Trivia / Fire Emblem: Awakening

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: A joke in the Avatar's supports with Frederick has them trick him into eating bear meat (again) by claiming it's "venison". While the word is nigh-exclusively used to refer to deer meat nowadays (and this was clearly the intention of the statement), technically, any meat from a hunt can be called venison.
• Acting for Two: In the Japanese version, the same lady does all the female Avatar voice options (which range from mature Lady of War to Token Mini-Moe) as well as one of the male ones.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Ricken, only in Japanese version.
  • Libra, in English and Japanese.
  • Henry, in only the Japanese version.
• Dummied Out: Bartre, Ninian, and Male Kris have unused placeholder portraits in the game.
• Fake American: Gideon Emery, who voices Gaius, is actually British — for comparison, his other two most famous roles are Balthier and Fenris, and for those, he keeps his natural accent.
• Fake Brit: Mela Lee, who voices Tiki is actually American.
• Franchise Killer: Awakening was actually intended to kill off the franchise for good after having suffered years of sales decline. However, due to the game's success, this ultimately never happened and the franchise continued to live on.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Despite this game being significant for the franchise, notably saving it from being shelved for good, it has yet to be ported to another console. As a result, it has become rarer as the years have gone by, with used copies of the game raking up to at least $55 on sites like Amazon. Those without access to a 3DS or emulation, or were too young to play it when it was released at the time are in miserable luck when it comes to getting the game into their hands. Hurting it even further is that the 3DS eShop was closed by March 27th, 2023, meaning that digital copies can no longer be bought there.
  • All of the DLC xenologues (including the DLC einherjar units) are no longer purchasable due to the shuttering of the 3DS eShop, and the only way to access any of them without pirating/hacking the game is through used copies that already had them installed or purchased (in which case they can be redownloaded) long before the 3DS eShop's closure.
• Killer App: It was reported in the UK that the bundle of Awakening and a limited edition 3DS XL made up about 30% of all 3DS XL sales the week it was released, and helped boost sales of the system 50% compared to the previous weeks.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • Thanks to the SpotPass optional battles and paid DLC, 50 characters from past games are appearing in English for the first time ever in this game.
  • In PAL versions of the game, this is the first time Lilina showed up in any form beyond a cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This is due to the fact that the PAL version of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade omitted the extended epilogue that was retained in all other versions of that game.
• Milestone Celebration: To commemorate Awakening's 10th anniversary, an episode of the Japanese Fire Emblem Roundtable webseries revolving around the game itself was broadcast on August 27th, 2022, featuring Tomokazu Sugita and Yū Kobayashi, the Japanese voice actors of Chrom and Lucina respectively, as guests. Months prior, Kozaki Yusuke also made celebratory artwork and posted it on his Twitter account on the exact same day it was released.
• Newbie Boom: Awakening got more marketing in the West than previous Fire Emblem titles, giving it much better mainstream exposure than its predecessors. It went on to become the best-selling Fire Emblem up to that point, which in turn drew in many new players to the fandom. Robin, Lucina and Chrom's inclusion as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. a few years later sparked another small surge of new fans due to the Smash series' popularity.
• No Dub for You: While the various European localizations are very creative and heavily Woolseyized, only English and Japanese voiceovers exist for the game, unlike Radiant Dawn's multiple European voices. However, all Western versions of the game contain both voice tracks, unlike in previous Fire Emblem games and the follow-up Fire Emblem Fates, which contain only the English audio.
• Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Yuri Lowenthal voicing a Kid Hero, Bryce Papenbrook voicing an energetic, creepily cheerful Kid Hero, Stephanie Sheh voicing a Yandere, Kate Higgins voicing a Tomboy; and Tara Platt voicing stern, serious mage, and a Lady of War, Sam Riegel as a Ridiculously Average Guy Badass Normal villager, Richard Epcar voicing a hammy villain.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Spike Spencer as a Sissy Smug Snake that looks like a lady, Liam O'Brien voicing a heroic Chivalrous Pervert, and Stephanie Sheh playing a confident, training-loving knight.
  • In terms of L.A-based roles, Todd Haberkorn went on to typically play Smug Snakes or Villains (like Sugou/Oberon and Jadeite). Male Morgan is neither of these, and is a bit of a dork, and is also a Nice Guy.
  • Jamieson Price has a recognizable deep and smooth voice that's pretty constantly used throughout all of his roles, meaning he usually doesn't get much of an opportunity to show off his vocal range. Those who played this game after some of the newer Fire Emblem entries recognize him as the original Tin Tyrant Red Emperor Rudolf, or the murderous warlord Nemesis. So his role as Virion, who uses a lighter voice with a French accent, still comes as a shocker to many people; nobody thought he was capable of pulling something like that off. In fact, many people thought that Virion was voiced by Dan Woren for years before news came out that it was Price. To steal a quote from the comment section of Virion's Behind The Voice Actors page:
    NCZ: Anyone who thinks Jamieson Price doesn't get to show off his range enough needs to let it sink in that it took 4 years for anyone to even consider that it was him voicing Virion.
• Reality Subtext:
  • It's possible to pair Miriel and Ricken. Their voice actors, Tara Platt and Yuri Lowenthal, are married in real life. Doubles as Hilarious in Hindsight, as the two were a fairly popular pairing even before their English voice actors were announced.
  • Same goes for Lucina and Brady, who are voiced by Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham respectively. (Willingham also voices Lon'qu, who can't be paired with Lucina.)
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Why Morgan has amnesia, as, depending on whether the Avatar marries a first or second generation unit, Morgan would have wildly different backgrounds and would require numerous script changes to their Supports. Amnesia easily circumvents this problem.
• Swan Song: The series was about to be cancelled due to low sales, so Intelligent Systems made this as one last hurrah. As with the original Final Fantasy, it instead went on to sell like gangbusters, becoming the Killer App for the 3DS and inducing a Newbie Boom to the franchise as a whole, securing its fate for the foreseeable future.
• Translation Correction:
  • Panne's generic barracks dialog in Japanese translates to "Humans are somewhat strong creatures too. [Name], how about we fight together next time?" It's possible to have her say that to one of the army's Manaketes, who obviously aren't human. So the English version changed it to "It seems the Taguel aren't the only strong beings out there."
  • In the original Japanese version, when Robin calls Chrom by name at the beginning despite never meeting him, Chrom confusedly asks Robin "How do you know my name?". This eventually stops making any sense whatsoever once it's revealed in-story a chapter or two later that Chrom is the prince of Ylisse, meaning there would be several hundred plausible reasons why Robin would know Chrom's name. The English localization fixes this by changing his line to "Ah, then you know who I am?", which is much more in line with what a famous figure would say upon being addressed by name by a stranger.
  • The weapon "Thor Hammer", which had shown up in previous games but never in English, was properly renamed Mjölnir in the English localization. Likewise the ultimate wind spell, which was generally romanized as Holsety before, was changed to Forseti, which gets the mythological reference right.
  • If you earn Robin and Lissa's C support conversation in the Prologue, then they will mention the Risen before their first appearance in Chapter 1. The European version corrects this by changing the Risen into bandits.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early trailers indicate Sumia was planned to have Cavalier as a reclass option.
  • In an early trailer for the English translation, Garrick (the Barbarian boss of the prologue) was named Grendel, but this was changed for unknown reasons.
  • Certain concept art suggests Cordelia early on was planned to have blue hair.
  • Several unused sprites for characters exist showing that Sully, Stahl, Lon'qu, Olivia, and Say'ri were able to promote into the Hero class at some point. Since all of those characters can become Myrmidons, this implies that the Hero used to be the promoted form of the Myrmidon.
  • Another sprite shows a critical hit animation for an unmasked Gerome◊, which indicates that he was to remove his mask during combat at some point.
  • A critical/skill portrait was discovered for Phila as well; unfortunately, she never has the chance to use it, because she's killed off.
  • The game's files list the names Andrea, Leopold^note which could be an early name for Libra, Bella, and Tracie among the game's characters. Although their names are all that is left of them in the game, these were apparently characters of some kind that were Dummied Out.
  • During the game's development, there were plans for the game's setting not to occur in the usual medieval setting. One concept originally had a modern-day setting while another concept took place on the planet Mars. It was changed back to a medieval setting due to fear of alienating players.
• Working Title: Fire Emblem Fin: The Children from the Brink

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