gummi ship uses the hitbox of its actual design. As such, a Gummi ship with a giant hole in the middle can cruise through a lot of the ship levels because the enemy will be firing at a point on the ship that doesn't actually contain any ship.
  • When fighting Vanitas's Lingering Spirit in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, going behind the large rocks in the battlefield will cause him to try to run through them to you without attacking. As long as you keep him there, you can cherry tap him to death with Strike Raid and its variants without retaliation since they go through the rocks, or heal yourself with potions.
• A.I. Roulette:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories had this with Donald, making him very unreliable if summoned. He would cast two random magic spells from a list of four, which could mean casting Thundaga twice and frying the screen for you, or could mean casting Curaga on Sora twice when Sora was already at full health. He could also cast elemental magic on enemies who absorb those elements.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] both use this for their boss AI, unlike all other games in the franchise. It's not especially noticeable during the stories due to the generally low difficulty level, but the bonus bosses in these two games are generally considered the worst the franchise has to offer because they follow no patterns, have no or insufficient tells, and will break out of being staggered by the player's attacks at random. 3D also uses it for your Dream Eater allies, though with the chance to perform a particular action varying based on their disposition and the remaining HP of themselves and their allies. As such, it's not uncommon to see them reapplying Status Effects or a Status Buff on something that they just put it on instead of doing something more productive. They also might heal you immediately when you're almost dead, or not at all.
  • Kingdom Hearts III averts it for all bosses except the secret boss, who randomizes the order of his moves each time he's fought and can even choose to skip straight to his second phase. Unlike the above examples, however, all nineteen of his moves have substantial tells, and he still breaks out of stagger at a predictable time with a consistent response.
• Air-Dashing: The majority of games have the Air Slide ability (named Quick Run in Kingdom Hearts II), which grants a burst of speed while in midair, allowing the user to propel themselves forward.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep includes Ice Slide, which is functionally the same as Air Slide but with the added ability of coating the user in ice that deals damage to enemies.
  • Downplayed with the Dash and Surge abilities in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Air Dash, Fire Dash, Dark Haze, Fire Surge, Barrier Surge and Thunder Surge are all attacks that coat the user in the respective element as they charge forward to strike an enemy. Though intended as an offensive action, these actions can also be used out of combat while in midair as long-range air dashes.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The series has plenty.
  • In Kingdom Hearts, this happens to Clayton, one of the Disney villains. While the rest of the villains willingly allied themselves to The Heartless for their own sick desires, Clayton was just a hunter who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and having an emotional moment of weakness, which allowed the Heartless to find him and steal his heart, turning him into their puppet. After his death, the party expresses pity for him, with Tarzan saying that if Clayton had some friends at his side, then maybe he wouldn't have fallen to the darkness.
    Tarzan: Friends, same heart. Clayton, lose heart. No heart, no see friends. No heart, no friends.
  • The Organization members across Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II prove to be rather pitiful in their final moments as they're overcome with fear that their deaths mean the permanent end to their existence, though the emotional punch is lessened with the reveal that it actually helped restore them to their humanity once their hearts were freed from the Heartless and/or Xemnas's artificial Kingdom Hearts.
    • Axel dies in Kingdom Hearts II after becoming The Atoner and performing a Heroic Sacrifice to allow Sora's team access to the Organization's base. The fact that he jokes about his death makes it worse.
      Sora: You're... you're fading!
      Axel: That's what happens when you put your whole being into an attack... not that Nobodies actually HAVE beings, right? Hehahahaha...
    • Saïx, despite his ruthlessness towards everyone, gets a touching sendoff as he pines for Kingdom Hearts to give him his heart back.
    • Xemnas gets what would seem to be a crack at this after the first fight with his armored form, driven home by chest/heart-clutching and indeterminably pained facial expressions, making it look like he was expressing genuine sadness over something. The moment, which managed to get Sora to sympathize slightly with Xemnas, was ruined on two accounts: 1.) Xemnas was faking his death and promptly returned for another three battles, only to get a more unceremonious send-off when he did bite it, and 2.) Xehanort's convoluted backstory calls into question how sympathetic Xemnas is as a character.
  • The Riku Replica spends his last scenes in Chain of Memories tormented by the fact that he's just a copy of Riku, leading him to try kill the original to make himself "real". Once Riku defeats him, he has this to say:
    Riku Replica: So... it's over. Hmph. Death doesn't frighten me. Good riddance to a phony life. My heart was never real. I'm sure even what I'm feeling now is probably fake.
    Riku: What are you feeling?
    Riku Replica: What happens when a fake dies - one like me? Where will my heart go? Does it disappear?
    Riku: It'll go somewhere. Maybe to the same place as mine.
    Riku Replica: A faithful replica until the very end. That's... okay.
  • Other examples in Kingdom Hearts II:
    • After Sora and co. defeat the Experiment and return the presents it stole, Santa Claus speculates that it only took them because it believed the joy associated with gifts would somehow give it a heart. Dr. Finklestein backs this up by mentioning he failed to provide the Experiment with a heart during the creation process.
    • In the manga adaptation, Sark's reason why he works alongside the Master Control Program was because he lost faith in the users following the banishment of Ansem the Wise, and Terra-Xehanort taking his name. Since Sark had no idea on what really happened, he simply thought that Ansem betrayed him. His derezzing words were to warn Tron that Sora, Donald and Goofy would eventually betray him if he continues to believe in them. Sora, feeling sorry, reassures Tron that they will always be friends.
  • Vanitas in Birth by Sleep makes such a lost and sad expression as he pitifully tries reaching for the χ-blade before fading away in Birth by Sleep that it's hard not to feel some degree of sympathy for him, despite being a remorseless Humanoid Abomination made of darkness. It doesn't help that his face is identical to Sora's, apart from the eye and hair color.
  • Kingdom Hearts III gives this to a number of the Real Organization XIII's members as they're defeated in the final battle, but not all:
    • Dark Riku (i.e. the Riku Replica from the past) is Zig-Zagged, as he's just as determined to prove he's the "real" Riku as he used to be, but gets eliminated by his present-day self, who performs a Heroic Sacrifice to give Dark Riku's vessel to Naminé.
    • Xigbar subverts this, faking out the heroes with a self-imposed Disney Villain Death after revealing his whole motivation was to have a Keyblade to call his own. Not only did he survive, but he's one of the original owners of Xehanort's Keyblade, and the one stringing Xehanort around all along.
    • Luxord is a Graceful Loser and gives Sora a "wild card" as a reward to help him some time in the future. The two then promise to meet up and play each other again one day, not as agents of light and darkness, but just as two everyday guys.
    • Larxene downplays this as she pouts over losing to Sora yet again, but is at the very least grateful that it means she won't have to be Xehanort's vessel anymore, and gives Sora a playful smile as she fades away.
    • Marluxia begins to regain his memory as he fades away and gives a sad yet genuine laugh, feeling emotion for the first time in years and thanking Sora for helping him reclaim his old identity.
    • Vanitas defies this by undergoing a Redemption Rejection as Ven tries convincing him he's his own person who doesn't need to define himself as Ven and Sora's darkness given flesh, saying that he chose to view himself this way and is damn proud of it.
    • Terra-Xehanort averts this when he gets booted out of Terra's body by his Guardian Heartless—possessed by Terra's heart—after trying to kill Aqua and Ven.
    • Saïx makes amends with Axel after finally admitting his own jealousy of Roxas and Xion before dying in his friend's arms, promising to meet him again as a human.
    • Ansem finally acknowledges that Riku has triumphed over the power of darkness and accepts that his own time has passed, offering words of encouragement to the heroes to move on as well.
    • Xemnas regains his heart and suffers a Villainous BSoD, overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness after realizing he has taken all his old allies for granted, and finding new appreciation in the strength Sora and other humans have to bear it.
    • Young Xehanort averts this, having already anticipated and accepted his own defeat while gloating that Sora has sealed his own fate with his actions.
    • Master Xehanort gets a big one, where the ghost of his childhood friend/rival comes in to talk him down, remind him of better times, and travel with him to the afterlife.
• Alien Geometries:
  • The Bizarre Room in the Wonderland level of Kingdom Hearts. Entering from different points of the world — including the room itself — leads to you stand on different dimensions of the room, i.e. the walls and roof. However, the dimensions of the areas you are entering from don't change at all.
  • Castle Oblivion is suggested to have properties like this. In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, it rearranges itself based on the memories of those that travel through it. In 358/2 Days, Organization XIII is scouring the place for a specific room but cannot find it anywhere, despite having used the Castle as a base for years at that point. Summed up nicely in this conversation:
    Saix: Did you search every room?
    Axel: Come on. You know as well as I do that's impossible.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Very early on in Kingdom Hearts, it's stated that Sora and co. shouldn't interfere with the affairs of other worlds during their mission because they are outsiders. Sora quickly decides to ignore that rule when he sees Alice in trouble on their visit to Wonderland, and the scope of the villains' plans eventually make it impossible to not meddle anyway.
• Alleged Lookalikes: Sora and Roxas are noted to resemble each other by several characters due to them being the whole human and Nobody versions of the same person. They do have the same faces, but their hairstyles are different, their colors are different shades of blond, and overall it is hard to think why others see them as identical. It is not helped by the fact that when other human/Nobody pairs start showing up, those ones actually are basically identical.
• All Myths Are True: The concurrent existence of multiple Disney worlds based on different real-world cultures and mythologies has some interesting implications. Agrabah proves the existence of the djinn of Islam through Genie, Olympus shows the Greek pantheon is real, The Land of Dragons shows some Chinese religious beliefs in regards to ancestral reverence are real, and Halloween Town shows that Christian holidays like Halloween and Christmas exist in this universe, with Sora, Donald, and Goofy's pre-existing knowledge of Santa Claus implying that Christmas is observed on their own worlds. From all that, one could extrapolate that Jesus and the Judeo-Christian God exist in this universe too.
• All There in the Manual: Many of the explanations for the Kingdom Hearts mysteries are in the Ultimania guides which, surprise surprise, will never see the light of day outside of Japan. Several minor lore points have also been explained in interviews with Nomura. 2017 also brought on a new standard of obscure side material by explaining a minor plot point of 0.2 through a dramatic line-reading at an orchestra concert.
• Alpha Bitch: Larxene in Chain of Memories and III thinks nothing of sadism and meanness towards enemy and ally (the Organization) alike.
• Alternate Continuity:
  • All characters from previous works are subject to Broad Strokes regarding which of their adventures from their original films have happened. For instance, Jack seems to have caused trouble in Christmas Town before Kingdom Hearts II, yet Oogie Boogie was killed in the first game in a wholly different manner. And of course, it's highly unlikely the Final Fantasy cast members are from the same continuities as in that series (Leon hanging out with characters from Final Fantasy VII, one of which being Aerith, is kind of a dead giveaway).
  • Averted with the Toy Story world in III. Nomura confirmed that the adventures Sora and Co. have there actually take place between the second and third movies (the yard sale sign from 2 can even be found behind Andy's house).
• Always Night: Several worlds always set at night:
  • The second world visited, Traverse Town, always has a clear starry sky and streetlamps and windows are always glowing.
  • Halloween Town and The World That Never Was are both eternally nighttime in any game they appear in.
  • Port Royal is always set at night so that "the moonlight shows us for what we really are" is in effect for the cursed crew.
  • Castle of Dreams in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is nighttime.
  • Agrabah is always day in the city and ruins, and always nighttime by the Cave of Wonders.
• Ambition Is Evil: Every character who has sought to further their own power or knowledge, no matter how just their cause is, ends up either being a villain or aligned with one. This also extends to simply having the ambition to leave their home. The main character, Sora, is notably lacking in ambition.
• Amusement Park: Prankster's Paradise (Pinocchio) is primarily based on the amusement park Pleasure Island from the film.
• Anachronic Order:
  • The Reports in any given game. You never collect them in numerical order, leaving holes in the story for other entries to fill in. However, they're usually written in a way to tease you with what's in those other entries, and usually explain some plot revelation that just happened. The Ansem Reports from the first game deserve special mention. They were given to you in such a way to still paint Ansem as a Big Good protagonist, but after The Reveal late in the first stage of the Hollow Bastion level, Aerith gives you the pages Maleficent had in her possession, which radically change the way the player interprets those early report pages.
  • The games themselves. The first three games were released in chronological order, but 358/2 Days takes place before II (with the first part of the story taking place during Chain of Memories), Birth by Sleep and χ take place before all of them, while Coded takes place before The Stinger of Kingdom Hearts II, but its stinger proceeds from the ending of II so it kinda got things moving forward. 3D finally got things completely moving forward again, while 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage took a third option by having the main action transpire during the original Kingdom Hearts but told via a flashback being told in the present day immediately following 3D and leading straight into Kingdom Hearts III.
• Anatomy of the Soul: Everyone has a Heart, Soul, and Body. Well, every normal person. Individual worlds also have Hearts, and in-game text alludes to them being somewhat sentient. Memory is also part of the equation, hinted to be another aspect of the Heart.
  • The Body is Exactly What It Says on the Tin—the thing that holds the Heart and is animated by the Soul.
  • The Heart contains the emotions and identity of an individual, and are made up of light and darkness. If the Heart is overcome by Darkness, it can separate itself from the Body and Soul and become a Heartless. It's accepted by most characters that a person without a Heart isn't really a person at all. The reality is slightly less complex; anyone or anything that wants to think of itself as a person can likely generate a Heart.
  • The Soul is seemingly simple—it's the animating force that gives life and movement to a body and heart. It's also translated as "Spirit" and synonymous with "Will" later in the series. Theoretically, if you somehow give or transplant a soul to an object, that object will gain a mind of its own and move around. In extreme circumstances, the Soul by itself could be enough to keep a Body moving. When a Heartless is formed, the Body and Soul left behind may reanimate into a Nobody, if the individual was particularly strong-willed.
  • Memory is hinted to be similar to one's Mind, and is critical to the function of a Heart but not entirely the same. Nobodies have no Hearts but retain Memory to teach them how to fake emotions, Replicas are Artificial Humans made of Memory, and Memory can be used to strengthen or weaken one's Heart. Additionally, Chain of Memories says memories of different people can be connected, like links in a chain, and that chain can be broken, mended or reorganized. This means that as Sora forgets people as he proceeds through Castle Oblivion, the people he forgets about forget him, too.
• Animated Armor:
  • There are numerous Heartless modelled after suits of armor. Guard Armor in the first game and 358/2 Days is the most prominent. The latter game also has a Palette Swap called the "Powered Armor".
  • In Birth By Sleep and KHIIFM+ the Lingering Will is another one. Birth By Sleep: Final Mix add Eraqus' and Master Xehanort's empty armor as a pair of Optional Bosses, Armor of the Master and No Heart.
  • The living suits of armor in Beast's Castle.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Most worlds in Kingdom Hearts I were non-linear and featured both puzzle- and platforming-oriented navigation, creating many points where players didn't understand where or how to proceed in the story. Topping this off were bosses with special gimmicks, like Oogie Boogie or the first fight with Ursula, which pushed the basic story progression of the first entry into Guide Dang It! territory. Later entries would include an Information bar that would hint towards the player's next step in the story or towards special boss mechanics (and also gave the developers freedom to create more exotic encounters), as well as the addition of Maps that would highlight all the doors in a tile.
  • The recurring EXP Zero ability, introduced in Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, allows the player to play the game as a Low-Level Run by preventing Sora and pals from earing any EXP, and as an added bonus is typically only available on the hardest difficulty setting. To prevent the game from being borderline unplayable, the ability has a few "hidden" functions built in.
    • EXP Zero enables minimum damage scaling, where, if your stats aren't high enough relative to the Battle Level of the current locale, the game will ensure that any hit you inflict is guaranteed to deal a certain amount of damage regardless of your actual stats. This prevents the game from devolving into Cherry Tapping as enemies get tougher while your stats remain static. Infamously, the original Japanese release of Birth By Sleep Final Mix and pre-patch Kingdom Hearts III (before Re Mind) did not have this feature, turning Level 1 Critical into an absolute grindfest.
    • EXP Zero also includes "one-shot protection", which prevents any attack from being lethal as long as the player is at full HP.
    • Kingdom Hearts II and III additionally rearrange Sora's level up ability learnset on Critical Mode so that powerful abilities needed to survive the endgame, such as Second Chance, Once More/Withstand Combo, and most combo modifiers, are instead obtained as Get Bonuses, preventing the player from being locked out of them due to not being able to level up.
• Anti-Villain: The Nobodies and Organization XIII only want to become whole beings again, and they antagonize the heroes due to their unscrupulous methods. Except Xemnas and Xigbar, they just want Kingdom Hearts for its power.
• Arc Number: The numbers 3, 7, and 13 show up a lot. To recap some of the most prominent ways;
  • 3 — three party members at a time, the many Power Trios in the series and the associated Trinity motif, three realms (Light, Darkness, Between), three aspects of being (Heart, Body, Soul), three types of Keyblades (Heart, Light, Darkness). Additionally, the Dark Seeker Saga ends with the third numbered game in the series.
  • 7 — Seven Princesses of Heart, seven Organization members left remaining in II (not counting Roxas), seven Orichalcum+ for the Ultima Weapon in II, seven days left in Roxas's vacation, Ansem and his six apprentices, the Master of Masters and his six apprentices, seven letters in "Xehanort" minus the "X", seven main characters in Dark Road (Master Odin and his six apprentices, including Xehanort and Eraqus), seven upper classmen missing in Dark Road.
  • 13 — Organization XIII, the "XIII Blades" attack in II, thirteen letters in "Kingdom Hearts", usually 13 worlds in each game (accordingly, 13 floors in Castle Oblivion), 13 matches in the Mirage Arena (not counting the Final Mix additions), 13 letters between several of the mentioned trios' names (Sora, Riku, Kairi),13 main protagonists as of III^note Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Naminé, Roxas, Xion, Axel, Aqua, Ventus, Terra, 13 whole pieces of darkness.
  • This trope comes to its head in 3D; There are three Xehanorts (Ansem, Xemnas, Young Xehanort) acting to revive Master Xehanort, and the true χ-blade is made up of seven Hearts of Light and thirteen Hearts of Darkness.
  • 20 is shaping up to be another of these—20 scattered fragments of the χ-blade, 20 replicas created by Vexen to house the Real Organization XIII members. Additionally, 20 is the sum of the aforementioned numbers 7 and 13.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The Recusant's Sigil, which happens to be the letter "X". This is due to Xehanort's fascination with the χ-blade.
  • Obviously, hearts, but also stars which usually represent destiny or the intertwining of destinies.
  • Sea salt Ice-cream, which is shared between each main character groups throughout the series and seems to represent the ties of friendship.
  • The Gazing Eye, a blue, cat-like eye adorning some darkness-aligned weapons. Unchained X Back Cover explains they represent the Master of Master's eye and his ability to see the future. The eye on Master Xehanort's Keyblade actually is this eye.
• Arc Villain:
  • The first part of the series, the Dark Seeker Saga, revolves around Master Xehanort’s attempts to claim Kingdom Hearts and begin another Keyblade War. While Master Xehanort is the main villain of this storyline, he only appears in a handful of games as his proxies Ansem, Xemnas, Young Xehanort and others serve as the main antagonists of most of the games, before eventually coming together to serve under him for the Final Battle.
  • The Master of Masters is poised to become the primary antagonist of the Lost Master Arc, which began with Melody of Memory, the first game post-Dark Seeker Saga. III reveals that his apprentice Luxu had been helping him pull Master Xehanort’s strings to bring about another Keyblade War and orchestrate Sora’s disappearance as part of the Master’s long-running, extremist scheme to destroy the Thirteen Darknesses.
• Arc Words:
  • "We'll go together" first appears in the "Another Side, Another Story" secret ending of Kingdom Hearts, actually plays out in II, and is used again in Dream Drop Distance (albeit mistranslated in English to "come with me").
  • "Reconnect" has been showing up in the secret endings since Birth by Sleep, all the way up to the secret ending of III.
    • As of ReMind, "Reconnect" has been retired and replaced with "An Oath to Return."
  • Another set appears at the end of Kingdom Hearts II in Kairi's letter, ending it with "There is one sky, one destiny." Those words reappear in Kingdom Hearts III spoken by Master Xehanort, who reveals he can summon the titular Kingdom Hearts anywhere as all the worlds are connected.
  • X Back Cover adds "May your heart be your guiding key", and variations thereof, words of encouragement stated by the Foretellers and the Master of Masters. The words make a come back in 0.2 and Kingdom Hearts III as words Yen Sid would always say before seeing off his pupils. It's implied the phrase was lost to time and thus few people know it. Xehanort learns of the phrase from the mysterious Subject X, a girl displaced in time. Xigbar saying it at the beginning of III foreshadows his reveal as Luxu, one of the apprentices of the Masters of Masters.
• Art Evolution: The hand-drawn artwork has gotten much more anime-influenced, angular, and thick-lined over time, but this is less an aspect of this series and more one of Tetsuya Nomura himself. There's also a good deal of evolution in the character models, but that makes sense due to better technology. Even so, it's hard to tell Aurora from KH1 and Aurora from Birth by Sleep are the same person. Kingdom Hearts IV also has the human character models looking more realistic than ever.
• The Artifact:
  • The Final Fantasy elements have become this. After being important to the plots of the first three games, 358/2 Days and III didn't include them at all, coded saw their presence reduced, Birth By Sleep was limited to Zack (though there were aborted plans for other inclusions), and 3D went for The World Ends With You characters instead of Final Fantasy.
  • Maleficent, once a Big Bad, has lost relevance since the first game. Starting with KH2 onward, she appears to do evil... just because. However, an additional scene in the movie version of Coded that comes with Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix reveals she is looking for a Book of Prophecies; this is what she was doing in Dream Drop Distance and it is her goal in III.
  • The Disney elements have also taken ever more of a back seat to Kingdom Hearts' own original mythology and plotlines. By this point, the worlds' plots and characterizations are lifted directly from the movies with the only contribution to the overall plot being Character Development for the main characters, and the Disney villains are almost never more than Minibosses, who understand the metaplot even less than the heroes, and exist only to be manipulated by the real bad guys (who are all the same person). The only Disney characters to maintain a consistently major role are Donald, Goofy, Mickey, and their mentor Yen Sid.
  • As a side-effect of this, Kairi, the supposed female lead of the series, also became The Artifact from Kingdom Hearts II and onward, since her main role as a Princess of Heart meant squat since the other Princesses of Heart were all Disney characters and thus the whole lot of then fell Out of Focus. However, the end of Dream Drop Distance doubly reverses this by bringing the Princesses back into play in the metaplot and finally paying off on the Foreshadowing of Kairi as a Keyblade wielder from KH2.
  • The Reports. Each game has the Reports or some similar story mechanic, brief papers on the actions of an important side character that fill in some critical backstory details and what they've been doing off-screen. In the original game the Ansem Reports were on his research into the Heartless, so it made sense why Sora and the Disney villains (as well as the player) would want them, and why the Disney villains would drop pages from the Report when defeated. Starting with II and becoming more egregious with each game since, the Reports or equivalent concept have little in-story reason why they're found in the manner they are, and they have even less reason for existing, as their tone shifts from being a researcher's lab notes to being the personal journals of characters. However, the Reports remain a part of the series because it's an effective way to explain plot points not easily given to the player otherwise, and collecting them to slowly piece together backstory and tease upcoming plot revelations is just a part of the series' style.
• Artistic License – Chess: The chess board that Xehanort and Eraqus were repeatedly seen using in their teenage years is literally unplayable. Other than the fact it places the squares diagonally instead of in straight lines, it has more squares than a normal chessboard, and the squares do not follow the proper black and white sequence. It is straight up impossible to play chess on that thing.
• Art Shift:
  • The art style of the game will typically shift between worlds to something appropriate to that world. Sora and company are typically not affected by this change unless they need to actually alter their appearance to fit in like in Halloween Town. This leads to some weird dissonance, especially in the worlds based on live-action films when you see more "realistic" characters like Jack Sparrow standing next to Goofy in Port Royal, or when you see the obviously more stylized Sora standing next to the Flynns in the Grid.
  • Halloween Town is probably the most obvious example, as even the Heartless get different, more detailed textures so that they look closer to the style of Tim Burton's puppets (Shadows have a grainy skin texture, Soldiers' armor is stitched up and rusted, Wight Knights' bandages are given a darkened gauze look, Emerald Blues' body looks like a strange button-up coat, etc.).
  • III uses a "Kingdom Shader" system, which alters the lighting and general look of a world to give each its own unique vibe.
• Artifact of Hope: Keyblades started out as this, a type of magical sword/staff that those with strong hearts full of light are allowed to wield, making them enemies of the Heartless by default. As the series goes on, morally-grey (Riku) or outright villainous characters (The Seekers of Darkness) are shown to wield keyblades, though these are meant to be exceptions to the rule.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Surprisingly enough, Cerberus. In the original movie, he shows up in the background for all of five seconds and only interacts with the hero near the climax. Despite this, he has been a recurring boss throughout the series.
  • Yen Sid was introduced in Kingdom Hearts II as Mickey's old mentor, and he only showed up to deliver some exposition at the start of the game. Birth By Sleep revealed he's a Keyblade Master, and as of coded he's effectively the Big Good.
• As Long as There Is Evil: As long as darkness exists within the hearts of sapient entities, the Heartless (and Nobodies) will continue to spawn.
• As You Know:
  • In KH II...
    Yen Sid: If one such as you, Donald, yields to the Darkness in their heart, they too will become a Heartless. But you know this.
  • Also, recapping the end of the first game...
    Sora: Then I guess we better go find the King first!
    Donald: But where could he be?
    Goofy: Well, we won't know 'til we look.
    Sora: Yeah. And the King must know where Riku is, 'cause the two of them were together in the Realm of Darkness when we closed the door. You know, after defeating Ansem.
  • Also seen in Re:Chain of Memories multiple times, though justified there, since Sora, Donald and Goofy knew they were losing their memories and wanted to make sure they still remembered what they were doing there.
• Attack Its Weak Point: A staple of bosses in this series, most of whom can only be damaged if attacked in one specific part of their body. Much of the game's difficulty comes from the fact that these are often either hard to reach or are where the boss deals the majority of its damage from.
• Author Appeal: Nomura's obsessions with zippers and belts manifests in many character designs. He also worked sea-salt ice cream into II after visiting Tokyo Disneyland and enjoying the treat.
• Award-Bait Song:
  • Well, it's based on Disney movies isn't it? Protip: Search iTunes for Utada, the singer, to score the Japanese-lyric versions of both songs^note The Japanese version of "Simple and Clean" is called "Hikari", and "Sanctuary" is "Passion". And yes, the same singer (Utada Hikaru) wrote and sang both versions of both songs.
  • As expected, Kingdom Hearts III gives us another one; "Don't Think Twice", also known as "Chikai" ("oath") in Japanese.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Sora's universe saving feats and daring swordplay are made even more impressive when you realize that unlike his predecessors, he is completely self-taught, his fighting style developing itself over the course of the series from his sparring with wooden swords at home. This shows when you compare him to Terra, Aqua, and Ven. They all fight in their own individual styles that show they have familiarity and training with their Keyblades. Sora wields his like a club or a baseball bat, and shows little finesse. This changes in Kingdom Hearts II, where he's a bit more experienced. The year of training Roxas had that Sora absorbed probably helped.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In almost every game, it's possible for the player to set up Abilities, combo modifiers, and/or Deck Commands to allow for extremely lengthy and intricate combos. However, most of these games also have some sort of mechanic in place to have the bosses automatically escape combos if they take too many hits, meaning that it's entirely possible to make your combo too long so the boss avoids damage from your powerful combo finisher (which is where most of the damage dealt by combos comes from). This is especially notable in II, where bosses can only be defeated by your combo finishers, Magic, or certain other attacks, meaning at best a long combo is going to needlessly delay the final blow or require MP to do so.

B

• Badbutt: This is inverted for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy when they appear in the series. Although they were no stranger to violence in their early cartoons, they started being known for being harmless characters that mostly appeared in Lighter and Softer kiddie fare (the preschool show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse being the prime example). With Kingdom Hearts geared towards an older audience (but still family-friendly), the trio was effectively allowed to not only return to violence, but to act as warriors/mages and genuinely kick some ass alongside Sora.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Kill a Heartless and then the Nobody, and the original person comes back to life. Master Xehanort, Braig, Dilan, Even, Aeleus, Ienzo, Isa, and Lea have all been revived in this manner. The only known exceptions to this rule are Sora and Kairi; various odd circumstances surrounding the losses of their hearts and the births of their Nobodies allowed for both of them to exist as normal humans alongside their Nobodies until both pairs went for Split Personality Merges.
  • Maleficent also counts. Killed off near the end of the first game, and then brought back to life through rather vague means in II. χ finally reveals it, and it's extremely mind-shattering. It turns out that Riku unlocking her heart somehow gave her time travel powers, which she used to take her to hundreds of years in the past after Sora defeated her. Specifically, she went to the aftermath of the Keyblade War in order to begin her world domination plans. However, the Master of Masters had devised a fail safe in case someone interferes with fate, so he created a data version of Enchanted Dominion, where Maleficent was forcefully shoved into. Maleficent had no choice but to return to the present and ended up in Yen Sid's tower, but not before she gained information about the Book of Prophecies and the Black Box. Wrap your head around that.
  • The True Organization XIII is mostly composed of formerly dead people, whether it's through plain resurrection or time travel shenanigans. Demyx, Larxene, Luxord, Marluxia, Vexen, and Xigbar are reconstituted as humans after their deaths in Chain of Memories and II, only to release their hearts to become Nobodies once again. Ansem, Riku Replica, Terra-Xehanort, Vanitas, Xemnas, Xion, and Young Xehanort are brought through time-displaced hearts inhabiting Replica bodies. Finally, Master Xehanort is back after the deaths of Ansem and Xemnas, as stated above.
  • The Replica program is also used to give Roxas and Naminé physical bodies in III.
  • At the very end of III, Sora manages to revive Kairi after she was crystallized and shattered by Xehanort, but at the cost of being stranded who-knows-where, in a completely different world.
• Badass in Distress: Sora of the Kingdom Hearts series may have slain a lot of Heartless and rescued a lot of women, but even he's been captured at some points: once by Hook, once by Barbossa, twice by Sark, once by Flotsam and Jetsam, and once by Master Xehanort.
• Badass Longcoat: Standard attire for the members of Organization XIII is to wear a long black cloak. It's implied this helps protect them from darkness when travelling between worlds.
• Bag of Spilling: Every single game resets the skillsets of Sora, Donald and Goofy, but most also justify it.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the trio enter Castle Oblivion and have their memories erased, and they have to relearn their skills as they explore the castle. At the end of the game their memories get "restored", as in restored back to when they entered the castle, explaining why they start over in scratch again in II (on top of spending a year in a coma).
  • In Kingdom Hearts coded you play as Data-Sora, a digital copy of Sora, thus starting from scratch with a different character.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days you play as Roxas, Sora's Nobody. The fact that Roxas gets his memory erased by the game finale also justifies the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II.
  • 3D has Yen Sid Hand Wave that the self-taught Keyblade skills of Sora and Riku are impressive, but for the purposes of the Mark of Mastery exam, they'll start fresh and prove themselves anew within the rules of the exam. This example does lead into Gameplay and Story Segregation though, since a good portion of the attacks they learn during the game are ones they had before. At the end of the game, Sora has his heart damaged and he once again loses his powers, and a major plot point in III is that it's going to take time (Level Grinding) to fully recover.
  • Averted in 0.2 and III, where Aqua and Riku keep the end-game stats and abilities they had at the end of Birth By Sleep and 3D, respectively.
  • Even with this trope, however, not all of Sora's skills are lost. Across the series his Keyblade techniques become more refined with each entry, to the extent of special attacks he had in a previous game becoming part of his basic moveset. II and III also have ways Sora can access the full extent of the abilities he had in the previous numbered title through some sort of Super Mode.
  • Aside from losing all his abilities in each game, Sora also loses all his Keychains. Given that the fuzzy way they work, however, and may be related to the heart and/or memory, it's plausible he loses them for the same reasons when those attributes of his being keep getting damaged.
• Balance Between Good and Evil:
  • The Realm Between. As its name implies, the realm is located between the Realms of Light and Darkness, which means both coexist. Worlds located in it can have one aspect outnumber the other depending on their proximity to either realm; the Mysterious Tower is near the Realm of Light and is indistinguishable from it, while The World That Never Was is so awfully close to the Realm of Darkness that it causes the world to suffer from eternal night and subjecting it to constant invasions by the Heartless. Twilight Town is the only exception this rule, because it is located exactly in the middle of the universe and receives equal amount of both, making it kind of a celestial Truce Zone. Since they are neither light nor darkness by nature, all Nobodies are born in the Realm Between.
  • In the Realm Between itself, there is also a world that specifically functions as a Truce Zone: the Land of Departure. According to Eraqus, generations of Keyblade wielders regard it as a safe zone where they can live undisturbed. To prevent those who want to abuse such neutral grounds, previous keepers of the world devised a technique to lock the world away. And that is how Castle Oblivion came to be.
  • Master Xehanort's Evil Plan is ostensibly to balance out the "tyranny of light" with darkness, which would make him a Well-Intentioned Extremist, if not for his heavy-handedness and penchant for screwing up countless people.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space:
  • Arguably, this is the case of all the heroes and villains in the series, considering every major Final Boss takes place in the middle of space.
  • Monstro can travel between worlds but seems just fine.
• Beehive Barrier: Seen in protective spells and in boss fights or event battles, locking you in the area.
• Beta Test Baddie: Organization XIII are driven to acquire hearts since, as Nobodies, they have no hearts of their own and are incomplete.
• Big Bad: Master Xehanort is the main villain of the Dark Seeker Saga, acting through various alternate incarnations. Everything wrong in the game universe can be blamed on him or his allies directly or indirectly. In order:
  • Kingdom Hearts I: Ansem, Seeker of Darkness and the Council of Disney Villains led by Maleficent.
  • Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories: Marluxia for Sora's story and Ansem for Riku's story.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: Xemnas, leader of Organization XIII.
  • Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days: Either Saïx or the Heartless themselves.
  • Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep: Master Xehanort.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded: Sora's Heartless.
  • Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: Young Xehanort, who is Master Xehanort's younger self that has traveled back through time to create the Real Organization XIII.
  • Kingdom Hearts III: Master Xehanort again, with Xigbar (who turns out to be the Master of Masters' sixth apprentice, Luxu, in a new body) being The Man in Front of the Man to him.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Halloween Town is a town full of ghosts and other supernatural beings.
• Big Damn Heroes: Lots of them.
  • Chain of Memories:
    • Donald and Goofy block Larxene from attacking Sora after she dealt him a Breaking Speech in the 12th Floor.
    • Mickey saves Riku from being possessed by Ansem again after defeating Lexaeus.
  • II:
    • In the climax of II, Maleficent and Pete decide to fight the Heartless by themselves while Sora and friends battle Xemnas.
    • Mickey makes it a game mechanic; when Sora falls in certain boss battles in II, Mickey may arrive to fight in his stead and revive him.
  • In Birth by Sleep, Ven is menaced by someone he trusted, and from his POV, Terra comes out of absolutely nowhere to save him.
  • Dream Drop Distance:
    • Ven gets to pull one as a disembodied heart no less when he gives his Keyblade Armor to Sora to protect his heart.
    • And Lea gets to be the Big Damn Hero twice, first by saving Minnie and Mickey from Maleficent and Pete, and then saving Sora from Master Xehanort.
  • III:
    • Vexen sends Dusks to save Hayner from being harmed by Ansem, Seeker of Darkness.
    • The Keyblade Graveyard finale has three instances, two of them happening one after another. The first is when the Guardians are menaced by the Demon Tornado for the second time, the fallen Dandelions' Keyblades appear to help Sora destroy it. The second happens when Riku Replica sends a rain of Heartless onto the Guardians, Yen Sid drops out of the sky and fends them off while the others (minus Donald and Goofy) move forward. Finally, the third is when Xemnas is about to kill Xion, Roxas drops out of the sky and sends a laser that forces Xemnas to back down.
• Big Door: The Door to Darkness and the door to Xemnas's artificial Kingdom Hearts reality. The big door in Disney Castle has a smaller one built in.
• Big Good: Yen Sid was probably the closest thing to this during Kingdom Hearts II, but in later games, he's really stepped up to the plate. Ansem the Wise has shades of this as well. The series started this way by teasing Ansem and Mickey as the Big Good characters in the series. Mickey still shows shades of this as time goes on, but Ansem played the audience hard in the first game.
• Bio Data: Ansem the Wise hides research data within Sora, although it is left vague on how he does this, especially since Riku brings the data out of him in the form of a bottled letter.
• Bishōnen Line:
  • Nobodies are stated to take forms closer to their original bodies as they grow more powerful, with the weakest looking like twitching white jumpsuits and the very strongest being physically indistinguishable from normal humans.
  • Can also apply to the Heartless as well, though only two examples exist: Xehanort's Heartless (which needed a body to remain stable, but changes the body to resemble Xehanort) and Scar (immediately after losing his heart and during the boss fight; the second visit ends with what is either the true form of Scar's Heartless or a One-Winged Angel form, the massive beastly Groundshaker).
• Bittersweet Ending: The standard kind of ending to the franchise, though they usually end on a high note for the most part. Exceptions to this rule include 358/2 Days and Birth By Sleep, which both have Downer Endings when taken on their own but resemble Bittersweet Endings when one considers what happens later on on a chronological scale, and Kingdom Hearts II, which is unambiguously a case of Earn Your Happy Ending only hampered by the fact that it isn't the final chronological adventure. The Dark Seeker Saga ultimately ends with Xehanort defeated, the worlds saved, and all of the protagonists safe and happy... except Sora, who appears to have given up his life to save Kairi's.
• Black Cloak:
  • Comes complete with an In the Hood function! The cloaks themselves are stated by Word of God to be protection against the Realm of Darkness' corruption, but several people who wear them (namely the Organization XIII) don't really need that due to not having hearts to corrupt.
  • It was said repeatedly that darkness always threatens to swallow up Nobodies because of their non-existence, so it's likely to stave it off. 3D reveals that the Nobodies do have hearts, so Xemnas kept them in uniform to protect his potential vessels.
• Black Magic: The ever-vague 'darkness' everyone keeps talking about can be controlled by strong people, but for those who aren't...
• Blessed with Suck: The Keyblades. All-powerful weapons that also look pretty dang neat, but no one we've seen who has been chosen to wield one has had a good life. Even freaking Mickey Mouse can't get away from it! The Heartless also constantly follow Keyblade wielders no matter where they go.
• Bloodless Carnage: Zigzagged in the manga, where characters sometimes are visibly wounded, yet still bloodless.
• Blue Means Cold: Zigzagged. Hades from Hercules appears, with his blue-flame hair that's cold in the movie, but there's no mention of it being cold in the game.
• Born as an Adult: The Nobodies are born the same age as their human selves. While not Nobodies, Riku Replica, Vanitas, and Xion are also born teenagers.
• Boring, but Practical: Shadow Heartless can flatten themselves against the ground, making them invulnerable to attacks.
• Boss Banter: Pretty much every single humanoid boss does this (and a few of the non-humanoid ones).
• Boss Remix: A lot of themes are remixed as boss themes sooner or later, particularly character themes, and many boss themes are themselves remixed, sometimes together, to make a new boss theme. One of the most striking examples is the final boss theme of Dream Drop Distance "Eye of Darkness", which is a remix of the Dive to the Heart theme, as Riku has had to dive into Sora's heart and fight him to free him from darkness.
• Broad Strokes:
  • The events of the original Disney films are subject to this. Some worlds feature a retelling of the plot of the source franchise with Sora tagging along, others imply the events of the source franchise occurred before Sora visited, or haven't occurred yet, and many just have an original plot. That said, the relationships of characters changes as well, and in coded and Chain of Memories when the worlds visited are composed of memories and data that aren't 100% accurate, anything could happen.
  • Averted with the Toy Story world in KH III. Word of God confirmed that the adventures Sora and Co. have there actually take place between the second and third movies.
• Button Mashing: A common complaint about the series, and it's not unfounded. Arguably the worst offender of the series is KH II, where upon entering a Drive Form like Valor Form or Master Form, you basically hit X until there was nothing left to attack. The series is growing out of it though due to better integration of special attacks and enemies starting to require more strategy. In Birth By Sleep for example, relying on just mashing attack to win and not properly building a balanced deck will get you crushed.

C

• Caged Inside a Monster: The Parasite Cage Heartless is, aptly named, a large monster that spent one of the two battles with it keeping Pinnochio trapped behind its bar like teeth.
• Camera Lock-On: Tapping R locks you onto an enemy. Although with the loads of enemies, it can be hard to lock onto a specific enemy.
• Captain Oblivious: For the so-called key that connects everything, Sora, Donald, and Goofy seem to be the lone people not privy to the Gambit Pileup in a universe full to the brim with Chessmasters and Magnificent Bastards.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: There's a lot of cute hunks around. Sora, Riku, Roxas, Ventus, Terra, Vanitas, many of the members of Organization XIII, etc.
• Cast Herd: There's somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 major and minor characters, but the vast majority of them are divided among the various Disney worlds. Out of the entire cast, only a (relative) few have the means to travel between worlds.
• Cerebus Retcon: While 3D had a fairly dark plot, it was also the game that introduced the Dream Eaters, Ridiculously Cute Critters that inhabit the Sleeping Worlds and are essentially Mons with a large variety of cute and colorful designs. You can collect them, fight alongside them, play with them, and essentially care for them in side modes. Them being innocuously cute and adorable pals is played completely straight until the ending of Union χ, which reveals that Dream Eater Spirits are actually the Chirithies of ancient Keyblade Wielders who changed form to protect the sleeping hearts of their Wielders.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first game was a lighthearted, episodic adventure quest, and didn't really get tense until the arrival of Maleficent and Ansem. II and Chain of Memories began exploring the mysteries of the heart, soul and memories, the true value of human life, and had stronger overarcing stories, and then coded and 358/Days explored the same issues in-depth. Birth By Sleep took this trope and ran with it by introducing the most sinister villain and the highest-stakes story yet while also making the hero-villain dynamics more personal, and with 3D the series shows little sign of stopping from getting even darker.
• A Chat with Satan: Xehanort and his various incarnations do this with various characters, from Ansem, Seeker of Darkness tempting Riku throughout the series to give in to the darkness, to Master Xehanort using the Balance Between Good and Evil to convince Terra to join him against his master Eraqus.
• Chained by Fashion: The Shadow Stalker/Dark Thorn boss.
• Chaos Architecture: The layout of various worlds changes between games, particularly between I and II. Word of God is that Traverse Town and The World That Never Was are anomalies with canonically changing layouts, and sometimes it's merely visiting a different part of a world than what was seen in another game, but usually it's this trope.
• Chekhov's Gun: A particularly notorious one from the very first game involves a room known as the "Laboratory" appearing in World Terminus that contains a mysterious machine and a cryptic message. Neither the room's existence nor the machine or its function are ever explained, and it is the only room in World Terminus that you can't revisit once you clear the enemies. The purpose of the room is not touched upon until Melody of Memory, which reveals that the machine is a "lifeboat" designed to send its passengers to other worlds. Kairi is revealed to have been kidnapped by Terra-Xehanort as a child and placed in the lifeboat in hopes that her power as a Princess of Heart would help him find a Keyblade wielder. An identical device is also featured in Union X as a major plot element, used to escape the data world that the Dandelions (and Maleficent at one point) are trapped in.
• Child Soldiers: People chosen by Keyblades can be as young as 4 years old. Remember, once chosen, they will live out the rest of their lives endangered by an army of Eldritch Abominations, whom they must fight for the safety of The Multiverse.
• The Chosen Many: Keyblade wielders were a knighthood.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
  • Axel. At one point in Chain of Memories, he betrays a senior member of the Organization, killing him, to get into the good graces of another faction betraying the main Organization. However, he's actually The Mole, set to betray that faction under Xemnas's orders, but then he kills a member particularly loyal to Xemnas because he's secretly planning to betray Xemnas alongside Saïx, because Xemnas is betraying the whole Organization. And then later on, during Days, he betrays that alliance when he develops friendship with Roxas and Xion, and then inadvertently betrays them, too! You need a friggin' flowchart to keep track of this dude. Lexaeus said it best:
    "And then there is Axel. Who knows what that one is thinking."
  • The Organization's lack of discipline was lampshaded by Sora in a mocking way:
    Sora: "Not a very organized Organization".
  • Organization XIII has a real problem with this. Virtually every other member is working on a scheme that works against the group's agenda.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Due to Square Enix being unable to secure the rights to use Tarzan in future installments, Deep Jungle hasn't appeared again after the first game and no references to the trio's visit there are ever made. It's quite notable, thanks to said world being a strong development factor in Sora and Donald's friendship.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Sora's drive forms in KH2 are a function of the new outfit he receives in the game, enchanted by the Good Fairies.
• Clueless Aesop: The series in general seems to be torn between two conflicting cultural beliefs. Namely, it tries to adhere to both a Black-and-White Morality and a Balance Between Good and Evil. In this story, Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil as far as both aesthetics and characterization goes, but the lore professes that too much of either side (light included) is a bad thing. This confused narrative was inevitable, because the story itself is the brainchild of both a Western company built on children's cartoons heaped with strong Christian values, as well as an Eastern company whose stories typically carry a strong Buddhist bent. Thus, KH tries to be all over the map with its themes, which can be very confusing.
• Collectible Card Game: Both as a gameplay mechanic in Chain of Memories, where you fight using cards as attacks and abilities, and as an actual collectible card game.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The 2008-2012 handheld games were each given a prominent color motif: Birth by Sleep is blue, Days is red, coded is yellow, and 3D is pink.
• Combined Energy Attack: Trinity Limit combines the power of three heroes to attack.
• Combo Breaker:
  • A rare non-Fighting Game example; in KH2 and KH3, some bosses have a "revenge value," which causes them to instantly retaliate in a specific way if you hit them too many times in succession. Sephiroth, for instance, will teleport out of Sora's combo and attack from a safe distance. The Payback moves in Birth By Sleep allow the player to do this, to some extent, by retaliating immediately after being knocked back by an enemy.
  • KH2 actually tracks two Combo Breaker values for bosses: one ("Revenge Value") based on number of hits that gradually resets when the boss isn't being attacked, and one based on how many times the boss plays their flinching animation that never resets until the revenge triggers. Certain A.I. Breaker strategies trigger one type of revenge to override the other, more dangerous one.
  • Birth By Sleep and 3D did away with revenge value in favor of having bosses randomly break out of stunlock and counterattack whenever the game felt like it. This had the side effect of making combos against them highly inconsistent (and frustrating).
• Combo Platter Powers: Keyblades can be used as traditional swords (or clubs), channel magic, lock and unlock pretty much anything, teleport to their owner's hand at will, create portals to other worlds, generate armor, turn into personal hovercraft that are capable of intergalactic travel, morph into other weapons like cannons or whips with no known limit to the transformations, and create elaborate castles out of rubble.
• Comic-Book Time: The only time that the in-game characters are portrayed as being of a different age between games is when it's plot-relevant. Otherwise, they don't age. This wouldn't be that obvious if it wasn't for the fact that the earliest game in the franchise chronical-wise, Kingdom Hearts χ, is set before the first keyblade war (an event that happened a long time before the Birth By Sleep, the next game in the series chronical-wise), and that several of the characters that appear in the game, like Snow White and Aladdin, apparently exist within that era as well. Even Mickey, Donald and Goofy can be encountered within that game within their modern-day Kingdom Hearts design. Their appearance within Kingdom Hearts X can be justified in that their worlds are simulated from the Book of Prophesy á la the Datascape from Kingdom Hearts coded, essentially allowing a form of pseudo-time travel to occur for the player characters of that game^note although this doesn't explain Mickey, Donald and Goofy appearing outside of the book within their standard garbs.
• Complexity Addiction: The more that Xehanort's plans are revealed, the more it looks like he's actually allergic to Mundane Solutions. Case in point: Dream Drop Distance reveals he's turned his entire life into a Stable Time Loop — a loop that required his past efforts to fail — just to set up a Long Game for Kingdom Hearts III.
• Composite Character: This happens often in the Disney worlds, usually because some of the characters are absent in their video game counterparts. These roles are usually filled by one of the original Kingdom Hearts characters. For example:
  • Sora takes on the role of Christopher Robin in the Winnie the Pooh world.
  • Xaldin seems to play the role of Forte in the Beauty and the Beast world.
  • Terra replaces the huntsman in the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs world.
  • Ventus replaces Gus in the Cinderella world.
  • Marluxia takes the place of the Stabbington brothers in the Tangled world.
  • In the Caribbean, Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Gibbs take most of the role played by Bootstrap ^note Sora and company attack Davy Jones long enough for Jack to have Will stab his heart, and Gibbs explains Will's subsequent curse as the new captain of the Flying Dutchman.
• Cool Key: Keyblades. Doesn't get much cooler than a key that not only doubles as a sword, but can open literally any lock or barrier.
• Cosmic Keystone: The Keyholes serve this purpose for each individual world; their safety keeps the world from falling into darkness.
• Crazy Enough to Work: The series concept itself for starters. A Disney and Final Fantasy crossover where anime-esque heroes fights the forces of darkness with swords shaped like giant keys.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: Despite coming from a Western company, it’s not uncommon to see some Disney characters use Japanese mannerisms in the game due to being developed by a Japanese company. This apparently happened so often during the development of the Toy Story world that the story consultant Tasha Sounart had to remind the Japanese staff that their characters wouldn’t use those gestures since they were American. This is especially noticeable with the manga series, where Disney characters are seen engaging in Japanese customs and eating Japanese food.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: Although not their original purpose. The Keyblade Wielders in general are this given they're the ones with weapons capable of purging the various creatures of the dark.
• Critical Status Buff: Various abilities can boost the player's status at critical HP, like "Defender" and "Damage Control" for defense, "Berserker", "Striker", and "Grand Slam" for offense.
• Crossover: The Kingdom Hearts franchise is centered around characters of both the Final Fantasy franchise and Classic Disney Shorts / Disney Animated Canon frequently meeting and interacting.
• Crossover Alternate Universe: The entire universe of the Kingdom Hearts series is an alternate universe for both the Disney Franchise and the Square Enix Franchise combined into one.
• Crossover Villain-in-Chief: Maleficent fills this role at various points throughout the series. In the original game, she's leading Hades, Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, Captain Hook, and Pete in an effort to find the Seven Princesses of Heart and unlock the gate to Kingdom Hearts, a vast repository of knowledge and power.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Most of the heroes, particularly Sora. In-game the kid is a maelstrom of Keyblade-fueled Magic Knight chaos that can rip through the hordes of darkness for days on end. In cutscenes, expect to see him regularly tossed around, knocked down, taken by surprise, etc.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • Near the end of Kingdom Hearts II, Sora basically turns into an overpowered action movie character. Case in point: he carves his way through entire buildings using a key. Using cuts that travel the length of said buildings. This may not count, however, depending on your definition of "cutscene".
  • Heartless and Nobodies are disposed of in one hit during cutscenes, regardless if it's Sora, Mickey, or even Kairi who is attacking.
• Cyber Space: Space Paranoids (Tron) and The Grid (Tron Legacy) take place inside computers.

D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The series has a bad habit of switching the button inputs for Aerial Recovery and Glide every other game.
  • In addition to this is the fact that the buttons for jumping and attacking are swapped on the DS and 3DS games, with A being attack and B being jump, despite the fact that their respective counterparts on a Playstation controller would be O and X.
  • Strangely enough, the same swap happens between the Japanese and English versions of the game, so if you're playing a fan translated version of one of the Final Mix games on an emulator, you'll find yourself using O to attack, and X to jump, the player can potentially work around this by simply swapping the controls in the menu on the emulator, but they'll still be met with conflicting orders on which button to press by the game, so this trope will apply either way.
• Damsel in Distress: Kairi gets kidnapped no less than three times in the series, one per each number game. The last is particularly infuriating as it happened just after the game promised that she becomes a capable combatant, only for her to get kidnapped once again before getting Stuffed in the Fridge by Xehanort (but was justified in the ReMind DLC).
  • The other Princesses of Heart don't fare much better but are sometimes useful. For example, Belle has a particularly memorable scene in which Xaldin has both her and the Rose and is forcing the Beast to choose between them. Belle preempts the choice by elbowing Xaldin in the gut, taking the rose from him, and escaping over to Sora right before the party fights him.
  • Naminé is an... unusual case. At first she's a Damsel in Distress that Sora has to rescue. The problem is that this is a complete and utter lie. She's a witch who can control the memories of people connected to Sora. However, she's only doing it because she's a hostage to Marluxia. After Sora rescues her, she's trying to restore his memories... only to be forced into hiding soon after when she betrays DiZ and the Organization wants her dead. Doesn't stop her from rescuing Kairi, though.
  • Played straight with Megara. Her very first scene in Kingdom Hearts II has her being chased by Heartless, and she ends up in distress at least three times. The manga adaptation has her fare worse, where she ends up Bound and Gagged by Pete moments after Sora frees her.
• Damsel out of Distress:
  • Belle of Beauty and the Beast pulls this trope off again in Kingdom Hearts II when Xaldin kidnaps her and the rose, and forces Beast to choose. She elbows Xaldin in the gut and grabs the rose before running back inside the castle.
  • Kairi sees herself in danger often, but every time she's escaped (or in the process of it) before Sora arrives in Kingdom Hearts II. For instance, when she's captured by Axel escapes from him but is later captured by Saïx and escapes him (with help from Namine, who, in an ironic doubling of this trope, actually IS her) and is confronted by nobodies and about to fight them when help from Riku arrives. Then she and Riku save Sora from a buttload of Heartless that Saix calls on him. Taken further in Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind in which Kairi is Promoted to Playable and becomes a devastating Glass Cannon.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The first game is very straightforward about declaring that Dark Is Evil, but from Chain of Memories onward, darkness is treated more like acid: powerful, useful if you use it responsibly, but dangerous to touch unprotected and easy to use for evil. Without protection, darkness feeds off and heightens the user's worst impulses before ultimately destroying them, but an obsession with purity of light means ignoring other people's pain and being an above-it-all jerk. Dream Drop Distance introduces the first good-aligned native creatures of darkness in the form of Spirit Dream Eaters, and the next group of villains set against Sora after Xehanort's defeat are ones obsessed with the power of light.
• Death Is Cheap: Zigzagged Trope. This series has an odd relationship with death. It's clear that it exists, but it seldom comes up—the weapons used in the series can cause grievous bodily harm, but will typically disrupt the target's being and cause them to fade away. This sort of not-technically-death is shown on-screen several times and is reversible if the pieces of a person's being are reunited. That said, in III, death is finally explained as the simultaneous destruction of the heart and body; previous not-technically-deaths only really harmed one of those. Sora nearly experiences this in the Keyblade Graveyard and discovers the Final World to be an example of The Nothing After Death.
• Demoted to Extra: The more games there are, the less and less Final Fantasy characters appear, let alone introduced to the point most games after II, Moogles are the only FF character to appear. Even Leon's group stops appearing after II despite their major supporting role, and only appear briefly in the Kingdom Hearts 3 Re Mind DLC.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • At the end of I, Mickey and Riku suddenly appear at the Door to Darkness and help Sora close it after he realizes that it's impossible on his own. Final Mix added a short cutscene to show Riku's heart had been jettisoned to the realm of darkness after Ansem possessed his body. Mickey's appearance was later explained in 0.2; he knew what would be required to close the Door to Darkness and was exploring to realm of darkness to find the Kingdom Key D. It also showed him trying to help Aqua escape, but failing due to Aqua staying back to Hold the Line.
  • During the dragon ship phase of the Xemnas battle in II, Riku randomly finds a flying motorcycle that allows him and Sora to pursue. Unlike the above example, this hasn't received any clarification, but the entire order is so surreal that no fans are too concerned about it.
  • Out of the Big Damn Heroes sequence during the final confrontation in III, the appearance of the fallen Dandelions' Keyblades gets the least amount of explanation. With the Lingering Will, Yen Sid, and Roxas, there are plenty of foreshadowing before that, but you can't really explain why the Keyblades of people who died eons ago randomly decide to help the Guardians fight against the darkness in the nick of time, especially since there is no logical explanation for them to do so.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Normally when one character heals another, the former shouts the latter's name. During the fight with the Guard Armor however, before they're properly introduced, Goofy shouts encouragingly to Sora "Don't give up!" instead.
  • In the first game, they thought of what would happen if you engaged in a bit of Sequence Breaking. If you complete Deep Jungle before Wonderland, the scene replaces Alice with Snow White. If you complete other worlds after completing Hollow Bastion, certain events with Maleficent will not play.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: A fair amount of worlds that use the plots of the films they represent have the villains die in different ways from how they die in their respective films.
  • In Tarzan, Clayton falls and ends up hanging himself. In Kingdom Hearts, The Stealth Sneak the fights alongside him in his boss fight collapses on him, crushing him.
  • In The Little Mermaid (1989), Eric kills Ursula by impaling her with the ship he is steering. In Kingdom Hearts II, he throws the trident right through her instead. This doubles as a Mythology Gag — she was originally slated to die in the same way in her film, but it was changed during production.
  • In The Lion King (1994), Scar is eaten alive by his hyenas after betraying them. In Kingdom Hearts II, he becomes a Heartless and plagues Simba for an extended period of time as a ghost until his Heartless is destroyed, then he dies.
  • In Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, Jafar's lamp is kicked into the lava by Iago, effectively destroying him. In Kingdom Hearts II, he dies the instant he is beaten in his boss fight with his lamp simply vanishing the moment he does.
  • In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the gargoyle that Frollo is standing on breaks off, sending him falling to his death. In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], it plays out the same way in Sora's story, but in Riku's story, he is blown off the church by the boss of the world, Wargoyle.
  • In III, while Mother Gothel dies the same way she does in the film, Marluxia puts a halt to her Disney Villain Death and transforms her into a Heartless for Sora to defeat. Additionally, while in the Frozen canon Hans survives the events of the film, the game's version of Hans is turned into a Heartless and destroyed by Sora's party.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Magic in most games. Most players often stick to the basic combos in most games with automatic finishers tagged on, and at most only use magic for healing. However, if used right, such as just before a combo finisher takes place, or at the end of a combo while the boss is stunned, magic attacks can take out large chunks of enemies HP and keep them stun-locked for longer.
  • Additionally, most combo finishers that aren't automated. For those, especially those not good at fighting games, getting the timing down can be rather tricky, but once you do, much like magic, it can take out large chunks of the enemies HP, and keep them stun locked for longer than the basic combos can. In fact, combined with magic above, it's possible to keep any boss permanently stun locked for the entirety of their battle, provided the boss doesn't have a move that specifically gets them out of being permanently stun locked.
  • Ars Arcanum (and its counterparts) is typically one of the most powerful techniques on the game, dishing out a massive amount of damage concentrated on a single target. The downside is that it's also quite difficult to use; it's very long and easily interruptible since Sora has no super armor or invulnerability, and to get the most damage out of it you must follow up with the Bash command up to an additional 5 times, with each successive hit becoming slower and more powerful at the risk of your enemy retaliating and knocking you out of the attack. In Chain of Memories, it requires a Stock value of 6 or lower to activate, which is easily breakable by almost any boss or late-game enemy the moment they're out of hitstun. The one exception to this tradition is Kingdom Hearts III, where Ars Arcanum is more flexible since it hits very fast and has full invulnerability, but its power rating is significantly downgraded since you start the game with it as a Finish command for Second Form.
• Diminishing Villain Threat: Poor Maleficent. She was a powerful, competent threat in Birth By Sleep and the original Kingdom Hearts. Then she lost all her help and resources in Kingdom Hearts II, but still managed to hold her own against Xemnas and the Nobodies. Then came Coded and Dream Drop Distance, where she is now a failure with plans that no-one but her cares about. Then she gains Reality Warper powers in X...
• Disappears into Light:
  • Most people who lose their hearts disappear into light. The only exceptions are people who completely lack darkness, like the Princesses of Heart and Ventus. Their bodies are left intact, although they are rendered comatose until their hearts return.
  • When a Nobody dies, its body degrades into darkness. Appropriate, as they aren't full humans and are sinking into the interstitial space between worlds to find the rest of their "parts".
• Disney Death: Well, Disney did help produce the game. It was originally stated by Tetsuya Nomura that there is no concept of death in the Kingdom Hearts universe, though it seems as though some of the characters from the Disney Animated Canon are exceptions to the rule. In III we learn that if a person's heart and body are destroyed simultaneously, then they actually do die for real. If something or someone is still holding onto them, their spirits remain in the Final World, a Purgatory of sorts where they cannot move on to the afterlife or return to life unless outside interference comes for them.
• Distressed Dude: For a series with most of its women Damsels in Distress, a few males in the Kingdom Hearts series wind in this situation, such as Pinocchio, Santa Claus, Jack Sparrow, Phillip, and even Sora himself.
  • In the manga adaptation for Kingdom Hearts II, Tron is bound to a wall and tortured, and later grabbed by a giant Sark, who tries to crush him (quite painfully). Quite a contrast to the game's portrayals as a Badass Bookworm and a mind-controlled cyber ninja.
• Doomed by Canon: The first game in the series feeds the audience bits of lore about a society based around light, darkness, and the Keyblade which appears to no longer exist. Suffice to say, characters introduced in the prequel games end their games on low notes.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: A variation in that the series is known for throwing the word darkness around a bit too much. This is especially bad in Riku's story within Chain of Memories. The series eventually lampshades it in Dream Drop Distance, where Riku suggests that Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (by far the biggest offender in overusing the word) should write a book about it.
• Dramedy: Likely owing to its Disney roots, the series is as genuinely silly as it is dark. Dream Drop Distance in particular ends with a Wham Episode about the plans of the Big Bad... and then it cuts to Sora wearing goofy eyeglasses with a fake mustache.
• Dub Name Change:
  • Some Heartless get little renames, like "Bulk Vendor" to "Bulky Vendor" or "Flare Globe" to "Fiery Globe"; sometimes the name changes are more significant ("Gate Guardian" to "Thresholder"). Conversely, very many Heartless were renamed in Days, and some renames are even inconsistent with previous renames (for example, a Heartless named "Loudness" in all Japanese games is called "Crescendo" in the English Chain of Memories but "Loudmouth" in the English Days).
  • Most of the Keyblades are renamed too—with the exception of a handful of character-significant Keyblades like the Oathkeeper, which have actual Japanese names, all the Keyblades have Gratuitous English names in the original. Some changes are minor ("Wish Star" to "Wishing Star", "Kingdom Chain" to "Kingdom Key", "Wishes Lamp" to "Wishing Lamp"), but some aren't - "Power of Hero" to "Olympia", "Desire Lamp" to "Three Wishes", "Native Work" to "Jungle King".
• Duel Boss: There are several examples in the main games (you tend to run solo period in the non-numbered titles). Some of these fights are more emotionally charged (e.g. Roxas vs. Axel), while in other cases you're simply separated from his party before the fight (Sora vs. Luxord).

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